Don’t know exactly what resolutions you should have for your social media for 2018? Here are a few questions to help you develop your social media resolutions. There are 10 sections: Audience, Identify Your Why, Engagement, Content Creation, Platforms, Video, Images/Infographics, Keywords and Hashtags, Measurement, and Personal Accounts.

Audience

There’s a reason audience is at the top of this list! When you’re talking to someone, you need to know what is important to that person, and what their pain points are. If you have no idea who your audience is, here you go: 10 Free Tools to Help You Understand Your Social Media Audience. And here: Using Surveys to Define Your Target Audience.

Who is your audience? (And please don’t say everyone!)

What is the lifestyle of your audience? In other words, what do they do when they’re not buying your product or service?

How will you build a better target persona?

What type of language does your target audience use? 

What will you do to better target your audience this year?

Where do you think your audience likes to hang out?

Do you hang out the same place your audience hangs out?

If you don’t hang out where your audience is, why not?

What is the best time or the best times to post for your audience?

Where in the world does most of your audience live? Yes, brick-and-mortars will have a more local audience, of course.

 

Identify Your Why

Social media isn’t a magic bullet. Social media is very good for branding and recognition, but it probably can’t replace all your forms of marketing. You’ll still want to meet some people in person, go to meet ups, or do other forms of marketing. So if you’re looking for sales, realize that social media does help to generate sales, but usually not immediately.

You might like these articles:

• Why Social Media Does Not Correspond to Exponential Growth.
• And Jeff Bullas’ excellent article: 44 Reasons Why You Should Use Social Media for Your Personal and Business Brand.

Why are you using social media? Fun? Business? Branding? The more specific, the better!

Will you use social media to build your business?

Will you meet some of your social media followers in person?

How have businesses similar to yours leveraged social media?

What expectations do you have of your social media?

Would you like to find collaborators with social media?

Do you have power partners? Would you like more power partners?

What are your top three reasons for using social media?

Looking back at your strategy for last year, have your reasons to use social media changed?

How will you decide if you’ve been successful on social media? 

 

Engagement

When I co-teach with Alyson Harrold (at UC Berkeley Extension, the students want to know how to engage on social media more than anything else. So I wrote this to help them (and maybe you): How to Engage on Social Media the Complete Guide. And I really like Coschedule, so here’s their 30 Social Media Engagement Tactics That Will Boost Shares And Conversions.

On a scale of 1-10, how much will you focus on engagement this year?

If your engagement was low last year, how will you create more engagement?

Are there any hashtags you could use to create more engagement?

Which hashtags will you use to increase your followers and engagement? 

Do you repost from those who follow you?

Do you use the 80/20 rule (80% other people’s content/20% your own content)? 

Will you thank people for sharing your posts in order to create more engagement?

Will you tag the people you write about in your posts to help increase engagement?

Will you participate in TweetChats to help your engagement on Twitter?

Could you use a Facebook group to increase your engagement on Facebook? 

Content Creation

Content creation has become more important than ever. And if you don’t believe me, how about this post from Hubspot: How to Develop a Content Strategy? I look at the blog as the torso, or body, of your efforts, with all the social media platforms as the arms and legs of your strategy. You might also like: Content creation: 5 Killer Reasons it’s Your New BFF.

Will you be starting a blog this year?

If so, what will you use (WordPress, etc.)?

Will you create a content calendar?

How often will you post?

How long will the posts be?

How many images, if any, will each post have?

Will you have a newsletter?

What will you use to create your newsletter (Mailchimp, etc.)?

How will you get signups for your newsletter?

Will you count posts, tweets, and comments on others’ posts and blogs as part of your content?

Platforms

By platforms, I mean Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. If you don’t know yet, this might help: Ten Simple Ways to Choose the Best Social Media Platform. The Huffington Post identifies seven best social media channels for business (#7 might surprise you! And no, that’s not clickbait!).

Which social media platforms do you want to be on?

Will you squat on a social media name until you have the time to be there full-time? 

How do you propose starting out a new platform?

Which new platforms would you like to research?

Are there any platforms that you definitely don’t want to use?

Which is your favorite social media platform? Why not start there?

Which social platforms will you use less of or spend less time on this year?

Why will you use that/those platforms less?

Which top sites will you focus on this year?

How will you measure your efforts (if at all)?

 

Video

Why should you use video in your social media? Forbes has a nifty article: Why You Need to Know about Social Video Marketing in 2017. Yes, video is an up-and-coming item to add to the mix. Here’s my first video (with tons of mistakes! so don’t feel intimated about getting started): How to Organize Jewelry.

Will you add video to the mix this year?

If you choose to add video, will you produce it yourself?

What tools will you use to produce your video?

Will you use YouTube this year? Vimeo?

Do you have your own YouTube channel? My friends Chef Ivan Flowers and his wife, Tracy, and now-famous pooch Pickle have a great YouTube channel (go subscribe!).

Will you create unique video on Instagram? Facebook? Twitter? 

Will you make money with ads from your YouTube videos?

How will you brand your channel? 

How will you create unique calls-to-action?

How will you discover key words to add to each video?

Images/Infographics

Social media posts have become more and more image-centric. So what’s your game plan for including images in your posts and blog articles? Here’s a good article article from Jeff Bulas: 6 Powerful Reasons Why You Should Include Images in Your Marketing (check out the infographic, too!). And you might like this: How to Recycle Content the Ten Best Ways (includes ways to recycle images).

Where will you find images for your social media posts?

Will you be using free images, or will you pay for images? 

How many images will you create yourself?

Will you use your own photographs for your social media? 

How will you give credit to those who provide images for your posts?

Will you use infographics in your social media mix?

How will you produce great quality infographics?

Will you create your own infographics? 

Which social platforms will you use to showcase your images?

Will you use any interactive images? How about gifs? 

 

Keywords and Hashtags

Keywords and hashtags have become more and more important. Keywords help your articles and post get picked up by Google. Hashtags also allow your posts to be seen by Google (thanks for this tip, Robert Nissenbaum!). Here’s a longish post about hashtags you might enjoy: How to Catapult Your Tweets Using Hashtags!

Are there keywords that you use regularly or that you’re trying to dominate?

Are keywords part of your strategy yet?

When you tag your blog posts, are there certain tags that you use over and over?

Will you continue to use the same keywords? 

Do you need to research hashtags more before you use them more regularly?

Will you start using hashtags over the next year? 

Do you have favorite hashtags that you use all the time?

On which platforms will you use hashtags?

Do you prefer local hashtags or more generic ones for your Instagram posts?

Do you have a way to store and then reuse your hashtags?

Measurement

Measurement of your social media efforts can be a tricky thing. You can use branded links, and you can always ask people how they found you, but often social media is one of many marketing “touches.” And people don’t always remember how they found you. You might like this: How to: Business Analytics Tricks You Need to Know for Twitter. And you might like this: Google Analytics Demographics & Generational Insights by my friend Alyson Harrold.

Will you measure your efforts on social media?

If you have a simple measurement system, what is it? 

Are there certain items that you won’t measure?

Will you use a branded hashtag to see how far your posts have traveled?

How about branded links? Will you use those?

Do you need help figuring out what to measure?

If you measured your efforts last year, how will this year be different?

How often will you check your analytics?

Will you use Google analytics?

Or will you use each platform’s analytics to measure your success? 

Personal Accounts

Some business owners would prefer not to have any presence on social media at all. Many would like to avoid it altogether! Are you one of them? Some would prefer to have one account, rather than separate personal and business accounts (I don’t recommend this approach.)

How much will you post on your personal social media platforms?

Do you plan to post at all on your personal platforms? 

Will you post more or less on each platform compared to last year?

How will you guarantee that you unplug or stop surfing the net?

Will your personal accounts be in alignment with your business accounts?

Are there any topics you will avoid posting about? 

Will you stop following people/pages who make you unhappy?

Will you focus on vanity metric, such as numbers of followers this year? Or not?

How do you use social media personally, and will that change this year?

How does social media affect your personal life, if at all? 

Need Help with Your Social Media? 

If all of these questions leave your head spinning, send me an email or comment here! I’d love to help!