Banyan Branch

For many, the new year means assessing our lives, making new goals and commitment plans. That could mean a change in the food eat, our workout schedule, our budgets and our schedules. For brands and individuals alike, this is also a great time to take a look at our social media “diets.” By that we mean taking a good look at our social media activity, weeding out the stuff that isn’t beneficial, taking what works and making it work even better, and exploring new platforms or campaigns altogether. While the past couple of years were about simply carving a presence on social, today most brands have at least created their Facebook page and dabbled a bit on Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn. Others more have found success on platforms like blogs, Google+, Quora and more. Every day, brands are building beyond their social media foundations and getting smarter about where, how, and why they are spending time on social.

With that, here are five things for your brand to consider when balancing its social media diet for the new year:

Image via Google

Tweak your metrics recipe

You’ve got your brand pages set up and are actively having conversations with fans and followers. Great! This year should be about focusing on defining the real value and ROI of your brand’s social media strategy. How are you measuring your work and determining what’s working for your brand on social media? Which tools are you using, and are they pulling the metrics you need? Which metrics have you been pulling? Is it time to add new measurements, or remove ones that aren’t relevant to your brand? Take the time to answer these questions, explore different options and tweak your metrics recipe. Here’s a guide to the various social media monitoring tools we use for our clients to help get you started.

Go where your audience is

Do you remember the first time social media came up as “something that needs to be done for marketing?” That might have resulted in a frenzy of branded page creation on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, FourSquare, Yelp, Instagram and a myriad of other social media sites. Where are you getting the most comments or responses? Which site is driving traffic back to your brand’s website? Which sites are attracting your target audience (regardless of whether or not you’ve interacted with them there?) Analyze your engagement on these various sites and you’ll see where your audience best responds to you. Focus your time on creating the best possible experience for your customers where they are, through compelling campaigns, interesting visuals and most of all – consistent and diverse engagement.

Try new ingredients

Maybe you’ve heard some buzz about Pinterest or Instagram, or created your brand’s Twitter page but never really invested any time or energy engaging in it. Spend some time exploring these sites and see if it makes sense for your brand to make a presence there. There might be a hidden gem of a campaign that integrates these sites with your Facebook page, Twitter or blog. You can open up a whole new audience by introducing new platforms in your social media marketing mix.

Aim higher

Take a look at the goals you’ve set in the past for your brand’s social media presence. Are they relevant now? “Get a ton of fans & followers” isn’t going to cut it anymore. The brands who can make a lasting impact on social media will set goals for standing out against the crowd. With 800 million users and counting, Facebook in particular is a platform for the survival of the fittest. How can your brand engage fans in a useful, meaningful way that keeps your page in your fans’ news feeds? Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn all took major steps in 2011 to improve branded pages. How will you go beyond posting tweets, status updates and videos and design a cohesive marketing strategy that connects with your audience? Your goals should then reflect what it takes to make this strategy happen.

Cement your policies

According to research firm Grant Thornton, 76% of companies don’t have a social media policy, and yet social media is where most internet users spend their time! Take the time this year to create or edit your social media and disclosure policies as needed, to reflect all of the changes and new platforms you’ve made a presence on in the past year(s.) Just as you’d create guidelines for use of your logo or company verbiage, your social media policy should outline what can (and can’t) be said or disclosed online.

Happy new year, and best of luck for a very successful 2012 in social media!