Ahh January. Dry January. January blues. Longest-wait-until-pay-day-January. The first month to kick start us into a brand new year doesn’t get the best rep does it?

From giving up everything we enjoy to the grey skies and dark afternoons not looking quite as magical now that the festive decorations and twinkly lights are no more, poor January just isn’t met with the same excitement as the rest of the year.

And it should be!

Much is shared and discussed about the demotivating nature of new year’s resolutions and setting ourselves unrealistic goals, only to feel an overwhelming sense of failure when we don’t hit the gym 85 times in one week or speed-read three books a day. But that’s not to say that setting targets and working towards something can’t be incredibly motivating.

Baby steps. That’s all we need.

If 2019 is the year you strategise your business’ social media, here are some resolutions baby steps you can take in January to set you up for the year.

Research

All good plans start with research. Audit your existing social media platforms, analyse the content shared, the audiences you’re speaking to and the engagement you’re receiving.

Perhaps specific content is directing traffic to your website which you hadn’t noticed or you’re receiving engagement from a potential client just waiting to be contacted. Of course, your findings might not be this positive, but it’s equally, if not more, important to know what isn’t working as well as what is – is it time to stop bombarding your Twitter audience with website links if Instagram advertising is going to garner more tangible results?

While your eyes and ears will be on your industry throughout the year, this is also a great time to suss out what your competitors are doing.

Listen

Social listening might be a phrase you’ve heard in the last couple of years, but is it something you’ve taken on board? Increasingly, as our days become busier and the need to be omnipresent on social media gets greater, it’s easy for our social listening to drop off the radar.

With quotas to meet, posts to schedule, reports to create and, well, work to do, it’s easy to forget that simply ‘listening’ could have the biggest impact on your social media strategy this year. If you’re concerned about little ol’ matters such as lead generation or reputation management, this list of tools might just be of interest. And don’t underestimate that using social media effectively is just the art of having a conversation; listen, respond, provide some useful information, ask a question.


Why not set yourself the target of speaking to someone new everyday via social media? You might just be pleasantly surprised at your engagement analytics at the end of the month…

Track

…which brings us nicely onto tracking. Reporting. Analytics. Insights. ROI. Whatever you want to call it, there’s little point throwing all the effort, tools, money and resource into an amazing new campaign or social strategy if you’ve nothing to measure or track.

Set goals for each quarter to give you something to work towards, whether it’s an increase in engagement on Twitter, video views on Facebook or website visits via Instagram* – put a figure to them and get a plan in place to meet and exceed them. Check in on them each month and keep a performance record, altering your strategy if needed as you go – most social platforms have easy-to-digest analytics available for business accounts, providing you with top line figures.

*Notice we didn’t say grow your followers? While having a bigger audience is great, and of course we want it to be on the up, businesses need to place much less value on their follower count and much more on creating meaningful content which drives interaction, and importantly, conversions.

What are your social media goals for January and beyond? If you need a helping hand in putting them together or in identifying your needs for the year, chat to us about our social media packages or bespoke training.

Happy 2019!