The champagne corks have been popped, the clock has struck 12, and the ball has dropped. That means it’s another new year, and time to make resolutions to improve your business, your marketing strategy, and your overall reach in 2015.
New year’s resolutions can fall into the realm of cliché — who hasn’t resolved to lose 10 pounds or to spend more time at the gym, at least once?– but they can also be a useful tool for revamping your company’s marketing and PR strategy in the coming year. As 2015 gets underway, a make resolution or two to enhance your company, increase its reach, and broaden its customer base.
Reflect and Plan
The start of the new year is a time for looking forward, as well as a time for looking back and reflecting on what worked and what didn’t in terms your marketing and public relations strategy in 2014. You can look back on a particular campaign and examine the aspects of it that brought in more customers or aspects of it that were more challenging than needed or that didn’t pan out the way you had intended.
Once you’ve looked over key events from the past year, resolve to lay out a plan for the year to come. What’s on the calendar for your business in 2015 and what do you hope to achieve over the course of the next 12 months? Your plans for 2015 don’t have to be set in stone, but it is helpful to have a basic outline to serve as a guide.
Tweak Your Social Media Strategy
Take a look at how your company is (or isn’t) using social media and resolve to improve upon it in 2015. A first step to take is to look at each social network you are (or aren’t) using and determine the type of customer your company reaches, or could reach, on that network.
People use different social media sites for different reasons, as this report from Business Insider demonstrates. Someone is likely to turn to Twitter for news, to LinkedIn to connect with fellow professionals, and to Pinterest or Instagram for lifestyle help.
Figuring out what you’ll say to your audience on various social media platforms is just step one. If you haven’t been the best at actually posting on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like, 2015 is the year to get that underway. Start small and resolve to post at least once a day to the social network that’s most likely to appeal to your customer base or audience. As the year goes on, add new networks to the mix. One way to figure out the best social media networks to use is to take a look at where your website is the most popular. SocialCrawlytics crawls your site and provides you with a report that lets you know how often it has been shared and on which networks.
Commit to Blogging
What’s one way to generate more leads for your business in 2015? Start a blog or commit to posting to your already existing blog more often. According to an infographic from Digital Insights, B2B marketers generate 67 percent more leads by blogging. The majority of people online, 77 percent, read blogs. Blogging also gives you something to share on social media, and keeps your audience in the loop about what is going on in your industry and in your business.
Make Your Goals Measurable
You’ve made your resolutions and now the big question is: “How will you keep them?” The answer is by setting trackable, measurable goals. If you’ve resolved to blog more, for example, set a goal of creating at least one post per week. If you’ve resolved to make better use of social media, set a minimum number of posts per week, then track how well each post performs.
Your goals don’t have to be directly related to your resolutions, either. In 2015, you might aim to expand your company’s media coverage, for example. A measurable goal might be to have your company mentioned in one additional print or online media piece per month. Another measurable goal might be to increase your customer base by 10 percent over the course of the year.
New Year’s resolutions aren’t necessarily made to be broken. Use yours as an excuse to improve upon your company’s marketing and PR strategy. You might not know what 2015 has in store, but making resolutions and setting goals will give you at least some insight into what lies ahead.
M. NICHOLS Communications 