This is going to be a bit of a different post as its not based on any reading or theory I have come across.

In this age where any Tom can create a Facebook page, Twitter handle or publish a YouTube video and call it marketing I spend more time encouraging colleagues to question their action. These are a few guide questions I often get them to ask.

• Does this platform fit in with your brand and brand positioning?
• Do you have a voice or from who’s point of view will the content be written?
• Where are your clients / potential clients?
• Do you have the resource to maintain these spaces?
• Do you have the content to populate the space?
• How will you maintain the quality of output and how much extra time will this add?
• Social media is also a communication platform, are you able to react to these communications and monitor them?
• In the early stages any online effort will only be seen by the people you tell, do you have the time to promote through offline and other online methods?

But this post is about another layer! For those who have decided that this is the correct medium to go to market. We should all be aware of purchase process and if not this should be pre requisite understanding to your marketing at some level. By understanding your targets purchase process you can map out Action Anticipation (I made that up) and this is the bit we usually forget. Sure you’ll hear people about number of followers or likes being a KPI, it is if your original objective is to gain readership but I’m pretty your MD is more concerned with whether one of those readers requested a proposal or actually bought something. So revisit your business or marketing strategy, what are your objectives?

By filling in the gaps in your potential clients purchase process you heighten the chances of meeting your objectives and satisfying a more tangible KPI that can be tracked by analytics such as number of RFPs or number of sales. If you are to be taken seriously as a social media marketer this is the language you should be talking.

Take something simpler to track like PPC advertising. Client searches client reads ad at this point you don’t want as many clicks as possible, if anything you want to put off the person who doesn’t require your product or service. client arrives on site (still not got them) what on that page sets you apart from the competition? Why should they call to action? You are not a brochure anymore! Your client is looking for more.

Apply this Action Anticipation next time you tweet something that is essentially a marketing message. What will the reader do next? if you manage to get them to your site, what will they do next? If you entice them with a free download, what will they do next? Missing a link, incentive, contact etc breaks the chain in the purchase process.

If you apply this mentality you are moving towards using the words social media in the same sentence as ROI. If not, keep measuring by readership and your social media marketing strategy will keep performing exceedingly well.