Only change is constant, sometimes you may feel that this adage was designed solely to describe the world of social marketing. Does this mean you should be constantly innovating with your social marketing strategies and tactics? Or should you focus on creating a good strategy and then simply stick to it?
Like all other important questions of life, there’s no straightforward answer to this conundrum. But there are some pointers that you can keep in mind when confused about whether you are smartly innovating or foolishly tinkering with your social marketing plan.
Fixing Something That’s Not Broken?
There’s always room to grow, to be better, and to become more successful at social marketing. However, you cannot set such utopian benchmarks when assessing the need to experiment. Why try to fix your strategy when it is not broken?
If you see a flaw in your social marketing strategy or anticipate issues in the future, then the smart thing to do would be to innovate and experiment to resolve the issue.
But if everything is going fine and you are happy with the growing engagement with your audience, then excessive experimentation may result in avoidable complications.
Disruption is Good but Not Too Much
Unless social marketing is just an academic exercise, you cannot afford too many disruptions to your strategy, right? An overhaul that will result in a huge dip in audience engagement for a month before yielding fantastic results after six months may sound good in theory.
In practice, you just cannot afford that kind of disruption, right? So, make sure your innovations are not too drastic or too disruptive. Slow and steady will work well to ensure the short-term costs don’t overshadow the long-term benefits.
Beyond Instinct – What about the Numbers?
To innovate or experiment just because you ‘feel’ like it or because your instinct tells you to go ahead may not be a very smart move. Run the numbers. Will your decision to expand to a new social platform boost your numbers?
Will you have access to a bigger audience? Will your metrics improve? Research your peers and competition to find out whether they have deployed such tactics and strategies. If the numbers back you, then you can go with your gut feel and take a call.
That you should innovate is a no-brainer idea. However, when, how, and to what extent is something that should be supported by cold analysis and hard numbers.
