Last-minute Holiday Social Media Checkup for Ecommerce

A quick checkup can ensure that holiday social media posts achieve a company’s objectives.

Detailed social media audits should be a regular part of an ecommerce marketer’s standard operating procedures. The audits should occur quarterly or annually, depending on the business. They should include a review of the company’s social-media key performance indicators.

What follows is a social media checklist. Think of it as a tune-up for an important journey. It will provide a measure of certainty about holiday social campaigns.

1. Check Goals, Vision

An ecommerce company’s social media marketing should be informed by its goals. Perhaps the vision includes metrics to meet each quarter. Or it might be a Hedgehog Concept — the intersection of passion, competence, and profit — with an associated strategy.

Regardless, verify that your company’s goals are in line with its social media channels, the future social posts on your editorial calendar, and how those posts are engaging your audience.

For your checklist, consider using a spreadsheet, Kanban board, Google Table, or similar. Associate each channel with a goal. This might be as simple as deciding if a channel is for engagement or acquisition. Maybe you want to increase brand awareness or provide a channel for content distribution.

Your social media checklist could take the form of a spreadsheet, a Google Table like this one, a Kanban board, or similar.

Whatever the goal, put it here. When possible, make the goal specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound (SMART).

2. Check Profiles, Pages

Ensure that each social channel’s profile or page is complete, optimized, and ready for the holidays. If you used a spreadsheet or Google Table, add columns for each profile or page items you want to check. These should include:

• Branding (think logos, graphics, and similar).
• Hours of operation.
• Customer service telephone and email.
• Video content (think about your company videos).
• Profile completeness (fill in every field in the social profile).

3. Verify Your Audience

Each social media channel should report about your audience in some way. Take a few minutes to ensure that the audience you’re addressing via a given channel is consistent with your ideal customer profiles.

For example, there is likely a disconnect if your online shop sells men’s grooming products, but 85 percent of your Facebook audience is female. Perhaps, your Facebook posts don’t appeal to males. Or, perhaps females purchase most of your products for gifts. You won’t know until you research.

Try to determine the demographics of your audience members — gender, age, location, occupation, more — and, importantly, their interests.

4. Check Performance

Review your social-media KPIs for trends. Depending on the platform, the KPIs could include:

• Followers or fans,
• Likes or upvotes,
• Post reach,
• Video views,
• Comments,
• Shares,
• Clicks.

Identify your top-performing posts. What were those posts about? Why did they perform well? Did those posts support your store’s goals?

For example, an online automotive parts store aimed at Jeep enthusiasts might be surprised to learn that its best performing post was about National Taco Day. At first glance, this might seem like a failure. Tacos have no direct connection to Jeeps. Perhaps, however, what made the Taco Day post successful was that it recommended an activity to get tacos. Could a post about planning a weekend off-road adventure perform just as well?

5. Editorial Calendar

Each social media channel should have an editorial calendar. This is a list or Kanban board showing what will be published on the channel and when. It should include copy, graphics, a call to action when appropriate, and even an engagement goal.

For your holiday social media checkup, verify that you have a publishing plan in place through the end of the year. Also, check the mix. Are you only posting cat memes from now until Christmas? Or are you using something like the help-hub-hero content marketing strategy?

Finally, ensure you’re optimizing each channel. For example, are there live video opportunities? Are you creating posts that make sense for your audience as defined in “Verify Your Audience” above?