With only a couple weeks left in 2019, there’s no better time than now to turn your attention to the new year. As a business owner, this means many things. Even if it’s not high on your priority list right now, you should make time to create a social media plan for 2020.

If you need a push in the right direction, here’s a long list of social media resources to guide you:

• The Future of Social Media Marketing in 2020: What You Need to Know
• 22 Instagram Stats You Need to Know in 2020 [Infographic]
• 6 Key Social Media Trends to Watch in 2020
• The Biggest Social Media Trends for 2020
• Social Media Trends for 2020: 50+ Industry Experts Define Trends You Should Know
• Where Social Media is Headed in 2020
• Social Media Predictions for 2020 [Infographic]

2020 is sure to be a big year for social media. While your 2019 strategy may generate some results, you’ll need to step into the new year if you want to take your social media activity to new heights.

Once you’ve read these resources, you’ll better understand how to use social media to your advantage in 2020, what to expect over the next 12 months, and how to position your brand for success.

With 2019 quickly winding down, there’s no better time than now to turn your attention to the new year. While this entails many things, for the sake of this article we’re going to focus on your social media marketing strategy.

There is no shortage of social media resources to lean on, but your success hinges largely on your ability to create a customized strategy based on your goals, industries, and other personalized factors.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in regards to your 2020 social media marketing strategy is waiting too long to pin down the details. If you start thinking about it on January 1, 2020, it’s not likely that you’ll hit the ground running on the second. It’s more likely that it’ll be February before you’re on the right track.

So, with that in mind, now’s the time to take action. Answering these eight questions will position you to formulate a detailed strategy that generates results:

• Overall, how do you feel about the results of your social media efforts in 2019?
• Which social media platforms generated the highest return on investment?
• Which social media platforms flopped, leaving you to wonder if it’s a good investment in the future?
• Do you have a social media team around you, or are you responsible for everything in regards to your strategy? Will this change in the new year?
• How much time and money can you comfortably afford to invest in social media marketing?
• What steps are you taking to measure your social media efforts?
• Are you willing to adjust your strategy in 2020 to boost performance across the board?
• Which social media KPIs are most important to you?

It’s not always easy to answer these questions. In fact, it may take quite a bit of digging to come up with honest answers that provide real value in regards to how you develop your strategy moving forward.

However, once you have the answers in front of you, it’s easier to implement a plan you can rely on to reach new social media heights in 2020!

Your social media marketing strategy can make or break your business.

With the right approach, you’re in position to generate interest for your product or service, engage with your target audience, and boost traffic and revenue.

Conversely, if you ignore social media or implement the wrong strategy, it’ll hold you back from reaching your goals.

In the past, we’ve covered every aspect of social media marketing, such as how to measure the success of your Instagram marketing plan.

This time around, we’re going to focus more on the actions you can take to achieve greater results. These seven must-read social media marketing resources will ensure that you’re on the right path for the remainder of 2019 and beyond:

• Social Media Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide
• 32 Social Media Marketing Tools That Will Give You an Unfair Advantage
• How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 8 Easy Steps
• Facebook Ads Guide for Beginners: How to Rock Your First Campaign
• The Ultimate Guide to Viral Campaigns
• 5 Types of Video to Add to Your Social Media Marketing
• Top 19 Social Media Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

The titles are self-explanatory, so you should have all the guidance you need regarding where to start. If you carefully review all seven of these social media marketing resources, you’ll feel more confident in your ability to implement a strategy that generates positive results well into the future.

When it comes to social media, it’s imperative to maintain a high level of flexibility. As platforms and your audience change, so should your strategy.

With the first half of 2019 in the books, there’s no better time to review your social media strategy with an eye toward optimizing it for better results over the final five months of the year. Pay close attention to:

• Return on investment
• Audience engagement
• Top posts (and those that didn’t perform well)

If you’re wondering where to go next in regards to your social media strategy, these seven statistics will point you in the right direction:

• 74% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes. (HubSpot)
• Seven out of ten hashtags on Instagram are branded. (HubSpot)
• 39% of the 500 million LinkedIn users are paying for a premium account. (HubSpot)
• Tweets with video get 10 times more engagement than those without. They are also 6 times more likely to be retweeted. (Hootsuite)
• People watched more than 50,000 years of product review videos over the last two years. (Hootsuite)
• 61% of businesses worldwide use YouTube. (Hootsuite)
• Facebook appeals to social marketers as an advertising platform with 70% of them choosing Facebook ads as the most useful for achieving their goals. (Sprout Social)

It doesn’t matter if you’re spending most your time on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or another platform, things are changing and it’s imperative that you adjust accordingly.

What are your thoughts on these social media statistics? Will they change your strategy in the future? How so?

Last month, we detailed some of the many ways to impress agency clients with a social media dashboard. As a quick recap, we touched on the following:

• Provide direct client access
• Hundreds of integrations
• Comprehensive reporting

With the help of a social media dashboard, you can keep your clients in the loop in regards to what’s working, what’s not, strategical adjustments, and much more.

A dashboard can also help answer a variety of client questions, which can save you a good amount of time. These often pertain to details such as:

• How a particular campaign is performing
• Potential strategy changes
• Reasons for an underperforming campaign
• Growth over a specified period of time (one week, one month, one year, etc.)
• How to harness the power of top performing social media platforms

So, for example, a client may come to notice a recent explosion in regards to Twitter engagement.

Rather than bombard you with questions, your client can review their social media dashboard for a clear idea of what’s happened. You can do the same, which puts both parties on track for a meaningful discussion.

Final Thoughts

It’s your job to provide your clients with as much data as possible, in a clear and concise manner. By using a social media dashboard, you’re able to do just that – while also proving your worth as an agency.

Even if your client is cool on the idea of using a dashboard, give them access anyway. Once they see what’s available to them, they may warm to the idea of using it to their advantage.

Did you know that 81 percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool? Not only is this a large number, but it’s one that has been on the rise over the past few years.

It doesn’t matter if you’re new to video marketing or have been using this strategy since YouTube entered the picture in 2005, it’s critical to understand your performance.

Rather than track YouTube analytics on your own, integrate your account with your Dasheroo dashboard. This allows you to track a variety of metrics, with these three among the most important:

1. Lifetime Overview

How have your videos performed on YouTube since day one? With this, you can obtain a summary of the most important data, such as total uploads, subscribers, and views.

If you only need a snapshot of your performance, this is the right place to start.

2. Engagement

Just the same as any other social media platform, engagement is essential to your success. You can post as many videos as you want, but if you’re not getting a response you’re missing out on the full power of YouTube.

Engagement includes:

• Likes
• Shares
• Comments
• Favorites

3. Views

Views and engagement go together hand in hand, so you’ll want to keep a close watch on this metric as well.

In short, you’re able to view the daily total views of a specific video for a selected date range. You also have the ability to display the number of new video views across your entire channel.

With a system in place for tracking YouTube analytics, you’ll better understand which videos have the highest engagement and views. Subsequently, you can create new videos just like them.

There is more than one way to win big with social media. Some brands throw most (if not all) of their marketing resources into a variety of social media channels, while others make it a small part of their overall strategy.

If you’ve pulled back on social media marketing, it may be time to reconsider. Here are five stats that show the true power of social media marketing:

1. Approximately 70 percent of Americans use social media. (Pew Research Center)

If you want to reach your audience, there’s a very good chance you can do so via social media. Best yet, this number is likely to grow in the years to come.

2. More than 50 million businesses are now using Facebook Pages. (Forbes)

Simply put, if you’re not using Facebook for business your competition is passing you by.

3. Link clicks account for 92 percent of all user interaction with tweets. (HubSpot)

There’s more to this than meets the eye, but it shows that there is a big opportunity to garner engagement on Twitter.

4. LinkedIn has 562 million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. (LinkedIn)

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network by a wide margin. There’s no guarantee of marketing success on LinkedIn, but there’s also no denying the potential to achieve great results.

5. Those under the age of 25 spend more than 32 minutes a day on Instagram, on average, while those age 25 and older spend more than 24 minutes a day. (Instagram)

Instagram users are more likely to engage with your content, when compared to other social platforms, as long as you provide something of value. There is a massive audience waiting to engage with you and/or your brand. You just have to take advantage.

What are your thoughts on these social media marketing statistics? Do they justify all the time and money you spend on social media? Will they push you toward a more social-focused strategy in the future?