As a marketer, you already know about the classic SWOT analysis. You look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats your brand faces and you draw conclusions and actions from them. Now it is the time to expand this useful analysis to your social media marketing work.
Why Do You Need a Social Media SWOT Analysis?
According to a survey prepared by Social Media Today in June 2019, nearly half (47%) of marketers say that their biggest challenge is creating strategies that support business goals. In other words, they find it difficult to align the social media activity with the overall goals of the company. This means that they note a lack of engagement and a disconnection between how followers interact with social media content and the expected results of these interactions from the point of view of the company.
And this is exactly why brands need to perform a social media SWOT analysis every once in a while. They have to know:
- What they are doing well (and should keep doing and improving);
- What they are not so good at (and need to reformulate or scrape);
- What new unexpected market trends they can tap into;
- Who and what threatens the market position of the business.
What Does a Social Media SWOT Analysis Involve?
This kind of analysis relies heavily on the way you collect and store data. We are talking about analytics data from:
- Your Facebook ad campaigns (and other social media ads, of course);
- The analytics pages of your social media accounts:
- The analytics reports generated by social media automation tools like Buffer or Hootsuite.
Without this information, you cannot do much social media marketing planning and measurement, anyway.
Now, let us look at the four elements of a SWOT analysis from the point of view of social media marketing.
1. Strengths
What are you best at? Where do you get your best results? Do you always meet and exceed the objectives of Facebook ad campaigns? Do you attract the right type of followers with your Instagram posts?
This is your strong point – the business goal that is reached to the highest possible extent on a specific social media platform and through a specific type of social media marketing activity. This is where you should continue to focus efforts, energy and budget with top priority – because you are getting the results you need.
2. Weaknesses
Nobody wants to look at this part of a social media SWOT analysis, but you must. Where do you see the least favourable results? What types of ad campaigns fail to generate leads? Or why do you get clicks from people who never end up becoming clients?
These weaknesses translate into lost money and lost business opportunities. You need to have a close look at the ways you can fix these areas – or maybe stop them (on a temporary or permanent basis).
3. Opportunities
Have you collected leads from an unlikely source or audience group? For example, did you target working moms with your social media posts, but got the highest engagement from young and busy professionals who are not ready to start a family yet?
This is an example of opportunity – an untapped audience segment that you should start targeted with tailored content and ads. And once you start sifting through your analytics data, you will find many more like this one.
4. Threats
Also, speaking of costs, your competitors may be increasing their spending on Facebook and Instagram ads, while your budget stays the same as last year.
Last but not least, when you are performing the next social media SWOT analysis, make sure you check whether you mitigated the weaknesses and threats identified in the previous analysis, as well as capitalised on strengths and opportunities.