Realistic New Year’s Resolutions for Social Media Marketers in 2016

There’s just something about New Year’s resolutions. Despite the jokes about all those social media marketing company resolutions you don’t keep up, you never tire of making new ones. It gives you hope for betterment, both personal and otherwise. It gives you a sense of ambition, and a potential accomplishment to look forward to.2015 was an exciting year in terms of social media with Facebook launching Instant Articles, Twitter releasing Moments and Snapchat introducing Discover. Although these developments came with challenges of their own, they gave social media marketers more avenues to share content and interact with their audiences. Along similar lines, 2016 is going to be a promising year – with the surge in real-time marketing, social commerce, and more targeted advertising, social media will continue to be an integral layer of the sales funnel. Whatever you’ve been doing on social media, do it better next year.The New Year is a good time to reconsider your social mix. Assess the engagement levels across your social profiles and adjust the effort you invest in each of them accordingly. If 2015 was a great year for you on Twitter, find more ways of strengthening your presence there in 2016. If you’re going to be growing your team over the next year you may also consider exploring platforms you haven’t tried yet. The golden rule as always is to create and maintain just as many profiles as you can (actively).Leverage the unique features of each platform. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat – name any social media platform and it’s quickly evolving. Growing your following and building engagement across multiple platforms demands a well-developed strategy that takes into account the uniqueness of each platform. For instance, both Facebook and LinkedIn are giving users more ways to publish content natively, you should definitely be looking at these opportunities in 2016. Optimize your time with automation .Automation was perhaps one of the most debated subjects among social media managers in 2015. If you don’t already have a social media marketing plan template tool kit, 2016 is the year to get one. From content discovery and scheduling to social listening and analytics, data and insights can drive your social media marketing efforts in the right direction, and help align them with your goals. Particularly for small businesses that are tight on resources, automation lets you focus on all the other aspects of your business while also leveraging the power of social media in reaching out to the right audience. We at DrumUp, will be working hard at making your life easier with great social media marketing and content marketing automation.

Do your own career evaluation

This means sitting down and thinking about your goals social media marketing world for the year in terms of your own personal career. Write down any responsibilities you want to take on for the year, evaluate what is making you happy and what is making you unhappy in your career so you can make changes, and do some research about salary for your position. Make sure you're getting treated fairly and you're happy, and if not, come up with a plan to make changes. Get certified in one new skill. Whatever the skill, make sure it is something that interests you and really make time for it this year as part of your personal development. This will help keep you motivated and hopefully learn something that will make you more valuable in the years to come. Organize personal social accounts for business. Even if you're not the social media expert in your office, that doesn't mean you can't use social media to your advantage. Make it a goal to utilize social media to help promote your business and even more importantly, help improve your personal brand.Clean out your inbox and keep it clean. This is probably the easiest resolution to master on the list. Take one weekend day before January and clean out your entire inbox so you can start fresh at 0 emails. This not only means deleting the emails you don't want, but actually unsubscribing from them as you go so that they don't keep bothering you. It's also important to keep it up throughout the year, which involves creating email folders for organization, turning off notifications, and more. Read industry news every morning. Before work everyday, read the news that's happening in your industry. Find the blog that really focuses on industry specifics so that you do not have to sift through other distracting news, and give it a quick read every single morning. If you keep up with it, you should only have three or four new headlines to read each day, and for most, only about one or two stories per week even deserves a clicksocial media marketing tips and a read. Regardless, it's important to have a feel for what is going on so that you don't miss a beat.

Buy a new house or car

If you just graduated or are finally earning what feels like a good income, you might be tempted to go shopping for a new car or your first house, especially if your friends and peers are posting on social media marketing tools about theirs. Don't feel pressured to keep up with the Joneses. What you don't see are any posts about how much debt they took on to make those purchases. A better resolution to have while you're in your 20s and early 30s is to keep building a good credit history, which you'll need it to get approved for a mortgage or auto loan. That doesn't mean you shouldn't drop the car or house idea entirely, however. Research what down payments cost, and start saving now in an account that earns compound interest so that you can afford a great car or house in a few more years. After a few glasses of Champagne while celebrating New Year's, you might start thinking you want to just quit your miserable job and pursue a new dream. Don't make any hasty decisions. If you really want to quit your job in 2016, you need to first line up a new stream of income so that you can pay your rent and monthly bills. Decide what new job or role would make you happier, and then outline the steps you'll have to take to make that happen in the coming year. Build your professional marketing social medianetwork and leverage your social media contacts, attend networking events and conferences, and take classes or seminars to build new skill sets. These efforts can help you feel like you're moving in a more positive direction for your career. You might also find that you can improve your standing in your current job in the process. Be smart about how to pursue a better – and better-paying – job in 2016, so that you don't spend the year trying to conquer unemployment instead.