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This end-of-financial year (EOFY) guide is designed to help measure the success of your online communications and social media, in order to plan ahead.
It’s the end of the financial year (EOFY) season for many organisations. And, apart from sorting out finances and other aspects of your operations, it is also a good time to look at your online communications and/or social media activities.
Checking what worked and what didn’t work, as well as planning what else can be done for the coming year, would all be very helpful in making sure that your ongoing efforts would have better impact.
If you have been keeping a monthly report, then this is only a matter of consolidating those monthly reports to look at trends and to analyse results.
You can look at what your data is telling you by checking different aspects of your metrics. Some questions you might look to ask when reviewing your report:
See: Social Media Engagement Metrics and Social Media Audit
Apart from reviewing the previous year’s efforts on communications and social media, it is also a good time to look at the previous year’s strategic documents. Checking on targets/goals, as well as setting new ones for the coming financial year.
Read: Content/Communications Strategy 101
And, don’t forget to look at/review your social media policies and promotional strategies in your new plan too.
Doing a brief content audit would also help, to see if you have any gaps and/or if there’s anything that you need to work on for the coming year. For example, you can look at your top 10 content for the year and look at how you can replicate and/or refresh those content items.
4. Content calendarOnce you have a better idea of what your content activities were like in the previous year, you can start planning your new content calendar for the year. Look at events or campaigns where you need to plan weeks or months in advance. And, start planning your content for those months.
Also read: 5 Content Ideas for Nonprofits and Businesses
You will also need to refresh your social media dashboard for the new financial year. Over the past year, you might have found that certain metrics don’t really work for what you’re trying to do with your organisation and/or you may have found new areas that you wish to track.
For example, you may have started tracking “Friends of Friends” on Facebook and/or Klout scores. But, you realise that these data points don’t really tell you much with what you’re trying to do. So, to prepare for the new year, just change what you need to change and find a way to track those consistently for the rest of the year.
You can download an EOFY checklist template here. Password is available for subscribers or VIP circle members (go here).
Contact Vervely if you think you need some help with your EOFY online communications/social media review and/or for the coming financial year.
Shai Coggins is the Manager and Chief Digital Media Specialist at Vervely, an Australia-based agency serving local and international clients. One of the company's main clients is Microsoft. Shai has been featured in a number of media due to her online work, including being named as one of Fast Company's "Most Influential Women in Technology" list (2009).
