Engaging on social media is no longer an option for companies, it’s mandatory
A large number of small and medium enterprise heard they should communicate more on social media but are unsure on the information to share. They usually end up publishing few inconsistent news every now and then without a clear objective in mind. Needless to say, the marketing impact of such an approach is usually close to zero.
Communicating on social media without a strategy in mind is like going to a supermarket without a shopping list. You might lose an incredible amount of time wandering through the aisles and bring back half the items you need.
Once again, why should I engage on social media?
Not just because everyone else is doing it, but because it can be a strong asset to your global marketing strategy. Like in any structured approach you need to identify your goals. For example, you could use social media to:
· Increase your website traffic
· Generate lead and build conversions
· Raise brand awareness
· Improve communication and interaction with your customers
· Create a brand identity and positive brand association
Locate your audience You probably have a good idea of who belongs to your targeted population, now you need to find out where they hang out and how they use social media. It’s not necessary to have a presence on every social network out there, just select the one(s) which will help you to reach out to your audience. Build up your content material The information you want to share on social media need to be valuable and relevant for your target. With your social objectives in mind, you will first have to define what topics and subjects your audience is interested in. It could be for example:
Trick & tips about your services or products
Customer reviews
User generated content
Featuring a partner
Behind-the-scenes tours
Your view & position on a market trend
The next step is to produce a series of short articles or videos for each topic you agreed on. Check first the usable content you already have and assess the one you need to create or curate.
Schedule your publications As mentioned earlier sporadic communication is worthless. You need to maintain a constant presence and the best way to do it is to schedule your publication in advance. It could be on a daily, weekly or monthly basis depending on the amount of content you gathered, what matter is to respect a cadence.
Be consistent Find your own brand voice, should it be whether casual and funny or formal and friendly. Let your brand’s personality shine through in everything you share on social media! But it’s important to use the same tone of voice throughout your publications. You will gain in recognition if your communication is consistent. For this reason, it’s best to limit the number of people responsible for posting, and make sure everybody is on the same page by editing clear instructions when it comes to language style and images you want to present.
Measuring Sure, Planning and Publishing might seem like the only two actual steps in a social media content strategy, however, in order to optimize your efforts, you have to also measure as much as possible.
In this phase, you'll want to take a top-level view of your data for a set time period, in order to determine which content performed the best. A key thing to keep in mind here is that different content pieces might have different objectives - for example, a story on Instagram intended to entertain should be judged by engagement, whereas a link to a website should be judged by clicks.
Should you need guidance in how to build up and roll out your social strategy , let’s meet and talk about it over a coffee !