What’s working with social media?
The easiest way to discover what makes great social media is to look at others’ social media outputs. Ask friends and colleagues who they follow, and why.
The secret of those which are most effective is that they usually focus on three main elements. They educate their customers, they engage their audience and from time to time they entertain.
Across the estate of social media, there is a broad range of constructive content that you can see published every day. You can quickly learn from this and so plan and build content, with ease, for your business.
What’s working with social media?
The easiest way to discover what makes great social media is to look at others’ social media outputs. Ask friends and colleagues who they follow, and why.
The secret of those which are most effective is that they usually focus on three main elements. They educate their customers, they engage their audience and from time to time they entertain.
Across the estate of social media, there is a broad range of constructive content that you can see published every day. You can quickly learn from this and so plan and build content, with ease, for your business.
Building a social media content plan
This range of content can include top tips; myth busting; ‘how to’ advice; news on upcoming events; new products and services; partner announcements; offers and packages; seasonal messages; announcements; skills workshops; loyalty stories and so on.
Social media is by design, a flag waving exercise. It provides the perfect opportunity to communicate on a regular basis with your customers and prospects. It’s also a platform for them to recommend or share you with their friends, which means that, if done well, you can build both loyalty and referrals through your social media communication.
Flag waving simply means that a social media piece that you publish is encouraging the customer to go and look somewhere else, perhaps to a specific page on your website, a blog article that you’ve published, or a sign-up page for an event that you’re running. Or you may use social media to amplify the coverage of some recent published relevant industry news, by providing a link to the online coverage.
So, don’t believe that you need to convey all of your message in the social media content itself. Short and sweet is definitely the key. And providing a strong, simple and message to encourage customers to read on, perhaps on another platform is absolutely fine.
Planning
As with many aspects of running your own business, planning your social media content is the key.
The reason why many businesses miss the opportunity for social media is that they wait for the chance to occur, something distracts them, and then they believe it’s too late to communicate. In many cases this is probably true.
Automated scheduling for your social media
Developing a clear schedule of what you want to say and when you want to say it is important. There are some free tools available to help you schedule your social media content, such as HootSuite or Buffer. These enable you to schedule your social media posts for a given day and time. Which means you can set up your social media messages for the week, or month, ahead.
Social media – think about what’s in your business plan
Whilst social media appears to be focused on activities ‘in the moment’, much of what you can publish on your social media channel is eminently predictable. So, you can plan and write the content with confidence. For example, if you are planning to appear at an exhibition, or launch a new service, you can create the post, and schedule it in advance.
You can even write, beforehand, your response to appearing at a trade show, knowing it will appear whilst you’re at the event. And if for any reason you choose not to publish, you can simply take down the post from your scheduling tool before it’s due to go out.
Check your annual plan
Think about the events in your business that you know are set to happen during the year. For example, opening a new gallery and all the preparatory steps that come with that. Or, working with a new partner and the stages involved in preparing for that. Perhaps you will be taking on a new member of staff? Each of these moments in the development of your business has social media value, so it’s important to think about the content that you will create to support your overall messaging.
Drip, drip, drip of social media, not erratic bursts
Social media can be a great way of building your brand and retaining presence in your customers’ minds. It’s therefore important to think about the frequency with which you will deliver social media content.
There is more value in delivering a continuous stream of content, then delivering spasmodic bursts every few months. You want to be understood for what you do and remembered for your proposition.
It’s OK to repeat social media posts
It’s tempting to think that you should only post a social media item once, and when that opportunity is completed, there is no chance to repeat it. Think of it this way – satellite TV is made up of 100 plus channels, many of which are repeats. We all accept this. Your customers are used to repetition and will forgive you if they see the same message twice.
The key to effective communication is to create ‘opportunities to see’ and by only publishing your message once, you are reducing that opportunity. So, think about well-timed, repeat instances of your social media.
You can do this by planning a series of repeat appearances for the same message over a few weeks, or you can schedule a rotating campaign of two or three different messages across, say, a two-to-three-week period.
Social media images are key
Like many digital marketing activities, social media works best with strong authentic images of you and your business. Check out our blog on photography for more details.
How’s your social media presence?
Drop me a line if you’d like some help or advice.