2018 was a whirlwind of a year, to say the least. At least as it pertained to social marketing.
Facebook found itself rife with controversy as a result of its algorithm changes and growing privacy concerns. Instagram rolled out a bevy of new business features and surpassed the one-billion user milestone. Brands grew bolder in an ever-changing economy, launching a stream of seemingly controversial campaigns as a result of their customer’s growing interest in real, transparent messaging. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The landmark events of last year combined with this year’s growing number of emerging trends have induced a sense of analysis paralysis for brands and marketers alike. Many are left asking themselves, “Where do I go from here?”
At the end of the day, what still matters most is the strategy you implement behind your social media efforts. We’ve broken down some powerful, fundamental steps behind developing a social media marketing plan that will not only assist you in building your brand; it will also help boost your business.
Simply put, creating high-quality posts will build your followers. Your posts should be interesting and valuable to your customers, and you should have something to publish every day in order to keep your customers engaged on your social channels.
Content is king. If your goal is to build a strong brand reputation, you should focus your efforts on your content. Remember the accompanying standards as you produce content for social media platforms. Whether it be from case studies or A/B testing, figure out which content is likely to achieve the most visibility. It’s imperative that your content strongly supports your brand. Though sometimes, it can be hard for certain brands to pull off an approach built around entertainment. However, if you have a strong creative team and finger on the pulse of trends in social, assets like memes can be highly effective brand-building content.
You want to deliver a singular message or brand voice with your content. But you can utilize different formats to deliver that core message, such as videos, infographics, blog posts, etc., to see what works and what doesn’t.
For example, promote one product with each of these different media types. See what your audience responds to, and keep using diverse formats while you are finding those that work best. Doing so will keep your channels interesting and your users engaged.
Users engage with social media posts that include images and videos at a much higher clip than with posts that don’t. Add infographics, photos, and other visual images and videos to your social content to boost engagement and interest.
Prior to creating your content and branding strategy, you should have a good understanding of what your competitors are doing in your vertical. Doing so may only require a bit of surface-level analysis. There are also third-party competitor analysis tools brands can utilize to dig deeper into their competitors’ data.
Analyzing your competitor’s online presence directly informs your own brand’s social strategy. Not to say you want to copy what your competitors are doing. Rather, use this practice to determine what is or isn’t working for them and how you can adapt your own strategies accordingly.
As the owner, principal or executive at your company, the best use of your time and position is to interact with customers directly on social media. Respond to customers quickly. It can turn an unhappy customer into an advocate for your company. Customers who feel like their issues are being addressed with care and in a timely fashion, quickly build trust in your brand and can even become loyal enthusiasts.
If your brand is just starting out or is relatively unknown in your industry, it’s easy for your voice to get lost in the crowd on social. While it’s possible to build your audience by creating amazing social content, this approach takes lots of time and energy. An approach that can accelerate that process is to influence the audience in your industry. There are many ways to do this, from becoming an authority in your industry to highly-targeted influencer marketing campaigns.
Storytelling is a central element of communication between humans. When you tell someone a story it can have the powerful effect of convincing them or getting them on board with an idea. A great story causes the listener to internalize the story, and personify it into their own idea and experience. When you can tell a compelling story and involve customers in that brand story, you incentivize your customers to engage with it.
Of course, social selling has become increasingly popular among salespeople and marketers over the past few years. However, the actual process of utilizing social networks to drive growth for a brand is often much different than what most people are accustomed to. Ideal social selling is less about using social media as an active promotional platform, and more about using it as a tool for communication and engagement.
Social media is ideal for brand building and recognition, so it’s crucial that every post you make is in line with your brand and image. This can become difficult at times, especially if you have multiple people assigned to the task of managing your brand’s social. Everybody tends to bring their own personality to their individual posts.
For this reason, it’s best practice to limit the number of people who post for your brand on social, and ensure everybody is on the same page as it pertains to both the voice and image your brand wants to present online.
Users are increasingly watching Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories offer a wide range of great features like polls, interactive live broadcasts, etc. You can run ad campaigns, teach how to use your product, give discounts and special offers, create contests and giveaways, highlight new and featured products. That doesn’t take much time and preparation to record your story. You can use a mixture of photos and videos, give a link to certain blog posts, websites or profiles.
Instagram Stories are a great tool to tell your story and spark interest in your brand. The advantage is to tell more than you can do through written posts. It looks like a first-class ticket that sits at the top of the feed, so followers can easily notice them. Update your stories once per day if you want to keep your followers engaged with your brand.
Social listening tools are exceptionally powerful. They allow you to see what people are saying about your brand, which may be very different from what they’re saying to your brand.
Use social listening tools to monitor the impact of your campaigns and see what people are talking about. Tools like Talkwalker can help you find out what conversations are occurring around your brand, how positive or negative the sentiment is, brand mentions, and a number of other critical data points.
Additionally, discover what questions consumers have about your brand, product, and industry. These questions can offer valuable ideas for content and insight into creating your social strategy.
