Social media platforms are constantly changing how you reach your people, how you engage them and how your success is determined.
A key part of an integrated marketing strategy is social media. Ensuring that you use the platforms, so they work for you is important to deliver the best results.
Audience
Where are they and who are they?
With so many platforms and channels for communication, the biggest question is which one(s) to use? To answer this, you need to know where your people are. You can choose to be on every channel, however, if your people aren’t there you will be wasting precious resources and it will not deliver the results you want.
You also need to know who your audience is – age group, industry, interests, values, behaviours. By identifying your audiences, you can ensure that your social media is strategic and purpose driven.
If you already know where your audience is and who they are, that’s great, however, with so many changes to social platforms and changes in user behaviour, it may be the right time to review your audience and customer profiles.
Better engagement
We often view social media as one of our main channels of communication, and it is, however, to maximise engagement, we need to play by the rules set by the platform. Once you’ve determined where your audience is and what social media channels work for you, it’s important that you also understand how the platforms work and what they value organically.
How do you do this and what might it look like?
Organically, this could include:
- Using more video
- Finding ways to keep audiences on your feed longer
- Generating more likes or comments on updates and posts
Once you’ve addressed your strategies to achieve organic engagement, you can then look at your paid social media AKA advertising – this is where knowing your audience will really pay off. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t get instant results, advertising can be a bit of trial and error. Try to analyse why a campaign didn’t work, e.g. was there too much text on the graphic? and use your learnings in your next paid campaign.
The great news with paid social media is that you can start with a small budget and increase it as you wish, and you can set a finite budget and rest easy that there will be no bill shock!
Consistency
Consistency is key; you need to stay true to your established brand, style guide and key messages and be consistently active to drive your social media activity for success.
Differing tones, mismatched imagery, frequent changes in the number and frequency of posts can all have a negative effect on how audiences view your feed.
A social media handbook can be a great tool to ensure your whole team are using your channels consistently. If it’s time for a social media audit and refreshed strategy, ask us how we can help you build a consistent social media presence that will appeal to your audience and improve your social media engagement.
