We know that social media visibility is important. We need to have a better consistency. Unfortunately, allocating time for posting gets lost in the rush of everything that has to get done. Coming up with a theme can be challenging – and time-consuming. Any ideas of what we can do?
Thoughts of the Day: Make social media visibility someone’s job. Pick a person who understands the importance of it. Identify the platforms your audience is on. Make a content calendar. Put technology in place to help manage it. Create a mix of what you sell, who you are, and what the company stands for.
Understand the customer and connect with them emotionally
Identify people in your office that understand your company’s voice and brand, and who buy into the importance of marketing and social media. Use them to select someone to manage your social media. Make sure they understand how to use a broad number of outlets and are willing to do further research on which outlets are best for getting the company’s message out. It’s important to make sure that this person can communicate well – spelling and word flow both count when speaking on behalf of the company. This should be someone who can do research, identify content that is relatable to your brand and messaging, and who can pick up relevant content from a broad spectrum of sources.
Social media can seem overwhelming with so many platform options. Take time to identify who your audience is and then do research on which platforms that demographic is most active on. The average user age on Facebook in the US is around 40 years old and up, while Instagram’s users are mostly 18 to 29 years old. You can also find out the demographics for average income, education levels, location (urban, suburban, rural), and gender.
Use social media to organically boost brand visibility
Your content plan and voice must be cohesive and consistent, but not identical across social media. Timing and frequency are also important and change depending on the platform. Experts recommend posting 1-2x per day on Facebook, while Twitter is closer to 15x per day (this includes retweeting others). Spend time one day/week planning a calendar with posts, specials, promotions, holidays, etc. Look forward to two weeks to stay organized but not stale. If you plan to share content from other sources, make sure it’s current; a 4-week-old article is likely outdated.
Automate your social media as much as possible. There are several services out there like HootSuite or SproutSocial that can help with this. While automation is important for ease of use, stay flexible. Look at incoming messages from your audience daily across the board. When it comes to high-traffic platforms like Twitter, the best way to get engagement is by re-tweeting and sharing articles from your Twitter Feed. Social media needs to be interactive, not boring. Consumers are looking for companies that want to engage with them.
BOOK RECOMMENDATION:
Looking for a good book? “Social Media: Strategies to Mastering Your Brand – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat“, by David Kelly.
