Social Media Tips
With all this newly found free time, I'm finishing off the many half-read books scattered across our apartment. The book I'm finishing up now is "We're All Ears: How to increase your impact, influence, and success online in a noisy world." by Valerie Morris. I had the privilege to share the stage with Valerie at SocialRock Conference 2019 , and even today, hundreds of miles away, I’m learning from her.
One thing, in particular, Valerie touches on is how to build influence by creating authority-building content. And the majority of the time it's done, you have to give first, be helpful. Specifically, "giving away free information is perhaps one of the best ways to build influencer."
So I'm going to do just that, and share some tips, best practices, and learnings around Social Media. The goal will be for you to walk away with ways to maximize your efforts on each platform. To start, we'll be talking about the current social media ecosystem, what's changing there, and how you can implement strategic approaches on various social media platforms.
When Art + Science Intersect
We all know that social media is a blend of both art and science, requiring not only the ability to understand "how" a piece of content performs but also "why" it performed the way that it did. And as social media best practices continue to evolve, and user-behavior on these platforms shifts, brands are continually looking to establish themselves in the social space. Often, the companies behind these social platforms define what successful content is.
And from my experience, it's actively managing and engaging with audiences online that leads to a brand's success. There is a need for brands today to establish an online community that can directly support and embody their goals. I believe that each social media platform can have a purpose for a brand, regardless of size or industry. I'll focus on four big ones for small businesses and entrepreneurs, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter for brevity's sake.
Facebook has one of the most massive, most diverse audiences, which is excellent for social content that needs to reach an audience at scale through organic and paid social. Facebook encourages consumers to showcase their love of a brand to their friends and family, which can be done through direct messaging, viewing, liking, or sharing content, engaging with chatbots, and even providing useful contact information directly to the brand.
A tip for improving your content strategy on Facebook is to remember that you don't always have to push out your published content! If you offer useful advice or information to someone and link them to a third-party website or piece of content, they may be more receptive to your brand at a later date since you've already established trust with them by providing useful information, regardless of the source.
On Instagram, content performs well when it highlights an individual or brand's 'best of' moments, inspiring people to go out and live a more aspirational life. Instagram as a platform is an excellent medium for visually-arresting creative while relying less on hard-hitting product messaging, otherwise knowns as the Reason To Buy (RTBs).
For Instagram, think about creating 'Engagement first' content utilizing unique formats like Boomerangs, as a great way to foster engagement. If this is your audience's preferred channel, use key platform features like Instagram Stories and unique functions within them, like Polls or Quizzes.
Linkedin is a great platform to become a thought-leader in your industry by engaging with your current and future LinkedIn connections. It's also an opportunity to share your company's culture with potential customers and job recruits. When thinking about what type of content lives best on LinkedIn, a recent platform survey said 44% of respondents said the last piece of content they read on LinkedIn was straight to the point and provided real value to businesses in their industry.
Finally, Twitter is the best social channel for facilitating brand awareness and direct communication with consumers, and not just because it's my favorite platform. I view Twitter as an excellent platform for connecting with people in real-time and integrating the brand into cultural conversations.
Use Twitter to help your brand stay top-of-mind with consumers, and you can do that without as much of a need for paid support than the other platforms that I've mentioned.
Overall Tips
Regardless of platform, staying top of mind with your consumers is more than just pushing out your content. Impactful social and community management is all about joining conversations and building on them. That doesn't mean only replying to people talking directly to you. I'm talking about joining conversations about your brand, general chatter about your business' industry, and even introducing community members to one another to spark further discussions.
With that said, brands have an opportunity to play a vital role in consumers' daily lives on social media, in a way that feels natural and non-invasive. And through research on user behavior, we know that consumers want to showcase how their favorite brands play a role in their lives online. Consumers expect their favorite brands to engage with them on social when appropriate. They want to see brands' heart,' 'favorite,' and share their content.
Photo by influencer Violet Ezedimora - @violetezedimora
The image above is from an influencer I randomly came across, Violet Ezedimora; please give her channel some love. One of the things about her post that I wanted to talk about is all of the brands she tagged. Violet’s tagged asos, Closet London, and even her Wandler bag.
Community Management
One of the better ways to engage with your brand or client's audience is through community management. Community management is a low-cost, high-reward initiative for brands to stand out in their respective industries and as a brand in the overall social media space. One of the great things about community management is that a company of anywhere between 1-5 people can punch above its weight class and compete with much larger companies by dedicating a little bit of time each day through community management.
We're nearly done with 2020 (don't remind me), and there are STILL are too many brands that believe that social media and community management are a marketing afterthought. Social media is a must for every brand, regardless of industry or size.
And we know this because consumers want to participate in a brand's online community for various reasons. A crucial part of community management is giving consumers an opportunity for dialogue, not only with the brand itself but also with other consumers.
Consumers are looking online and through social for information about a brand through product news or updates. They look for entertainment through engaging or shareable content, more often than not, repurposing content across platforms. And at the end of the day, we're human beings that are looking to build social relationships with one another, and consumers can do that by connecting online.
Community Engagement
These social interactions between brands and consumers can help elicit an emotional reaction, directly attributed to the brand. The photo above is from a recent post by the big-box retailer Target. Prompted by a user’s comment asking the brand to make it easier to label products that Target sources from Black-owned companies, the brand listened. Now on Target.com, there are icons to help shoppers identify and support Black-Owned or -Founded brands.
This is an excellent example of a brand investing in their online communities by listening to their community. This post highlights that Target is creating a two-way conversation for its customers, allowing them to break through an already cluttered timeline.
User-Generated Content
A great way to support an effective yet scrappy content strategy is to leverage User-Generated Content. User-Generated Content, or UGC, is an excellent way to share engaging social content and promote conversations around a brand. UGC enables companies to build brand affinity and foster community growth through additional reach and engagements.
By highlighting individuals that embody a brand's essence through UGC, other consumers are encouraged to share their content using branded hashtags. In turn, this User-Generated Content helps amplify a brand's message through what we call brand advocates.
One brand that I believe does a great job of utilizing UGC is Starbucks and their Instagram feed. In the images above, you’ll see a photo from a woman based in Seattle, Maria, and her fantastic shot of the Haleakala Sun Rise Viewpoint, garnering 51 likes since her posting it on March 08. About 2.5 months later, Starbucks touched the photo up a little bit and reposted it on their channel; it garnered over seventy-thousand likes.
A quick tip about branded hashtags before we move on: create a branded hashtag that's own-able, yet the average user would easily read aloud.
When I worked on Oscar Mayer, we were launching a brand-wide campaign for their new and better hot dogs. I had to sell in the idea of using an unbranded hashtag that allowed us to own the conversation around hot dogs, while still providing utility to users that may feel nervous about using a branded hashtag. Something like For The Love Of Oscar Mayer Hot Dogs didn't feel right to us as a team back then.
If you're launching a new business and don't have enough current customers to create UGC for your company, enroll your team! You may not have a marketing department like larger businesses, but you can still enroll your organization to help support your marketing efforts by capturing and posting content on your behalf.
Stay tuned for more!
