Social media impacts all areas of your company and should permeate throughout the business. It is invaluable to look and listen at what your customers and competitors are doing because this will be a good indicator of where and how you can be active on social media.
First up, it is important to define the reason for your use of social media; start with a tightly focused rationale and grow from there eg. sales, loyalty, awareness, leads.
Products and services alone are not going to create engagement; instead, uncover what is unique about your business and share this – for example, Samsung isn’t about technology it’s about innovation, Disney isn’t about movies, it’s about magic.
Social media is about people not logos. Get clear on how your business is going to portray the people behind the brand, this will create engagement.
After the nuts and bolts of why are sorted, you can turn your attention to how. The first step is to create a strategic plan. This plan needs to support your business’s strategic objectives eg. customer loyalty or acquisition.
A content calendar is a great way to visualise how your content will be distributed throughout the year across all the social platforms you use.
Have a different voice for each platform to meet the audience demographic you are targeting. The majority of people that have a Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram account will also have a Facebook account, so if you are using the same information in multiple places you are wasting time and money. (And potentially undermining your credibility.)
Steps to building a content calendar
1. Identify topics
2. Analyse your existing and potential audience – make use of insights and analytics to identify demographics
3. Identify audiences – stakeholders / potentials / new / existing
4. Decide on content distribution between audience – new / existing / potential
5. Content curation - a mixture of your own and others
Use presentations, pdfs, videos, data from surveys, expertise from colleagues / industry contacts, blog posts, news items. Repurpose existing content such as infographics, blogs, reports. Scour the internet for reputable information, contact local / national key figures for content
6. Choose the metrics you will use to monitor your objectives eg. growth of audience, likes, ROI
7. Schedule, publish, promote, track
8. Analyse and compare results against your objectives
9. Tweak
And most of all enjoy!
Article written by Kathleen Boyd
First up, it is important to define the reason for your use of social media; start with a tightly focused rationale and grow from there eg. sales, loyalty, awareness, leads.
Products and services alone are not going to create engagement; instead, uncover what is unique about your business and share this – for example, Samsung isn’t about technology it’s about innovation, Disney isn’t about movies, it’s about magic.
Social media is about people not logos. Get clear on how your business is going to portray the people behind the brand, this will create engagement.
After the nuts and bolts of why are sorted, you can turn your attention to how. The first step is to create a strategic plan. This plan needs to support your business’s strategic objectives eg. customer loyalty or acquisition.
A content calendar is a great way to visualise how your content will be distributed throughout the year across all the social platforms you use.
Have a different voice for each platform to meet the audience demographic you are targeting. The majority of people that have a Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram account will also have a Facebook account, so if you are using the same information in multiple places you are wasting time and money. (And potentially undermining your credibility.)
Steps to building a content calendar
1. Identify topics
2. Analyse your existing and potential audience – make use of insights and analytics to identify demographics
3. Identify audiences – stakeholders / potentials / new / existing
4. Decide on content distribution between audience – new / existing / potential
5. Content curation - a mixture of your own and others
Use presentations, pdfs, videos, data from surveys, expertise from colleagues / industry contacts, blog posts, news items. Repurpose existing content such as infographics, blogs, reports. Scour the internet for reputable information, contact local / national key figures for content
6. Choose the metrics you will use to monitor your objectives eg. growth of audience, likes, ROI
7. Schedule, publish, promote, track
8. Analyse and compare results against your objectives
9. Tweak
And most of all enjoy!
Article written by Kathleen Boyd
