5 ways to get the most from social media
Social media has become a predominant force in the PR, marketing and communications mix. However, with so much ‘noise’ and competition for eyeballs, and given that it takes so much time, effort and resource to manage social media effectively, how can you streamline your management and get the most from it?
Here’s 5 top tips to simplify your social media management and achieve a return on investment from it.
Think strategically
The fast moving pace of social media adds pressure, as brands and business users feel the need to continually generate and post new content, and expand their platform landscape, but to what end? As a business using social media, think about the role it plays in your comms mix, what you want to achieve from it, who you’re trying to reach and influence, and the type of content that will inspire, inform, educate and benefit your audience. In recent years, social media has become a platform for brands and businesses to say what they want to say, promote their brand and sell products, but is this what your audience wants to see and hear, and is this why they follow you?
Social media is ultimately a ‘social’ environment and value content that helps, imparts advice and inspires is generally better engaged with compared to ‘marketing’ content that’s designed to sell. Clients will buy when they want to, and that’s not always when you want to sell. Social media should create the conditions for a mutually beneficial relationship…it’s a soft power, and you should consider social marketing as part of your social mix to generate sales. As we covered in our Website vs. social media blog, organic reach and engagement is very low - typically 10% and 1%-5% respectively, so factor these stats in to your content strategy. Posting in itself is unlikely to get the result you want - it may create the presence, impression and profile you want, but when it comes to marketing and sales, you should be actively investing in social marketing to amplify your reach and target content to a defined audience to generate leads and sales.
Additionally, think about how your content looks, as the visual aspect is what people first respond to, think about your message, and about the purpose behind every post or story. If there’s no purpose, then the chances are your audience will not engage with it either. It’s much better to focus on quality and purpose rather than quantity, engage your followers, and support your sales and marketing objectives with a social marketing strategy. Remember also that, as a ‘social’ environment, you need to engage with your followers by liking, sharing and commenting on their content too. This way you build rapport and foster relationships, which is crucial to your social media plan.
Another reason a strategy is important is that many brands and social media users simply post content. That’s one aspect of it but there are so many other aspects to social media that matter, such as formats, advertising types and using analytics to see what content is working for you, and what effect your content is having.
If you need help and advice creating and implementing a social media strategy, why not contact us?
2. Simplify your social media life
When posting social media across multiple platforms, consider using a social media publishing platform, and be aware of the current post and story sizes, so your content always looks amazing. There are lots of tools on which you can preschedule content across multiple social media platforms, and this will improve management efficiency while allowing you to access analytics to measure activity performance.
There are also a number of online resources that enable you to design content that looks inspiring, along with AI caption generators to help you stay on-message. That said, always fact check your posts to make sure they’re accurate and represent what you want to communicate. Originating content is, in our view, still the most effective way, as it humanises your content in ways that we don’t feel are as effectively achieved using AI, but it definitely has a role and is getting better all the time.
As there are so many resources, to find the best platforms for you, simply Google or ask us for our recommendations.
3. Keep blogging - it works!
One effective way to create added-value content and get fans to your website is to blog regularly, and invite your social fans to read it. On every website we manage for clients, the blog page, and/or individual blogs, are the most visited pages on websites other than the home page. This is important because 1. it proves the point about focussing on added-value content rather than promotional content and 2. you should be prioritising getting people to your website from social media and not the other way around i.e. getting people from your website to your socials.
The majority of your followers and fans are visiting websites, searching on Google or browsing through social content because they’re looking for inspiration, help, advice and solutions to issues. Switch from overtly trying to sell products and services to understanding the challenges and issues your fans and followers face, and offering real solutions, is the way to win them over, nurture and forge meaningful relationships and position your expertise in a way that differentiates you. Look at it this way.
You can post about a product, say a haircare range for curly hair for example, and you’ll be one of many brands competing in this space. Posting about your latest product range and trying to sell it with an offer might gain some attention - but the chances are everyone else is doing the same or similar. However, write about the challenges faced by clients with curly hair and the opportunity salons have to capitalise on a sector worth £x millions. Then position why and how your brand solves the curly hair issues faced by clients, using evidence-based content, and how it solves the problems salons have in dealing with clients with curly hair. Your range then becomes a solution to a problem, rather than just another curly hair product line among many. This approach applies to any product in any business. Take this blog for example. Yes we specialise in providing social media and marketing services, but we’re not trying to sell them directly from this blog, or in the subsequent social media post. Instead, we’re offering insight, imparting advice, provoking thought and positioning our expertise in a way that, hopefully, instils confidence. The effect of which will hopefully lead to brands seeking our expertise by gaining trust over time.
4. Vanity vs. Sanity - be number aware
The most visible metrics that most people often reflect upon to determine influence and credibility on social media are the number of fans and followers brands have. Sure this is one way of looking at it but, in recent years everything has changed. A few years ago it was relatively easy to build your social following but it’s not so easy now. Before social media platforms became highly commercialised it was in their interests to give brands and users fast growth and create a situation that has resulted in social media becoming an indispensable brand asset. However, we’ve also seen a rise in fake accounts, click farms, fake followers and a rush from brands to get to a specific number of followers in order to maintain the illusion. It’s that FOMO thing!
As social platforms changed their model to get brands to invest in advertising, their algorithms actively suppress organic reach, meaning your content will only be served to around 10% of your fanbase, with engagement at 1%-5%. That’s a lot of graft for no cigar! However, it does means that brands need to have 1. a social media strategy and 2. a social marketing strategy. In the end, what matters is that your content delivers a return on investment. Take the curly hair product range mentioned above. You have 1,000 followers on Instagram and, as a result your post will be served to 100 fans (10% reach) and 5% engage with it. That’s 5 people out of every 100 that are actually engaged in your content. Ouch! By launching a social marketing campaign and defining your target audience you could potentially reach tens of thousands of people that are interested in this type of brand. Get them to visit your website, which is where you sell your range, and this not only focusses on reaching the right people, it will generate leads and sales. And this has nothing to do with your fanbase in terms of its size either.
The reality is social media can, and indeed should, be used strategically to reach and influence the right people, and generate leads and sales. If you want to achieve this, focus on how you reach the right numbers and profile of audience, as pushing out content to the same fanbase over and over is less likely to achieve your aims alone. Let the social content do the social bit, and the social marketing do the marketing bit!
5. Fish where the fish are, and don’t follow the crowd
When it comes to reaching the right people, try not to invest time and energy in the wrong platforms. Social media is diverse and, as it matures and evolves, different socio economic groups will favour certain platforms. Take hairdressing. A few years ago, Twitter, now X, was the go-to platform but not anymore. Since then we’ve seen Facebook become more associated with older generations, X become less relevant, Instagram become prevalent and the emergence of Snapchat and TiKTok. YouTube was once seen as ‘the place to be’ and all the talk was about YouTubers and how everyone wanted to become one and make a mint. That’s not heard of quite so much anymore, so things have changed a lot, and they’ll continue to do so.
To save time, resource and effort, work out what you want to achieve with social media, who is most likely to affect your commercial prospects, and identify which social platforms they’re most active on. After all, like any form of marketing, it’s all about reaching the right people at the right time and in the right environment. Don’t ‘be on TikTok’ just because it’s the new thing and everyone else is, or focus on Facebook just because you’ve always posted on it. Keep ahead of the game and select the right platforms based on where your clients and customers are, and where your potential business is going to come from.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog and it offers some valuable insight that may affect how you manage social media from this point forward? Feel specialises in social media strategy and social marketing, so to ensure your social media activity is managed effectively, feel free to reach out and find out how we can help you, either by managing it for you, or by consulting and mentoring you on your social media journey.
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