Here we go again…what’s the point of social media?

If you’re spending time, effort and resource on creating great social media content and treading water, you could be wasting your time…especially if you’re a small business. Here’s why, and here’s how to fix it in as small a nutshell as we can muster.

First we want to start by reinforcing two points 1. there is absolutely a point to doing social media, and 2. it’s a necessary and fundamental part of your comms mix. But, there’s a but. We’ll come onto that, but for businesses that see the point and value of social media, it can be soul destroying when you invest so much in getting every detail right only to see it have little or no impact at all.

So what does this mean? Well, lots.

First it proves the point that brands need to approach social media strategically. Creating a plan, messaging, design, animation or video and then posting it and analysing the results etc. takes a lot of knowledge, skill, creativity and time, and, one way or another, all this costs money! In most cases it also involves layers of people. From a marketing manager and/or social media manager to a designer, production company, copywriter and agency, many people inside and outside of your organisation could be involved in creating that one post. Then there’s the publishing platforms or people managing the posting or scheduling which, again, costs time and money. It’s expensive right? And for what? To reach 3% of your followers and get no tangible ROI? Phew!

It’s not just small brands either. Take brand Z with 650k IG followers…a recent video got 125 Likes. How much time, resource and effort did it take to create that!? A global super brand with 3M IG followers just got 11k Likes on a post this week - that sounds like a lot but that’s less than 0.4% of their fanbase, notwithstanding the fact that we can’t access their reach analytics. But what we do know is this. The smaller the business, the more they need it to work and generate results. For mega brands, social media is generally a part of a whole campaign matrix and, whilst they want it to work, their business doesn’t depend on it generating results on its own. But for a small business with 500 fans the same amount of effort can be deployed into creating content and they need that investment to pay off.

So how can you make social media work for you? How can it deliver all the benefits it offers while achieving the outreach and results you need it to?

A reality check to get your social media on track

Without going down the rabbit hole of what makes great content and how you create it, we will say that, as a general observation, the smaller the business the more they see social media as a marketing environment, and the more they need it to work. The problem with this is expectation. Often they expect social media to generate sales. In most cases, it doesn’t. They also expect social media to behave in they way they want, rather than the way it does. The reality is that social media platforms won’t aggregate your content to thousands of people to ‘do you a favour’ and being blunt, you get what you’re given in terms of reach, and not what you want.

The solution is…and it’s not as painful as you think

So the solution is this. Don’t obsess about growing numbers of fans and followers. Accept the reality that social media platforms are like any other media outlet and you have to invest in advertising to reach the right people at the right time. What does it matter if you have 500 followers when you can reach many thousands of people relevant to your business through their targeting mechanisms, as opposed to 23 with a non-marketed post?

The simple strategic key to unlocking a ROI is to identify your audience through targeting and invest wisely to reach them. The good news is that it’s affordable too. If you sell men’s grooming products for example, advertising in a fashion magazine, on TV, radio or in a national newspaper may be out of your reach, but for a modest investment in the hundreds of pounds, you could reach thousands of men that reflect your target demographic. Not only that, you can create awareness campaigns, drive website visits or direct them to a store, so the options for leads and sales generation are higher too.

Last we’ll finish by saying this. Social media…the clue’s in the name. Social media is about being a good social player, so overwhelming your feeds with sales and marketing messages doesn’t work well. Focus on being a good social player, have fun, educate, inform and inspire and then plan your paid-for campaigns to reach your marketing and sales goals.

First let’s look at why social media is a must-have in your comms canon. Social media is important because your audience expects you to be present for one thing. Just imagine not being on social media! Your customers, team and industry would wonder why you’re absent and, like it or not, your credibility would be doubted. Being active on socials connects you to your audiences. It informs, educates and inspires. It tells your story, showcases your expertise, positions and distinguishes your brand and fosters positive relations in your social and business communities. Originating content communicates your culture, values, products and services while differentiating you from your competitors. Done properly, it also allows you to engage with partners, support their endeavours and show you care about their journey.

…and here’s the but.

We’ve mentioned in previous blogs about how social media platforms control, and indeed suppress your organic reach. Things have changed a lot over the years as social platforms have matured, grown and focussed on commercialisation and, in pursuit of this aim, they use algorithms that actively suppress the aggregation of your content. Take brand X with over 10k followers on Facebook. In a recent time critical post, content was served to 230 users with 8 engagements and 2 Likes. The one before that, which again, is time critical, achieved a reach of 320 with 19 engagements and 5 Likes...and they know four of them! That’s a reach rate of 2.3% and 3.4% respectively. Brand Y, a relative IG newbie with 500 followers, recently published a great post which has achieved 46 views, no engagements and 2 Likes and, yes, they know them too!

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