To get good results from social channels, a few actions are essential:
- Quality content;
- Proper targeting;
- Good planning.
Approaching social media with a good strategy is the first step to start the channel and begin the process of interactive communication with the audience.
Quality content is now the ace up the Social Media Managers' sleeve, the time of publishing posts just to publish is over...it is no longer frequency but quality that is the key in the social communication landscape.
Many clients ask me "how many posts should we publish?" and my answer is never a number, but rather "what do you want to achieve with your channel?", this needs to be answered. Do we want to create value by giving value first? Well, this must be the mantra, the audience must be engaged through tips, suggestions, actions that cancreate more value for the brand and the user.
I really feel like suggesting a paradigm shift, to move from "Content is the king," which has inspired us marketers for so long, to "VALUE IS THE KING."
Competitor analysis
Analyzing competitors is therefore the first thing to do when approaching a new strategy. Evaluate the exposure of competitor brands' content, understand the strengths and weaknesses of communication, to take example from success stories and avoid mistakes.
Each channel has its own language: Facebook for the origin itself, has a language more dedicated to written communication, more and more relevant the storytelling through videos, with the inclusion of hashtags finally also introduced the aggregation of content by category.
Instagram, born as image sharing, prefers the particularity of the image, you have to pay special attention to photos, creating surprise effects when scrolling through the feed. Aggregation with hashtags is a flywheel to be taken into utmost consideration in communication.
Stories and live streams have revolutionized the way of communicating through social, they are a tool to witness the behind-the-scenes, the work behind each company, very useful during events, they have been the lifesaver for many people during lockdown, thanks to this tool we have been able to be less distant.
For Linkedin, given the BtoB target audience of professionals, the approach is to communicate expertise, corollary images testifying to references to increase relevance and be supportive of the professionalism you want to demonstrate.
Target Analysis
After analyzing well the way competitors communicate, we need to analyze well the target audience we want to approach, in this we are helped by the Facebook platform with the "Audience insight" tool with the possibility to analyze people connected to the page or the wholeFacebook audience.
Demographic data, sentimental situation, education level, professional title, location, interests, important events. Profiling is exceptionally specific, through good targeting we can meet the audience that is most interested and naturally most likely to be engaged.
To start planning content we need to start thinking abouthow we want to represent our values: first we need to be well aware of what ourvalues are and share them with the team to really be able to communicate them in the right way. It will be much easier to build an editorial plan, because it will be consistent with the way we are, our mission and company vision. Create headings that support communication with respect to values, for example, if we have a brand that deals with sustainability, we will create posts that show how our company is sustainable and therefore chooses environmentally friendly paper packaging with reduced environmental impact, for example, or if our brand is related to design, we will communicate how much our team researches innovation, new materials and follows trend topics.
What better tool to manage social media planning?
I have tried them all, I also use the ones from the main platforms, such as Business Manager for Ads and Creator Studio, which have improved so much since the platforms started, I still stick to Hootsuite though. Maybe it's because of the very easy graphical interface, maybe it's because I've been using it for quite some time, I think the functionality of this tool is a very goodsupport for social media management. It is very stable, a publisher with the possibility of customizing the dashboard with highlighted social to be monitored also for mentions, possibility of scheduling posts and stories, integration of Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest and Youtube. All in one tool, with a broad look at the calendar, offers an effective overview for good balance in timing posts by channel. A dedicated statistics panel to monitor posts, fans, engagement and traffic.
This and much more will be discussed during the Online Edition of Digital Innovation Days, an entire room dedicated to social media, at this link https://www.digitalinnovationdays.com/sala-social-media/ you can get to know the speakers, coordinated by Luca La Mesa, a great social media expert and trainer.
Sara Brugnoni
Brand Ambassador Digital Innovation Days| CEO of Santafranca60 - Communication Manager Raja Italia
Photo by Sam Willis from Pexels