No matter what you are selling or how you are selling it, there is a place for well planned and delivered social media strategies in your marketing tool box. How to do it well you ask? Have a read of some of our top tips from our team below.
What is your brand voice?
Tone.
Be clear to followers about what and how the brand will communicate online. Is your brand cheeky and irreverent or serious and formal?
Language.
What type of language will the brand use online? A young and hip brand might get away with more slang, or a niche brand may use more acronyms and industry-specific language.
Purpose.
Identify the main reason your business is on each social media platform? What are your community goals (outside of selling products/increasing attendance) What are people getting from your feed?
What is your look and feel?
What does your community want?
What do your peeps respond to? What do they want to know more about?
Be consistent across platforms
A brand’s profile on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, your company blog and everywhere else it has a presence online should be unified and in line with the brand essence and style guide. Be consistent with graphics, colour, style and language, and even posting routine.
Content is king
Quality content will improve your search engine ranking and will encourage more visitors to your site. Also, you need to give your customers more that just a cash for goods and services transactions. Help your customers learn something new, they will see the value in it.
People are unlikely to engage with a sales message. You need to offer your community more than just a product/experience for sale.
Keep your face in their feed
Post regularly, at least three times a week per platform. Consistency is key.
Treat your social media accounts like a person
You are not a company yelling into the void, you are a person. When someone in your community is talking to your business on social media, they should feel like they are communicating with a person. Use plain English, and informal language where appropriate.
Show lots of love
Be authentic online, are show your customers that you care. Pay attention to the content they respond to and give them more of the same. Take on the Taylor Swiftmas model, small kindnesses—whether they be prizes, vouchers, or lovely words—can help you build strong relationships with your online community. But remember, it has to be genuine!
Storytelling
What is the story of your brand? What do you have to say? Think outside the box on this one. For example, Collins 234 is the perfect brand to build content around fashion in a broad sense. Share articles about building personal style, tailoring, beauty—anything that a fashion minded person would be interested to engage with. When you tell your brands story in a creative way, and give your customers lots of quality content you make them more receptive to future sales messages.
Building your community
focus on building a relationship with customers by conversing, interacting, engaging and caring. Don’t solely plug products or services – broadcasting is dead. Genuine, two-way communication is key because at the end of the day, people need to inherently trust a brand and that takes time and effort.
Take your relationship to the next level
Think about how you can get your community to engage with you on more than one platform, and eventually, to become paying customers. This doesn’t happen overnight, think about it like dating! You have to romance this random internet dweller with great content and special offers. You will see more return on this approach than by just pumping out sales messages, stand out from the crowd by giving more than you ask for.
PRACTICAL STEPS
Come up with a look and feel
Identify your brand voice
Identify your audience
Identify your offering (beyond transactional)