Top Tips from LEARN Social Media Strategy

“The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on.”  – Oscar Wilde

Our LEARN events aim to inspire and teach other digital marketing professionals about particular marketing channels that we, at Verb, specialise in.

Following the success of our first and second LEARN sessions (website optimisation and conversion, and SEO strategy), we recently hosted our third #LEARNbyVERB event at Shoreditch House focusing on social media strategy.

In a content-saturated world, having a strategy in place is key to social media success. Read on to discover some of the key highlights from the session, focusing on a content, engagement and posting strategy:

Why Social Media?

We all use social media platforms; the platforms are key places to communicate with our connections and that opens up opportunities for businesses to tap into. Chris Donnelly, Founder and Managing Director of Verb, began the session briefly sharing the evolution of the social media platforms and the volume of those using them.

• FACEBOOK has 1.94 billion monthly active users, with 1.28 billion daily users
• INSTAGRAM has over 700 million monthly users, with 400 million daily users
• TWITTER has 317 million monthly active users and 500 million tweets are sent daily
• YOUTUBE has over 1 billion users and is the second largest search engine
• PINTEREST has a total of 150 million active users

The numbers speak for themselves and tapping into the power of social media to deliver key marketing goals is an opportunity not to be missed. Like any good brand communication, you should look to have an ultimate goal as to why you’re sharing the content in the first place. Stepping back and evaluating your key social media goals is pivotal in establishing the right strategy.

Key social media goals:

• Establish your brand
• Foster brand loyalty
• Manage your reputation
• Inspire your customers
• Convert

CONTENT STRATEGY

With key social goals in mind, we then moved onto how to strategize your content. First and foremost, content needs to start with who you’re talking to.

Social media is not a one size fits all. Be unique and play to this uniqueness

Use data analytics to discover more about your audience. Discovering basic information and creating personas off the back of this data is vital to content success. A top tip here is to look at who from your fans are engaging with your content. From here, look at your content and ask why that demographic are engaging with your content and how you can inspire those who are not. Audience analysis is something we do for brands and creating persona’s humanises the audience you’re trying to approach.

Content should be what the customer wants to see from you, not what you want to show them.

Our Senior Social Media Manager, Sarah Keeble, revealed how to analyse your content. With the abundance of metrics on social media she clarified what each of them really means and can be used for. Keeble took a deep dive into Twitter Analytics, Facebook Insights and Instagram Insights, demonstrating how to get the most from each platform. Some of Sarah’s top tips:

• Track your data month on month
• Understand what content is delivering engagement and why it is performing better
• Test, learn and repeat

Chris Donnelly then looked at some best practices when it comes to sharing your brand’s story on social media. The crucial piece of advice was to stay true to your brand personality and sharing your brand’s story in the most authentic way.  Five of these tips were:

1. Plan your content
2. Consider your colour “flow”
3. Play with platforms layout
4. A holistic experience with consistent messaging across all channels: Tone of voice and narrative style.
5. Entertain your audiences

POSTING STRATEGY

Social media algorithms are a consumer’s friend but a marketer’s enemy. Because of the saturation of content on the social platforms, algorithms were introduced so consumers see the content they want to see, based on most engaging content. Organic traffic from social media has dropped 80% in the last two years as a result of algorithms. The session shared hacks to try and beat the algorithm to get content seen. One example being tagging a post’s location typically boosts a post’s engagement by 29%.

In addition to posting hacks, the session also covered how to discover optimum times to post based on audience analytics, and how best to use hashtags to a brand’s advantage.

ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

Social Media is social for a reason, therefore, engaging with the community and audiences is key to boosting your brand and seeing positive results. We touched on best practices to maintaining and building a brand’s presence and reputation.

Listen, engage and add value

Listen to what your community are saying and build upon this with how you engage with the community.

“71% of consumers of that have had a good customer service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.”

Convert

Social Media is typically a touch point in the purchase funnel. Even if consumers typically do not buy from social media it plays a very important role to remind them about your brand.

Almost 50% of Instagram users conduct product research on social media. A few tips to aid conversion are:

1. Track your links with UTM parameters
2. Experiment with CTA (call to action) embedded links
3. Advertise with paid spent
4. Ensure your website is optimised for conversion

We wrapped up the session by looking at the new trends in social media (video, more live stories, chatbots and AI being central topics) as well as the key takeaways from the session:

1. Your strategy = your audience – Deliver what they want to see not what you want to show them.
2. Be true to your brand – Tone of voice, look and feel etc.
3. Experiment – Test and learn, conclude, repeat.
4. Analyse everything – Understand what is doing well and what is not.

The next LEARN event

It was a pleasure to host the social media strategy session – a topic we’re passionate about. If you’re interested in social media management, strategizing your brand’s social media, help to analyse your content, or even paid social, please do get in touch. Our next LEARN event will be on Influencer Marketing: Why and How you should approach this marketing channel. We look forward to seeing you there. Sign up here if you’d like to be emailed about this event.

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