7 Ways to Tell the Thrivers from the Survivors in SMM
Social media is an excellent way for a business to build brand awareness and take audience interaction to the next level. The popularity of social media, combined with its integration into everyday life, means there is an audience of millions just waiting to be reached through a screen at any given moment.
The scale of social media has seen Social Media Marketing (SMM) emerge as a powerful way of reaching out to customers. These days a brand needs a strong social media presence or it risks drowning. Many businesses have recognised this need and created killer social media strategies that both target new customers and maintain engagement with current users.
Others have tried but are floundering, unable to keep up with the technology and failing to incorporate the key components that make a Social Media Marketing strategy shine. So what is it exactly that separates a winning social strategy from a losing one?
Here are 7 key ways to tell the difference between a thriver and a survivor:
1. Quality
In SMM, quality is key. While you should post regularly, there is no point posting at all if content does not bring value to your audience.
See also: The Power of Content Marketing
Quality content doesn’t just refer to highly researched written material – it could be images, videos, infographics or how-to guides; essentially anything that is helpful, interesting or entertaining to your target audience. Social media can also be a great way to share website or blog content with audiences in order to attract new customers, retain current ones and boost your engagement rate.
2. Frequency
Your content plan should incorporate regular posting, but remember there is a fine line between front of mind and annoying, and social media users have a very low tolerance for the latter. The frequency of posts is obviously dependent on the medium in question. For example, it is best to keep Facebook posts to one a day to ensure maximum engagement.
To ensure you are posting frequently, it can be helpful to schedule posts. Many social media sites have their own scheduling software, including Facebook and Twitter which allow you to schedule posts up to six months in advance. Automated third-party apps, like Hootsuite are also an option for scheduling posts in advance.
3. Variety
As with life, variety is the spice of SMM. Change things up by running a poll on your Facebook page, starting a Twitter chat or asking your followers to share their own photos on Instagram (with your hashtag of course!) These things help to establish your business as unique to others in the industry and encourage customers to get involved.
The best way to approach variety it to think in terms of the 80-20 principle – 80% high-value content that gives the reader something useful and 20% entertaining content that is less “valuable” but still engaging.
4. Engagement
Truly effective SMM means you engage with your audience and keep the conversation going after you post. This means reacting to the presence of your audience, responding to comments, reaching out to users with questions or concerns and rectifying any issues that arise.
Having an engaging social media presence has a number of benefits for your business. It adds a human element to your brand; shows your brand’s personality; and allows you to gain valuable insights into your audience. While engaging with users on social media can be time consuming, it is far less demanding when posts have been scheduled in advance.
5. Layout / Usability
Your social media pages should be on brand, easy to use and should prompt visitors to engage with the business. Seemingly obvious things like ensuring your logo is the profile image on your pages and choosing a clear, relevant header photo can take a social media page from amateur to professional.
It’s incredibly important that your social media is consistent with your branding – remember who you are, what you stand for and what your brand colours and fonts are. While it’s fine to change things up every now and then, straying from your brand personality too far or too frequently will make your social media look messy and inconsistent.
6. Responsiveness
No one likes to be ignored; on the contrary, people love to feel like they are being heard. Smart businesses understand this and integrate this knowledge into each and every social media response. A prompt reply demonstrates to the audience that you value what they have to say and could be the difference between a one-off customer and a lifelong devotee of the brand.
While remaining professional and on brand, you should be friendly in your responses and reply within an hour whenever possible. Responding to comments, stories and complaints on social media shouldn’t be a chore, but a unique opportunity to interact directly with fans of the brand.
7. Strategy
Social media marketing is nothing without strategy. A SMM strategy allows you to set goals and channel everything you do into making those goals become a reality. It should also answer key questions including:
- What do you want to achieve through SMM?
- Who is your target audience?
- When, why and how does your target audience use social media?
- What is your USP?
- What do you want your audience to remember about your brand?
Your strategy should be a result of research into your own past campaigns, competitor’s past and present campaigns and the market overall. Often a social media strategy can be created after a content strategy so it can draw upon planned content.
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Who is Winning?
STA Travel
This global travel company aimed at students and young people is excelling when it comes to Instagram. The page is full of striking, relevant images that match the brand’s overall theme and fit with each other. They also cleverly use colour themes throughout their feed to group photos and create an attractive aesthetic.
A sample of STA Travel’s Instagram page. They have created a visually appealing look that matches their brand and brings out their unique personality.
Virgin
The multi-billion dollar company has global recognition and despite being a well-established brand before the age of SMM, has embraced new technology to remain at the forefront of its industry.
Virgin understands the importance of keeping its finger on the pulse of change and as a result of this the company’s social media strategy taps into a highly refined target audience, achieving a delicate balance of entertainment and education. Each and every post across the business’ social channels is high quality, highly valuable and visually appealing.
Virgin's Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.
Victoria Police
Victoria Police is highly active on social media and is a prime example of how SMM can add personality to a brand. Each piece of content posted is optimised for the social medium it is shared on and is highly engaging to audiences of all ages. The highly strategic SMM campaign is relatable, emotive and educational. Achieving a careful balance between video, written and photographic content, the organisation has used SMM to make itself very likeable.
Victoria Police's Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.
Who is Surviving?
Kellogg’s Australia
It is likely that Kellogg’s Australia has the (little) engagement it does on social media because it is already a well-established brand. While resting on your laurels can be fine sometimes, it doesn’t leave much room for growth and can see you left behind.
While Kellogg’s has some quality content, the brand would benefit from a more refined SMM strategy and content plan. This content plan should include more regular and frequent posting.
Kellogg's posts quality, aesthetically pleasing content on Instagram, but the rest of their social media strategy needs work.
3M
It is likely that 3M has also managed to survive purely because the brand is big enough to compensate for a poor SMM campaign. As an established household name before the digital era, 3M doesn’t need to sell through social media to stay afloat; brand recognition and sales come from other methods.
However social media opens the doors to a whole new world of customers, so why wouldn’t you make the most of this? 3M have some things going for them – their quality is good, they have a nice balance between photographic and video content and all content is high-value; but there’s room for improvement and a clear SMM strategy would go a long way towards ensuring this.
3M has managed to survive on social media due to its popularity before the age of digital marketing. The brand's social presence could be improved drastically.
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Social media offers unprecedented access to billions of potential customers and allows you to build brand awareness and interact with users in a direct manner. The possibilities that arise from social media and SMM are endless, but there are right and wrong ways to go about it. As we’ve seen, the winners in SMM have carefully thought out strategies that consider a range of factors, while the survivors are resistant to change and ignore many components.
In the next article, I will look at some of the brands that are ignoring all the important parts of SMM and are drowning when it comes to social media.
If you simply can’t wait or need help crafting an effective social media marketing strategy today, give Arrow a call on 1300 766 665 to find out how we can help. Alternatively, you can book in for a FREE 90-minute strategy session here.