Let's Make 2021 The Year Of Respect Driven Social Media Marketing

Are you in business and spending January looking at your social media strategy for 2021? If you answered no, then now might be the time to start and I've got a few ideas for you. But if you said yes, then you're not alone. Brief keyword searches on Twitter and Facebook reveal that a lot of businesses are taking this time to re-evaluate their social efforts and that even more consultants like me are advertising for their business as a result.

But the first questions I want you to think about are what are you basing your new strategy upon and what are the experts touting as the best things to focus on this year? Well, from what I've seen, the vast majority are focusing on functionality or how to exploit it for their benefit over the coming 12 months. All those 'trends to look out for in 2021’ articles that are prevalent at this time of year continue to stress the importance of video, Facebook ads and filling your content calendar well in advance.

Others talk more about your content strategy and how it has to be more engaging than everyone else's, or how you have to be posting more frequently than everyone else to get noticed. There can be no doubt that all businesses on social media today are competing for attention, for eyeballs and for sales. But they're all doing it in almost exactly the same way. Which feels wrong to me. But when we all have access to the same functionality it actually means that there's very little originality out there at the moment, which represents an opportunity for you all.

I was fortunate enough to see part of Russell Brand's 'Messiah Complex' tour over the holidays and amongst the many observations about our society today, he made one which really stuck with me about businesses. He said something along the lines of "If you have to advertise it, then people don’t need it. No one has to advertise to remind you to breathe, to love, to interact with people or do any of the things we as human beings actually need or want."

He's right, especially when it comes to social media. Look at any of the majorly successful businesses on social media and you'll find that they very rarely actually advertise. They don't actively sell to you. They don't repeatedly tell you what they have to sell and why you should buy it from them. They don't rely upon 'engagement bait' or 'click bait' posts. They don't regurgitate curated content or articles from other sources and they don't post every 30 minutes either!

So here's my idea for 2021, ditch competing for attention by broadcasting quality over quantity (which has been the overwhelming trend for the last 6 years or so); compete with trustworthiness instead. What do I mean by that? I mean focus on delivering truth, value and quality on a personal level. Delivering respect driven marketing.

We've all heard the expression 'know your audience', but let's move beyond segmenting and personas, let's actually connect with the people that like our pages or follow our feeds.

Let's look beyond campaigns and instead create experiences and transparency in the way clients and potential customers want.