Why a social media post - is not just a social media post

Social Media is evolving. Fast. With over 2.3 billion active social media users and 91% of retail brands using two or more social media channels, organisations are rushing to posting more and more content online in order to get their voices heard.

But this shouldn’t be the case.

Every post that a brand publishes has many connotations that may first be ignored at face value. A post is always more than a post. It isn’t just a series of characters, an emoji that you thought was funny or an art asset that your social team have put together. It represents your brand in ways that you might never have even considered.

Let’s explain by taking a look at a handful of different types of social posts:

"Direct Messaging"

This is what many organisational departments think of when ‘social media’ gets mentioned in a meeting. Quite simply, it is the process in which a direct message is communicated to a customer. This may be via an organic post or paid as illustrated by Blizzard’s Blizzcon event below:

The messaging is direct – ‘get your Virtual Ticket now!’ And the imagery relates to the various properties that Blizzard controls such as Overwatch and Hearthstone.

"Visualising a lifestyle"

Whether you utilise the help of an influencer of note, many brands will consider helping consumers ‘visualise a lifestyle’ when composing social media posts. You’ll see many travel providers such as Thomas Cook and TUI post in this manner. Whilst the end-goal is clear (to sell a product/service) it is important to remember that your product must be easily linked to the ‘reality’ that you are trying to portray.

Jack Wills recently partnered with Menswear influencer ‘The Debonair’ to illustrate how its clothing fits into a ‘luxury’ lifestyle:

 The large country house in the background, the addition of another luxury brand (Hunter) footwear and a relatable scene of spending time walking the family pet in the midst of autumn is a lifestyle that many office-workers can easily envision and thus a strong bond is formed between the consumer seeing this content and the Jack Wills brand.

Providing a service

It’s important to note that sometimes organisations work alongside other companies to provide a service. In my own role as a community manager at Microsoft UK, we worked alongside the National Apprenticeship Service to host a Facebook Live broadcast sharing the journeys that our three generations of apprentices had taken to kick-start their careers within the technology sector.

No products or services by Microsoft were promoted in this broadcast, instead we shared the broadcast schedule via the National Apprenticeship website, asked training providers from across the UK if they would like to share the broadcast with their current students and even informed colleges/schools of the time that they could tune in to ask questions about what an apprenticeship is really like.

The broadcast was hosted by our ‘first generation’ apprentice who led the broadcast asking questions to others who were part-way through our apprenticeship programme and those who had just started and the response was fantastic. This wasn’t a ‘social media post’ – this was a way in which we were ‘empowering young people’ to make the right life choice for themselves.

Building relationships

The true power of social media for brands is the ability to build strong relationships with consumers, whether they have used your service or not. Airbnb does a fantastic job of curating UGC (user generated content) by actively seeking out photographers and engaging with them via the comments section in Instagram:

Although many people will see this type of social content as building out their social calendar, it’s important to consider that every engagement that Airbnb makes is a way that they ‘delight’ Instagram users, making them feel valuable to such a popular brand and that their social media post has reached a new standard in comparison to the standard everyday picture that others may share.

Creating conversation

News outlets are fantastic are creating conversations via social media but other brands may utilise tools such as Twitter polls to gather feedback on an idea (My own social communities) or use a Periscope broadcast to explain business decisions directly to consumers (Monzo).

Whilst these posts – such as BuzzFeed above – mainly focus on generating link clicks, the aim of these social media posts are to generate a conversation in the comments among social media users whether on the same social platform or their own website.

It’s an easy way to create a community – albeit a virtual one – a community in which regular readers become loyalists and support the firm by engaging with others and feedback on new article suggestions, features and interviews that organisations may test.

So remember – when you discuss social media posts as an organisation think, ‘what type of post do I want to make?’

We can all go for the easy method of writing copy that aims to simply sell a product/service – but it takes a real whiz to understand what type of post to make to truly engage an audience and build a community that thrives into the future.

Enjoyed reading this article? Here are a few more that might be of interest:

• Are you using social media to influence the consumer decision making process?
• Social Media: "When customer love turns into lasting hate" - Disagreeing with academia
• What 'experience' is your brand portraying?