Social media is now the “way of the world” and critical to any brand strategy. However, with so much media at our fingertips, it’s easy to understand how your brand and its content can get swept under the rug or how it can be difficult to make yourself stand out.
Here are a few tips and tricks that can help your brand hurdle the metaphorical barriers standing between you and successful social content.
How to Create Your Social Media Strategy
Define Your Audience
What are your audience profiles? Your audience can help determine what channels you should utilize, what sort of content you are creating, the time of day to post, and a number of other factors. Research shows that Facebook is dominated mostly by Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), Instagram by Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), and TikTok and Snapchat by Gen Zers (born after 1997).
Research also shows that the industry can also dictate which platform you should use. For example, while the construction industry is mainly centered around the image-based platforms of Facebook and Instagram, athletes and public figures are drawn to the word-based, re-posting platform of Twitter.
Find Your Voice and Stick To It
Audit your content. While you may not have a cohesive theme already, it’s not too late to forge one! You can find patterns in the content you’ve previously posted to identify what is important to your organization’s brand. Use these three critical tools:
- Your current feeds. What does your organization focus on? Taking a social audit of your brand will help you do an honest evaluation of what current socials say about your organization, where you are, and where you want to go.
- Reground yourself in your mission and values and pinpoint what it is that you stand for, what your brand represents, and what tone is AUTHENTIC to you. Transparency and authenticity are key to audience engagement. From your audit, you should be able to find your style.
- Create a style guide with colors, values, and tone that can guide all of your content. This is particularly important if you have multiple people who manage your accounts or guests.
Map Out Your Stakeholders
Your stakeholders define your themes and topics. For example, a plaintiff attorney who is dealing with injured clients may find it inappropriate to jump on the #purplepopsicleday trend. However, for a university with purple as its main color, #purplepopsicleday could be a great way to engage their students and alumni. You should alternate content between larger industry trends, local community engagement, industry educational material, and internal news and promotions.
Use SEO practices and hashtags to make yourself easier to find
Hashtags are a great way to find new followers, customers, and audiences. Hashtags are also an easier way for audiences to find you. For example, being a result of a user’s #doggroomer search makes you much easier to find. Think about it, if someone is searching for a dog groomer, they obviously don’t know of any. Therefore, it’s completely unlikely to search your business’s specific name.
While hashtags may seem easy-peasy, the wrong hashtags can keep you in front of the entirely wrong audience. Similarly, your content can be guided by SEO keyword searches. This is applicable for blogs, posts, and all original content that you create. Using the right keywords and hashtags helps put you and your business in front of the right people.
Build and schedule your social media content calendar
Now it’s time to publish; you need to decide the frequency with which you would like to publish and stick to it. With the amount of content accessible to users, your lack of consistency can easily result in your followers losing interest in you.
Followers need consistency, so when you are inspired or have meaningful content, jot it down and save some of it for future posts when things may be a little slower. So, when you’re ready to publish, find a social media template and scheduling tool. If you need help with planning visit Firefly’s social media content calendar template! It’s a great tool to get you on your way!
Bonus Hack: Commit to learning visual hacks. Your feed should be visually consistent by utilizing similar lighting and filter effects. Understand the difference between good and bad lighting.
Let’s Get to Posting!
Clear goals, planning, consistency, and creativity will be your major keys to success. With these 5 surefire strategies in mind, you can boost your brand to the next level, get noticed on media platforms, and get the social engagement you’ve been looking for from your followers. What are you waiting for?!
Questions?
Ready to increase your brand awareness and revenue through your social media marketing or overall strategy. Valuecoast Digital can help you!
If you would like to know more about social media marketing with Valuecoast Digital, feel free to contact us at any time.
