Trying to build a successful business on social media without an effective strategy, can be detrimental. In order to create a memorable experience, brands should focus on seven key tasks before they start creating content. These include researching your audience and setting goals that will help you map out how customers interact with what's posted. Adding the right kind of content on your social channel can drive traffic, build brand awareness, and even increase sales.
In this blog, we will analyse the essence of a successful content strategy:
1. Brand authenticity
Does your business deliver the values you claim it does?Through social media platforms, brands have the opportunity to authentically talk to their target audience and show them who they truly are as a company, beyond what products or services they provide.
Nowadays, brand authenticity is more important than ever. When customers are emotionally invested in a brand, they are more likely to maintain loyalty. This is especially true for authentic brands that focus on customer service and satisfaction more than anything else!
You won’t help your customers feel valued and appreciated if you don't show it with actions or they never hear from you.
2. Brand awareness and recognition
The first step of building any brand is to get your audience familiar with who you are. You want them to be aware that there is a person behind the product, and it’s not just an idea in someone’s head.
To make sure your audience shows interest in what you have to offer, it’s crucial to build engagement with your brand.
The second step is brand recognition, which refers to the ability to identify a brand through components such as the logo, packaging, colours... With the help of a defined social media strategy, you can significantly increase you brand awareness and recognition which will consequently lead to new customers, more sales, and will enhance your brands credibility.
Brand awareness and brand recognition go hand in hand. Once you start to build awareness, you then want to turn it into recognition.
3. Set marketing goals, objectives and KPI’s
The effectiveness of your marketing campaigns relates to the goals you set. If they don’t have a clear direction, it will be difficult for them to reach their full potential and produce desired results. A brand is only strong if its objectives and goals can easily translate into actions (for example: drive traffic to the website, increase brand awareness and increase engagement).
KPI’s (Key performance indicators) are measurable values that determine if your activities have been successful or not. A good KPI, by definition, should be measurable and trackable. Without a way to measure progress towards your goals, you can't make improvements or adjustments.
4. Study and target your audience more effectively
Why do so many small businesses struggle to get the results they desire from their social media? The answer is simple: being on all channels at once takes too much time and often doesn’t produce the desired outcomes. Social Media should be thoughtfully planned out - otherwise you could end up feeling frustrated by unmet expectations or worse yet - lost opportunities!
Defining a target audience can be one of the most challenging aspects of marketing: what topics interest them the most? What are their biggest challenges? What do they read on a regular basis? Once you know who your target audience is, it will be easier to run relevant campaigns with great results.
5. Community management
Community management is the process of diving deep into your audience, interacting with them directly, and bringing them together so they can interact with each other.
This way you will be able to strengthen your brand loyalty. When people feel seen, heard, and appreciated, they are much more likely to share your content with others.
The rise of social media has made it easy to monitor what people are saying about your company online, which means you need strong community management practices if you want your brand to stand out.
Words spread fast, and one poor experience can quickly snowball into a reputation loss for your company. Community management helps bring your brand to life online.
6. Stay ahead of the competitors
Social media is an open book which means you can read and learn from it.
If your competitors are on social media, you can check their actions and analyse their marketing strategy. If they are not, you have the advantage of being the main player. Competition is something that drives brands to explore new opportunities and new marketing approaches. This is the main reason why it’s crucial to track and analyse your competitors’ marketing strategy. With these strategies, you can increase your brand's growth and profitability.
7. Create a content calendar
This stage bridges the gap between strategy and content creation.Content calendars are the place where ideas, topics, events, and launches are stored, to help you focus on your long-term strategy.They are not only a planning tool, but they help you to visualise your strategy over time, across multiple social media platforms.By utilising advanced scheduling, you won’t miss the opportunities to leverage your content, events, campaigns, and topics which are important for your audience and will help you get in front of potential customers. Advanced scheduling will ultimate help ensure you never miss a deadline.
To discuss your social media strategy and discover how it can help drive your business forward, please contact jessica@nucreative.co.uk.
