Great, engaging content is the soul of any social media strategy. Think about it. A flashy, edgy design on a Facebook page defeats its own purpose if its content is dull and boring. Same goes for Twitter.
And don’t neglect the benefits of having engaging social media content. When fans ‘like‘ or ‘follow‘ you, it’s announced to their sphere of friends. If their friends dig your brand, the more they’re likely to connect with your brand and announce your brand to their friends. Imagine the infinite reach of marketing possibilities.
Social media consumers respond well to funny, witty, and relevant content, but great social media content reflects your brand and keeps your audience engaged. Here are five effective tips in devising an effective social media content strategy:
1. Know Your Voice
Think of your brand and what kind of personality it exudes or want to exude. Is your brand in academia? Perhaps a more serious voice is suitable. Or does your brand want to project a more comical, quirky voice? Knowing your brand’s voice is important. Remember that with social media, you’re conversing with your audience, not marketing your brand to them. Skittles does a good job of knowing its voice.
Skittles’ Facebook page updates are fun and quirky, and sometimes even comically nonsensical, but their voice reflects their brand. Some of their Facebook updates have even garnered over 10,000 ‘likes’ and 1,000 comments.
2. Timing
What you say is important, and when you say it might just be as crucial. Your content might be great, but what use is it if it doesn’t reach your audience at the right time? Use analytics, such as Facebook Insights, to see when your audience is most active. If your audience is most active at 3 in the afternoon, don’t post updates at 3 in the morning.
Also, anticipate yearly trends such as holidays and seasons, and the lifestyle nuances that go with them. No one wants to hear about Halloween in July, but there’s a spike in umbrella sales during winter showers. Banana Republic made great use of this through Twitter:
3. Know Your Audience
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and try to imagine what it is about your brand that they enjoy. Make sure your brand delivers it. And in what form of media do they enjoy receiving it – images, audio, or video? Facebook Insights lets you see which media your audience responds well to. Here is a great example of a tweet from SKYY Vodka that delivered fun, relevant content to its followers:
4. Help Solve Problems
Fun, entertaining social media content is great, but people enjoy a little help every once in a while. Imagine for a second that your brand is a tennis academy and that someone ‘liked’ on Facebook in hopes of finding insider advice on improving their backhand. Now imagine how many others like him or her that thirst for that knowledge. Here’s another great example of how Threadless helped fans solve a problem:
5. Be Honest
This one trumps the rest. Social media is a human-to-human interaction; the only difference is that it’s optimized through the internet. Your brand has a message, a point of view, and a personality. When someone connects with a brand or organization through social media, it’s like befriending that cool, funny kid in class. Don’t spoil that connection with superficiality lest you’ll turn people away – and there’s certainly no room for that in social networking.
