The Fundamentals of Social Media
Social media can be a scary playing field with trends, algorithm changes, platform updates and new features appearing almost daily. How do we keep up?
In the world of social media marketing, having a set of fundamentals in place and adapting them to each new change is key. It may sound like a whole lot of work, but trust us… having a consistent set of foundations will help you from losing your mind!
When it comes to keeping your digital marketing afloat, there are five main fundamentals we live by; define your strategy, know your audience, visually represent your brand, have clear brand messaging and integrate your campaigns.
Strategy
Say it louder for the people in the back! When it comes to your social media marketing, strategy is everything! Developing a strategy for your social media can be time consuming and overwhelming, but it sure pays off. Here’s why we recommend (no, insist!) you have a digital marketing strategy…
Direction – A strategy gives you clear direction for the weeks, months or even years ahead. Strategy can help you work out a targeted approach to achieving your goals.
Measurement – Being able to analyse your data allows you to measure the progress you’ve made towards your goals. It can also help you identify areas that are struggling, or re-allocate your budget throughout the campaign to areas that would be more beneficial for your business. Using a combination of analytics and conversion results allows you to consistently adjust your approach and make necessary corrections before it’s too late.
Consistency – A strategy can help you keep on track with your organic and paid marketing efforts. Planning and scheduling your campaigns in advance will help you build your online presence, grow your audience and get those sales flowing!
Defining Your Strategy
Defining your strategy is as simple as following some easy steps…
- State your mission/vision
- Set some measurable goals
- Identify your target market and their buyer personas
- Describe your content strategies; the type of content, how much of it, the channels you will distribute it on and whether you will adopt paid advertising
- Identify and allocate your budget
- Identify your competitors; What are they doing? What aren’t they doing? What’s working? What isn’t?
- Outline the people who will help you achieve different aspects of your plan
- Set a calendar of key events
- Set a plan for the implementation of your marketing
Know Your Audience
One of our most invaluable tips for social media marketing is knowing your audience! After all, how can you market to someone if you don’t know who they are?
When defining your audience, we recommend starting with your current clients. Who are they? What platforms are they using? What are their demographics? What trends are they responding to (if any)? By asking yourself these questions, you will be given a clear idea of the people who are interested in your brand, and most likely to purchase from you.
From this, you can identify your ideal client or customer, developing a specific audience persona for each target market. Then when you are writing your social media content, write with these personas in mind. Ask yourself questions like “how would this person benefit from my service?”, “how can my product solve their problem?” or “how would this person like to be spoken to?”. Asking these questions and actively thinking about your audience’s wants, needs and challenges will result in relevant, high-quality content that converts!
The real key to connecting with your audience is knowing them inside-out! Trust us, you will reap the rewards.
Visually Represent Your Brand
Representing your brand means more than just words and a logo. When approaching your branding on social media, you need to be focusing on ensuring that every single one of your images, posts, graphics and stories are telling the world “Hello! This is me!”. Visual storytelling plays a huge part in any social media strategy, so here’s how it’s done…
Use Branded Graphics
Your social media graphics should be showcasing your complete brand kit, including colours, imagery and fonts (as well as your logo). Including these aspects throughout your posts will improve brand recognition, consistency and recall, with customers knowing the content is yours before they even read a word!
Elevate Your Brand With High-Quality Imagery
That’s right, sometimes an iPhone image taken by a family member just… doesn’t… cut it. There is a time and place for iPhone photography, but the benefits of high quality, professional imagery are second to none! Set yourself up with a collection of professional images of yourself, your team, your products or your services. These images can be used across your social media platforms, website, email marketing and so much more. Not only will they take your marketing to the next level, they will also elevate your professionalism and boost trust in your brand.
Seems daunting? It doesn’t have to be! Choose a photographer, decide on a location, grab the team and get snapping. We find creating a mood board prior to the shoot really helps with your vision and direction on the day.
Incorporate Video Content to Show Your Brand Personality
Did you know that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to a small 10% when reading it in text? (Forbes). You may have noticed that video content has been on the rise in 2022, with more and more brands opting to incorporate video into their social media strategy.
Engaging, moving visuals, reels and videos are favoured by both viewers and the algorithm alike. So now is the time to start capturing and utilising video content to get your brand noticed!
Here are some different ways you can incorporate video into your strategy:
- Meet the team videos
- Behind the scenes shots (people love to see what goes on beyond the social media images!)
- Video blogs or product/service updates
- Client testimonial videos
- Turn your images into a video slideshow (this is one of our favourite algorithm hacks!)
- Informational videos on your product or service
- Answer your FAQ’s
Brand Messaging
Your brand messaging is SO important in letting your customers know exactly who you are! And by brand messaging, we’re not just talking about social media captions. Brand messaging is the entire way you communicate your values, your offering, your personality and your voice.
Setting Your Tone
Your brand messaging shouldn’t be limited to one platform alone, it includes a mixture of verbal and non-verbal messages across your website, social media, EDM’s, videography, you name it!
Start by setting out your mission statement, your values, your tone of voice and language. From here, you will be able to refer back to this in every form of communication your business is involved in, setting the foundation for consistent messaging and a maintained brand personality.
Content Pillars
The next step? Set your content pillars! A content pillar is a topic or theme that is relevant to your audience. You can have multiple pillars for a range of different topics you regularly cover in your day-to-day content. For example, some of ours would be digital marketing tips, campaigns, educational posts, testimonials and BTS of our business. Content pillars are a great way of organising your content and making sure it fits the core categories your audience are interested in, as well as your core values.
An easy way to think of content pillars is picturing them as the foundations and key messages that hold up your communication. Take a look at your social media platforms and start categorising your posts into different content groups. From here, you can see which categories are most engaged with and in turn, find out some helpful things for your content moving forward!
Integrate Your Campaigns
An integrated marketing campaign is a campaign that adopts a mixture of platforms to showcase your business. These can involve methods such as email marketing, social media and Google Ads (there are so many platforms to us) and they are a MUST when it comes to converting your viewers into customers.
Having a consistent presence and messaging across multiple marketing platforms can work wonders in creating brand awareness for your business. Sounds daunting? It can actually be quite simple! Try to think of ways you can repurpose your social media content and adapt it to suit each marketing channel.
If you need a helping hand, our team can’t wait to work with you! Your outsourced marketing team, Soqual can help elevate your brand identity and improve your presence online.
