Some guiding principles for success on social media
Some principles…
I get asked a lot whether it is a good idea for companies to invest in social media. The answer there is usually yes, but not without a plan. I then set out a strategy with them and help implement it. When embarking on a journey like that, it is important to keep a few guiding principles in the back of your head. These will help to decide what to post, where, how often and what to expect back.
I mention a few of them here.
Conversation rather than Broadcast
Social media is all about two- or more-way conversations. The good thing about this is that you have a direct connection with your clients. The bad thing is that they have a direct connection with you. 24/7. This may in some cases lead to an overload of conversations that you need to engage in, at the peril of your reputation. This is a problem specifically if you have many (potential) customers.
Having third parties tell your story rather than you doing that yourself
The great thing about social media is that your story may reach a vast audience if it resonates. Your followers may repost your story and thus cause a ripple effect that no paid campaign can match, making your content go viral. The problem is, that you can’t predict what will resonate with your audience to that extent. You can only make sure that the message is genuine and learn more every time about what works better and worse.
Something many brands are engaging in nowadays, is the leveraging of so called influencers to tell their story for them. Bloggers, vloggers, instagrammers, snappers, some popular ones may have millions of followers, making them mention your brand to those followers an interesting commercial proposition. The issue with influencers, is their credibility. Their audience generally sees right through any commercial message and too many of those inevitably erodes their credibility and their following. Any ensuing issue with the influencer may reflect badly on your brand.
Being rather than Buying
On social media, people expect to encounter content that is amusing, informative, educational, entertaining but most of all genuine, real and sincere. Content that is experienced as fake, staged or too overtly commercial is easily discarded, dismissed or worse, dissed. So when posting something on social media - no matter which platform, make sure your story is about yourself, your company, your relation to the outside world, your opinion about a recent event, anything works, as long as it’s sincere.
Many Mini Moments rather than Few Big Events
Companies often wonder how often they need to post something on social media in order to remain relevant. The answer to that is as often as you can, without compromising the quality of the message. It doesn’t have to be all world changing content, as long as it’s personal, genuine and sincere. It is better to post often on relatively mundane topics, than only a few times per year on large, relevant and big events. As long as your mundane messages have some relation to your brand. If you choose to post messages few and far between, the algorithms of the platform may have too little data to work with and you lose audience.
That is also the case when you have a big announcement to make. Kindling people’s curiosity for a prolonged period with teasers showing a bit more every time leading up to a big announcement, works better than doing one big splash with all revelations at the same time.
However, you need to avoid clickbait - suggesting great new developments or revelations, that in the article or video itself don’t materialize. The disappointment with the audience will linger longer than the initial enthusiasm for the topic and next time people will think twice before clicking your content.
Owning Few Topics Deeply rather than Many Shallowly
This principle relates to the Content Marketing aspect within social media. People need to understand your offering, the problem your enterprise solves in order to remember you better. Of course it is best if you’re operating in a blue ocean, but even if you have many competitors, your proposition will be unique in specific ways. You may have to work this over a prolonged period of time, but eventually your unique proposition will come forward.
Your social media posts then need to reflect that unique proposition. Once you find your unique niche, it will be easier to choose what fits and what doesn’t. Those that fit, deepen them out, determine how to leverage the unique characteristics of each channel to convey that message and reach the maximum audience you can.
Showcasing Expertise rather than Boasting Success
The ancient idea that you need others to sing your praise, rather than you blowing your own horn still holds true. You concentrate on the content, let your clients tell their success stories with you. Of course when they do, you will not withhold it from your audience. But make sure it sounds as genuine as possible, not just another thinly veiled sales trick.
News Items and Human Interest Topics and their Effect on the Industry
Some of the mini moments mentioned above, may be about news and topical items and your take on them related to your business. These can be relatively short, but beware not to just link to the news item, but instead give your own view on it. Human interest topics work as well, as long as the link with your business is not too distant or sought.
Some Platform specific principles
Next to the above listed principles for social media in general, there are some platform specific tips to take into account.
Organic Posts
The Facebook timeline shows you the most relevant posts for you at any specific time according to its algorithms. Relevance is determined by your interaction with the post. On the other hand, Facebook is also a for-profit company, so it has tweaked its algorithms to treat paid-for content over non-paid-for content. In practice this means that your organic posts as a company will rarely get any serious audience. If you want your company posts to show, even with your own followers and fans, consider paying for them. The targeting options are very specific and your content will at least show.
International companies
Many internationals struggle with the question of how to set up their Facebook page, as their posts may be interesting for one region, but not for another. The way Facebook is handling this, is by separate Facebook pages for separate countries. However, having separate country pages poses a challenge in terms of governance and brand consistency. It is for the organization to decide whether to open a region specific Facebook page, in its own language, with local events - once the local office has enough resources to support this. The alternative is to have visitors from that region be redirected to the default version of the page. Good example of this setup is the page of IKEA (see image below).
In some regions, Instagram is becoming more popular with the younger generation than Facebook. This is something to take into account when choosing where to direct your social media efforts. This may take some additional effort, since proprietary quality photography is not to be taken for granted.
A certain president of a not too distant country, has in the past few years taught the world a lot about the perils of Twitter as a social media platform. Where the spontaneous and real time aspect of the platform can be attractive to some industries, generally the potential hazards often outweigh the benefits. These hazards include brand consistency, compliance, style and spelling and general brand relevance. To mitigate those risks, most companies choose to limit direct corporate access to the channel for any individual, especially the ones in higher echelons. In these cases the channel is often solely used to syndicate content on different channels, like for instance Youtube or the blog, and thus stripped of the very characteristics that make it unique and popular.
Youtube
As previously mentioned, Youtube has the second most used search engine on the Internet world wide. That means that the potential audience on this platform is enormous, but also that your content will be subject to rigorous algorithms that determine the relevance of your content to any search performed. Video has the unique characteristic of being able to convey a lot of knowledge, but also style and identity at minimal effort for the consumer seeking in depth reviews, how-to guides or general background information. The making of videos has become a lot easier in the past decade, but the difference between quality content and home videos is larger than ever, making a well considered video strategy a prerequisite for any company active on Youtube.
A professional network and recruitment platform, LinkedIn is of particular interest for LPI. However, the type of content shared is not going to be vastly different from the other platforms and principles mentioned there apply here as well. It’s just the audience will likely be more serious and willing to consume larger pieces of content.