Don’t make the mistake of diving into social media without a clear content plan
Nowadays, social media is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. If you use it correctly, you can create a solid personal connection with your prospective customers.
However, marketers often make the mistake of diving into social media without a clear content plan. At best, this is a waste of time – and at worst, it can lead to a PR disaster.
To benefit from social media, you need to build a clear content strategy that considers what you’re trying to achieve, who your customers are, what your competition is doing and what is best for social media posting.
A client of mine told me that he hates seeing bad content from business pages on social media. He said:
- A lot have no imagination…
- A lot presents no value for the audience…
- When I read them, I realised it’s such a waste of time!
It’s true–many social media posts by organisations have no value. And remember, poor social media posting can cost a business!
Think about how long it takes to post and create content. Let’s say 45 minutes per day x 5 days per week. That’s some serious poor-performing production time!
Not only does this result in wasted hours, but it’s also represented by a loss in brand value, audience build and potential leads
Define the purpose of being on social media in the first place
Why are you posting right now? If you can’t answer that, don’t post.
Understand your purpose for being on social media. I suggest looking at using social media to create Brand Build. After this, usually what follows is sales and enquiries.
Understand your target audience, what they need, and what social media posts they want. Survey them if you have to!
Visit Facebook groups, Reddit pages, blogs and forums that hold your target audience. See what Linkedin influencers within your industry are talking about, and take note of the comments and reactions that are being given.
This will give you an understanding of what your target audience wants and needs. From there, you can prepare a content calendar plan to begin delivering to your target audience.
Define what and how many social media posts per day. Make it valuable, varied and insightful!
Present what’s needed
From your findings, form your target audience, present what’s needed. Make sure your posts give value to your audience. Ensure your posting strategy contains varied topics.
Don’t preach your products and services, but give a lot of information away. Loyal audiences are built when high value is presented on a page.
To keep social media posting varied, define a content calendar for your business. A content calendar ensures you are never sending the same message twice.
It can look something like this:
- Monday – Branding posts (What is your brand offering)
- Tuesday – Business Value posts (Talk about value points of your business, why you adding value to your audience)
- Wednesday – Educational posts (Educate your audience on your industry, provide valuable material they can use to understand better).
- Thursday – Success Stories (Show your customer testimonials/case studies)
- Friday – Branding (Use customer reviews, testimonials)
- Saturday – Educational posts.
- Sunday – A quote or statement. (Think about what represent your tribe, what they believe in)
Have the end goal to create social media posts that give value first. You can create campaigns focused on sales once you have a valuable page.
The biggest mistake a lot of social pages and posts make is that they focus too much on trying to generate sales.
Social media is one step of the sales funnel. It needs to be its own entity. Through social media posting, you will create a brand to flow this to a sales campaign. But social media should not be only for starting a pure sales channel.
Key takeaways about social media posting guidelines to consider before posting.
Conclusion
In conclusion, before you start posting on social media, make sure you understand your audience and create brand touchpoints with them. If you have valuable engagement, you will then be able to flow this to a sales campaign. But remember, social media should not be only for creating a pure sales channel.
Brand touchpoints are critical in marketing. Social media is a platform that allows a lot of touchpoints. Make sure your audience becomes inspired. This will ensure more engagement and more brand loyalty.
I hope this has been insightful and helped you on your way to creating a dynamic posting strategy.
