We hear phrases all the time about consistency in social media, and yes, we fully agree, you do need to be consistent with your posting, but there’s a lot more that goes into it.
Posting without purpose is how your post gets lost in the floods of other accounts, including your competitors. At Freshbat, we’ve moved on from ‘showing up’. We ‘show up’ but with a purpose behind it.
We see endless posts about the importance of content calendars. Yes, they are a must-have, but posting for the sake of posting, 7 days a week without the why behind it, leads to content fatigue, poor engagement, and often misalignment to the company goals and values.
A social media strategy isn’t just about hitting a certain amount of posts a week because you think that’s what you should be doing. A social media strategy is the rule book that you should follow to make sure you stay aligned with your wider marketing strategy.
If you’ve not got a marketing strategy, (the rest of this blog isn’t a sales pitch, promise), we can help you in just one day: https://freshbat.com/services/marketing-strategy/
What does a social media strategy look like?
Don’t get ‘plan’ and ‘strategy’ mixed up. They’re both essential elements to any successful marketing strategy, but they serve very different roles. The strategy is the why and the what, and the plan is the how and when.
What time are you posting? Who are you posting for? Are you keeping up with social updates and trends? Are you watching your audience’s behaviour? Do you have your business objectives in mind? Are you tracking and analysing conversations that are happening around your content? Analysing tones? Looking for new hashtags? And adjusting your strategy on all the above?
So many questions, yep, we really are making you work for it today, but you need to be answering them all properly before pressing that schedule button.
Buuuut, the hard work doesn’t stop there.
Now you’ve got a strategy, it’s time to build the ‘what’, and we like to do this with content pillars. See these pillars as your core themes, and everything you post should fall under one of these topics. Each pillar needs to work towards your business goals.
Here are some examples you could use:
Company culture: your audience needs to get to know the team behind the business to help humanise your company. This builds trust, creates an emotional connection, and differentiates you from everyone else. So, show birthdays, team days out, behind-the-scenes content, basically the personal side of your company.
Educational: position yourself as an industry expert. Share your expertise on the latest industry trends, teach and educate your audience, post valuable articles and blogs, resolve pain points, and provide value and key takeaways in your posts.
Thought leadership: make your mark in the industry. Provide the latest updates, write engaging articles, and start conversations based on research and findings to show your audience that you’re the trusted source they should follow.
If anything, having these pillars makes your job a lot easier. It becomes almost a checklist to make sure you’re hitting each one and not wondering what to post.
Instead of chasing trends that don’t align with your company goals, you’re posting content that reflects your brand and resonates with your audience.
How do we use social media in the bigger picture?
It’s quite worrying how many social media specialists have no idea what their business goals are.
At the end of the day, we do marketing to generate brand awareness, for PR, CSR and to gain more sales and leads. Social media tends to be the first gorgeous step that our audience will take in the sales funnel.
Social media channels are the place that your audience will make first impressions. They will have the choice of whether they’re going to find you interesting or necessary enough to follow.
If they do follow you, yay, they like something they saw, but now, you need to keep them engaged.
A successful social media strategy will keep you at the forefront of their mind. They’ve seen your posts for weeks, maybe months, and when the time comes around when they’re looking for someone in your industry, they should immediately think of you.
From our rant, you probably know how we feel about posting for the sake of it. It’s not a strategy, and it’s not going to get you results that are worth the time investment. Consistency matters, but it’s the alignment it has to your marketing goals that truly sets your strategy apart.
When you reflect on the wider picture, like your social media being a fundamental part of your overall strategy, building relationships with your audience, supporting your brand values and driving business growth, you’ll start to see real ROI.
So, all we ask is next time you go to schedule a post, think of us and ask yourself, will this help me achieve my goals or am I just posting for the sake of it? Make every post count by posting with intention and direction.
Stop winging it and get real results with a real strategy. Get in touch for help https://freshbat.com/contact/
