Social media is one of the most creative and diverse marketing channels in your brand’s toolbox.
Versatile and dynamic, it offers a plethora of ways to connect with your customers.
But, like all your marketing channels, it could always do with a revamp. Perhaps your current approach is getting stale, or you’ve neglected a few channels lately — whatever the reason, a social strategy overhaul can be a worthwhile endeavor.
If you’re considering reinventing your social strategy, read on for some useful tips and tricks to help you get the most out of it.
Helpful Tips To Reinvent Your Social Media Strategy
Deliver value that is informed by your USP
Social media is a crowded place. As a brand, you are vying against a sea of countless other accounts to get your content seen by your target audience. Consequently, you need to work hard to create content that deserves to be seen. Your competitors are making the same promises as you to their customers, so you need to go one step further and actually prove it. You need to offer real, tangible value.
This is where your unique selling proposition (USP) comes in. This is what makes your brand different, often expressed in one or two sentences. Your USP informs your value. It is what sets you apart from the crowd and convinces your audience that you offer something new and worthwhile.
For instance, let’s say you run an interior design company. You could wax lyrical about your happy clients and their testimonials on social. This demonstrates your value to prospective customers, and while it has its place, it does not convey your brand USP.
But by creating informative or useful content that actually impacts your audience — design tips for small city apartments, for instance — you communicate your USP by delivering real-world value.
Revisit (or identify) your USP and use it to inform your social calendar and relevant content. This focuses your approach and increases engagement through the delivery of actionable content that demonstrates your value.
Build out (and lean on) your audience personas
Following on from the above, part of delivering value through your social strategy is understanding who your target audience consists of. Beyond demonstrating your USP as a brand, you need to connect with your audience and create content that actually matters to your followers.
As you know, it’s important to remember that your audience is not a singular entity — it consists of multiple different customer personas, each of whom has a different relationship with your brand. Continuing the interior design example, one typical customer might be a first-time homeowner with a limited budget. On the other hand, you might also cater to small retail businesses, such as restaurants.
These two disparate customer segments have different needs, and your social strategy has to cater to that.
As you reinvent your social strategy, take the time to build out your audience personas. If you don’t already have these documented, now is the time to do so. If you do, then take this opportunity to reassess them — update them with new information and make them more detailed.
If you’re struggling, use a template as a starting point. As your business grows, you can expand or tweak these as necessary.
Use these customer personas to inform your social strategy. Identify pain points and issues that matter to each type and tailor your content, your social tone of voice, and even your posting times. This is what increases your social strategy’s value — by appealing to your customers on a more personal, individual level.
Take advantage of newer channels and features
Social media is always innovating. New channels, features, or indeed approaches are always in the pipeline, giving people (and businesses) new ways to connect with others online. But these changes often happen at such a pace that they leave businesses, especially smaller ones, in the dust.
TikTok is the most obvious example of this. The video-based social platform has soared in popularity of late, and yet many brands are naturally apprehensive about using it for business. This is understandable — getting to grips with a new platform is no easy task. However, with such a growing user base and an array of features, it is important that brands take the time to learn how to use TikTok in order to stay fresh and relevant.
Beyond this, there are plenty of other features that are not necessarily new but are often underutilized by brands. Take Instagram Stories, for instance. First rolled out in 2016, Stories are often only used sparingly by businesses, a token nod to the feature.
Stories offer an array of benefits for brands, but only when used consistently and frequently, and knowing how to use Stories is crucial to this. They have a variety of features — Stickers, Shoppable tags, AR filters, Highlight reels, and so on — that help you connect with your audience in a new and dynamic way.
Identify underused social channels (or features of your existing channels) and take the time to understand how they can work for your business. This is essential for reinventing your social strategy so that it is fresh and engaging.
If your social channels take off (and let’s hope they do!), think about investing in a decent CRM (customer relationship manager) platform, too. By implementing a shared inbox, you’ll be able to view and reply to all of your social messages from one central hub. There are plenty to choose from nowadays, but the best will offer effortless helpdesk integration, chatbot functionality, and transparent pricing, so be sure to shop around.
Strive for personality in your social strategy
As the name suggests, social media is about social interaction — human interaction. It is about connecting with others on a personal level. While this is obvious to the average user, many brands feel wary of adopting such an informal tone on social. But it can (and does) work — when done right.
Even big brands are adopting a more personal, human approach to their social tone of voice, and small businesses, too, can enjoy the benefits of a more personal social media style. Eschew industry jargon and in favor of a more common language. The key to this approach is to make yourself approachable and accessible, not exclusive to a select few.
Avoid stiff, formal approaches to customer comments and reply in a human, approachable way without falling into the trap of inappropriate slang or excessive emojis. While some brands can pull this off, it doesn’t work for all.
As a rule of thumb, speak to your followers as you would to a friend. This personable approach to your social strategy enhances the relationship between your brand and your followers. A faceless, corporate approach implies a distance between each party, while a more informal style is more in tune with the general atmosphere of social media.
Conclusion
Social media is always changing, so it’s important that you change with it. Strive for relevant value through your strategy, bearing your customer segments in mind throughout.
Identify new or underused social channels or features and foster a personal relationship between your brand and your customers. Bear the points above in mind, and reinvent your social strategy for greater resonance.
