We get a lot of requests for tips on social media best practices, so we thought we’d start with a strategic overview. Chances are you’ve delegated your social media to someone in-house, and are wondering how to make those efforts more effective. We’ve created the below “four pillar” framework so you can better communicate expectations to your team and measure the results.
Goals
In our experience, few businesses are actually defining goals from the top down. Do you want to increase “Likes,” or do you want to move the meter on your business? It can and should be both, but there’s a difference. As our friends at Tribe Fitness wisely preach, these should be SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-sensitive. Make sure to get the input of your social media manager(s) for buy-in, so they’re being held accountable to goals they helped set. It’s OK and probably wise to start with modest goals so you can more rapidly cycle through the process of evaluating what works and what doesn’t then iterate. Once your goals are set you can hold yourself and your team accountable to them. First step: Voice.
Voice
It is crucial to understanding your brand’s voice. If you’re a small business it’s likely your own, but once you delegate social media responsibilities to someone else that voice can quickly get lost. This can be jarring to your fans, as a consistent voice is key to developing a relationship with fans on an emotional level. We recommend taking a moment to sketch out (literally, even) the character behind your brand. Unsurprisingly, this character should be a reflection of your target customer. Male or female? (tip: stay consistent with your phone system). Name? Interests? Personality? Sense of humor? Favorite brands? Responsibilities? Anxieties? Personal goals? By outlining your brand’s voice you can stay consistent over time, communicate your core value proposition and deepen your relationship with your audience.
Courtney Seiter at Marketing Land has a piece on 20 Great Social Media Voices that may prove helpful.
Content & SEO
By defining your brand’s voice, you can better understand who you are speaking to, and therefore elicit more engagement. And how does one “speak” on the Internet? You guessed it, through content! If you create and share content your audience finds valuable (i.e. “share-worthy”), then your Likes, Shares, RT’s, +’s, etc. should mostly take care of themselves. You can go down that rabbit hole as far as you want (which is why folks like us have jobs), but just thinking about content goes a long way. Keep in mind, not all content needs to or even should originate from your site, but the best part about the stuff that does? These presumably search-friendly posts on your site are a) indexed by Google and b) when shared via social media are considered new inbound links to your site, with bonus points for associated social activity on the link. Content and SEO all at once! For more information, see our 3 Big Reasons to Integrate Your Blog With Social Media.
Analyze and Iterate
If you can’t measure you can’t improve, right? Facebook Insights should take you as far as you probably need to go, and for Twitter Follerwonk and something like Hootsuite make a lot of sense. For the enterprise level (or simply the extremely ambitious), there are a LOT of options. Here’s 54 of them. The trick is finding one that makes sense for you. Don’t miss the forest for the trees – whatever the tool, you’re trying to identify what sort of content gets the most activity, and thus helps extend your reach. Use the info to make some deductions, modify your strategy/content, measure some more, rinse and repeat!
At the end of the day, though, if you’ve got your Goals, Voice, and Content in line – you should be measuring success! Have any comments or suggestions on your own social media best practices? Let us know!