In a sea of jargon, buzz words, trends and millions of experts I am a big fan of the one-liner. Those key phrases that you can pin up above your desk and cast your eyes over really quickly to make sure you are on the right track. Or to make sure you are keeping it real – which is pretty much the best one-liner ever.
Here’s five of my key one-liners when talking to a client about a social media strategy and some things to think about when making a plan for your social media platforms.
Linking your accounts isn’t a good idea.
This one is pretty simple really: each platform has a different audience and your audience consume content in a different way on each platform. In other words, they go on Twitter looking for one thing, Facebook for something else and Instagram for something else completely. Not only that, but your audience will consume content on each platform in a different way too – so linking platforms will tar their experience of your business and basically be a total waste of time for you.
Be willing to evolve.
What worked last year or last week is not guaranteed to work again. Trending topics don’t stick around long and your audience’s lives don’t stand still either. Be willing and prepared to evolve your content ideas and social media strategy as your audience and the world evolves.
Plan to communicate.
Using social media for business without a plan is about as bad as running your business without a plan. It’s pretty much the same as throwing a dart blindfolded and hoping it lands on the bullseye. Be sure to plan to communicate to your audience; this starts by knowing who they are (target audience), where they are (which platform they use) and how they like to consume content (video, blogs, images, etc).
Social is social.
The clue is in the name, you might be a business on social media but the platform you are choosing to communicate from is used by real people in a sociable manner; people looking for a meme or the next video of a kitten and you really need to bear that in mind when creating content and writing captions. Take a minute to think about how you yourself use a social media platform, you might be surprised to find that it is completely different to how you are trying to communicate to your audience.
You don’t have to be on every platform.
It’s ok, no need to feel left out if your business is not on every platform. It really is going to be a super smart decision for your business to know where your audience are and then choose to be there. As my mother always says: “quality over quantity”.
Confused? Have any questions? Find me here. #BirdandEmmy
