To talk about content we have to talk about context
Where does your brand / business fit into the context of your customer’s life?
And the reality is cold and harsh for many business owners trying to promote themselves on Social Media
The reality is, however exciting, interesting, ground breaking your latest update is – it will always play second fiddle to a friend’s baby photos, holiday photos, funny meme or latest breaking news
Now that isn’t game over – it just means you need to make your content MORE Exciting, MORE interesting, MORE Ground breaking so that it stands the best chance of success
- Know Your Customers Inside Out
It’s not music – but if you’ve ever seen the Travelodge “Travelodgical” adverts (youtube search it if not) you’ll witness Customer Profiling at its most obvious
Bands are the same – there’s a defined profile of fans from Radiohead to Bieber, from Clapton to the latest X Factor winner. There’s certain things you’d expect those acts to talk about and there’s certain things you’d expect them never to talk about based on perception of them and what their fans are interested in.
At the most extreme it’s well known the band Keane hired brand consultants before releasing a record. The Guardian were quoted as “Moving Brands went on to shape Keane’s identity, coming up with eve
rything from characteristics the band were supposed to embody (youth, innocence, passion, beauty and expansiveness among them), to their logos, promotional material, postcards and even a special shade of the green for use on their record sleeves”
Now that’s profiling and marketing at it’s extreme – but your business has a customer profile(s)
So, take the following steps:
- Define your customer types – is there just one type or more than one type of customer
- Write down everything about them you can think of their demographics (age / gender / musical interests)
- Back up the gut feeling by looking at your Facebook Insights > People
- Write all of this down in clear concise bullet points
From now on everything you post on Social Media should appeal to one of these customer types
- Think Of Themes
Now you know your customers – think of themes that you can run on a regular basis
People like the familiar and sense of what to expect
Most people’s brains are still wired into programmic and routine so think of weekly / daily themes that you could run
* Music Monday
* Top Tip Tuesday
* Wednesday Wisdom
* Thursday Thoughts
* Friday Feeling
These are all fairly standard themes that trend on Twitter regularly, but you can come up with your own
- Think Visually – Photos and Videos
In 2017 text-only updates will not stand out
It’s been moving that way for several years now, but everything is visual
It’s why Instagram, Snapchat and live video have become more popular
Visual is easy to consume, but it’s harder to produce on a regular basis of a high enough quality
Here are a few apps that I use to make better images
* Text On Photos – Word Swag / Typorama
* Gifs – GifMe
* Meme’s – Mematic
* Animated Text – Legend
In terms of video – the number 1 way to get noticed is Facebook Live videos as Facebook are prioritising them and they have notification built in to all people that follow your page
Examples of Facebook Live videos you can do are
* Q&A
* How To Guide
* Interviews
* Behind The Scenes
* Live Gigs (Be careful of copyright though – so get permission)
- Draft and Redraft
On all of the apps above (apart from Live Video) make perfection your number 1 goal
All of the apps are fantastic, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of leaving social media content to the last minute and posting the 1st draft you come up with
Plan all your content ahead – produce the content and sit on it for a few days – then look at it with fresh eyes a few days later
Make sure everything makes the grade on quality control as a great idea executed badly won’t perform well on Social
- Distribute at The Right Time
Timing is everything on Social Media
Did you know for instance the prime life span of a tweet is only 18 minutes? I.e 18 minutes after it’s posted it is unlikely to received replies, retweets, likes
Did you know that 8-10pm in the evening on Facebook is when most people are online? It’s also means that more people are posting at that time so it’s noisier
Timing is where you have to get a bit geeky and a bit analytical and look at these 2 places
- * Facebook – Insights > Posts – you’ll see a whale like graph which will show you when your fans are online
- * Twitter – Avatar top right > Analytics > Tweets > Top Tweets – look at what time your most popular posts were posted
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST – ALWAYS ASK THESE QUESTIONS
Go through each of the 5 steps above and keep asking
* Does this appeal to my customers?
* Are these themes still relevant / working?
* What content is working best?
* Is this the best content I can produce?
* Are these still the best times to post?
If you keeping asking yourself these questions and improving – the impact of your social media posts will make the right impact on sales
