Social media managers and marketers work tirelessly to crack the algorithm secrets of Facebook. To gameify Pinterest and Twitter, and post at the “most engaging times” according to sites like Buffer — but is the pay-to-play method creating truly engaged fans? If a post “reaches” a million fans and followers, but only 100 interact, is it still effective?
For those brands with limited (or no) advertising budget, social media is an essential tool for marketing — that’s nothing new. Now, however, with Facebook’s organic engagement dropping up to 88%, many brands are forced to choose between paying to truly “reach” their fans, or turning to another platform -- but what about the content?
Removing the algorithms from Facebook and thinking about the content, which mediums (photos, links, video, text) will help to best tell your story?
What resonates with your audience?
You have a group of fans that always see your content, they always like, comment, share and engage with you. They reply to your call to actions, convert to your other channels, and buy your products. Create quality content with these consumers in mind, and slowly you build more of them.
An example here, using the UMich vs Ohio State rivalry to help us "beat" them in Facebook fans a few days before we played them in basketball. A simple post that had impressiveresults. (We also gained over 4K new Facebook fans, as our posts traveled to users that may have not been previously aware of our page.)
Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram (to me) have the largest potential for growth, and likelihood for follower interaction. Pinterest in-particular sees the longest post-life, with Pins for uofmichigan receiving 80% above average Repin/Pin rate at 5pm, even though we post the most at 10am. You can read more about the University of Michigan's success with Pinterest here. Sure, there is no concrete answer to get your followers to Retweet and Repin all of your posts, but creating content that fans actually want to engage with should be more valuable than getting 100 Retweets from robots.
Think of it this way — you’re a community manager creating content for an over-the-counter diet pill with some not so pretty side effects. You have no product or discounts to give away, limited link drivers, and a product shortage. How do you create brand ambassadors and provide value for your audience? (this is a true story)
I often explain community management to people as, “you work really hard to produce content that you think your audience will respond to, only to have to accept every person in the world telling you how much they hate you and how stupid you are, every day.”
So what are the options?
What do people want that are trying to lose weight?
Motivation, support, ideas. They want partnership; knowing you are committed to their success, for as long as it may take to reach their goals. They want new ideas that will help make their journey easier, even fun. How do you do this?
How do you tell this audience, one that you are not a part of (at least, I wasn’t), that they can rely on you? Research.
I read countless articles, studies, watched videos, and did my best to answer the question — what do you need? The solution was to provide value.
You know they are dieting, so how can you help them avoid pitfalls? Educate them. The way to do this isn’t by cheating the system (from a diet, and a content perspective). You can have the strongest call to action in the world, but unless the content you provide has value, they won’t come back.
Sure, there are shortcuts, there’s click-bating and hashtag bandwagoning, but what’s the ROI on that? What’s the ROI on getting 100 people that don’t care about your brand to Retweet it once, because you found a way to connect Justin Bieber’s arrest to your brand strategy, if they don’t follow you, and never interact with you again? To me, it’s zero.
What’s next?
Ditch your content calendars: Engaging with your followers on things they care about, when they care about them. Although it’s difficult to create content on the fly (and risky, editing is crucial here), connecting with people about what’s happening in their life that day means more than Googling ‘weird holidays January.' Using a content calendar is a great way to build, and often necessary for client approval, but it’s constricting.
Listen to your fans: While experimenting is highly encouraged, sometimes you have to give the people what they want. Your fans love Throwback Thursdays? Find the best ones. High conversion rates from Facebook to Pinterest? Find new and better ways to link them together. A great way to start here is to categorize all of your content from the previous year by type and amount of engagement. You may be surprised to see certain categories outperform others.
Refine your brand identity: My favorite way to write for a new brand is to create a character. If you, like many of us, don’t particularly identify with your brand (which I actually love!), I find it best to "create" a brain that does.
How does this person talk, what are their interests, how do they present a story they want to share. Character portrayal allows a community manager to quickly switch between brands they may write for. I like to imagine each brand with a little person behind it, and that cohesive voice is who the audience knows and trusts.
Prioritize your channels: As I mentioned earlier, Facebook is a platform that marketers with little or no budgets are finding increasingly more difficult to use. Don’t waste your content in places it isn't working. Many brands have upwards of 5 social channels with a strong presence, many (hopefully) with entirely different content. Prioritize your primary and secondary channels and decide how much you want to publish on them each week.
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Writing content for social media isn’t easy. Understanding how to communicate effectively with your audience will help them feel a strong connection to your brand identity, and help your content perform. It may sound obvious, but when marketers get distracted with follower count, algorithms, and attempting to turn everything “viral,” the art of writing a good piece of content often gets lost. What’s missing, is that while it is marketing, it’s also communications. It’s talking to people, connecting, being engaging. There’s no secret to that, you just do it.
This post originally appeared on my Medium blog.