Telling Your Story: Developing an Arc to Your Business’ Social Media Presence
Social media. It seems so simple, right? You’ve probably been using personal Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts for years, and you know your way around them pretty well.
Unfortunately, when you’re running a business social media page, the rules are very different, and it can be tough to figure out what you should post, what you should like and how you should communicate with your customers.
As it turns out, social media marketing is more than just posting every day, even if you’re posting quality content.
In this blog, we’ll look at how creating an art or a narrative to your social media can help bring more people in and engage them. Whether it’s a week-long or month-long campaign, there’s value to be had in thinking through how your posts will lead into the next.
Thinking in Terms of Campaigns
The first step to building arcs — or narratives — on your social media platforms is thinking in terms of campaigns.
Campaigns don’t have to be complicated. Just think of each post as a single piece in a much larger series of posts on the same topic or theme.
Brainstorm a few messages that you want your customers to associate with your business and focus your social media campaigns around reinforcing those messages.
Alternatively, you can focus your campaigns around trade events or sales going on at your business. Your campaign’s focus is totally up to you!
Creating (and Sticking to) a Social Calendar
A surefire way to keep a continuous stream of quality content on your channels is creating (and sticking to) a social calendar.
With a monthly social calendar, you can easily plan what posts should go live and when.
When you’re first getting started, print off a monthly calendar and physically write beginning and end dates for your campaigns. If you really want to be organized, consider coming up with a color coding system that shows you when, where and what content to post.
As your calendar gets more complicated, you can use an Excel spreadsheet to keep tabs on due dates, publishing dates, channel, type of media, buyer’s persona and more.
Keeping Tabs on Your Competitors and Industry Trends
Having trouble thinking of campaigns and posts to fit into those campaigns?
If so, it’s time to boost your competitor intel game. Keeping tabs on your competitors will give you an idea of what conversations are going on in your industry and what kinds of things your customers are seeing from other businesses that do the same thing you do.
See what your competitors are doing well on social media and what they’re doing not so well. These posts will spark your creative side and give you ideas that you can make for your own social channel.
Remember, though, you don’t want a lot of standalone posts. Make sure you choose a larger theme that ties them together, and don’t forget to vary your types of content. Use images, GIFs, text and more to keep your social channels fresh.
Using Social Tools to Save Time
Once you’ve established your campaigns, written your posts and placed them on your social calendar, it’s time to find some tools to help you stay on top of your social media platforms.
The truth is, you could manually post everything, but it’s so much easier to automate that process with third-party publishing tools. Just make sure you don’t get too comfortable — some businesses have made huge missteps by automating all posting on social media and rarely actually signing on.
Social media is meant to be… well, social. That means interacting with your prospects and customers, not just posting your updates and forgetting about them.
A robust social strategy should be part of any business’s marketing plan, but it doesn’t have to take all your time from other aspects of your business. Think about what kinds of campaigns, arcs or narratives you want to build your social platforms on and write posts that help you tell that story.
In the end, people gravitate toward storytelling, not product features. Make your campaigns tell stories about how your service or product can help them achieve a bigger goal they have.
Succeeding at social media is about being honest, so focus on being authentic and genuine on your social platforms. Your customers and prospects will thank you.
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