Social media consistency and relevancy
There’s a whole host of social media platforms out there for you to explore.
Finding the ones that work for you to help you find and engage with your audience can be vital for the success of your product or service. What works for one company may not work for others. With all these possible social platforms out there for you to choose from it’s important that your audience is able to find you, no matter what platform you’re on. This is where it’s vital to ensure that your brand is consistently advertised.
This means you need to consider standardising your @username, profile image, bio and hashtags. Making sure that you’re as identical as possible will ensure that people can easily search for you and then be confident that they’ve found the ‘real’ you.
Standardising your brand across all platforms is critical but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the content you publish on each platform can be standardised – it can’t! Each platform has its own audience expectations and while the lines between traditional ways of categorising these platforms has changed that doesn’t mean you can be complacent.
Once upon a time you used to be able to categorise a social network based on its characteristics – ie. short text content, video etc but now with each platform expanding what it’s offerings to its users the lines are blurring so creating a marketing plan for each is key. You’ll need to look at changing or adjusting your message to play to the strengths of each. Here’s the main platform types:
Connecting/relationship building
These are your Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn – their goal is to connect individuals and brands in a straight-forward manner enabling brand awareness, engagement and relationship building. Each has its own ‘audience’ – Facebook is more up close and personal, Twitter more instant snippets and LinkedIn much more business based (you won’t find piano playing cats on this platform). What you post on one platform should always be evaluated for suitability and then the message or content re-packaged/re-aligned for the new platform. Don’t take the easy route and re-post content without evaluating the relevance of the content for your audience.
Media Sharing
Instagram, Flickr and Snapchat are great examples of media sharing networks, which while having text content are much more focused on the photo, video or live video content and again help individuals or brands to engage, inform and entertain their audience while promoting brand awareness.
Forums
Possibly the first social platforms, these include Digg & Reddit these allow their users to find, discuss, and share news, info and opinions. These types of platform are great for market research.
Curated Content
These are Pinterest or Flipboard and generally allow its users to discover, save and share content and media – which is great for building brand awareness, engagement and inspiration. These are also great for brands who want to really promote their brand ‘vision’ beyond their actual product and into mainstream culture.
So, for instance you might have a new Trainer you want to promote – so depending on the platform you might post some promo text, photo and link to your website, a promotional video, live event, a product endorsement or some fashion style closeup shots of the materials and features – all would promote your new product but tailored to the platforms audience.
Don’t think that you have to just stick with the current goliath’s of social media though – there’s always new and exciting social platforms launching, and if you’ve got the time, try them out and see if they too could be worth delving into. For instance, the Vero app is trending at the moment, it’s in its infancy but it’s potential for social sharing cannot be ignored. It’s got a few ‘start-up’ teething problems at the moment but it’s potential for artists, book sellers or other media providers to be able to share their curated content is huge.
Whatever your business there’s social platforms that’ll work for you. Whether it’s one of the current goliath’s or a new kid on the block just remember, post content, review your engagement, make sure you’re brand consistent and finally don’t spread yourself too thin – if you’re not generating engagement, retire the platform and re-focus on the remaining ones.
If you need more information or help on how social media could work for your business, please get in touch with me at http://paulkirkdesign.co.uk or at @PKirk_designer
