It’s hard to keep up these days. From Elon Musk acquiring Twitter and all the disruptions that has caused, to the advent of Chat GPT, to millennials still trying to figure out TikTok, social media has become a crazy playground with ever-changing rules.
While we don’t have all the answers to what is coming next, what we can offer is a method and some tips to help you get it right.
01 Choose your playground.
How do you choose which social media platforms to be on? The answer lies within another question: who are you trying to talk to? Once you figure out your target audience, figure out where they ‘live’ online, and that will tell you where you should be investing your time and resources.
02 Check the basics.
Your social media channels are just another window to showcase yourself and/or your organisation, so you want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward. That means giving a bit of TLC to your profile.
Spend time on that bio or description to hit the right tone for the channel you’re on. Check to make sure your profile picture is nice and centered and relatable, but appropriate enough, especially if you’re using your personal profile for professional purposes. You’d be surprised how often these boxes aren’t ticked…
03 Plan your approach.
Each platform needs its strategy. So, make sure you’re planning ahead and have clarified your objectives and ambitions. You can only allocate enough resources to manage one account? No problem, just choose it carefully. Don’t have time to post every day? Create an editorial calendar to prep your content in advance and save precious time by scheduling your posts.
04 Keep it short.
It might sound obvious for Twitter since you only have 280 characters, but the rule still stands across the board. It’s not because you can write more there that it means you should. Attention spans are increasingly low, so a focused, short and sweet message will help you create higher-quality, more memorable content.
05 Use the right hashtags.
We have left the era when dozens of hashtags on a post were a thing. Using 2 to 3 relevant ones per post will actually give you better traction in social media algorithms… so choose them wisely!
06 Visualise.
Informative and consistent visual content will help people remember your message and provide them with an additional opportunity to engage. Compelling visuals should not be an afterthought: creatives are a complementary means to push your message beyond the text of your post and should be carefully prepared.
07 Rally the troops.
Your best ambassadors are your employees / members / network. Getting ‘your people’ to share your content is a way of getting positive endorsement, accessing your network’s network, and creating more buzz around your content.
08 Engage.
Engaging is important in building a like-minded community and nurturing the conversation. Why should people react to your posts if they feel like they’re talking to a wall? Engage by liking and responding to comments, articles, or even reposting content.
09 Promote .
As cynical as it sounds, social media has become a pay-to-play world. So make sure you take advantage of the targeting opportunities offered by every social media platform to guarantee your content gets seen by the right people.
10 Analyse.
Take a look at your performance by checking your social analytics. What has work well? What hasn’t? How can you do more of what worked? When you analyse your performance, you can refine your strategy and drive better impact.
10 + 1 Across the board: remember you’re talking to people.
Here’s the extra freebie tip: don’t forget to add a human touch to what you’re doing. Forget about the stiff, passport photos. You have the freedom to share your personality online, so allow that to shine through. Are you light-hearted and engaging? Are you fact-driven, evidence-based? Build your persona according to who you / your organisation want(s) to represent. Basically, decide if you’ll be more of a Beyonce or a Bill Gates!
Vanessa Terrier, Account Director