Key Qualities of a Strong Social Media Content Strategy

More than 1.7 billion people use Facebook daily. contribute Instagram, TikTok, and a few others, and you see that social media’s audience is almost all encompassing.

It is sensible that marketers need to get on those platforms so as to require advantage of that massive audience. But what are the key qualities of a social media content strategy?

Whether you’re an enormous brand looking to stay yourself at the highest , or a smaller company looking to maneuver up, you would like to form sure your content strategy is top notch.

With the proper strategy, you'll dominate on social media and avoid losing money on inefficient marketing. How does one know if your strategy is stellar? Here are the tell-tale signs:

You Know Your Audience

The very first factor which will differentiate an excellent social media marketing strategy from a mediocre one is how well you recognize your audience. Audience is vital for any marketing endeavor. You can’t possibly be selling your products to anyone if you don’t know who they're and what they might want or need from you.

Ask yourself these questions:

•  Do i do know basic demographic information about my audience?
•  Do i do know the intentions behind the purchase?
•  Am I conscious of specific purchasing patterns?
•  Do i do know the explanations behind customer churn?
•  Do i do know my audience’s adjacent interests?
•  Do I even have a customer journey map?
•  Do I even have detailed customer personas?

Overall, to form sure you recognize everything about your customers there are two key steps: gather data and analyze it.

This may sound easy in theory, but it gets progressively more complicated as you begin analyzing data. At the very least, you’ll got to learn all the essential information about your audience.

Social media platforms and Google Analytics can help cover that as you’ll be ready to learn tons about your audience, and advanced website analytics will show you the trail that your customers make before the acquisition . this may help understand what content converts better.

You Know Yourself

We’re living during a time of content overload and it’s hard to seek out something valuable and memorable. If you would like to make certain your social media content marketing strategy goes to figure , your brand must be something that the audience can remember and identify.

The basic elements of brand name identity, like having a recognizable logo and brand colors, are important, but you furthermore may need to work on perfecting a brand voice. this is often the foremost important thing for content marketing, on social media or elsewhere.

Is your brand fun and flirty, or more buttoned-up? Are memes the simplest thanks to communicate together with your audience?

If you've got a singular tone and elegance that you simply use consistently, it’s getting to be much easier for you to be recognized.

You Have Clear, Measurable Goals

While creating outstanding content will help bring visitors to your brand, it’s the content strategy that turns those visitors into customers. If you begin creating content without having a group of goals in mind, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Without measurable goals, your content campaign is simply an ingenious effort that has nothing to try to to with business. You’ll guide your content creation efforts with what feels right, not what’s good for growth.

So, if you recognize exactly what sorts of results you would like to ascertain when the campaign is over, your social media content strategy is perhaps getting to be a hit . If not, you’ll need to find out your goals.

Most goals should be centered either around increasing sales or increasing brand awareness. Whatever path you would like to travel down, confirm that you simply don’t formulate your goals simply as “increasing sales”, but rather have clear sales targets stated at the start of a campaign (e.g. Open 10% more leads than previous campaign)

You’ve Know the Competition

No matter how good you're at creating social media content, you can’t start a content marketing campaign without researching what your competitors do .

This is a really important step in preparing a social media content marketing strategy because it allows you to learn from the successes – or mistakes – of others. search your biggest rivals and perform a social media competitive analysis that gives insights on their content marketing strategy.

It may be impossible to guage some aspects of their content marketing strategy, but at the very least you’ll be ready to understand the overall direction they’re taking and see the top-rated posts.

That said, you would like to understand what your competition is doing but not blindly mimic their strategy. Take the simplest bits of it and make it even better once you began to implement it.

You Understand the Platforms

Running content marketing campaigns on the most important platforms like Facebook or Instagram may be a no-brainer. However, to possess a very successful content marketing strategy, you would like to knowingly choose other social media platforms that you simply want to take a position time and resources into.

First off, ask yourself, is your target demographic using that social media platform? Instagram accounts is especially populated with people under 35, and Snapchat is another great fit teen audiences.

LinkedIn’s audience skews older and more professional while Pinterest accounts is basically strong with female audiences. then there’s TikTok, which is one among the fastest-growing social media platforms and has many brands using successful strategies that you simply can learn from.

If you’re ready to make a survey of your clients and determine what social media platforms are hottest with them, that’s the simplest case scenario.

You Understand the Workflow

Creating content for social media marketing may be a creative endeavor. But it’s not as if you’re an ingenious genius who can take four years to make a masterpiece.

Working with content in social media means tight schedules, constant deadlines, and analyzing your mistakes to enhance within the future.

Since making it big on social media means posting amazing content regularly, an excellent social media content strategy includes a planned workflow. There’s no magic formula for a content pipeline workflow, but any plan is best than simply trying to form something decent to suit the deadline.

If you and your team know exactly what they have to try to to and when, you'll be confident that you’ll deliver in your marketing strategy. If you’re just trying to wing it, it's going to be best to urge back to the drafting board and make a procedure.

Jacob Grant, Head of Content at Ivory Research, recommends to start out with creating an article calendar. Hold a gathering once a month where you discuss ideas that you simply can become content and plan out each post that you’re getting to be creating subsequent month.

Then, you’ll need a checklist of all the items you would like to try to to for a well-performing post. this might include fact checking, proofreading, passing the post on to a different employee for editing or content curation, and scheduling the time where a post can perform best

You Know the way to Combine Content With Sales

Posting content on your social media page without having an integration with the sales division causes you to just a blogger, not a business. While creating content is usually an ingenious job, you ought to not forget to include that creativity into your sales process.

If you've got a transparent understanding of how your content marketing efforts on social media improve your sales funnel, it’s another sign that your content marketing strategy is solid.

What if you've got no idea the way to do that? the simplest step is to try to to great content pieces that introduce your new products or services. That’s a no brainer if you own a fashion brand. you only create great photography that shows your products within the best light. If you own a corporation that doesn’t have a physical product, it's going to be harder, but not impossible.

Another good idea is to incorporate CTAs into your content. Linking to your website may be a good tactic also . Facebook allows you to do this on any post, while Instagram only gives you one link within the bio, so you ought to use it wisely.

A tactic which will not cause direct sales but helps to guide people down the sales funnel is creating content specifically for leads who are on the brink of a purchase . Unlike content that's created to urge more traffic, this content explains the way to use your products better. this might be what a lead neads to become a customer.

You Know the Content Distribution Channels

No matter how great your content is, it’s safe to mention that it won’t be noticed if you don’t put efforts into promoting it. Sure, there’s always an opportunity that your piece may go viral, but making something go viral isn’t a simple task. Having your social media account grow slowly but surely may be a more reliable idea.

Do you know exactly how you’re getting to expose your audience to your amazing content? Great, this suggests you've got a vision for your social media content strategy.

If you don’t, start with the fundamentals . the foremost basic way you'll expose people to your content is to buy ads. Run a paid advertising campaign that’s focused on bringing you traffic as against leads. confirm that you simply put your best pieces on paid promotion, this manner you maximise the advantages you’re getting for the worth .

Promoting content together with other content creators is additionally an honest idea. Having your content reposted by an already established social media account can offer you a large boost in followers.

These two strategies are great, but nothing beats word of mouth on social media. Come up with a user-generated content campaign, and your social media page may alright go viral after an honest campaign.

Improvement is a component of the Plan

The most important thing in any strategy is having the ability to vary it once you see it’s not working.

When you start implementing your strategy, it’s important that you simply measure equally of performance and analyze it. Despite how hard you worked on creating a social media content strategy, if it’s not working as intended, you've got to be willing to regulate as required .

This point may be a good bit more complex and important than the remainder on our list. It’s not a checkbox that you simply can check and make certain your strategy is stellar.

Making improvement a neighborhood of your plan takes constant dedication and constant work on your part. It also requires you to admit your mistakes and improve the plan that you simply thought was perfect.

But all that tough work comes with a benefit. Without mastering analytics and improvement, any social media marketing strategy is mediocre at the best .

Brands Helping Out During Coronavirus Crisis

People round the world are taking precautions to combat the present pandemic. Amidst all of that, many brands do what they will to lend a hand .

Running a marketing campaign during a worldwide pandemic are often tricky, but during this crisis there are many samples of brands reaching bent help keep their communities safe or support people that are suddenly out of labor . While it’s the proper thing to try to to , it also makes business sense as people are likely to recollect which companies were there for them.

Here are several samples of companies who are stepping up, giving back, and reworking so as to deliver value to many struggling people round the world.

Hand Sanitizer Production

Remember when grocery stores were wiped empty and hand sanitizer became a hot commodity? Well, an unlikely hero has taken action to fight the recent shortages. Anheuser-Busch announced that the corporate has begun the assembly of sanitizer, and can work with the American Red Cross to deliver it to communities in need.

Additional companies have launched the assembly of hand sanitizer also , including luxury goods maker LVMH and therefore the U.K.-based craft brewer BrewDog. Even Tito’s Vodka announced that it “will now indeed be producing and distributing 24 plenty of actual hand sanitizer to assist combat the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Switching Gears

Many stores and factories worldwide went dark as governments declared nationwide quarantines. However, the lights flickered back on for a couple of companies who are hard at work pivoting from their usual fashion apparel to producing much needed surgical masks.

Luxury designers like Louis Vuitton, Dior, Gucci, and Prada are just a couple of samples of brands jumping in on the action. the businesses have promised to supply many face masks primarily in high risk areas like Italy and France. Even H&M and Zara have begun to require steps to modify their textile manufacturing over to creating health materials.

While many brands are currently waiting on both the materials and approval from the WHO and EU to start production, prepare to ascertain a surplus of surgical masks within the coming weeks.

Tip Your Bartender

Miller lite wasted no time reaching out a hand to struggling bartenders, who are now unemployed in response to the mass closure of bars worldwide. The American beer company tweeted a photograph of an abandoned pub in support of their latest campaign “#VirtualTipJar”, which aims to boost money for bartenders who are put out of labor .

The owner of Miller Lite, Molson Coors, has volunteered a further $1 million as an estimated 241,000 US restaurants and bars have closed their doors as of in the week .

Jameson, Irish whiskey brand, was also searching for bartenders by contributing $500,000 to the us Bartender’s Guild. the corporate launched the #LoveThyBartender campaign aimed to point out further support for afflicted bartenders.

Guinness addressed the pandemic through their latest ad, released on March 20. Irish beer company acknowledged that St. Patrick’s Day wouldn’t be an equivalent this year thanks to the parade and bar closures.

However, the corporate vowed to “march again” and thus pledged $500,000 through its Guinness Gives Back Fund to “help the communities where we live, work and celebrate”. Guinness Ireland also pledged €1.5 million to support Irish bar staff and elderly citizens.

Fast Food Restaurants Adjusting on the Fly

On March 23, McDonald’s announced that it might indefinitely close all of its U.K. and Ireland restaurants, giving patrons until the evening to urge one last Big Mac. the corporate shared the unfortunate news via a twitter post, adding that “We anticipate to seeing you all again as soon because it is safe for us to reopen”. In North America, McDonald’s chains still offer drive-thru and delivery services.

Similarly, Starbucks has decided to exclusively offer drive-thru services in North America for subsequent fortnight . The world’s leading coffee chain received an immense amount of pressure from employees to shutdown thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Starbucks has decided to avoid shutting down all at once and instead, pay all in-store staff for subsequent 30 days no matter if they plan to come to figure .

Elsewhere within the US, the National Restaurant Association has forecasted a $225 billion industry loss and expects 5 to 7 million jobs to fade over subsequent 3 months. The prediction was made because the industry attempts to shift its focus toward delivery, take-out, and drive-thru services.
Delivery is that the thanks to Go

Naturally, people don’t want to offer up eating their food from their favorite restaurants entirely. Instead, expect a high-volume of delivery services from restaurants and nutriment chains who don’t typically offer on-the-go orders.

Companies like Dunkin’ have found an ingenious thanks to incentivize customers to urge their donut fix, but from a secure distance. The chain launched a replacement social distancing rewards program, where customers who order on-the-go receive an additional 100 points on their DD Perks program. Additionally, the company’s Joy in Childhood Foundation pledged $1.25 million to support hunger relief organizations.

Pizza companies, like Domino’s and Jet’s, are one among the few businesses providing new job opportunities amid the coronavirus pandemic. Open positions ranging from delivery driver all the thanks to store manager are being advertised as stores face an awesome amount of delivery orders.

Meanwhile, Amazon has taken measures to guard its factory workers by temporarily halting all non-essential deliveries in both Italy and France. the corporate shared the most recent safety measures, saying that it might specialise in receiving and shipping only “the products customers need most at this point .” Essential items include food and hygiene products.

Home Entertainment

In the wake of the novel virus, many brands have decided to offer back to their struggling communities by temporarily providing free online services. Included therein list is that the streaming company Sling TV, which is offering a growing list of channels and free coverage on all COVID-19 news and on-demand access to kids, lifestyle, and entertainment programming.

Other streaming services are becoming creative, too. Airtime Media Inc. created a Google Chrome extension – Netflix Watch Party – that easily allows people to observe their favorite movies or shows and chat along side their friends who also are watching. Meanwhile, Disney+ helped parents by releasing Frozen II on its streaming service before schedule.

Many telephone providers, including AT&T, Verizon, and Mint Mobile, have waived data overage fees or pledged to not assess late fees for missed payments. Meanwhile, some students are receiving special assistance as Varsity Tutors and LinkedIn Learning have shared free classes while schools are closed.

And for the gym rats who are stuck reception , many gym brands and yoga studios, including Planet Fitness and CorePower Yoga, also are offering online classes to avoid spreading the virus without sacrificing their fitness routine.

Social Media as Your New Therapist

Is self distancing causing you anxiety or distress? Snapchat is one social media platform that has created a feature that gives users with resources for topics associated with psychological state , including anxiety, depression, stress, suicidal thoughts, and grief.

As the novel virus wreaks havoc on the economy, Facebook accounts has also made an attempt in helping out the community by pledging $100 million to small businesses additionally to providing advertising assistance for businesses marketing on the social network.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the platform’s information service capabilities by sharing a livestream interview with former director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci. the 2 aimed to supply more credible information on the virus than what could also be circulating round the internet.

Never Fear, the Grocery Stores Are Here

As grocery stores round the world have struggled to satisfy high demands, Kraft Heinz Co. supported their efforts by donating $12 million in both cash and food. The american company also launched the #WeGotYouAmerica campaign, showing appreciation for all the plant workers ramping up food production.

In the coming weeks, consumers are expected to experience fully stocked shelves as Clay Detlefsen, the senior vice chairman of regulatory and environmental affairs for the National Milk Producers Federation, announced that buyers shouldn't fear food shortages as there's still a healthy supply of food. Rather, Detlefsen blames the empty shelves – mostly a phenomenon within the US – on panic-buying.

How to found out Your Marketing Team for Remote Work

Over the last decade, there has been an outsized increase within the number of companies using remote work asa part-time or full-time option for his or her employees. Many companies today are even created and performance completely online.

However, not every company is ready for remote work. And thanks to worldwide precautions associated with the coronavirus, nearly every industry has to reckon with remote work and telecommuting while attempting to stay business running as smoothly as possible.

It are often a scary time with tons of uncertainty, but in most places there’s still a capability to stay life relatively normal without a health risk. What’s required may be a change in how things get accomplished.

In marketing, this will be an enormous challenge. a part of succeeding is producing an idea for what you’re up against and the way to unravel it.So, here a glance at a number of the challenges marketers are currently facing and a few of the tools they will use (if they aren’t already) to stay their team on an equivalent page and productive

What Are the Challenges for Working Remotely?

Anytime there's an opportunity within the usual routine, any deficiencies or holes within the workflow process will get exposed. this is often very true with a team shifting from working closely together in one place to collaborating remotely.

Managing a Team Remotely

If your team isn’t wont to seeing one another just over chat, a sensible initiative for a manager would be a team call to determine expectations and workflows. What’s our approval process? On what platform are we collaborating?

A lot of this could simply be a review of your current process, but when shifting faraway from face-to-face interaction, it’s important to form sure that everybody understands how they fit into the workflow.

Team Productivity and Motivation

If a team is settling into remote work because the new normal – a minimum of for a short time – it’s also important to stay everyone’s spirits up and to stay them feeling connected. Have team members provides a little tour of where they’re performing from or carve out one group chat that’s only for fun, non-work discussions that folks normally would have had over lunch.

For people that aren’t wont to working remotely, it can feel very isolating which feeling will eventually limit how well they will do their jobs. It’s important for managers, on top of the technological challenges that this pandemic has brought, to bring the maximum amount humanity as possible to the new work environment.

Team Collaboration

All of the conversations got to shift online while roles and expectations need to be clearly defined. this is often one area that needs tons of effort from team managers and leaders, because if it takes an excessive amount of effort to urge everyone on an equivalent page then the workflow completely slows down.

For team members who aren’t wont to working remotely, the primary question is where do they need to figure from? many of us are happy and productive lounging round the house in pajamas all day, except for others which will be an excessive amount of of a distraction to urge anything accomplished.

Do they need an office room at home? Do they need to travel to a restaurant or library? It’s a private choice, but team members can give one another advice and compare notes on the ways they wish to work faraway from the office.

Clear Processes and Documentation

If any work is really getting to get done, there still got to be solid processes in situ . does one know
where to travel to seek out them?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, over 60% of B2B marketers don’t have a documented content strategy. Without an idea in situ , where does your team turn in times of crises?

If you don’t know, then this is often the time to place an idea together and alter things for the higher . Not only will it assist you now, but also within the future as that very same study cites that of the foremost successful marketers, 65% have a documented content strategy.

What Are the proper Tools for Remote Work?

Marketing today can’t be accomplished effectively without technology, so marketers are certainly conversant in some martech tools. The question, and therefore the primary challenge, immediately is, are marketers capable of successfully using these tools during a strictly remote setting?Furthermore, do teams have enough user seats in their tools? Are there clear permissions? Can team members connect securely outside of the office?

These were already important questions, but now they’re imperative. Because if the answers are “No” or “I don’t know”, then it'd not be possible for business to continue at anything resembling a traditional rate.So, what quite tools does one got to be utilizing?

Communication Tools

Starting with the fundamentals , how are teams communicating with each other? this is often where everyone having their own preferred option can cause issues, because an equivalent conversation could be happening in three different places at an equivalent time without other team members knowing about it.

So whatever tool you employ , it’s important to bring everybody on board in order that there’s one destination for conversation. One option, Slack, is great for easily managing multiple threads, both group chats and one-on-one.

There’s also Google Talk – often mentioned as Gchat – as an option that a lot of people are already conversant in , and for content marketing teams who have a publishing tool, whether it’s Socialbakers or an alternative choice , there's the chance to simply discuss a thought or edit within the publisher.

For conference calls or other video needs, many people performing from home – #wfh – have recently discovered Zoom’s “Touch up my appearance” feature, which functions as a built-in Instagram accounts filter. Another video option is Google Hangouts, which mixes video and chat messaging, and it pairs well for teams already using the G-Suite.

Project Management Tools

Once you’ve established where and the way you’re communicating, does one know where you’re tracking and monitoring your work?

While the initial focus is on continuing and finishing what’s currently scheduled, many of us are going to be working remotely for long enough that they have to implement full new plans.

Again, many of those martech tools could be something that marketers have already heard of or used a touch , but now they’re vital. When a team leader can’t beat to someone’s desk to invite an update, they have to return up with a digital version.

Monday, Asana, and Basecamp are options that allow teams to make workflows and monitor projects step-by-step while also integrating with other apps as required . As mentioned before, though, it’s important for managers to form sure they need enough user seats and therefore the correct permissions for the whole team.
Security

It’s much easier to make sure your network is secure when most are working in one office on one wifi network. But when the team has got to opened up and use external wifi networks, especially publicly available ones at cafes or home networks that aren’t setup properly, then network security becomes critical and two-factor authentication may be a must for contemporary technology.

An app like OneLogin or Okta is vital to form sure that you’re not at-risk of a bug that would cause further complications. And, like many of those tools, it’s something that ought to have already been implemented or considered before.

So if it wasn’t, now's the time to repair that in order that the longer term is safer .