Here’s why your business needs a robust social media strategy
You can now tell a story as it unfolds in the fewest words possible or just use images and videos to convey your emotions exactly as they are. Social media has evolved the very fundamentals of social dynamics and expression, and the way we consume information.
There is an impulse to share what we feel, the very moment we are feeling and to share it in a way that makes others feel the same. The influence this has on mass perception of communication is unfathomable.
It has also pushed the envelope when considering how we process our expectations socially. We now consciously and unconsciously demand immediate responses from our peers and loved ones, and quite irrationally assume something’s not right when we do not receive feedback right away or in a short time.
We also tend to define and put on a scale how close we are to someone based on how frequently we interact with them. FOMO (fear of missing out) has induced a looped swing of separation anxiety and isolation. This has led to people putting others down the importance ladder if they are not connected as often.
While, on a personal level, this metamorphosis of social dynamics tends to be resolved by a great day out together or a long chat, the apparent lack of emotional connection is brutal to the health of businesses that do not have a strategy to frequently engage with their audiences.
Just like social media algorithms curate your news feed with posts from friends and acquaintances who share similar interests and/or are consistent in their content creation, they also filter out businesses pages that do not post regularly or lack engaging and relevant copy.
So, your business not only has to face the problem of arresting your audience’s attention actively, but to also stay anchored in the relevancy regions of the algorithm and not sink to anonymity.
That’s a whole lot of pressure to process and proactively push aside and produce content. Fortunately, and unfortunately, you’re not the only one to walk the plank. The graveyard of dead social media pages has thousands of small and large businesses lingering at the edge of oblivion.
But social media necromancy is entirely possible and requires a few simple steps.
Meditation
Before you go about trying to revive a dead page or usher a new one into relevance, it is imperative that you meditate on an existential level.
Who or what is your business? What does it mean to those who have made use of it? How can your business truly serve and attract customers or audiences? What does it have as a unique quotient that can act as a definitive selling point? Who will be missing out on reaping the full benefits from your product or service or experience if you are not properly accessible? Where does your business stand right now and where do you realistically want it to be?
These are but a few questions you can ponder over and write down the answers to. The more elaborate your answer, the closer you will get to finding that holy grail. Exploring the why behind every why will lead you to the why notthat defines the confident approach of successful businesses.
Ingredients – a skeleton, a soul, a fistful of spark and a scroll
The first thing you need in your strategy now that you have finished brainstorming is a skeleton for your social media. Without a structure that clearly segregates every action and decision and assembles it all in a symbiotic ecosystem where every part complements the other, your efforts are going to experience a swift burnout and a spectacular crash that might inflict long lasting damage.
Secondly, establishing a voice, and finding the soul of your business will help you humanize a faceless entity and enable you to engage with your audience emotionally. People don’t follow social media pages just for the product or service anymore. They love social media accounts that are witty and present a human voice. Wendy’s and Netflix are just a couple of examples.
Speaking of Netflix, their peppy and forward-looking attitude makes for a loud approach that sets them apart from their competitors on social media. Nobody connects with dry and mechanical elitism. But the spark and the oomph are instantly relatable.
When social media accounts embody of the people, by the people, for the people, they create the illusion that these accounts are not some serious businesses standing preaching to the crowd but rather friends of the audiences who just happen to be rich and popular.
While it is easy to get carried away and forget the distinction between a business account and a personal account, charting up a social media policy and handbook internally will save you from embarrassments and more prominent repercussions of making mistakes.
Because, unlike dealing with friends, audiences on social media are seldom forgiving and take errors very seriously, sometimes even leading to permanent damage to your business image. Reputation management needs to be pre-emptive and proactive.
Putting down rules about who has access to business social media accounts, proofreading and gauging the appropriateness of content, and clearly writing down everything that is absolutely inappropriate and inadvisable will help you avoid controversies and save you time, money and sanity mitigating a crisis.
Incantations
If you want to keep your audiences under your spell, you need to create content that makes it hard for them to do anything other than think of you. Your words and your visuals need to have a hypnotic effect on your audiences that evokes a little more than infatuation with your business and makes them think of following you forever.
On paper, or rather screen, it sounds ridiculous and immature, and a childish analogy. But, tapping into the addictive nature of social media is precisely the strategy of social media sites.
No matter how tiring or distracting or disabling it gets, people cannot have enough of being on a social media channel. They want more of it, that rush, that high, the feeling of experiencing something new or familiar that speaks to their need of distraction. In a sea full of casually thrown heart reacts, constantly upping your wow factor is quintessential.
Ultimately, a well-thought out social media strategy optimizes your search engine rankings, improves your conversion rate, succeeds in retaining your audience and brand loyalty, and makes sales a smooth sailing endeavour in the future.
A social media strategy helps your business navigate the vast and daunting prospects of the internet and find new followers to say “Aye, aye!” to everything you say.
At Jester, we understand the dynamics of social media, and know how to speak to specific audiences and engage their attention creatively. If you need help figuring out your social media strategy, you have landed at the right harbour. We are here to hear you and get you on board!