It’s amazing how quickly the world of social media moves – statistics are forever changing. Rising in the case of Facebook, falling in the case of Twitter at the moment, but who knows? That could all change in a heartbeat!
What will be today, will not be the case tomorrow and it’s important for PR’s and marketeers who use social as a fundamental part of client strategies to keep themselves well educated and ahead of the game.
Account Executive Rebecca Morris of Leapfrog PR attended the CIPR Social Media ‘Content that Converts’ seminar at Hotel Du Vin on Thursday 18 November, and was enlightened by social media guru Jonathan Pollinger and creative lead of Rubber Republic, Tiffany Maddox in the ways of creating impactful content.
Here are some of the top line points she picked up from the seminar, looking at the kind of social content that gets results:
The three most important things to remember for social media are – AUDIENCE, LOCATION & TIMING
Audience
Establish who your ideal customer/demographic is by considering your FB insights & twitter analytics regularly. Analysing this data will allow you to find your audience’s favoured content type, e.g. video, images.
FB is brilliant as it lets you hyper target – you can get down to specifics as exact as region, place of work and even relationship status.
Location – both geographical and social location (platform)
Now, everyone is on FB – there are 1.78bn global users and 37m businesses view FB on average 14 times a day. This shift in FB to B2B and the fact that ads are really effective because they are so targeted, means that FB should be the first point of call for clients.
Social media platform ranking
Advice was to Rule out Google + completely!
Timing
Research shows that content MUST be optimised and suitable for mobile – short posts with little text and an image works well – including an image is always an ABSOLUTE MUST.
Newsjacking – the process of leveraging trending news to elevate your brand’s message is a great idea. Look at trending world news and hash tags, thinking of something your business can relate to. If done well, it can go viral – if done badly it can ruin your company reputation.
Good examples –
Celebrates a positive occasion – the same sex marriage bill being passed
Bad examples –
Tasteless, irrelevant, terribly insensitive – damaging to Urban Outfitter’s reputation.
Build content calendars – however long your retainer is – 6 months, 1 year – build content plans!
Look for seasonal content, shows, national/international/global days – any big company/industry occasions – ensure you have it in the calendar so you can appropriately engage and plan content around this.
Posts that work well promoting your company – Sometimes you don’t even need text – a good image/gif can convey more than text and often speaks for itself and if you are going to include text – short, impactful statements are often the best for catching attention.
Tiffany Maddox, Rubber republic shares her views on the 7 deadly sins of social media, specifically looking at how to best engage with a client and use video content:
Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Lust
Wrath