The majority of brands understand how important it is to cultivate a strong social media presence. However, fewer businesses are aware that less is more when it comes to promotion. It’s an easy mistake to make, and a hard line to toe. If you don’t post frequently enough you risk fading into obscurity, too often and too blatantly promotional and you risk becoming a nuisance. So, what’s the right social media content mix for your business? Read on for some useful tips…
1. Identify and cater to your target audience
There’s no use spending time and resources marketing to the wrong people or an audience that doesn’t exist. Use your business’ data to create a buyer persona for your typical customer(s) to define their common characteristics.
If a lack of audience data is an issue, ask your email subscribers or social media followers to complete a short questionnaire to help you learn more about them. You might even want to run a few focus groups with customers to gather information. Social listening tools like Hootsuite, Brandwatch and Agorapulse are another way to monitor mentions of your brand, which can also help you understand your audience better.
Pinning your target audience down will make it much easier to effectively market your product or service. It will also inform your social media content mix, as different types of posts will appeal to different groups. Supplementing this approach with market research, like surveys, will allow you to collect even more in-depth insights directly from your customers.
2. Establish your content mix
Posting content that’s in keeping with your sector and the general style and tone of your company is always a wise choice. There are even tools that can help you analyse your business and advise on what your social media content mix should be!
The 80/20 rule is your best friend when it comes to social media content. It refers to the idea that 80% of posts should provide entertainment, education, or help readers solve problems, whilst only 20% should be promotional. It’s therefore important to remember that a deluge of promo posts is only likely to turn off customers. It might even lose you some followers!
Social media users spend time on their chosen platform for fun, building connections, and gaining information or inspiration. If you provide them with the kind of content they log on for, the odds are they’ll follow your brand. If you’re able to hold their attention in the long term, you’ll be well placed to build a relationship and a sense of brand loyalty.
It also pays to have a selection of post types to guard against audience fatigue. The simplest way to do this is to categorize your posts and cycle through them for variety. This way, you won’t disappoint your followers with boring, repetitious content.
Consider posting these content types when establishing a presence online:
- Behind-the-scenes posts
- Your blogs
- Content with emotional appeal
- Questions for your community
3. Plan ahead
Creating a content plan is a great way to organise your social media marketing. Having a ‘formal’ schedule ensures your customers receive regular, varied updates. It allows you to keep track of when and where your posts will be going live, and what kind of posts these will be.
Having a structured plan allows you to post consistently. It also enables you to create content ahead of time (e.g. if you’re repurposing an item or posting about an annual event like Christmas).
We hope this blog has given you some pointers on establishing the right social media content mix for your business. There’s likely to be an element of trial and error before you crack this, so don’t worry if you don’t get things right first time!
If you need more advice on your social media or any other area of your digital marketing, our friendly team is on hand to help so don’t hesitate to drop us a line.