Find managing your social media overwhelming and confusing? Not sure what you should be doing to see success? Then you’ve come to the right place as we have a brand new framework to help you find clarity.
We love a framework at Digital Mums. A framework provides structure and a structure helps you create a plan. Frameworks are particularly handy for complex areas of work where there are a lot of ins and a lot of outs. Like social media marketing.
We already have some tried and tested frameworks to help businesses and marketers with social media marketing, including our social media strategy process and our social media consultancy toolkit. This time we wanted something that would help people to develop clear plans for each social media platform.
Just to be clear the framework comes into the picture once the social media marketing strategy is complete. It steers the individual platform strategy that comes after the customer personas, brand strategy, influencer plan and content strategy have been developed and goals and the means of tracking goals are clear. So first comes the overall strategy across all platforms and then comes this framework to help that translate into action on the accounts.
So what is our new framework?
The 9Cs of social media success
Our new framework outlines 9 key areas to see success with your social media marketing.
1. Customers
Your customers influence your brand strategy, content strategy, tone of voice, hashtags, captions and more. Having customer personas for each of your main target segments is important.
For example, Digital Mums has Business Breda who owns a small business, Career break Carol who is looking to get back into work after a break and Marketing Mihica who has a traditional marketing background but wants to build digital marketing skills. We make sure our strategy works to target these.
2. Content
Social media is hungry for content and it's important to create content that reaches new audiences and converts them into customers. This means content that sits at the top of your marketing funnel as well as content that converts customers further down the funnel when they know more about your brand and are considering buying from you.
For example, we share fun content and tips on Reels to reach new audiences as well as more product-focused content on Stories to convert followers.
3. Creativity
Being creative is crucial to stand out from all the other brands on social, whether that’s coming up with ideas for campaigns or content, particularly since the growth of creative formats in Stories, Reels/TikTok.
For example, we have run clever social media campaigns such as our #CleanUpTheFWord and #RealMumMoments campaigns and we also come up with creative ideas for our Reels to stand out and be noticed.
4. Consistency
Consistency is crucial with social media. This applies for all elements - a consistent style, content strategy, posting and engagement schedule for example. Algorithms reward consistency.
For example, at Digital Mums our content and style is consistent and we post and engage when our audiences are online daily. We also try and maintain a consistent schedule.
5. Conversation
While content is important you can’t share content without conversation and expect to see success. Social media is all about being social after all. Brands should have proactive and reactive conversations.
For example, at Digital Mums we respond to all comments and we try and spend time engaging with accounts proactively every day when our posts go out - we say try as we are a small business and it’s not always easy to find the time!
6. Community
The most successful brands have moved beyond transactional interactions to building meaningful relationships. They do this through activities such as adding value and engaging around community hashtags.
For example, at Digital Mums we focus on reaching communities through hashtags such as #femalefoundersunite and we add value through content like this!
7. Collaborations
Reaching new audiences can be helped along through collaborations with influencers (even smaller influencers) and partner brands that aren’t direct competitors.
For example, Digital Mums love the Amazing If ladies and we do things like joint live video which reaches both our audiences and we’ve also partnered with influencers like MotherPukka and Big Fat Greek Mother.
8. Calls to action
Let potential customers know exactly what you would like them to do by including clear calls to action in your account bio, content and copy. Encourage people to save, like, comment, share but avoid asking for this too explicitly.
For example, Digital Mums says “let us know what you think about x” rather than “comment below” to avoid engagement-bait.
9. Cash
Organic reach is a major struggle on most of the big platforms and brands should look to supplement their organic activity with some budget for paid advertising. This is particularly true of Facebook and increasingly of Instagram.
For example, at Digital Mums we have a monthly budget to guarantee getting more sales-focused messaging to customers.
We used Instagram examples here for consistency but this framework applies to all platforms. All of these elements are key to success overall but some are more important than others on certain platforms and how you implement them is also different on different platforms.
