So far in our #SocialDoneRight series we’ve walked you through all the basics of how to get the most out of your time on social media. Now we’re in Week 8 it’s time to make your life easier again and share with you how to optimise your social media channels to get even better results.
First up though, we want you to go right back to the beginning and think again about your brand and its key themes. We appreciate you probably live and breathe your brand values, but we want to make sure that passion translates into success on social media.
Make a pie chart of your brand
The simplest way to do this is by making a pie chart (hello GCSE Maths!) of all the areas that make up your brand and relate to your social media activity or specific campaign. The more important they are for your brand then the larger their segment will be on the pie chart. This is what a pie chart at Digital Mums might look like:
So you can see we’re not just about social media training. Number one for us is supporting mums. Then there are other areas of importance like flexible working, digital trends and more.
So why exactly is making a pie chart so important?
It helps you to create a consistent brand online
You’ve already nailed the tone of voice for your business, but there’s so much more to creating a consistent online brand. The subject matter is just as important as how you say it. So how do you know what to talk about? If you're a local restaurant for example you might talk about food, recipes, community interest - all the things that your audience would respond to. What would happen if you suddenly threw in some tweets about government policy? Firstly, you’d be way off brand. But you might also confuse your audience as to what you were all about.
It helps you to find brilliant influencers
As you will discover with the pie chart you make for your business, it will cover different themes. And each one of these will have different influencers. To be successful you'll need to find relevant influencers for each of these different segments. Brainstorm different keywords in each segment and use them to find influencers in that space.
It supports you to find great content
Each area your brand covers will influence your content strategy (more on that next week!). A restaurant can't just push menus, menus, menus - people will switch off. By sharing useful tips on recipes and healthy eating they’ll reach more people and build brand awareness. By sharing news of their community they’ll be adding value to the locals who might become customers. Constantly refer to your pie chart when finding useful content online and also when creating your own content.
It will help you to find relevant hashtags
Each segment could have their own active hashtags so make sure you seek out hashtags that are relevant for all parts of your pie chart.
Segmenting your audience
Another key strand for optimising your platforms is thinking about segmenting your audiences. As with all marketing, the more you can target people and what they are specifically interested in, the better. Also you might actually have drawn up quite different user personas for your various customers so you'll need to be able speak to them all.
There is no magic bullet that allows you to do the same thing on each social media platform unfortunately. Facebook is fairly useless when you don't have a huge audience in the first place, as they want you to use Facebook advertising to take advantage of the amazing audience targeting on there. Where you will have success though is over on Twitter.
Twitter Lists
We love these at Digital Mums as they allow you to create different lists for different audiences and subjects. They're simple to set up and Twitter will walk you through the process. Here's why we're such fans:
They allow you to curate great content
Chances are your home feed will be a mish mash of content. So for example at Digital Mums, due to who we follow, ours contains everything from social media advice to flexible working and supporting mums content.
But you can use separate lists for different subject areas. Say we feel we want to tweet 2-3 times a day about flexible working, We just go to that list and share content from there. We can do the same with social media advice or supporting mums. With brilliant Twitter lists full of great content you’re already well on the way to sharing interesting and relevant content with your audience, and adding serious value.
They help you target specific customers
You can create different lists for particular customers you’d like to target. So for example imagine you’re an online shop selling homewares and toys. You could put your followers into lists depending on whether they were homewares customers or toy customers. If you wanted to push a new toy you could visit the toy customers list and @mention and engage with those customers.
Great for building relationships
Following on from the influencers you identified, you can also create lists of key influencers you want to build relationships with. You need to build up to following an influencer - don't just do it straight away. Check the list daily, see what your target influencers are sharing and slowly start building a relationship with them. Remember, a follow is the ultimate pat on the back!
LinkedIn - filtering
LinkedIn also has great filtering options for your company page. You can filter by company size, industry, function, seniority and geography. LinkedIn also tells you how many of your followers match your filtering options so you can see exactly how many people fall into each category.
Groups
Finally think about using groups as a clever way of filtering what you want to say to specific audiences. LinkedIn for example, is particularly useful for this and you can check out their group directory. But remember your manners in any group - don’t just go in there and start selling. Instead listen first, which means you can also see what your customers are interested in. Then add value with plenty of helpful comments before finally adding your own articles and products.
Tune in again next week for the penultimate in our #SocialDoneRight series and everything you need to know about creating killer content, Digital Mums style.
