Social Media - What's The Plan?

We're always advising clients to get online, get selling, make a plan, #getreadygo, etc, and their reply is usually "but how"?  So we thought it was time to spill some  beans about social media and how to make the most of your posts.

One vitally important thing to remember about social media is the word 'social'.  Social implies interaction and engagement.  It’s all fair and well to advertise your products on Facebook and boost your posts to put your latest handbag range in front of your target audience every day at 3pm, but that isn’t very engaging and if your fan base only sees adverts, they will get irritated and disinterested very quickly and they’ll never convert.  That's not a great start.

So what do we do?  We plan to post!  There are a lot of different types of posts you can add which can work with your marketing strategy.  Here they are, in no particular order.

Product Posts
        Yup.  You need product posts.  They're vitally important to keep your audience up to date with your product offering, so don’t stop doing them altogether, but rather keep it to around 20% of your overall posts.
 

Engagement Posts
        These aren’t adverts, they’re more about building awareness and curiosity about your brand.  Explain your brand, explain the features of a product and why it’s amazing.  On the flip side of that, respond to your target audiences’ posts and ‘engage’ with their posts.  This is a sure fire way to win fans on social media.

News / Trending Posts
        This speaks for itself.  If there’s a certain topic you can use to link to your brand and/or product offering, post about it, but keep it general and not too pushy/opinionated.

Promotion of Blog Posts
        Promote your latest blog!  You want your followers to learn from you right?  Be the master of your industry by writing blogs about general information about your brand, history of the products you make, etc.  Be super proud of the heritage of your product or the reason for you cause/etc. to win people’s interested and then keep them hooked.

Competitions
        This one is obvious.  Everyone loves free stuff, BUT, make sure the prize is relevant to your target audience.  This way, once the prize has been eaten or drunk or finished, the customer is more likely to purchase again.

Photograph Posts
        Visual posts build much more engagement and interaction than simple text posts, everyone knows that.  Humans are visual creatures.  Caution though, if you’re going to put a standard stock image post out there, make it relevant.  The whole point of a social media strategy is to remain relevant to your target audience.  
        Make it pretty, make it stand out, make it relevant.  Even better, make it personal! ...

Personal Photograph Posts
           These posts are super important.  Remember what I said in the beginning, about engagement, these are the posts for that.  People love seeing what other people are doing.  Humans are naturally voyeuristic.  Before you think ‘that’s weird, Jenn’, let's first think about how it could work.  If you can show your customers the inside of your new shop, or your staff chatting to customers on the phone or a selfie of you wearing your latest leather apron creation, for instance, your target audience will be engaged because you’re showing them that you are human and proud of your business!

Infographics
        These take a little more time to make and are time sensitive, but the research shows that infographic posts are shared the most.  If you have a team who can help you build an infographic, or if you're an amazingly talented person and can create one yourself, then do it.

Videos
        Video posts have become extremely popular in the last 2-3 years.  Plan your video content along the same lines as what we’re speaking about here.  Keep them varied, some product videos, some office videos, some news, etc.
   

Polls
        Everyone has an opinion so use that to your advantage.  Create a poll!  You want to launch a new product but aren’t sure about the name, or the styles you should offer.  Ask your audience!  Just make sure to limit them to your favourite options, otherwise it will get messy quickly!

Questions
        Similar to polls, ask your audience questions.  Even better, ask them questions on their own posts so they can see you're following them, like a genuine friend would!  #engagement101

Stories
        Instagram is best for stories.  It needs quite a bit of planning, for example you’re launching a new bubble bath product to compliment your soap ranges and you can tell a story about it over 5 days.  Video posts often work best for stories, but as long as they’re very visually enticing, it will work.  Build hype for your audience, get them excited about getting their hands on your new bubble bath product!

Livestreams
        Show your audience around the factory where the team is making or packing the bubble bath for orders going out to show how popular the product is.  Show us around the sewing room where your seamstress(es) is busy creating a cute new dress for your spring range.  This is a great way of showing the human side of your business.  

At the end of the day, you HAVE TO plan your posts.  This might seem obvious, but a lot of businesses don’t plan or half plan and end up with nonsense content that irritates people.  How many posts per week is a good start?  You can do as little as 2 posts per week, as long as the posts are meaningful and form part of your overall marketing strategy. 
        
To quote a famous Jedi Master, "Do, or do not.  There is no try."

Don’t ever think ‘oh well, it’s too late in the day to do this post, I’ll wait until tomorrow’.  Do the post!  Post on the fly (over and above your planned posts, of course), it will help make your business look more human.