6 ways to make social marketing a cinch
By Jade McAuley
PS If the idea of reading this long post is not all that tempting, I will be teaching this and more at our regional digital marketing conference on 29 October about #superchargingyoursocials. As for the post, it’s super practical so I think it’s worth the read but that’s just me.
Throw the term “social media marketing” out into a group of business owners and you will see most faces turn to you with equal parts dread and bewilderment. To a lot of people, social marketing does not seem like a fun idea. Even though it’s a free channel (if you manage it in-house), and the fact that half of Australia log in to FB every day (and that’s just one platform, so the possibilities are MASSIVE) – people’s eyes just don’t light up.
Why? Because social media can be a real drag. It’s a basically a two year old – constantly demanding your attention and being perpetually hungry. Not to mention crapping all over itself, creating drama wherever it goes.
Don’t let this stop you from taking advantage of the positives though. You can do it, and possibly even enjoy it – I kid you not.
I’ve done so many training sessions with either business owners or in-house marketing/admin peeps who have forced themselves to come learn about social media marketing, and ended up leaving our session buzzing with ideas and excitement. For reals. It’s an amazing transformation to watch, and not one I ever get tired of.
In those sessions, I often go through technical aspects of how to do socials but I can’t be bothered writing about that because by tomorrow, something I’ve written will no longer be right.
What I do want to write about is the overarching theory – the stuff that generally gets most people excited (only nerds like me like the tech stuff), and will work on every platform because it’s all about strategy. Mmmm strategy, so useful.
Kk here goes >>
1. Devise a never-ending list of super interesting and highly relevant content ideas
Why? When you take a bit of time (using one or more of the methods below) to generate a stack of ideas in one go, I can almost guarantee you that when you sit down to create some content (eg write out a month’s worth of Facey posts – it’s possible, we’ll get to that in a tick) – you won’t even use half of those ideas. What they will do is inspire you or remind you of a recent topic of interest, and it will put a stop to that crappy feeling of “What the hell am I going to write about?”.
How?
Team brainstorm > Sit down with your crew (even if that’s only you at this point) and write down all of the services you offer – and then for each one, note the most commonly asked questions you get from clients and prospects. What are the challenges and queries that people most often have around your services? Set it up as a big list and boom – a list of content ideas and topics, ready to go.
Questions folder > When a client emails you with a question, cc yourself into the reply so that you can save the email in a folder named something like “Client FAQS”. Instead of having to remember what people ask you all the time, you can go in there and have a complete list.
Keyword tool > If you’re into Google Analytics and Google Ads, then you may already be into the Google Keywords Planner Tool but if you’re not – there is a really cool website that even the most un-techy people can get into. Answer the Public is a free tool that uses keywords, but makes it really visual – so it’s easy for anyone to use. Simply type in your service or topic, and it will generate a massive list of questions that people are typing into Google every day around your topic. You can also do free export of the list as a spready, so you can download it and keep it on file as your massive ideas list. #winning
2. Plot out content themes unique to your business, and your audience
Why? If you were to look at putting together a month’s worth of content in one afternoon, you might have a slight freak out. Or want to slap me for even suggesting it. Don’t do that. Please. What you can do though is get strategic about what you’re posting by planning out theme days. This has so many benefits, but the two main ones are that you will be giving your audience the variety they crave, while making your life sooooo much easier.
How?
Key messages > Work out what the main key messages are that you want to let your audience know about you. It could be that you’re an expert at what you do, you’re a local business who supports the community, you’ve got a great team etc etc.
Cull to the top five > Out of all of those key messages, pick the top five that really matter the most to you. If there were only five things you could tell someone about your business, what would they be? These five are now your theme days – and seriously, your audience will probably never pick up on the fact that every Monday you share a local good news story or event (to demonstrate your community support). What it will do is make a big difference for you – because if you were planning a month of content, instead of thinking of 20 random posts, you now just need four ideas for each of your five topics. Breaking things down makes it so much easier, don’t you think? Whoops – this one has gone on a bit long, soz.
Test your ideas > Once you pat yourself on the back for making life simpler by working out strategy theme days, the fun does not stop there. Next stop is to analyse how your audience responds to your ideas. Two months is normally a pretty good indicator – after you’ve been running a topic for that long, check your analytics and it should be pretty clear if your audience is peaking or dipping on particular days over and over again. If you are getting a dip every Tuesday (for example), then switch out Tuesday’s theme for the next key message on your list and see how that one goes. It’s not enough to think of an initial strategy, we also need to test and measure how we are performing if we truly want to create a banging social presence. That was the royal we, I actually meant you.
Please note > I say five because for a lot of our clients, we mainly deal with B2B and we’d ideally love them to be posting once every workday. For our hospitality and retail peeps, weekends can be your biggest times so if you can do seven days – awesome! If not, start with what you can do and build up.
Actually that goes for everyone – posting each day you’re open would be crazy good but if you start at twice a week, get into the habit of that and then just add a day whenever you feel comfortable until you work up to the full amount. You won’t break anything or screw anything up by letting yourself develop these skills, rather than going flat out and then burning out on social altogether.
3. Create images and graphics that are on brand, without being all pushy and stuff
Why? When people scroll through their newsfeeds, we don’t want your stuff to be just another face in the crowd. By adding branding to your posts, subtly though (because you’re cool like that), you can also be generating brand awareness and making your content instantly recognisable as yours. Also – if you start creating content that really hits the mark, peeps are going to start sharing it. Even more brand awareness and even more need for your content to be easily recognised as belonging to your business.
How?
Whether you DIY it or get a professional, Canva is a great tool to set up branded templates for your posts. It’s a free platform (there’s paid stuff but chances are, you’ll never need it) has all the social media sizes preset in there – so if you want a nicely branded Facebook timeline cover, Insta post, whatever – you can set up a few variations in there, and then use those to keep your graphics consistent and brand-aligned. Mwah – magnificent darling!
4. Build a content bank full of ready to go posts, without taking up all your time
Why? Unless you set aside time to create content, it’s not going to happen. This doesn’t have to be a big chore but it’s not like a TV ad where you have to pay for the ad to be made and then have to pay for the placement. Creating your own content and publishing it on social media is free – the investment here is some of your time. If you are going to make that worthwhile time investment and write a bunch of blog posts, or shoot a few videos or even just do one a week – don’t let that be the end of it. Repurpose the crap out of that content, and milk it for all it’s worth.
How?
As an example, say you set up a time to shoot a video with your team once a week – that 20min of shooting is not actually a lot of time. The big time suck is you not procrastinating and just getting in and doing. Editing takes a bit of time but you can outsource that if it gets too much.
Once you have your video though, don’t let it end there. Use a free transcription tool like Trint to transcribe your video – a little bit of formatting, and you have a blog. Now read that blog and pull out any good one liners, “quotes” that make sense as a standalone and use your branded templates to create a graphic for each. Now, did the video go into a step by step process? Awesome, copy that text across from your blog post and reformat it again into a checklist – PDF that and now you have a downloadable checklist on how to do XYZ. You may even want to set that up as a lead magnet for your website – a free piece of content that people can download in exchange for their name and email address.
And don’t stop there. What else can you repurpose that one video into? Where else can you use it? The only limits here are your imagination. Well, that got a bit corny – didn’t it?
5. Plan out your month of content without missing a thing
Why? You’re not posting on social media for the fun of it (even though it truly can be fun). You’re doing it because you want to reach and connect with your audience, build a relationship and turn those people who know/like/trust you into paying customers. That’s why we need to work out our content ahead of time as much as possible – to make sure we are strategically planning out how we are going to increase our reach, build trust and bring customers through the door.
How?
Content mix > If you’ve got your theme days worked out, this is where you can plug them in and then, with your amazing new content bank skills, slot in where all of that original, valuable content is going to go.
Leverage trends > When everyone in a certain spot is talking about one thing on social, the platform’s algorithm will generally show us a heap of that content because they can tell it’s a trending topic. For example, Christmas – you open up your newsfeed and it’s just a sea of Merry Christmas messages. Going through how to do this really well and the effect it can have on your reach is a whole other blog post, but for now – just add in those local/state/national/global events that are most relevant to your business when you plan out your month, and take advantage of those trending topics where suitable. This is where hashtags can be especially useful!!
Include CTAs > In marketing-speak, a CTA is a Call to Action – it’s the line on a piece of content that tells the audience what you would like them to do next. Call you to take up this free offer. Click here to read the full post. Etc and so on. I don’t advocate for putting a CTA on every post – I think it’s best to pick and choose where they will be most effective, when looking at that overall months’ worth of content. Which ones give people a really good reason to interact with your business (whether emailing you, visiting your website, downloading something etc)? Include your CTAs there and then use your social and website analytics, and call enquiries (if that’s relevant to your business) to determine how effective your placement is, so you can tweak as needed.
6. Schedule a month’s worth of kick arse content at a moment
Why? Who wants daily posts on their social pages, but doesn’t want to be actually physically posting every day? Or worse, who doesn’t want their paid staff sitting on social media every day? It’s ok, batching your social marketing to be super consistent without eating up time will make the pain go away.
How?
Schedule to do the first five things listed above in batches.
Schedule a month of content in one hit – based on topics that are relevant to your business and audience, with themes to make it easier on you and to hit your top key messages, using graphics that are on brand and eye catching, from a variety of original content you made yourself, strategically plotted out for the month.
Easy, hey? I could go more in-depth on this stuff, but I sort of feel that most people know what scheduling and batching are, they might just not have thought of using this productivity method for social marketing – because it all seems so “in the moment”. It’s not, the best pages are 99% scheduled out and then if something in the moment does happen that you want to post about, that’s just the icing on your “consistent social presence" cake. Sounds pretty damn tasty!