by Katy Howell
As consumers demand more from brands, ethics and morals around diversity and sustainability matter more than ever. It’s time to raise the bar on social if you want to stay in the game.
You’ll learn:
• Great social marketing starts with setting goals
• The importance of social data insights
• Tech knowledge, experimentation and innovation is key
Social might be free at point of entry, but it’s by no means simple. In fact, over the last few years it’s become a complex intertwining of sophisticated advertising, community management and data analysis. Oh and it’s no longer free either. Not if you want to deliver results.
It’s time to raise the bar on social if you still want to be in the game. Because, whilst brands are looking for the smarts that can deliver business value, audiences are upping the ante on creativity and leading the charge with attention-grabbing content.
It just isn’t enough to be posting content regularly. No matter how compelling the story might be, you’ll need to work a lot harder.
Let’s start at the end
Like most good comms, great social marketing starts with knowing where you’re heading. Setting the goals. In the same way AVEs as a metric are being driven out of the PR profession, the idea that followers, likes and engagement add any true business value is also becoming poor practice in social. In reality, these vanity metrics mean little in boardrooms where the fight is on to improve ROI.
Begin with business goals. Are you trying to increase marketing qualified leads (MQLs), increase basket size, improve brand trust or drive customer acquisition? Work back from this bottom of the funnel to understand the journey your audiences will take to the top of the funnel. Plot out metrics to include web visits, conversion rates, search uplift; through to social metrics such as clicks to site, downloads, impressions and reach.
Engagement metrics have a place when evaluating content. Video views, reactions and shares will tell you if your content resonates, but will not tell you if it drives business value. Ultimately your purpose is to make a positive impact on the business. Chase the wrong goals and you’ll waste time and budget.
Do the maths
Social is a fascinating numbers game. So dig out your calculators and dive into social data. You just cannot run a profile without understanding audiences on social. You need more than demographics; you’ll need to understand behaviours, attitudes, interests and trending topics. And that comes from the wonderful world of unstructured, natural language, social data insights.
Using listening tools (we use Brandwatch, but there are more on the market) you are able to hone in on conversations. Only then comes the creative thinking. The aim is to analyse the insights based on hypothesis.
Like a detective, you have to hunt for the answers by sifting through clues and cues. For instance, in a search for how people talk about food, you might investigate if they mention lunch more than dinner (and then find out it’s all about the breakfast!), you can uncover what food groups get talked about most and whether the ketchup / mayo battle is still ongoing. You start with the idea and then search to see if the data supports it.
Analysing the data is a combination of creativity and maths (statistical analysis, probabilities and a dose of percentages). The results offer a window into:
• Trend predictions and topics that inform campaigns and narratives
• New audience targets you might not have considered and a better view of where they are taking place
• Moments that make up the insanely fast speed at which conversations ignite on social
Knowing what the audience wants and where you can join in the conversation is half the battle in making the social connection.
I say join the conversation, but I don’t mean it
In truth, no one particularly wants to have a conversation with a brand. Maybe a few companies enjoy customer repartee, but for most, audiences only engage when they are complaining. So why bother with social?
Well most audiences are on social as a distraction. Your brand can be just that - and get their attention too. After all, it is their attention and action that you want most. That way you can communicate your message.
The key is to be entertaining, informative, fun, insightful, surprising and just plain interesting. It’s why so many articles bang on about storytelling. It’s in the sweet spot of PR and the hooks and angles you craft are the points of narration in what should be sequential stories in social. Better still, give your brand personality on social and it immediately becomes more interesting for your audience.
Of course stories are not enough on social. In an activist climate and cancel culture, your brand needs to know what it stands for – its purpose. And that purpose needs to be genuine and honest (you cannot paper over cracks in social). As consumers demand more from brands, ethics and morals around diversity and sustainability matter more than ever.
Thumb-stopping content
The right story is also not enough. Creativity is what will bring you stand out in a feed. Over half the world is now on social (51%). You’re competing with a staggering 3.96 billion people with many having an average of nine social profiles from TikTok to Facebook. Copy and visuals need to mean something to your audience. To resonate with what interests them, so they stop and look.
If pushing hard on storytelling and creative isn’t enough then you need to think about how it will be delivered. Social has a plethora of formats and functions. They’re different for every channel. You need to understand each one and its value to your customers. Is a Facebook instant experience better than a carousel? Does a still image work with your messaging, or will a gif explain it better?
Oh and then we get to the biggest challenge for those on social. It’s ever-changing nature. From algorithms to formats you need to stay on top of what’s new. You need tech knowledge and experimentation at your side.
From Snapchat’s AR to Facebook shops and the future of spectacles and VR, social is moving at speed. And I haven’t even mentioned dark social or bots! The aim of the big platforms is to be everything in one place, on your mobile, in your hand, an extension of a user’s life. You need to know exactly what you can do, what’s the latest evolution, what’s being turned off and what’s being ramped up, and why it will impact your brand. You need to know it all if you are ever going to see business benefits.
Oh! And we’re back to the numbers
Organic, the content you post for free in feeds, is of limited value. Yes, organic content shows people that you are still alive and humming. However, penetration to audiences you want to reach (even your own followers on some platforms) is low. So low in some cases, as to be of no value. Paid is the future of social. Paid is now a multifaceted mix of algorithms, AI, functionality and bid pricing. And every platform from LinkedIn to TikTok has a different way to buy. It’s complicated!
But boy is it worth it. Get the story right, the creative singing, your relevance high and your paid on target and you’ll smash your goals out the park.
Social is a big hot mess of creativity, maths, data, behavioural science, technology…. you get the picture. It’s complicated. Its’s sophisticated. And it’s brilliant at delivering business value.
Katy Howell, CEO of immediate future, pioneered social media marketing, launching her social media agency 16 years ago, just as Facebook made its way onto university campus.
Often called in as the UK expert on social by TV, radio and the press, she appears regularly on BBC News, Victoria Derbyshire and Reuters, as well in The Telegraph, FT and Guardian. She’s considered the 4th most influential social media marketing expert, has been named one of the 25 women who have made an outstanding contribution to digital by the Drum, and was honoured to be amongst the Top 100 Asian tech entrepreneurs in the UK.
She speaks at conferences, runs masterclasses, and guest lectures at two universities. She’s co-authored three books on social and is a regular contributor to the press.
Her expertise lies in helping brands deliver significant impact by breaking the social boring: using social data to springboard creative that delivers growth to business. Her agency wins industry awards every year for their smarts and innovation in social media.
Twitter: @katyhowell
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/katyhowell
Web: immediatefuture.co.uk