HOW TO: Find your social media sweet spot
We all know that social media is a big deal in terms of how brands interact with their communities, generate revenue, and gain insight.
So how does a brand make that social media magic happen?
The first thing to understand is how to reach the right people with useful, relevant content in the correct context(s). Let’s call this your social media “sweet spot.”
There are four elements involved in reaching that sweet spot: brand identity, goals for social media and business, the expertise and passions that exist within your organisation, and the needs and interests of the people you are trying to reach.
Let’s look at each element in turn.
Brand Identity
Your brand is a representation of your organisation as a whole, with which people create a relationship in their minds.
Your brand is the lens through which all communication should be filtered, and it’s crucial that your brand be represented accurately.
Imagine your brand is a person. Understanding who this person is makes it easier to define the “tone of voice” and boundaries of the brand. This ensures that communications sound authentic and deliver on your brand promise.
Goals
Understanding what your organisation’s goals are will help you understand why you’re in business and what you’ve come to social media to achieve.
Using these two elements to frame your social media activity, you can define what your interactions look like. Examine the people involved: your employees and your customers.
Employee Expertise and Passions
When you understand what your employees (from the C-level on down) know and are passionate about, not only do you know who to go to when you need information for your customers (as well as content and stories to share), but it also helps you understand your employees’ motivations and work to make them happier. After all, they’re your most important assets, right?
Needs and Interests of Your Target Communities
The most important part of using social media business (and engagement overall) is understanding the people you are trying to reach. Knowing which needs you are fulfilling and what is of interest to them informs which parts of your employees’ passions and expertise to share with them and which partnerships you should form in order to fill the gaps in your content and expertise because, in the end, the first rule of social media is be helpful.
So that’s how you find your social media sweet spot. Does this make sense? I’d love to hear what you think.
