Keeping up with social media accounts in a business can be arduous, especially if you’re juggling multiple work areas at a digital marketing company. Here, time and efficiency are key if you wish to retain customers and remain in the limelight. Keeping in mind that more than 40% of digital shoppers use social media to research new brands, you need to step up your social game. First, one needs to tackle the issue of dearth of time, and this can be achieved by following a holistic daily strategy that is carried out in less than 20 minutes!
Kickass Social Media Plan | In Less Than 20 Minutes
Every performance marketing agency is aware of the fact that the key to audience retention is to stay on top of their social game. Here’s how you can do so too:
Minutes 1-5: Social Listening
Start by devoting 5 minutes to social listening, which is essentially the monitoring of a brand’s social channels for garnering customer feedback and direct mentions of your brand, along with insights about your competitors, keywords, and industries. This also involves the monitoring of conversations that audiences are having about your brand regarding your business niche. This can be executed with the help of social listening apps that allows you to monitor all your social channels on one dashboard, facilitating strategies and engagement. Here’s a checklist for you to work with:
Monitor:
- Industry trends and relevant news
- Relevant hashtags and keywords
- Mentions about your product/service
- Partners, collaborations, and competitors
Minutes 5-10: Planning and Analysis
Next, take some time to analyze your findings, based on your social listening learnings. Doing so would allow you to fine-tune your social listening process more efficiently. While doing so, you must keep the following in mind:
Emotions/Sentiment
Emotions are always a good place to start. This becomes pertinent especially because this determines how people feel about your brand, along with the aura you emit. Are people talking about your brand positively? What emotions are you able to evoke with the help of your social presence, products, and campaigns? Are they comparing your brand to that of your competitors in a negative manner? If yes, you need to retrace your steps and rethink your strategies towards a more positive outcome.
Constructive Criticism/Feedback
Some brands fail to take what their customers want into consideration. It is juvenile and counterproductive to dismiss constructive criticism as “hate”. If your customers have recurring feedback that you need to work upon, it up immediately. For instance, if you run a pub, and your customers frequently talk about how your ambience is too loud, tone it down. Also, if you are selling running shoes, and you find people complaining about comfort, streamline your product to reach that goal accordingly.
Newsjacking/Hijacking Trends
Stay up-to-date with the emerging trends in your industry. Once you spot them, you’ll be able to identify niches and prospective customers to engage with. Leveraging on newsjacking, you can also create a viral social campaign that brings about waves of change. You can also tie up your products with topical news to bring about greater reach and engagement for your brand, ushering brand awareness and recall.
Minutes 10 - 15 Optimize your Content Calendar
Check your content calendar to take stock of what you’ve planned for the week. Double-check your creatives, image and post copies, and audiences are all good-to-go. Proofreading always helps, as it helps avoid last-minute errors.
Minutes 15-17 Schedule and Engage
There is a horde of automation tools out there that allow you to schedule your posts quickly and effortlessly. You have to simply add your content, select the time for posting, select your ad budget, and click on schedule. Keep peak engagement time sin mind while doing so: for instance, the best time for engagement on social media is between 9 AM and 12 AM, IST. Of course, this varies platform to platform and where your audiences reside.
Lastly, remember to engage with your audience - respond to comments and reshare posts that have your brand tagged in it. The more actively you engage, the more you’re likely to retain the engagement for that period of time. This can also drive sales and formulate a positive aura around your brand. Make sure that you do not post cookie-cutter responses, as people prefer authenticity and personalization when it comes to brand communication.
