Managing Brand & Corporate Social Media
Unless your personal social media presence is highly branded and your job, chances are you can’t just take what you’re doing on your personal accounts and do that for your business.
In every organization I’ve helped with social media I’ve run into this issue. A social media presence set up with the best intention, but without a clear connection to the desired outcomes of the organization it was associated with is just wasting your time.
So how do you make sure your digital presence drives results? Let’s go over some basics.
Common Social Media Mis-Management Issues
Some of the mistakes organizations and small businesses (even multi-national corporations!) make are more extreme than others.
For instance, buying followers generally just messes your analytics up, and means you can’t rely on your data to help you figure out what your audience wants versus what they couldn’t care less about.
Or having multiple pages on the same platform for every offering and city-level location a business or organization has which just splits people’s attention, multiplies the time you have to spend managing it all, and becomes confusing for everyone. Except the rare exception of Google My Business or Yelp profiles for SEO purposes.
Others get closer to a solid strategy but just are missing a few foundational bits. Like an issue I’ve seen time and again: not curating the accounts you follow so that you can use your feed for ideas and build relationships.
Way back when Twitter was still pretty nascent, it was a free for all of follow-for-follow and #FBF.
That tactic can still grow your follower count, but it’s not going to help drive outcomes, dovetail with specific KPIs, or build an intentional outreach to demographics you’re trying to build rapport with.
When you just follow haphazardly, or follow accounts that look cool, or (my personal pet peeve) follow all your friends hoping they’ll do you a solid and repost your content, you’re creating at best an unfocused feed and follower base.
Build an Inspiration Database and Community
The accounts you follow, whether on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, or whatever will come next should reflect two things:
- Relationships you have that are mutually supportive.
- Content you can use either for inspiration, or to help fill up dead space you might have in your schedule.
Let’s break that down a little.
Relationships that are mutually supportive with followers are more than just “I follow them, they follow me back.” These are instances where you both generally, and ideally organically, interact with each other’s content.
Whether that be sharing, liking, commenting, these relationships not only help to get your content ranked more favorably by the algorithm governing the major social media platforms, they can help make a real-life connection. Look for organizations and influencers in the same markets/area as you, who serve overlapping but not competing clientele, or who are communicating with a similar audience and rock their social media.
For nonprofits and social organizations, this will also include foundations you regularly apply to, local and regional media, notable public figures (including but not limited to politicians–just be careful on this one), and even personal accounts of legacy givers.
As for content you can use for inspiration, try to keep this reigned in. It’s not meant to be your whole personal feed.
However, done correctly, by following a handful of accounts that have an aesthetic, follower demographic, and mission similar to the one your brand is working to establish, you can build a fail-safe into your feed and avoid having those times where you just. cannot. think. of. anything. to. post.
You get both inspiration to help keep the content you produce fresh and relevant, and can connect with community to support your goals on and off-line.
Don’t Let the Speed of the Feed Fool You
One note: building your presence on social media with intention towards key goals and outcomes is going to take longer than just building a big follower base.
Despite the quickness with which most social media content is produced and consumed nowadays, building a dedicated and interactive audience takes time. The payoff is that you should end up with a follower base that’s more loyal, interacts with content more enthusiastically, and actually drives results offline.
Social media is, of course, a great way to simply be visible. It shouldn’t be the only reason you’re using it.
At minimum you want your social media driving traffic to your website. A more successful social media presence should lead to things like higher event attendance, referrals from social media to your services and goods, and other measurable outcomes.
Want more help creating a social media strategy that helps you get to your goals? Reach out to see how Else Communications can help you build a strategy to reach your audience and meet your goals.
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