The ONE Mistake In Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Quit the Social Media Bullshit

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A friend of mine (let’s call her Maggie), a Marketing Exec for an £18million turnover B2B company, was having a right old moan to me the other day. After recently appointing a Head of Marketing, they’re in the process of handing over all the social media activity to Maggie to expand her skillset. Nice!

But not one for change (bless), she began moaning about the fact her workload has drastically increased since they’re expecting her to pump out content everyday.

And that’s when I stopped listening. Not because she was moaning...

Yet again, I was hearing the bullshit remark of having to post X amount of times per week. STOP! When you are creating content for content’s sake, then how the hell are you expecting others to engage?!

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Measure Engagement Not Productivity

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“Quality not Quantity”. A phrase we’re all familiar with, and guess what cowboys, it applies to social content too. A fatal error for companies is to give an employee KPIs based on the amount of content they’re pumping out. Obviously, you want to ensure there is productivity, but that comes with trust.

Instead, you should be discussing targets for engagement. 

Ask yourself this, would you rather:

a) Have 10 posts with little engagement

b) 1 post that receives 10x the engagement

AND BONUS...the more option B happens, the less you’ll have to fight against the algorithm - meaning your posts will have a better fighting chance of showing up in your followers' feeds. Why? Cause the platform naturally wants to provide its users with the best possible content. So, if it sees your audience is engaged, it’ll push it to more of your audience.

If they don’t engage, guess what, Facebook (or whatever the platform) will literally say to itself “this clearly isn’t that interesting so we better limit the amount of people who see it”.

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Who Cares About #NationalDonutWeek?

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Back in the day, awareness days were a quick win for exposure. People raising awareness on topics using campaigns for #internationalwomensday for instance. 

That’s ok.

But it didn’t take long before they started to become ridiculous. With the likes of #nationalpopcornday, #kissagingerday and of course, #steakandblo ...we’ll leave that there. 

It’s #nationalsconeday - which do you put on first, jam or cream?

What type of cat are you? #internationalcatday

For #InternationalDayOfHappiness we’re asking what makes you happy?

Bleurghhhh. Why on earth would I want to tell Nisa Local what makes me happy?! What am I going to gain from that? Maybe I would tell my mate, but to air it to the world using Nisa Local as my sounding board is a tad ambitious. 

But this is exactly the type of content that is produced when someone is assigned the task of producing a set amount of posts per week. It’s forced. It’s fake. It’s not engaging.

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Ok, I hear you... But What Should I Post About?

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So you get it. I’ve told you what NOT to do. But now what should you do?

Stories. 

“Sorry, what?!” - tell a story. Let people connect to what you’re telling them.

Oh and guess what, I drew you in with a story. Remember Maggie? Gotcha!

Your business will have plenty of stories - you’ve just got to know where to look for them. And in the end you’ll indirectly sell your services or products. Where can I find stories for my business?

• Customer testimonials. What was the emotional connection that led them to make a purchase? What did they overcome by using your service?
• Your WHY. Why was the business set up in the first place? What are the core values and how do you live them each day?
• Opinions on current affairs. Are there stories making the press currently that have a direct impact on or relate to your business? Do you have an opinion? 

These are just 3 examples of stories, and give yourself some credit. The first few you try are probably going to flop... As with everything, the more you try, the better and more natural it will come to you.

From hunting down the stories to composing them in a way that your audience will engage. It’s hard. But you’ve got to start somewhere. 

Put it this way, I was you 10 years ago. I’m just saving you all that time to find it out for yourself.