Perhaps the most challenging aspect of social media marketing is that we tend to overthink it when the platform, at its core, is actually quite simple. The goal is to raise awareness about your brand, your offerings, and the problems you solve for your customers and to stay top of mind when they’re ready to learn more or make a purchase.
Many business owners get caught up in trying to follow the latest trends, “going viral,” or feel like they need to create brand-new content several times a week. We’d like to remind you that unless you have an entire team dedicated to your social media efforts, this simply isn’t sustainable—or necessary.
If you’re tasked with managing your social media profiles and don’t know where to begin, here are some methods and tips from the social media experts at Pivot Creative.
Create a Content Kaleidoscope
Feeling overwhelmed by the thought of keeping up with your social media profiles? Try running your offerings through a kaleidoscope (figuratively speaking, of course). In addition to being a simple way to keep children entertained, the concept of the kaleidoscope can easily be applied to your social media marketing efforts.
It could be argued that the kaleidoscope is one of the simplest yet most fascinating toys ever invented. There’s not much to it. The tube consists of a lens on one end and mirrors in the middle, leading to a chamber that holds colorful materials, such as glass beads, plastic pieces, or other small objects. As you rotate the tube, the light reflections create endless patterns and shapes that are both mesmerizing and relaxing.
If coming up with content to post on each social media platform feels daunting, you’re not alone. However, when you use this basic idea as the foundation for creating all your social media content, you may be surprised by how much easier it is to generate engaging and relevant topics for your audience.
Simple as Blueberry Pie
Imagine, for a moment, that you own a bakery that specializes in making the most delectable pies. Your pies are “to die for.” You may think there’s only so much one can say about pies or that everyone already knows everything there is to know about these savory treats. So, how can you possibly talk about your pies on social media regularly in a way that’s both entertaining and educational while also highlighting the features that make your pies better than anyone else’s?
First, it’s important to understand that “better” is relative to someone’s preferences—in this case, their taste buds. But generally speaking, “better” means something meets or exceeds the basic expectations but also offers something uniquely valuable to the consumer. Maybe the unique value of your pies is the intricate design on each pie crust or the quality of service that accompanies your well-made pies. Or, it could be that all of your ingredients are locally sourced.
When planning your social media content, take each of your offerings and break them down into as many pieces as possible. Let’s say you choose to talk about blueberry pies this week. Here are six social media post topics that all focus on blueberry pie.
Blueberry Pie Post Ideas
- How to make blueberry pie
- How to serve blueberry pie
- Why blueberry pie is a great holiday dessert
- How to buy our blueberry pies
- Learn about our locally sourced ingredients
- How to store your blueberry pie
Spread these topics out throughout the month or several months, mixing them in with similar topics about apple pie, pumpkin pie, etc. Just talking about three of your main offerings can provide ideas to fill several days of your content calendar.
Highlight the Human Side of Your Brand
There’s nothing that captures our attention more than images (or videos) of real people doing real things. Stock photos and graphics will always have a place in your marketing content, but the more you share real stories of real people, the more engagement you’ll see.
Go Behind the Scenes
Share candid photos from behind the scenes of a day in the office or participating in an industry event.
Share Testimonials
Gather testimonials from happy customers, with photos or videos whenever possible.
Show Appreciation
Highlight your team by celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, and other milestones and achievements.
Take pictures and videos often, even if you’re unsure what to do with them. Having a content library to pull from will make sharing all of the above much easier.
Leverage Your Existing Content
Social media is a great way to remind your audience that you exist and to re-engage them with your brand as often as possible. But you don’t always have to start from scratch.
Whether your business is a few months old or well-established, you’ve likely already created content for various purposes. Just because you created it for one purpose, that doesn’t mean you can’t leverage it in other ways.
Many business owners falsely assume that, since they’ve already addressed a topic once, their audience doesn’t need or want to hear about it again. Chances are, your audience has already forgotten all about the blog you published last month; write a short post and link to the blog again. That email you sent last week? It’s buried and forgotten. Recreate the message and share it on social media. Your social media post from a few days ago? Gone from their memory. Try posting it again with a different image, making it into a reel, or approaching it from a different angle.
You can bet that we will leverage this blog post in as many ways as possible!
Empathize, Explain, and Engage
They say the best type of marketing doesn’t feel like marketing. It can be off-putting when you only post about your business and offerings and neglect to explain how you can help your audience. Instead, focus on showing prospects that you understand their problems, explaining how your product or service can help, and engaging in conversations around things that matter to them. Some examples include:
- Ask questions
- Answer questions
- Address your audience’s most important issues
- Start conversations
- Respond to comments
- Offer checklists and cheat sheets
- Share how-to videos
Tips and Tools to Make Social Simple
If you’re determined to manage your social media marketing, we commend you! It requires a significant amount of time and resources to do it consistently. But it can be done. Here are a few recommendations to help you get the most out of your social media efforts.
Choose the Right Platforms
Each social media platform caters to a slightly different audience; in some cases, the differences are based on age and/or gender. And certain industries perform better on specific platforms. For example, industries with services and products that are easy to share in photos and videos will do particularly well on Instagram, while those with older audiences may be a better fit for Facebook. Companies focused primarily on B2B clients may find LinkedIn to be a better match.
Many industries can find a way to be relevant to their audiences on multiple platforms, but this isn’t the case for every business. Understanding your audience’s preferences is important so you can build the right social media content strategy to attract and keep their attention.
Plan Ahead
There’s this universal misconception that because social media posts are often shorter than other types of content, it doesn’t take long to put together a month’s worth of posts. However, if you’ve ever been tasked with social media marketing for a brand, you quickly learn just how much time it requires. While we agree that social media marketing can be quite time-consuming, we’ve found that planning ahead is often the best way to save time.
Scheduling posts in batches is a great way to minimize the time that’s often wasted when you work on one post at a time. Once the creative juices are flowing, it’s easier to keep going with your ideas than to stop and start up again the next day. Instead of working on each post individually, work on a week’s worth or even a month’s worth of posts at once.
If you need to break it up, you can start by writing all the copy one day and work on the accompanying visuals another day. Then, spend an hour or less on a Friday morning (while sipping coffee) to schedule a month’s worth of posts ahead of time.
Utilize Free and Low-Cost Scheduling Tools
Are you scheduling your posts ahead of time? If not, there are free and low-cost tools that make it easy to post across multiple social media platforms simultaneously.
Meta Business Suite
If you have a business Facebook or Instagram profile, you can access Meta Business Suite for free. This allows you to schedule static posts, reels, videos, and ads on Facebook and Instagram. You can edit the copy before and after they’ve gone live. If you only use these two platforms and are looking for a free scheduling tool, this is your best option.
Later or Planoly
Later and Planoly are third-party apps with a low starting subscription cost (under $20/month). Each tool works similarly and allows for posting to multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Each app features a slightly different interface and may differ in what’s available for analytics and functionality depending on which app you choose and which tier you subscribe to.
Loomly or Hootsuite
Loomly and Hootsuite are also third-party apps but are more comprehensive in their functionality. We recommend these apps for more experienced social media managers who may require multiple users for planning and approvals or for those who need more in-depth analytics reporting. Loomly’s basic plan with two users starts at $32/month, and Hootsuite’s lowest tier, Professional, starts at $99/month.
In addition to the above apps, there are several other options to choose from. Some social media scheduling tools may also connect with other social media tools, like Canva, which is great for creating simple graphics and videos to bring your social media ideas to life. We recommend testing out a few different ones using their free trial offers so you can find the best one for your business.
Get Help From a Team of Social Media Experts
We hope this information helps you navigate everything that goes into building a solid social media strategy and implementing it with ease. If managing your social media becomes too time-consuming or you need assistance with strategy or implementation, the Pivot team is happy to help.
Contact us today to learn more about our social media marketing services.
