Our Top 5 Social Media Rules in Today’s Agile World
It’s no secret that here at Scrum50, we’ve built our business on the changing dynamic of today’s fast-paced world. Thanks to the plethora of technology that makes it possible to speed up the exchange of information, we’ve got it all at our fingertips at any given time. Social media channels play a HUGE part in this shift in mindset. The immediate sharing of content, and the instantaneous engagement of brands with their audiences, make social platforms fertile ground for testing out new ideas and gathering real consumer feedback.
We pride ourselves on helping clients like Beech-Nut, Fusion Brands and Spark Modern Fires build a deeper connection with their consumers through their social media channels. Through it all, we’ve come to develop a set of universal best practices when it comes to customer engagement on social. We wanted to spread the love and share our top 5 social media rules that we live and breathe by on a daily basis.
Moving at the speed of light means lots of planning ahead. It all starts with a brand narrative. What story do we want to tell at a higher level? What does the editorial posting calendar look like? Who is responsible for what aspects – from imagery, content, feedback, monitoring, etc.? Taking the time up front to plan as a team so we’re all on the same page moving forward is ESSENTIAL to social media success. Having your plan and process in place from the start allows you to take on anything and everything that comes your way. For us at Scrum50, this allows our team to be nimble to tackle the unexpected.
Social media can be a very reactive channel. As everyone knows from public figures on Twitter (or Snapchat or any other network), whatever you put out on social is there for good. Even if you delete it 30 seconds later, you can be sure that the post isn’t going to just die. Good or bad it will take on a life of its own. At Scrum50 we make it a point not to be reactive. Even though we are Agile (note: Agile doesn’t mean purely speed), we still make sure to take a breather and fully think through any potentially controversial posts to understand the different reactions that may occur. Sometimes you want that controversy to create a stir and other times you don’t…just make sure you think it through because that post is living on whether you want it to or not.
In this sense, we mean specifically the number of different channels. Many times we see companies that want to have a presence on each and every social media network out there. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat…the list is endless. But, if you are leaving these channels empty and not engaging thoroughly enough or the right way for that channel, it’s not a good look for your brand. We believe that it’s a much more efficient use of your time and budget to create great content for one channel vs. mediocre content for several. It’s best to focus on the channels that make sense for your brand, are popular with your target consumers and that you have time for. Add on when and if you are ready, but keep it simple to highlight your brand most effectively.
Social media is inherently Agile. Pretty much right away you can see what’s working and measure the images getting the most likes, messages with the most comments and overall understand what concepts are most engaging to your audience. The more you know, the better you can be. So, set aside time to look at results and compare the best posts getting traction, creating conversations, and driving website traffic. Then you know what’s working and can only to continue to improve from there.
We consider social media an ongoing conversation between the brand and their core audience. The best advice that we can give for social media is to create great content and keep it going. Continue the engagement and create a dynamic conversation that you actually want to be a part of. These are the types of conversations that build trust and keep your customers interested and engaged in what your brand has to say, because they actually like you and enjoy the conversation.
So, there you have it. Plan ahead, learn, build, create great content and your social media channels will continue to grow.
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