Nov 14 2022
9 Steps To A Future-Proof Social Media Strategy In A Web3 World via @sejournal, @lisabuyer

May I see a copy of your social media strategy?

🦗(crickets) 🦗

More than a decade into the Web 2.0 era and entering into the Web 3.0 evolution, brands are still lagging regarding a documented social media strategy.

Looking back, it was the mid to late 2000s when Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the iPhone hit the palms of our hands.

Fast forward to today, we enter the next generation of the internet, called the metaverse, and even more digital ways to engage with audiences.

You aren’t alone if you don’t have a social media strategy.

While almost 60% of the world population are reported active social media users, more than 50% of B2C brands admit to not having documented content or social media strategy.

In addition, most brands consider themselves amateur when rating their expertise level, with more than half of brands surveyed rating their social media marketing levels as immature.

Uh oh?

It’s true! Without a strategy, you are gambling. With Web3, the metaverse, digital goods, and virtual worlds on the horizon, it is impossible to skip Web 2.0 and move on.

“I believe Web 2 and Web3 have a lot to learn from each other. There are frameworks and best practices in each which lend themselves very well to the other, so it’s a lot about bridge building. Leave behind the practices that slow us down but bring with us those which provide structure and support scaling in a sustainable way. We are moving too quickly to re-invent the wheel; better to grab the best and mold it to our future needs,” said Stefanie Hingley, COO of Mission Impact, an organization helping females elevate in Web3.

Forward-thinking, purposeful plus strategic will usually win the social media game.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an effective social media strategy to level up your Web 2.0 and prepare for Web3.

1. Write An Executive Summary

Start your strategy with an executive summary.

This should be a one-pager, succinctly identifying your social media purpose and how it ties into your current business goals and objectives.

In addition, make a note of relevant testing or projections into Web3.

Establish the primary goal and specific objectives you are trying to achieve. Be sure to identify a channel focus and avoid trying to be all things to all social media platforms.

For example, if you are a B2B company, consider creating content for Linkedin and then repurposing it for other secondary channels.

Web3 Tip: Explore and research what other brands are doing with Web3. What is working? Start holding team meetings to discuss your social media strategy in the Horizons Workrooms environment.

“Horizons Workrooms works across both virtual reality and the web and is designed to improve your team’s ability to collaborate, communicate, and connect remotely through the power of VR— whether that’s getting together to brainstorm or whiteboard an idea, work on a document, hear updates from your team, hang out and socialize, or simply have better conversations that flow more naturally,” as noted in the Meta Newsroom.

Benchmark and include measurable outcomes to assure all players are defining success with the same expectations. Larger goals need granular objectives.

Example: Grow your Instagram audience by 20% by the end of the quarter.

2. Do A Social Media Audit

Keeping your friends close but your enemies closer is an intelligent way to stay ahead of the competition.

Start by conducting a social media audit of your brand’s social channels compared to two or three competitors. You can even pick a non-competing brand to use for inspiration and aspiration. Consider choosing a brand already involved in Web3 strategies.

For example, Wendys, Airbnb, Netflix, Buffer, Hubspot, and Cisco are known for their social media savviness. It’s helpful to go beyond your industry’s borders and see what’s working.

Compare types of content, engagement, frequency, audience size, visuals, video use, tone, and customer service messaging. How’s the response rate?

Other factors to compare and take note of include:

  • Live streaming.
  • Courses and webinars.
  • Influencer marketing.
  • User-generated content.
  • Features such as Reels, Stories, and Frequency.
  • Communities.
  • AR/VR.
  • 3D.
  • Virtual Worlds.
  • NFTs.
  • Creator Coins, Tokens, or Crypto.
  • Metaverse collaborations.
  • Audio experiences.
  • Emoji use.
  • Facebook Messenger, chatbots.
  • Keywords and hashtags.
  • Third-party content.
  • Online branded search results.
  • Reviews.

According to the 2022 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, brands and marketers see increased exposure and traffic as social media’s main benefits. On the flip side, the “struggle is real” for translating social media into quantitative ROI, such as improving sales and generating leads.

Recent reports indicate Facebook and Linkedin are the go-to channels if you are looking for leads out of social media channels.

3. Zero In On Social Media Objectives

Focus Pocus.

Let’s quickly review the difference between goals, strategy, objectives, and tasks, known as GSOT.

  • Goals: These are your broad social media outcomes.
  • Strategy: The approach you will take to accomplish your goal.
  • Objectives: These are measurable steps you will take to achieve the strategy.
  • Tactics: These are the tools or tasks used in pursuing an objective related to a strategy.

Examples:

  • Goal: Make our book the #1 best-seller in the Metaverse category.
  • Strategy: Increase the amount of content we publish on social channels supporting the book’s topics, ideas, and opinions.
  • Objective: Increase unique visitors from social channels to the book’s website or landing page by 50%.
  • Tactic: Using metaverse and Web3 influencers, leverage the exposure with branded hashtags and behind-the-scenes content using Instagram Stories, Facebook Live, and Twitter.
  • Advanced: Participate and host events in Web3-centric communities using Twitter Spaces, Clubhouse, Discord communities, and virtual worlds such as Meta’s Horizon Worlds, Decentraland, Roblox, or Alt Space VR.

4. Develop Buyer Personas

Know your avatar. Develop a personal relationship with your personas. If 50% of brands lack a documented social media strategy, the number of brands having defined buyer personas must be significantly greater.

Brands need personas. This is a must if you want to survive and thrive in Web3.

Marketers preach the value of personas, but when it comes down to investing the time and effort into building and using personas? Zzzzzzzz. Sound asleep.

The good news: The lack of buyer personas makes for a huge opportunity if your competition is missing the persona step.

Buyer personas + social media = a winning formula.

The results mean big wins in increased:

  • Conversions.
  • Relevance scores.
  • Engagement.
  • Efficiencies across the board.

Getting your persona started is a must!

Start with these buyer persona hacks and get to know your buyers.

#SocialPRSecret: In his book “X: The Experience When Business Meets Design,” digital analyst Brian Solis had this to say:

“You want to create personas for the people who buy from you today as well as for those who don’t, whom you’re targeting. The research that goes into the accurate portrayal of current and potential customers and their behaviors should be a combination of demographic, psychographic, and ethnographic.”

When creating your buyer personas, don’t forget to include your media, stakeholders, community admins and moderators, podcasters, bloggers, and influencers as personas.

The media (journalists, podcast hosts, Twitter Spaces hosts, Clubhouse room hosts) is your target audience, too! Make them real people with real interests and real lives. You might relate to them more.

5. Find Your Brand Persona

Every brand needs a voice, personality, and sense of character.

Think about what adjectives describe your brand.

Are you positive, fun, playful, or coy?

Maybe your brand is serious, straight-laced, and emoji-free.

Do you dare to roast or poke fun at a competition like Wendy’s and Taco Bell?

Make a list of how you want to be perceived when interacting with a brand. Are you supporting and encouraging or sensational and bold?

In 2009, when social media was heating up, best-selling author and PR icon Aliza Licht played the persona behind the famous (and now defunct) @DKNYPRGirl.

Of the experience, Licht said:

“Before any other fashion brand had stepped into the social game, I created an anonymous Twitter personality called DKNY PR GIRL. DKNY PR GIRL pioneered authentic voices in social media and ultimately captivated the attention of 1.5 million people around the world across platforms. In 2011, I revealed myself as the person behind the handle, which resulted in over 230 million global impressions, including a full-page feature in The New York Times.”

Licht’s persona behind the DKNY PR GIRL netted some nice gains for her personal brand.

“Over six years, my DKNY PR GIRL persona resulted in many awards, a TED talk, and a book deal. “Leave Your Mark” was published in 2015 and has successfully mentored thousands of professionals around the world.”

7. Establish Strategies & Tools

This is where you figure out how to slice up the paid, earned, and owned categories.

Paid social is a must – and it doesn’t have to break the bank.

Maybe the combo looks something like this:

Paid

Increase your results, and boost a featured Facebook post once a week.

According to Joe Youngblood, wait a few days before boosting a Facebook post, and let it publish organically and then boost.

Owned

Remember, anything you build on social media is basically “rented space.”

You do not own your social media community, following, or content. It can shut down tomorrow, as we saw with Vine, Blab, and other now defunct social media channels.

You can transition your social media community into an email list (this is what you own).

Think of creating some free download, cheat sheet, guide, or course to gain direct access to your audience.

Introduce a branded hashtag and start using it across social platforms. Publicize in bios and posts.

Encourage influencers to use the hashtag. Promote hashtags across social platforms, emails, ads, and social media covers and captions.

Earned

Monitor social media for branded keywords and targeted keyword phrases. Twitter is primed with journalists, bloggers, and real-time influencers. Find the conversations and engage.

Warning: This activity has been known to cause positive media coverage, shares, and engagement outcomes.

#SocialPRSecret: You can’t buy good public relations and social proof, and you can’t hide from negative PR.

Earn the positive first to own more and gain positive search and social results.

Tools

I like Canva. She likes Spark. They like Hootsuite. We like Buffer. The CEO’s son wants to know why you don’t have a Snapchat geo filter.

Having 50 million tools fragmented across your social media team is no fun and not efficient. That’s a slight exaggeration; the point is to have an approved list of tools and platforms.

Everyone needs to be using the same social media management tools and platforms.

Web3 Tip: Explore Web3-centric tools and platforms such as spacial.io, Discord, and Threedium to enhance your brand experience.

8. Make Your Mark: Timing & Dates

Timing is everything! One day late is a dollar lost.

You must show up to the party early on social media and never be late. This means researching industry dates for conferences and events. Look up tie-ins to seasons, days, or official months.

Make sure your reporting is efficient and on point for the proper analysis.

The CEO gets the one-pager, the CMO gets the two-pager, sales gets the sales connection report, and the analysts get the full 10-pager.

Match the report with the right persona and what they care about most.

Figure out internal dates, external dates, and reporting dates.

  • Internal: Check out conferences, workshops, team meetings, and marketing reports in your industry. Don’t forget the hashtags!
  • External: Look at seasons, themes, events, and trending news to tie into your social media content.

#SocialPRSecret: From Pineapple Day to World Productivity Day, never miss a day! Check out Days of the Year and keep your editorial calendar filled with the most interesting events, festivals, and weird holidays. And bookmark this SEJ article to help your editorial calendar further: You Need This Marketing Calendar & Free Template!

Web 3 Tip: Sign up for Crypto, Web3, and NFT-related events. Be on the lookout for virtual and in-person events and conferences to educate your team and possibly connect with Web3 partners to elevate your brand.

9. Measure What Matters

Measuring what matters is the key to social media strategy sanity and success.

Every network has its version of analytics. It’s easy to spend infinite time running reports. Make sure you are circling back to those measurable objectives.

Look at both quantitative for the hard numbers and qualitative for the sentiment and intent.

  • Quantitative examples include website sessions, number of email sign-ups, impressions, and social network data.
  • Qualitative examples include sentiment, such as favorable reviews or comments on social messaging. For example, did you raise prices on the menu and have complaints on your Facebook Page?

Quantitative tells what happened, and qualitative can usually tell the “why.” For instance, you have a positive feature story in Business Insider with a link to your company website, which caused a spike in website visits.

When influencers started turning on Daily Harvest, the vegan meal-delivery service that sells bowls, soups, and smoothies, with negative reviews after falling ill – this could be an example of quantitative and qualitative – sales fell, negative media publicity, and negative social media sentiment.

Conclusion

After following all of these steps, what’s next?

You might find yourself in a different direction due to your new social media strategy process.

You may venture your brand into the metaverse, start an NFT collection, continue your hashtag campaign, and even add more budget.

#SocialPRSecret: After accessing your reports and progress, create a proposed action plan, including the next steps. Provide analysis and recommendations interpreting your findings.

Web3 Tip: Make sure you are following the evolution of Web3 – the next generation of the world wide web, which includes the unfolding of the creator economy, decentralization; artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning; Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), the metaverse, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and connectivity and ubiquity, blockchain, digital wearables, and more.

While having a documented social media strategy is important, it’s more important to make sure the plan is fluid and flexible and to keep current on trends.

Meta offers Meta Blueprint, a selection of self-paced and self-guided courses, certifications, and educational materials designed to keep your business moving forward.

As a marketer, having these certifications can help you stand out from your competition.

Keep the social in social media by staying engaged and in the conversation. The strategy will follow, flow, and fill from Web 2.0 to Web3. Be sure you are proficient in Web 2.0 to maximize your returns in Web3.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Jacob Lund/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 8 2022
The Do’s And Don’ts Of Social Media Management via @sejournal, @ab80

Are you looking for better ways to manage social media accounts without missing out on anything important?

Social media platforms play a vital role in our lives today. From staying connected with friends to sharing personal updates, they provide countless opportunities to connect with others.

In addition to staying informed about current events, brands can also build relationships with potential customers and grow their audience.

Social media management tools allow you to post content from multiple sources at once and schedule posts in advance. They also give you access to analytics data, allowing you to track metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and even conversions – all of which can serve as helpful guides in determining the effectiveness of specific campaigns.

These tools can also work with various platforms (i.e., Twitter and Facebook), giving you complete control over your presence across multiple mediums.

So now, let’s get into the current social media management trends for B2B and B2C brands.

Social Media Management Strategy Trends

Social media is one of the most versatile and effective marketing tools today.

We use social media to drive our branding efforts, connect with customers, generate new leads, gain insights into buying habits, manage reputation, and bolster our digital footprint.

But, while social media is an essential part of modern business, many companies still aren’t getting the full potential from their digital efforts.

As Social Media Examiner’s 2022 Social Media Marketing Industry Report reveals:

  • Those new to social media marketing generally focus on Facebook (82%) and Instagram (67%). However, those who have been social media managers for more than five years have diversified across multiple platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok.
  • The top two platforms that B2C marketers use are Facebook (94%) and Instagram (85%).
  • The top two platforms that B2B marketers use are Facebook (85%) and LinkedIn (81%).
  • Regarding organic social plans, 61% of marketers will be increasing their Instagram activity.
  • Most marketers agree that they want to increase their video marketing, with 68% of marketers planning to increase their video marketing for Instagram, 67% for YouTube, and 56% for Facebook.

If this surprises you, you might want to shift your marketing efforts. Because unfortunately, most B2B and B2C businesses lack an effective strategy for social media management. You’ll have to create a strategy that moves with social media trends and help companies to understand that shift.

Now, I’ll walk you through the most important social media “Do’s” and “Don’ts.”

And at the end of this article, I’ve also included a table that recaps my main points. Feel free to print it out and use it as a reminder whenever you need to get your social media strategy back on track.

Do

1. Have A Strategy

The most important part of social media management happens before you sign up for Facebook or publish your first Tweet.

Each social media marketing campaign should start with clearly outlined goals and a battle plan that will help you achieve those goals.

Here’s the secret of an effective strategy: For a plan to be successful, it must be as specific as possible.

For example, SEJ’s Social Media Strategy breaks down tactics for dealing with the different types of platforms (photo sharing, video sharing, bookmarking, and discussion forum), and each one is specific in its aims. They refine their strategies by listing tone guidelines, posting strategies, engagement strategies, and strategies to find new followers.

Typical start-up social media management strategies will look a little different. These strategies revolve around assessing your strengths and weaknesses as a company and finding opportunities to turn your early customers into brand loyalists.

Of course, your perfect strategy won’t be a carbon copy of some other brand’s goals. So, when building your social media management strategy, set realistic goals to impact your business.

Editor’s Note: To learn more about creating a social media strategy that also incorporates SEO efforts, check out this article.

2. Choose The Best Platforms

How’s your Facebook outreach going? What about Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+? Do you have a YouTube account? What about Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr? And lest we forget, TikTok.

With so many social media platforms to choose from, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed if you don’t stay organized. The worst part is that overlooking one platform might mean missing out on a massive potential market.

Check out Shelley Walsh’s research on social media usage, marketing, and strategy.

3. Use The Right Tools

Keeping up with social media is an impossible task for us mere mortals.

Fortunately, there are some handy software options to help you manage and monitor all of your social media accounts from one central hub. Here are some of the best options:

  • BuzzBundle: BuzzBundle was developed to be the ultimate social media management tool. Not only does it connect with all the biggest social media platforms, but it helps you monitor blogs, forums, and Q&A sites, too. BuzzBundle analytics gives you the insights you need to reach new customers, boost your SEO campaign, and find key influencers in your industry.
  • Hootsuite: Hootsuite connects you to numerous social networks. Like BuzzBundle, Hootsuite lets you find out what your customers are saying about your brand and easily manage your outreach, thanks to a central hub for all of your social media management.
  • Buffer: Social media is Buffer’s specialty. Buffer lets you post photos, videos, and posts to the most popular social media sites. It also enables you to craft posts in advance and publishes them later for maximum exposure.
  • Sprout Social: Sprout Social’s platform lets you manage your social messages through a single-stream inbox. You can schedule, publish, and post content to your favorite social media sites and get valuable insights into how audiences engage with your content.
  • Social Studio: Social Studio’s offering helps you engage with your customers by connecting you to different sources and can replace programs like Photoshop and Canva. With this software, you can use AI capabilities to create posts across platforms.

4. Track The Metrics That Matter

If you don’t know whether or not your social media outreach is impacting your business, then what’s the point? When you’ve defined a goal for your social media campaign, gathering corresponding metrics is the only way to tell if it succeeded.

Here are some metrics that might indicate success:

  • If your goal is to expand your reach, measure the engagement and new followers.
  • If your goal is to grow brand awareness, measure shares and influencers mentioning your brand.
  • If your goal is to get more sales, measure referrals, CTR, and conversions.

The tools listed above will give you a lot of insights into the metrics you need to measure the success of your campaign.

5. Engage And Post Regularly

Last but not least, the point of a social network is to socialize. So, share great content regularly to give your followers something to share and get excited about.

Don’t forget to engage with their content, too. Make sure to follow the industry leaders in your niche and try to give more than you receive.

To ensure you keep up with social media, consider setting a schedule for yourself. Even 10 minutes spent sharing and engaging daily goes a long way toward boosting your web presence.

Don’t

1. Try To Please Everyone

Understanding your audience is one of the most critical parts of your strategy. If you try to please everyone, you’ll offer nothing unique, and nobody will be satisfied.

On the other hand, if you know your audience and understand their pain points, you can tailor your services to solve their specific problems.

Do that better than any of your competitors, and you’ll have a loyal following in no time.

2. Delete Negative Reviews

When you see every mention of your brand, it can be tempting to purge negative experiences from the web. Resist that urge.

Instead, reach out to people who leave a negative review. Ask how you can improve their experience and work hard to regain their trust. Doing this may not only salvage a bad situation but also show other potential leads how far you’re willing to go for your customers.

Responding to both positive and negative reviews is a helpful way to gain insight into your business and target market.

3. Lose Your Personal Touch

Automation may be the only way to keep up with all the bustling social spheres, but that’s no excuse to lose the human element in your brand.

That means posting new content for every demographic, no matter where they fall in your sales funnel. Keep your messaging personal, targeted, and bursting with your brand’s unique personality.

On this note, make sure that your outreach always feels organic. Don’t make the mistake of befriending every follower and spamming inane posts.

On the flip side, don’t be a hermit who only posts and promotes their content. Instead, share content you truly love and connect with people whose insights you value.

4. Become Complacent

Finding your audience on all the bustling social media platforms and watching them respond enthusiastically whenever you post new content isn’t enough. So, the best social media strategists plan ahead – and they’re always experimenting.

The truth is that social media management is never done. There’s always a better way to reach your target audience, a new platform waiting to be discovered, and more avenues for you to engage with your customers.

Stay ahead of the curve and never let your current strategy be “good enough.”

5. Neglect Your Audience

Disengaging is one of the worst social media sins. Don’t neglect one network in favor of another or leave comments and questions from a genuinely engaged audience unanswered.

If you need to go on a hiatus, use social media to inform your followers – they’ll value the communication.

Final Takeaways

Social media management can be overwhelming if you aren’t careful. However, countless platforms, apps, and tools are available today to help you manage your accounts and eliminate some of the unnecessary stress.

If you focus on these simple “do’s” and “don’ts,” you’ll be able to create an effective and streamlined social media management strategy for any brand.

To recap, here are the top “dos” and “don’ts” when it comes to social media management:

tableImage created by author, September 2022

More Resources:

Featured Image: Red Fox studio/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments