Social media is increasingly the new American storefront. As more and more of everyday human life occurs online rather than in person, an organization’s digital presence can easily be the difference between success and failure. And yet, for many small and mid-sized organizations, social media is a roadblock that appears to be insurmountable. If you listen to any of the “experts,” the world of social media is a brutal, data-driven dog-fight where one must run as fast as one can simply to keep from falling behind. A true Red Queen’s race. For the average person running an organization, this uphill battle might seem like more trouble than it’s worth. However, there is no reason why it has to be so difficult.
The fact is that most organizations lack the means as well as the need to dedicate a great deal of precious time and money to their presences online. Racking up millions of dedicated followers on each and every platform is simply not in the cards for most organizations. While being absent from social media in 2020 is surely a fatal decision, it should not be something that subsumes the day-to-day of an organization. Though certainly a massive time commitment to learn, social media is a valuable and low-cost tool that allows organizations, regardless of their size, to reach their audiences more easily than ever before. While far from exhaustive, this list is designed to provide some practical advice on how to effectively use social media for an organization and avoid rookie mistakes.
- Know your audience. This sounds cliché but it’s both difficult and utterly crucial for developing an effective strategy. The first step in figuring out how to approach social media is knowing who exactly you serve. Just as a store will cater its wares and its advertising to suit the demands of its patrons, so too must you know your audience and cater your content to meet their needs and desires. Because social media is global and largely faceless, there is a temptation to assume that one’s audience is the whole world. No business caters to the whole world. Even the largest companies are limited to the people who are both willing and able to buy their products. Be deliberate and think about what sort of person wants what you’re offering. Again, not the sort of person you want to want what you’re offering, but the sort of person who actually want’s what you have to offer. If you own a vinyl record store, you may want to attract the youth but your main consumers might be a much older demographic. Once you know your audience, you have to figure out what sort of content they want to see. Perhaps you are a local WWII museum. Your most dedicated audience (i.e., those from whom you’ll likely receive the greatest and highest quality engagement) is probably going to be a fairly older demographic, comprised of people specifically interested in history, who are patriotic, and who live within driving distance of your museum. They’re the ones who’ll show up at your doors, not the chain-smoking, anti-war punk who lives two hours away and doesn’t own a car. There’s no point in spending the time or money on creating content he would be interested in because, chances are, he’s not coming to your museum. So, create content that you think those in your target audience wants to see. Again, know your audience.
- Quality over quantity. Some experts will tell you that posting regularly is the key to higher engagement. While this may be true for some industries (e.g., news, sports, music, influencers, etc.) chances are that over-engaging with your audience will be as negative if not more negative than engaging too little. Here’s why. First, it takes a long time to create quality content. Time is money and dedicating 20 mins to a post that gets only a few engagements is probably not a great expenditure of resources. Second, you don’t want to become a nuisance to your followers. This is where knowing your audience and your market is crucial. If you’re a local butcher shop, your followers probably don’t care enough about you to want to see your content in their feeds every single day. They go online to see pictures of their cousin’s friend’s newborn, not your newest product for sale. It’s analogous to the boy who cried wolf. If you keep telling people to listen to you when you have nothing of substance to say, they won’t listen when you actually do have something they should pay attention to. Make sure whatever you post is something that will benefit the lives of your followers. If it’s fluff you’re putting out so you can make your weekly post quota, don’t bother. Additionally, you do not need to have a presence on every platform. If most of your audience engagement is on Facebook and Twitter seems to be dead in the water, focus on Facebook. Different platforms suit different organizations differently. Again, know your audience and your organization and decide what deserves your focus and what does not.
- Looks matter. It’s 2020 and your profile is your storefront. You wouldn’t leave a mouldering bag of trash in your front window, nor would you leave a torn awning up or an outdated sign. So too, make sure whatever you put online is free of mistakes and/or blemishes. It sounds simple but proper spelling, grammar, syntax, etc., are crucial. If you use images (which you should) , make sure they’re professional, not crooked, off-center, or low-resolution. Nothing looks more unprofessional and jarring than a grainy low-resolution image. If you use video, make sure it’s high-quality and the audio isn’t terrible. The cameras on most phones today are better in many ways than the cameras used by Hollywood directors a decade or two ago. There is no excuse. Also, make sure whatever information you have up is accurate and not outdated. People notice these things and it has a direct impact on how they view your credibility. One helpful thing I learned is that keeping all of your content in the same style (i.e., same colors, font, format, etc.) helps make it stand out and helps cut down on production time. Above all, make sure whatever you put out is pleasant to look at.
- Simplicity is key. Step back from your various online profiles and ask yourself, “Does this look good?” Are the crucial bits of information easily accessible? Can someone glean what your organization is about in an instant or do they have to go searching? Remember, people looking at your content probably won’t do so for more than a few seconds. It’s your job to guide them with to the relevant information with the least amount of resistance possible. Don’t make people wade through a bunch of junk. The more clicks it takes to learn about your organization, the less likely it is that people will stick around. I can’t believe how often I see businesses promoted on Instagram that don’t have their street address available in their bio. If I don’t know where your coffee shop is located, I’m not going. I don’t care if it’s listed on your website. I’m not looking it up and you just wasted your ad money on a worthless click. This applies to individual posts too. Don’t ramble. Keep it short, concise, and pertinent to the lives of your followers.
- Keep politics out of it. Want to know the fastest way to alienate half of your audience? Start making political statements. Now, of course, this depends on the nature of your organization. If you’re running a political campaign, disregard this point entirely. However, for the average coffee shop or mechanic, unless you are marketing yourself only to a particular political orientation, avoid politics like the plague. It doesn’t matter how deeply held your convictions are, don’t damage your organization’s credibility by getting political. The only exception to this rule would be if a particular piece of legislation or policy DIRECTLY affects your organization. If it’s an ordinance to ban ice cream shops in your city and you’re an ice cream shop, then by all means start posting about it. But if it’s national politics or some hot-button issue, do yourself and your patrons a favor, keep your opinions to yourself. This is a good rule for your personal social media use as well. Assuming your audience agrees with you is a mistake. It’s tempting, but is generally not worth the cost.
- Look at your numbers, but don’t obsess. Just as with the real world, social media changes by the day. What worked yesterday won’t necessarily work today. A lot of people will recommend the use of social media management platforms to schedule posts and analyze data. While these can be genuinely helpful, they can also become a crutch. You don’t want to be mindlessly scheduling posts in hopes that it will boost your numbers. At the end of the day, numbers mean little. What really matters is how your engagement with social media is impacting your performance as an organization. Having 1,000,000 likes on Instagram but not a single percent increase in sales is impressive but not the goal at the end of the day. Again, know your organization and know your audience. Stick your finger in the wind from time to time and see in what direction the world is moving. Do people care about your content? Do your patrons mention it when they talk to you? Are you seeing growth in your organization’s actual vital metrics? If not, don’t be afraid to try new things and have them fail. That’s just part of the game. Social media is all about figuring out what works and what doesn’t. The only true failure is in giving up and becoming complacent.
Overall, the key to social media lies in how well one understands the needs and desires of one’s audience. While these points certainly do not represent the full breadth of knowledge needed to successfully run a social media campaign, they do represent a bare-bones starting point that should prove useful for anyone wishing to bring their organization into the modern era. Much of what one needs to know is learned with experience. After all, the most important part of any foray into the world of social media is actually sitting down and getting started.
