If you’re feeling like your social media efforts are getting stale or lacking some luster, it may be time to revisit your social strategy. Strategies are often created to launch or re-launch efforts from the ground up. Overarching goals and KPIs are considered, and results are targeted based on action items that fit the directive. But what happens when those ideas don’t work? Or if your goals shift? If this sounds like you or your brand, keep reading.
Making Necessary Adjustments
Adjusting a social strategy is simply part of the game. Naturally, goals and trends change with time, making it necessary to view your strategy as something that lives, breathes, and evolves. We have some tips on where to start.
Keep Up with Trends
If your social strategy is more than a week old, odds are algorithms have changed since its creation. Social media is an ever-changing game of trends and algorithm overhauls, and what platforms prioritize in one year certainly will change the next.
By keeping up with trends (and re-prioritizing based on your learnings), you set yourself up for continued success and reach.
Upgrade Your Content
It’s easy to get stuck in a content cycle year after year–posting about the same things, in similar ways, at the same time, etc. When revisiting your social strategy, consider ways to up-level your content. Ideate with your team, give everyone a voice, and actively listen. Putting several heads together can inspire fresh thinking, and new ideas give the social effort new life!
Deep Dive into What’s Missing
When you look too closely at something for too long, it’s easy to get lost or miss things. To get a broader picture of what your existing content strategy may be missing, don’t be afraid to get feedback! Ask your audience what they want to see more (or less) of, talk to clients, and chat with team members who haven’t been involved in the project. New perspectives can help a strategy go from good to great.
Don’t Neglect Your Analytics
The numbers tell a story, so make sure you’re listening. If your original social strategy prioritized images and still photos over video content, but videos consistently outperform stills, it’s time to reevaluate and find ways to create more videos. You can only learn those audience preferences from an analytics review.
Calendar Out Important Dates
Planning for important dates relevant to your brand helps ensure you don’t miss them. Better yet, by incorporating them into your strategy ahead of time, you create the opportunity to plan bonus promotions or events surrounding them to increase hype, awareness, and results. Let’s say you run an ice cream shop but don’t know that July 21 is National Ice Cream Day. It seems like a big opportunity missed.
We use sources like NationalToday.com to cover our bases for each client. We also do niche searches in the client’s business category (healthcare or manufacturing) to catch the industry-specific holidays their target audience may be tuned into.
Research Your Audience
Your audience’s needs and expectations aren’t fixed. They shift with time and cultural trends. Simply staying up to date with what’s happening in your target demographic’s world can help you remain top of mind and socially significant. Google is your friend when it comes to finding timely information about any industry.
Revisit Your Goals
In every brand evolution, goals are met, shift, die, etc. When did you last revisit or track the goals and KPIs in your social strategy? You may be closer to achievement than you realize. Or what you initially planned for is no longer worth prioritizing. In any case, review them and adjust accordingly.
Add Additional Support
Social media works. Should we repeat it? But here’s the thing–it’s just a piece of a much larger puzzle. Social alone can’t sustain the entire marketing effort or function properly without adequate processes to back it up. If your strategy isn’t garnering the results you’d hope for, consider that the issue may be underlying. Are you complimenting your social effort with solid marketing, customer service, and operations?
Designate Someone (or us😉) to Manage Social
Social media marketing is an investment in your brand image and future. If revamping your strategy to meet your standard requires more time and energy than you have, hire someone or outsource the work to maximize expertise and effort.