Any social media manager will tell you that the ability to learn how to deal with the unexpected is crucial. In 2020, SMM managers had to pivot from their initial strategies to dealing with pandemic and protests all around the world.
Though nobody can predict what will happen in the new year, you can use analytics data in the last 6-9 months to improve your marketing strategy for 2021. By looking at your data from 2020, you can identify what kind of content will resonate with their target audience.
Here are some ideas of how you can build social media strategy.
Facts you should keep top of mind
There are some key stats from the 2020 Sprout Social Index you need to learn before making any strategic decisions:
1. People will follow brands on social to stay up to date
Earlier, we believed that people followed brands for inspiration or fun. Now there is a proven fact – more than 50% of customers follow brands to learn about new products, offers, or discounts from a brand’s social feed.
Here is a great opportunity for business owners. When planning your social content, you can learn what types of updates resonate most with your audience.
2. Poor customer service cannot be hidden
If social customer service isn’t your top priority yet, it needs to be on your radar in 2021. According to Sprout Social, 49% of customers say they will unfollow brands if they provide poor customer service. Marketers and SMM managers can’t afford to ignore any questions and requests that the customer support team receives from users.
Take a moment to evaluate how your company deals with customer inquiries. Look for tools such as those offered by Epsilon or similar companies that can help you answer questions and resolve any issues. Even a simple action like pointing someone in the right direction goes a long way. Speeding up the time of your brand’s response is also significant. About 80% of customers expect companies to respond within 24 hours of reaching out.
All those small things contribute towards customer loyalty.
3. Images and video are a must-have
Not only does your content have to be relevant and valuable to your audience, how you deliver content on social media channels matter as well. According to research from Sprout Social, 68% of users engage with images and 50% engage with video content.
What you can do is to review content you’ve created over the past year and mark those posts that received high engagement. Then you and your team members can brainstorm what topics were most engaging and how to turn engaging text posts into visual or video content.
If you want to take it a step further, you can branch out from the mainstream social media platforms and check out other options like uploading video content on newsflare, or other similar platforms, that can help to provide licensing, streaming and selling of your video. You can get your entire content team on board with such an idea as it only means more exposure, which might be the main objective of video content marketing.Tips to improve your social marketing strategy
Bring personality to paid ads
Leads, or potential customers, are more likely to see your paid ads than your organic posts. To stand out from the competition, you need to make your paid ads unique and as native as possible. Make sure your paid ads reflect the same aesthetic and value as the organic content.
Showcase who your customers are
Brand storytelling is all about making your customer the hero of your band story. How can you make that come to life in your content? Businesses can no longer be faceless. To connect with the audience, businesses need to engage with them on a much deeper level.
Brand storytelling is the narrative that business shares with the audience. In addition to giving customers certain reasons to buy a product or service, businesses need to share the story behind their brand. Tell your customers why your business exists and why it matters.
Share customer reviews
People trust other people’s opinions. Even if those people are strangers to you. That’s why testimonials are a powerful tool for a social marketing strategy. Such an approach will help you achieve the goal of turning the spotlight back on your customer and build trust among your customers.
Show how your product works
As marketers, you need to make it easier for customers to buy from you. The solution? You can show your product in action.
Leverage the company leaders of your company
A message from the CEO, founder, CMO, Head of Content, etc. can inspire and showcase the expertise of people who work in your team. It’s also a good look to demonstrate to your customers how people are involved in projects in your company. It also shows that your company is a group of professionals, not just a faceless brand logo.
Take a peek into your company culture
Corporate culture is about “the way we do things around here.” Prospective customers and employees are interested to know more about your company’s culture and place. You can start with office snapshots or human-focused stories.
Conclusion
Instead of guessing what will resonate with your audience, you can leverage customer data on behaviors and preferences to guide your planning. With software solutions such as Zendesk integrations, you can consolidate all customer data in one place, so your marketing team can use it to develop and execute personalized customer interactions and formulate effective social media campaigns. When you understand your audience, you can tailor your strategies to strengthen your brand’s relationship with customers.
Though none of us can predict what will happen in the new year, we can use what we’ve learned from 2020 towards our next business strategy.
