Recently I have spent some time working on Ferring’s social media presence with the incredible team led by Bhavin Vaid at the headquarters in St-Prex. I also finished my entire vacation getting lost in Tiktok. That was not as smart as I felt older instantly. But remember: the new format of communications is set by these platforms. Who would have guessed stories would be so popular ten years ago? Scaling the footprint of a company goes, of course, by sharing best practices but knowing what to avoid is better. Here is an extract of these discussions with some of my folks along the year leading the path on how, as a team, we could manage social media better for our audiences.
1. Not having a social media strategy or plan
Billions of people use social media, giving a huge opportunity to reach and engage your audiences. Yet, we still see irregular updates to social media pages, low customer service and poor-quality of content all around. Yet, it knows why we want to share and what should be the value-added of these presences for a company. So, let’s dive in a second.
Why is this still the case? There are many potential reasons, but one is that there are too many opportunities. There are so many platforms and ways to interact (that evolve rapidly) that it can be completely overwhelming. In addition, it’s so easy to start with social media that it may seem that devising a social media strategy without a template to follow is unnecessary or too daunting. It can be much more tempting to get it out without thinking. However, by doing that, you cannot know if the content is relevant and engaging or if it’s done the job you intended.
So, where to start? Social networks should be part of an integrated multichannel brand strategy. First: Create a social media marketing plan It would help if you started by creating a list of tasks that follows a structure you could replicate, scale and sustain. Here I am not recommending any methodologies or tools as you could take a piece of paper and get started, but if you ask me, we are currently using Trello. Using this as an approach, your planning document should include the following: Situation Analysis: An assessment of the current situation (internally, e.g. team capacity to manage SM channels, and externally such as competition, target audience etc.). I recommend having done social media listening before, as it does help get a helicopter view. Objectives: A list of SMART objectives to be achieved. Ask yourself what you need to achieve and how running this initiative will solve your company group objectives or your brand’s must-win battles. Brand Strategy: A plan to get there based on insights about your target audiences and the content formats and types to engage your audience and hit your targets. Drafting a strategy means seeing the outcomes and slicing the steps to go there safely. Risks are there, so you need to mitigate them at this level. Don’t forget the boundaries of the web are languages and not countries. Keep that in mind when the strategy is localised. Tactics: Which networks to use, how often to share content, who will be responsible, what content to share etc. For some, this is the fun part, but this is also where you have to prepare the field for scalability. For example, going from 1K to 1M, users in a community would use different tactics and resources. Are you keeping this internally or externally? Actions: Deliverables (what’s in and out of scope). At that stage, you need to be clear on what is asked to be done by your resources. This could be job descriptions and project scope of work for agencies. Control: A set of benchmarks and KPIs to help analyse results and a means of reporting against these. Don’t forget the governance of the activity, as the fast pace of running social media would mean you need to keep a short sight of what’s happening. By formulating a thorough plan that works for your business, you can ensure that social media does not sit in isolation, is sustainable, and plays an integral part in your customer experience
