The science of social

Seven steps to having the best social networking presence in your industry.

The previous couple of months have seen social media move to the forefront of
daily consumer behaviour, with nearly a 30 percent increase in daily usage
since January 2021. Now more than ever, we’ve seen the need for a dynamic and
agile social strategy end up being the ultimate “must have” for businesses.
Be it driving mass reach and brand awareness or growing sales, a
business's social media strategy is their secret weapon to an evolving digital
landscape.

The great news? Social media is a science, and with the right tools your
brand could be amongst the big ones! With over 10 years of developing social
media marketing strategies for some of the world's most prominent brands,
L&A Social is promoting a seven-step process to mastering social media for
brands. Here's how this process can be applied to your business.

Step 1: Strategy and evaluation

Strategy and evaluation ought to always be first in developing a brand's
social networking presence, as it ensures you have a roadmap to follow and you know
what success appears like for your business. To develop your own social media
strategy we recommend looking at these key points:

• What is your big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG) and just how can social media help you achieve this?
• What are the elements of your brand or business making it unique?
• Who are your target customers? Identify all of the customer groups you may have inside your business.
• What kind of messaging is interesting for your audience?
• What are the goals you want to achieve through social media?

Once you will find the above, you're on your way to success!

Step 2: Content development

Your content is how you show up on social media; it is the messaging your community sees also it represents the journey you take your followers on. The key to good content is to ensure it adds value to your community and that it is targeted, relevant and engaging.

“Now more than ever, we’ve seen the need for a dynamic and agile social strategy become the ultimate 'must have'.”

In a recent social media census that people ran in partnership with
Pureprofile (which surveyed over 1000 Australians on their own social media
consumption habits), we discovered that 75 per cent of social media users are more
likely to consume a brand that posts quality content that is relevant to them;
66 percent follow brands that have values they align with; and 62 per cent
follow brands that entertain them.

We recommend developing engaging and relevant content by:

• Developing your general content ethos. This can be related to your BHAG as well as your overall brand vision.
• From there, develop 3 to 5 content pillars that holistically cover your audience interests (remember, good content should entertain, educate and be relevant).
• Finally, we strongly suggest working on your content strategy one month ahead to ensure it strategically flows and it has a great visual aesthetic.

Step 3: Social networks

Choosing the right social networks is critical to success. Remember your
audience and also the kinds of content pillars you've selected to accurately identify
your social networking sites.

In Australia, the most used channels are Facebook, YouTube and
Instagram. We advise choosing a few social networks and doing them really
well, instead of choosing all of them and neglecting each one.

Here we have outlined some of the key stats for that largest social
channels around australia:

• 89 per cent of social users are active on Facebook, with people spending 85 minutes each day on the channel. Facebook also has a very equal split of users across all age demographics.
• 65 percent of social media users are participating in YouTube, with users spending 90 minutes a day on the channel. YouTube is fairly equally split in age demographics, with users being aged 18 -59.
• 50 per cent of social media users are participating in Instagram, with users spending 77 minutes each day on the channel. Instagram is slightly more female skewed, with a majority of users aged 18 -39
• 28 percent of social media users are participating in Linkedin, with people spending 38 minutes each day on the channel. The majority of users are aged 25 -49.

Step 4: Posting and engagement

When posting your content, be sure to trial and test which days and
times impact your metrics for that better. For example, if posting within the
evening increases your engagement or perhaps is when you are tracking the most sales,
then leverage these details to make informed decisions about how you
schedule your content within the coming weeks and monitor the success.

This raises the next point of community engagement and management.
By ensuring you're responsive to comments, reviews and overall community
management, you are leveraging the opportunity to increase engagement around the
page, gain insight into what your visitors want to see from your brand and
ultimately build trust and credibility for your brand.

Step 5: Advertising and amplification

Social media has a great amount of potential when it comes to organic
amplification. But the the truth is it's a pay-to-play game and you have the
chance to target relevant and authentic audiences which will resonate with
your brand through advertising.

Developing a strong paid advertising strategy will ensure your articles
is being seen by the audience you have to attract, leading them through your
consumer journey.

Our recommendation would be to start your advertising journey by boosting
content on your page and then moving to presenting Ads Manager to create “dark
posts” by utilizing Facebook objectives and bidding for space online.

Step 6: Campaign development

Whether you're aligning to the latest season of The Bachelor with
heart-shaped inspired merch or you're partnering with an influencer to launch a
new product, leveraging campaigns and adding this activity for your “always on”
strategy is an effective way to amplify your social media presence and keep you
on the right track to meet KPIs.

The sky’s the limit with this step! Think outside of the box, trial and
test new ideas and executions, track and measure your ability to succeed and take
learnings for your next peak campaign period.

We recommend preparing for these in advance by using your marketing strategy
to build out time to ideate and execute your campaign strategy and ensure it
aligns with your regular calendar content.

Step 7: Insights and analytics

Data makes the world go round, why should it be any different on
social?

The great thing about social media is that the data is in real time and
is 99 percent accurate through platform analytics or a connected third-party
reporting platform.

First and foremost, you need to solidify your metrics and key
performance indicators, according to your step one strategy questions. From here,
we recommend revisiting these metrics softly each week, doing more of a deep
dive each month into overall stats and trends, after which revisiting your larger
strategy with one of these metrics each quarter.

This process gives you an on-the-ground look at how you're tracking
upon your goals. It also gives you the opportunity to make small changes on
an every week or monthly basis to things like copywriting or hashtags, and then
evolve the process at a higher level each quarter when you make changes to
content execution or optimise your advertising funnel approach.

With all of this in mind, you'll be right on track to a successful social
media presence. Remember: it's all about strategy, consistency and staying
ahead of the curve.

This story first appeared in issue 30 from the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine