'Content is King' is an old phrase but still a true one when it comes to building a brand presence on social media.
As Facebook implements more and more ways for users to control exactly what appears in their News Feeds, brands need to be ready to meet the challenges that brings.
Community Management is the art and science of engaging your fans and it’s important to view it as a data-driven, long-term, iterative process. Here are a few of my top tips...
1. Know your audience
Listening to your fans is the first step in determining what to post about. What interests them? What are they already talking about? This is a crucial step in understanding what they want to hear from you.
Listen to the conversations they are already having and get in on the action!
2. Mix it up
Repetitive posts will eventually lead your fans to ‘hide’ or ‘unlike’ your brand. If you take your time and use your creativity, then fans are more likely to remain interested and interact with your posts.
If you do have similar messages to push then make sure you are delivering them in different ways to ensure your fans don’t become bored with the content.
Simply changing the way the message is phrased or using other mediums such as video or polls, will keep it fresh.
3. Be social
Allow yourself to have a little fun with your updates. Social media allows you to develop a personality or persona for your brand. Use this personality in your updates to build a genuine relationship with your fans.
Humanising the account will encourage more users to interact with you. Create content that’s easily shareable and your fans will share with their friends.
4. Be prepared
Build a content calendar and use it as the main structure for your postings. It’s important to remain flexible as content or events may come up, but having a plan ensures that you are prepared.
Planning ahead means you’ll never be short of content and you can keep your fans happy with regular updates.
5. Get statistical
Community Management is a data-driven, iterative process. Track what initiatives are creating the most interactions and engagement by studying the analytics and then use the data to determine upcoming content possibilities.
Research what time of day or day of the week seems to be most successful, or whether they like pictures, polls, videos or quizzes. Analytics is a crucial tool in gaining insight into what will keep your audience engaged and that will drive your success.
Reader comments (3)
12:30PM on 26th September 2011
Focus is extremely important also!
With social media it is crucial to have an overall plan, and long term goals. That way, every step will be geared around these, and you will be able to keep your focus!
Online Marketing at Language Connect
2:35PM on 26th September 2011
I agree with Steven, you need to have goals of what you intend to do with social media.
It is also important to have an in-house employee who can overlook social media to execute a social media strategy succesfully.
4:13PM on 28th September 2011
Yes keeping statistics of what fans "likes" certainly helps determines what makes them tick.
Facebook should improve their analytics features. If not, they might just see marketers preferring google+ because it can easily be integrated with google analytics eh?
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