When to Change your Social Media Strategy
At Red Desk we know that social media strategies are flexible and should be changed to reflect current trends and algorithms on the various social media platforms. In reality what does this mean? We give two examples of where we have changed social media strategy for clients and what you should be on the look out for.
LinkedIn
A while ago we were working with a company on their LinkedIn strategy. After some research, we set up Showcase Pages for them as they had a number of products which had completely different audiences. Showcase pages are extensions of the Company Page. You can share company updates and sponsored content with LinkedIn members who follow your relevant Showcase Pages. Take a look at Adobe as they have 5 Showcase Pages (Adobe Creative Cloud for example) set up.
When we came to review how our strategy was going, we realised that we were getting low engagements. We have since changed tactic, deactivating the Showcase Pages and started posting the content directly onto the Company page. This has seen a direct increase in interactions.
Instagram
For many small businesses Instagram can be a very effective platform, with higher engagement than organic Facebook posting, however, the company/industry/product does have to lend itself to the visual nature of this platform. Recently even though our research showed that Instagram could potentially be a good platform for our client, we quickly discovered that it was not the right for them. If your business is very much about product sales rather than brand awareness then Instagram is probably not the platform for you. We therefore pushed our efforts to Facebook, Twitter and their Google Entry which work better for this product and industry. Monitoring your statistics and insights is an integral part of managing your social media, then you can make change and reassess your strategy quickly.
For more tips on Instagram, you can read our article on Instagram for Business.
Other Red Desk Tips
Here are a few more things that we have learnt over the years:
• In 2014 Pinterest was the fastest social media platform and we set many of our creative clients up on it. However over time, Instagram has become the more popular visual platform and one that we use with our clients today. Pinterest still has it’s place in the market so don’t discount it entirely
• When a new social media platform emerges, you need to decide whether to ignore it or embrace it. Since Google+ was part of the Google family, we decided to embrace it, even running our own workshops. Google+ never really took off so we soon stopped using it for our clients. Google has now closed all the Google+ accounts
• One good thing that came out of Google+ was Google Local (now Google Business). This is often where potential customers find your information so it is important to claim your account and keep it updated. The social media function of Google+ has now been moved here and you can post updates onto your Google Local account which are visible for a week
• Our quarterly social media reports not only provide our clients information on how well their campaigns are doing but also valuable insights for us on when to post to gain the maximum audience and the types of content which performs best
• Finally, our research that we carry out for new clients often gives us ideas on how we can tweak the social media strategy of existing clients
If you are about to launch a product or need help with your social media strategy then get in touch with mel@reddesk.co.uk