As Happy Creative celebrates 8 years of bringing happiness to the world of marketing, it’s interesting to think that when we started 8 years ago Facebook was still called “TheFacebook” and was still in its early stages of development, whilst Twitter was still a spark in Jack Dorsey’s mind.
The massive growth in Social Media and particularly its evolution into a marketing tool for businesses has been one of the key developments of recent years.
Therefore it isn’t a surprise that the biggest question we get from businesses is “how do I use social media for my business?”. It’s a simple question, and one that can be defined in so many ways particularly when you factor in the business and the industry they operate in.
It’s why we developed a “1-page Social Media Strategy” to help any business organise their social media activity in a structured way. It’s always a natural thought for most businesses and business owners to create plans and strategies for each key function of their business. Production has a strategy, sales have a strategy, and marketing has a strategy. Yet, often when it comes to social media, a medium so many of us are used to using in our everyday lives, the leap from personal to business use is fraught with challenges.
The “1-page Social Media Strategy” helps in many ways, but not least creating the conditions, objectives and measures around social media that ensure this marketing/sales/customer service tool is used effectively within an organisation in whichever way suits them best.
Within the strategy are two key elements which will help any business understand how best they can use social media, and I’d like to share those with you:
1. Your Audience
2. Your Content (for each audience)
Simple. Yet it is amazing how many businesses do not conduct these simple exercises before leaping into social media activity.
Let me give you an example looking first at Your Audience:
Let’s take a business centre in Blackpool. This business lets office space to several businesses of different sizes, industries and styles. Who are their audience?
I’d suggest just a few would include:
• Small businesses in Blackpool who may be looking for office space at some time
• Business Support/Enterprise agencies in the area
• Local Residents
• Anyone looking for meeting room space
• Anyone looking for secretarial services
• Large businesses in the area
As just a few of the list there is already a focus in terms of who and where this business centre should be tailoring their social media activity to. It even potentially shows when activity would be best scheduled. These 3 factors go a long way to helping define the content that it would be useful and advisable for the centre to “talk” about.
That leads us nicely into the 2nd factor…Your Content.
Content is the real key to any social media activity and it is fair to say that social media campaigns stand or fall on their content. So how do we define the best content.
To continue the example above we’ve already defined a few sections of the audience it would be useful for the business centre to engage with. Let’s look at what kind of content each audience would find useful or engaging (just a sample)…
• Small businesses – News on vacancies, services, stories from current residents, legislation
• Business Support/Enterprise agencies – Stories from current residents, vacancies, services
• Local Residents – Development news, who’s in the building
• Anyone looking for meeting room space – Meeting room services, rates
As just a few key pieces of content the business centre can already begin to define the types of subject areas they can expand on to create good quality, useful content that doesn’t always have to contain a blatant sales message. It would be a great idea for the business centre to look at utilising the business residents they have to create blogs promoting the great work they are doing, thanks to having such a super landlord.
There you have it, two key factors that any business can use to bring a focus to their social media activity. Of course, you will only truly get benefit out of these by using them within a social media strategy, but they truly are remarkable and stunningly simple tools to get you moving in the right direction.
Simon Brooke and Happy Creative run bespoke workshops to help you create your “1 page Social Media Strategy”. For more details contact www.happy-creative.co.uk
Simon Brooke is a Director and creative thinker at Happy Creative, a strategic marketing and creative branding agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact us please go to www.happy-creative.co.uk or @Happy_Creative
