Social Performance Measurement For Agencies
How To Avoid The Big Hurdles Brands Face In Social Media
Sahail Ashraf posted on 19 September 2016
Social media is a big part of how brands market to an audience, so it’s vital that a brand gets it right. But unfortunately, it can also be incredibly difficult to get it right. Sometimes, it can even seem like there is nothing happening, despite your best efforts.
Perhaps your brand and the team behind it has sunk hundreds of hours into social media ‘stuff’ only to find that there is no engagement anywhere. You may even find that it is the case that reach is a problem.
No one seems to be looking at what you do, never mind engaging with it. We’ve thought about this issue, and we’ve put together a few pointers on how to deal with these ‘bumps’ in the road. It’s all about getting back on track.
Are you in the right places?
Believe it or not, not everyone you need to speak to is where you want them to be. It is, of course, important to have a presence. But if nobody’s there it’s basically a waste of time. Knowing your audience is a huge part of effective social media management, and if you’re putting your eggs in what is frankly the worst possible basket, you’re failing.
Your audience has its habits and its routines, not to mention its preferences. If your audience is made up of businesspeople who are serious and short of time, this has a definite impact on where they are congregating online. And if you’re working hard in the places they are not congregating, this could be a major factor in you not achieving any reach.
That audience of businesspeople will probably not spend a whole lot of time on Twitter for example. That’s the demographic you have to wrestle with. At the same time, you’re putting hundreds of hours into a huge and sexy Twitter strategy. That’s failing.
Know your audience, and ensure that you are in the right places so that you are in front of them for the majority of the time.
Quick tip: By using Locowise and the Social Scientist features, you can drill down and see important data, such as the gender makeup on each of the platforms you use.
Is the format right?
Engagement is not always a neat and tidy thing and you’ll have to fiddle with the details a lot before you end up with the right package for your audience. This includes the format of your content.
Format is simply the way your content is delivered to your audience. If it is the right kind of post format (video, for example) for your particular audience, it will ring true and build engagement. Some audiences like text heavy content still, and this is almost going against the modern social media grain. But it’s a thing.
By ensuring you are creating content that is in the optimal format for your audience, you are giving yourself the best chance for improving the engagement that great content receives. If your audience wants video and you’re giving them website links and not much else, this would be a reason why engagement may be going south. And if they like reading and all you’re giving them is flashy video content, the same applies.
Quick tip: Use Locowise to see which post format is best suited to your audience and gives you the highest engagement rate. Locowise also provides you the option to compare your post format performance to the engagement standards on the platform. This information can help you get back on the road towards optimal engagement.
What are they engaging with?
This is a vital part of getting over the problems your brand is facing with engagement. If engagement was there a few months ago but now it’s kind of grinding to a halt, take the bull by the horns and investigate what worked before.
Use your data and analytics to get a good idea of what people were actually engaging with before. If you had some fans on social who were regularly engaging with your content around a certain topic, you need to reboot, and get creating again.
You can even repost some of those posts that performed well in the past (as long as they’re still relevant). What has worked before will work again.
Take a good long look at the content that brought engagement before. This is what people want to see you deliver. Work on creating more of this stuff and then market it heavily on social. Your best performing posts can be a great way to restart a struggling profile.
The outperforming posts on your channels (for example, Facebook) need to be identified. Then, create content around that topic and in that format. This will help boost your engagement once more. Out of this re-engagement will come more ‘best posts’ and so on.
There’s a goldmine in your data. Use it.
Are you posting at the right time?
Locowise offers a ton of data, but perhaps one of the most important aspects of the value it delivers is the information on the optimal times to post. If you’re simply posting stuff at the wrong time of day you’re missing out on a huge opportunity when it comes to reach and engagement.
Find out when your optimal times to post are. This is really important stuff because it could be the difference between getting in front of people and not.
If you find out that you should be posting at 7.00pm to get that 10% boost in engagement compared to your previous performance, then you’d be foolish to not take that advice and change your strategy. Having this kind of data is invaluable.
The Locowise data engine crunches up a ton of information and finds out when your audience is online and most likely to engage. This could be a major factor in the problems your brand is having. Take a look, and see if you are simply producing and delivering content at the wrong time of day.
These basic principles above are a way to reboot your entire strategy. Find out where people are and what they are doing, and then use that information to optimise your work. If you have a huge problem at the moment with engagement, it probably isn’t that bad. Take a look at the past through your data, and analyse what has worked and what will work again.
Then get back out there and give your audience what they want.
