Spot the Difference
What’s the difference between a traditional marketing strategy and organic social media marketing?
It’s not about who people are. It’s not their age, their hobby, their married mommy or single teen demographics. Not anymore.
Organic social media marketing is about connecting with what your audience is talking about. It’s also about keeping it relevant.
What Are They Talking About?
When you’re running a year-round social media presence, you’re looking for daily content to post everywhere and anywhere.
Let’s be honest, it can get pretty draining.
The best social media content connects with relevant topics and relates to people – ideally those in your target audience – through shared discussions. It’s the community part of community management.
Whether someone is a gardener or a hairdresser doesn’t matter. If they’re watching The Real Housewives of Wherever together and simultaneously live-tweeting jokes about the Teresa’s poor landscaping job, what matters is that they’re engaging with the event as it happens.
So how do we leverage this for our own purposes without over- or under-estimating our audiences?
Know Your Audience
Look at what your followers and fans are posting about. Are they live-tweeting about the political events in Ferguson, or are they having a collective fangasm over the latest episode of Doctor Who?
While there may be some overlap, taking the temperature will tune you into what your audience knows and cares about beyond your brand.
This is the part where your social media content planning calendar comes into play. When you know what your audience cares about and how it relates to your brand and larger offering, you can plan ahead and work your content around upcoming events.
Planning Ahead
Social media platforms know these strategies work. That’s why Google has its famous daily Google Doodle. Those don’t happen in a day – they’re planned out months in advance.
It’s also why Twitter has its own event planner – #OwntheMoment. Bookmark it and keep it on hand – but, as I said above, don’t go too crazy. Stick to the topics most relevant to your brand.
These examples should gives you plenty of ammunition for shareable upcoming events that you might want to tweet, blog, and create content around – but it’s up to you to select the holidays and events that are most relevant to your audience.
Some other great tools for this are On This Day calendars (here are 2 great ones from Wikipedia and BBC). While these may take some time to comb through, you’ll quickly know what you’re looking for.
For example, when I worked at Quotables, we had a Google Calendar filled with key dates like famous authors birthdays, momentous quotable occasions (like the dates of famous speeches); writing and reading holidays like NaNoWriMo, Banned Books Week and Roald Dahl Day, and so on.
For Example…
Here are a few guideline categories to help you think about how to approach holidays and events:
- The no-brainer. Let’s say you are Starbucks. It’s August. The dog days of summer, at last. What are you gonna talk about? Probably your infamous fall treat the Pumpkin Spice Latte!
- Think twice. Let’s say you’re a beauty company. It’s January. Are you going to talk about the Superbowl? Likely not – unless your (probably largely female) audience is chatting about the event. Don’t go crazy with those gifs without doing your research first.
- The no-go. Let’s say you’re a web design agency that specialises in conceptual sites for artists. Are your audience going to appreciate your tweets about the latest cricket match? Likely not. (Unless conceptual artists are really into that shit.)
Current Events
While you’re able to plan ahead for holidays, relevant events, and any other specific dates, topics will also pop up that you can’t have anticipated.
My Current Events tweeting mantra is simple: Keep It Relevant, Keep it Light.
Unless you’re an investigative journalist, you probably want to keep your event tweeting light-hearted. Stick to entertainment and avoid current events. (Unless, of course, you particularly want to be like Belvedere or Kenneth Cole. In which case I probably can’t help you.)
Get Going!
The best way to start is to get moving with that social media calendar!
What are they key dates that your fans and followers care about? Even if they’re months in advance, plug them into your calendar now and start thinking about what relevant content you can create around them. You’ll be amazed how much it will flesh out your content planner and fuel your ideas for dates closer to today.
How do you plan your relevant, shareable content?
Can I help you with your content planning? If so, get in touch.
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