Nicola Balkind

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Keeping it Relevant on Social Media

By Nicola Balkind

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:

  1. 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!
  2. 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.
  3. 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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Filed Under: Social Media & Content Tagged With: content marketing, content planning, organic marketing, ownthemoment, social media, social media marketing

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Testimonials

Nicola is an experienced creative copywriter, with a great ability to produce quality pieces quickly and at short-notice. She has a great knowledge of social platforms and ability to apply this knowledge. Nicola is an absolute pleasure to work with and brings her creativity and personality to everything she does.
Kaye SymingtonMint Digital & Stickygram
Nicola’s contributions to our projects for Channel 4 were invaluable: her huge knowledge of social media developments and online trends, together with her editorial flair and excellent writing skills made her invaluable in roles that encompassed community management, social media marketing, content strategy and product development. Her dedication, creativity, forward-thinking and attention to detail made her a major factor in the success of these projects. It was a pleasure to work with her, and I hope to work with her again!
Laura GraceMint Digital
Nicola has worked with Purplefeather on various social media and copywriting campaigns. She is creative, reliable and professional and can be completely trusted with the voice of your brand – rare qualities indeed!
Andrea GardnerPurplefeather
Nicola and I worked together across several projects in the Yomgeo community management team. Nicola is great to work with, her attitude towards projects is always amazing and she is incredibly efficient, Her work is always of the highest quality, and I’ve learned a lot from working with her.
Catherine CarriganYomego
Nicola has been my number one go-to for freelance community management. She is incredibly efficient, she is clear with costs, time estimates and invoicing and completely reliable. She is a breath of fresh air in an industry which is plagued by self-promoting “gurus”: her range of skills and experience is broad and authentic. I really appreciate the way Nicola is uncomplicated to work with: she asks quick, straightforward questions about what’s required then sits down and gets the job done without fuss. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Nicola and would certainly work with her again.
Annie MacfarlaneTOMS Europe
Nicola has been nothing but helpful, insightful, and an amazing force to impact our team. She exudes exceptional talent, and throughout working together I’ve been able to see first-hand her strength in organising and leading a team, attention to detail, and ability communicate with her peers and clients effectively. It has been a real pleasure to work with Nicola, and I can’t wait to continue working alongside and learning from her.
Jessica Yamamoto, Yelp
We’ve employed Nicola’s services several times at Yomego and every time she has been absolutely fantastic in both outputs and attitude. Supporting our community management team, Nicola has added invaluable expertise in creating customer focused strategies for our clients and helping to draft truly compelling content plans. I have absolutely no hesitations in recommending Nicola’s services for anyone that places important on ensuring outputs are consistently exemplary.
Sam Macleod
Nicola is crazy talented, knowledgeable and efficient when it comes to Social Media and Copywriting. I had the pleasure to work with Nicola on several online marketing projects over the course of almost two years. Not only is she a fountain of knowledge regarding latest trends and best practices for both Social Media and online writing – she is also able to put abstract ideas into action. Any team looking to improve their online presence would be lucky to get their hands on Nicola.
Eva MartinSERPS Invaders
Nicola was an important member of the Edinburgh International Film Festival Marketing Department and was key in the communication delivery of the Festival. In such a dynamic and demanding environment, Nicola delivered great content and was dependable throughout, an invaluable asset to the Festival.
Ross PerthEdinburgh International Film Festival
Nicola helped transform EIFF’s web vision at a time of change. She is assured and confident with her tactics in an ever-evolving industry and, more importantly, generates great content with results. Allied to Nicola’s strategic savvy, it’s a winning combination.
Colan MehaffeyEdinburgh International Film Festival

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