SOCIAL MEDIA IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE.
Social media is not about your business. People don’t go on social media to be sold to. Provide content for the people and the people will provide you with their loyalty and business.
I hate blogs that rant. Make it helpful. Keep it simple and don’t yell at your audience about how dumb they are. Basic 101 of blogging (and business right?). So I am not going to rant. And I’m definitely not going to call you dumb. Cath would kill me just quietly. And I know you’re not dumb. Especially if you’re reading one of our blogs.
So...instead of ranting about why you shouldn’t be just pushing your product all over your social media platforms and why it is killing social and you will never see organic results... I’m going to be helpful :) and give you our top tips on why social media is about the people (and not your product/service):
What does this mean exactly? It means that content has to be meaningful. Start conversations, provide content that your audience generally wants to see and will get value from. Don’t use clickbait posts. Start genuine conversations and provide real value to your audience. Give them content that is “shareable”.
You’re in their space
A person’s social media newsfeed is highly personal. Facebook and the powers to be have done a lot of work with very smart people to make sure of it. The people are only seeing posts and ads from people and businesses who the actually want to see. I love that about social media. I know that when I scroll through my feed, I am seeing exactly what interests me and who interests me.
To get your content onto your audiences’ newsfeed, we recommend having a very specific idea of who your audience is. What do they look like, who are their friends, where do they live and how do they spend their time and money. Visualise them. Now provide content that they want to see. Jokes, quotes, photos, blog posts, videos of cats. Whatever it is that they want, give them that! Then slide in your occasional brand post just to make sure that it’s on your Facebook page. But your broader strategy should focus more on building meaningful engagement and less on pushing your product or service (that’s what Facebook ads are for).
Build back their trust
In Edelman’s 2018 Trust Barometer Report, 60% of people no longer trust social media organisations like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. With stories of “fake news” and data manipulation, users have lost their trust of influencers – both celebrities and high profile media personalities. In a major reversal, trust has reverted back to immediate colleagues acquaintances, friends and family on social media. These individuals have more personal credibility than the size of their followings.
For businesses on social media, this presents a delicate challenge in 2019. Progressive businesses need to focus less on maximizing reach and more on generating transparent and meaningful engagement with their social communities.
It’s getting personal
Most of the world is now on messaging apps. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (both owned by Facebook) now count more than 2.8 billion users between them. Then there is also the Chinese platforms WeChat and QQ.
Nine out of 10 consumers** want to use messaging to communicate with businesses, however fewer than half of the businesses responding to Hootsuite’s survey have implemented messaging apps.
Customers are telling businesses that they want to be able to communicate with them via messenger, yet this isn’t available to them. They are however pushing post after post of their services and products ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
** Hootsuite
Oops - I was at risk of ranting a little towards the end. I’ll stop now.
If you take away nothing from above just think about this:
In the beginning, social media was a place to connect in meaningful ways, with people you actually knew or, at the very least, wanted to get to know. That is why people fell in love with social media.
So, be the good in social media. Go back to the fundamentals and adapt your business social media strategy to be about the people and your audience. Give them what they want. Build back the trust and in return - build your brand and your customer loyalty.