Contrary to popular belief, posting on social media day in day out isn’t necessarily the best way to go. When there’s no real rhythm or reason to your social media strategy, it’s hard for your audience to keep up and your social media presence quickly fizzles out.
It’s best to find a sustainable strategy that works for you and for your audience.
In this article, we’ll walk through how to create a coherent and sustainable social media strategy that follows a buyer’s journey.
The basics of a good social media strategy:
1. Curated content
Sourcing your content from reputable sources enhances your overall content strategy. Put simply, referencing experts in your field reinforces to readers that your content is accurate and worth noting. For example, referencing Steadfast or Insurance Business Magazine will play in your favor as both are thought leaders in the industry. You want to give your audience confidence in what you’re posting and gain their trust.
2. Educational content
Educational content uses your expertise to help readers solve a problem they might be facing or bring to light an issue they may not have even been aware of. The idea is to teach your audience something new and relevant. Put yourself in their shoes and think of what pain points they may have and how your expertise can help them. Providing educational content backed by reputable sources allows you to show your audience that not only you understand them but also shows that you have something of value to offer; essentially a solution to the problem they have.
3. Promotional content
In this instance, we refer to promotional content as content that drives conversions via form submissions. For example, you could have a social post with a link to your newly built business insurance landing page. The aim of this post would be to have your potential client click on the link, view the landing page, and fill in the form for a quote request. In this day and age, most of us are quite wary of “giving away” our personal information so it is important that you’ve earned your readers’ trust first. Getting your audience to fill out a form is like telling them that they’ll earn information that’s even more valuable and in exchange we’re politely asking for their email address.
What will my content calendar look like?
Now that we understand the types of content we’ll need to make a good social media strategy, let’s have a look at how we could plan out your social media calendar. You’ll want to structure your week/month around your buyer’s journey.
The content you put out should ideally follow a logical behavioral pattern. What we mean by that is you’ll want to put yourself in your buyer’s shoes. So say for argument’s sake, you become aware of the increasing prevalence of ransomware in Australia. You share a post from Emergence, an insurance underwriting agency pioneer in providing insurance solutions to help protect businesses against their cyber risks. Emergence, a known expert in the cybersecurity industry allows you to share curated content. Next, you’ll want to share more on what an increase in ransomware means to your audience; this will be your educational content. And finally, now that your audience understands why they need your product/service, guide them as to how they could get in touch with you and any next steps you’d like them to take.
Curating a sustainable social media strategy is no easy feat. That being said, if you’re following a themed method that you can easily replicate, you’ll be able to map your strategy for months ahead of time. Ensure you know how much time each component of your social media strategy will take you so you have an ample amount of time to work on and revisit your content prior to roll out. And, if you still feel lost and don’t know where to start, get in touch with us.