Very few organizations exist to post things on social media. We use social media to reach an audience that can help us achieve our goals.
Your social performance – how well you use your social media channels to engage your target audience — is important. If you have high levels of audience engagement, your channels can play an essential role in achieving your goals.
So how do you achieve high social performance? We’re glad you asked!
Here are 4 Ps we use to guide our efforts at achieving high social performance for our clients.
Plan
Too often organizations start posting on social media without creating a plan. Planning your social media activities doesn’t have to be a tedious task. Although, the more you put into your planning, the more you’re likely to get out of it.
Making a plan will help you be more intentional with your publishing. You can have posts that build on one another and content that takes your audience on a journey, rather than haphazard, sporadic, and fragmented posting that comes across as disorganized.
Project
Remember that you are not your audience. Your audience contains real people with their own lives, experiences, and interests. So you need to project yourself into their place and post content that will catch their attention by using another P — personas.
What about your organization, or your activities will appeal most to your audience? Is what you’re posting important to your organization or your audience? And can you find ways of telling a story about those things rather than just broadcasting updates?
Persuade
People often don’t engage with content on their own. They need an invitation. Remove the guesswork for your audience and tell them what you want them to do with calls-to-action!
Your calls-to-action also need to be persuasive. Let your audience know why liking or sharing your post matters. Tell them what the impact of their donation or purchase will be. Remind them why helping you achieve your goals will be meaningful for them.
Predict
Every social media post will provide you with valuable data. Whether your content is successful or not, it will give you essential information you can use to predict future performance.
Pay attention to what types of content get a lot of likes, shares, and comments. Does your audience respond particularly well to videos or infographics? Audiences will tell you what they like and what they don’t like. If you’re listening, you’ll be able to use their feedback to refine your efforts and build on your successes.
The Fifth P: Bringing in the pros
Using social media in a purposeful fashion can make it a powerful tool in achieving your goals. And we can tell you that practice and persistence always pay off.
But sometimes you need help. And that’s when its time to bring in the pros — like Communicatto!
Whether you’re a professional association, a nonprofit, or a plucky new business, we can help you come up with a strategy that will realize real-world outcomes.