How Brands Can Crush Social Media in 2022
In marketing, things change rapidly. What worked in the past, may not work in the future.
TikTok has changed the game
It’s hard to ignore video as it seems to be dominating every platform.
Adam Mosseri – Head of Instagram – stated: “more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time.” This is undoubtedly a response to TikTok’s popularity.
Meta introduced changes to Instagram’s apps. Videos under 15 minutes will be posted as Reels, which will start to be promoted to others on Instagram, similar to TikTok’s For You Page.
What this means for you or your brand is, it’s time to double down on video and think video first when it comes to your social media and content strategies.
With TikTok, there is less of an emphasis on highly produced video, with perfect lighting and scripting. Instead, a raw and authentic video of you speaking into a camera on your phone is sufficient. So these videos do not need to be expensive or time consuming to produce, simply grab your phone, and share your ideas.
Be clear about your goals
If you’re looking at social media as a place your brand needs to be, a good question to start with is, what are we hoping to get out of social media?
Typically, brands focus on using social media for three things:
- Acquiring customers (to increase revenue and gain market share)
- Acquiring talent (to grow and scale the business)
- Listening (to gain customer insight to make offering better)
Goals can change depending on the platform.
For instance, if you’re a B2B company, perhaps Instagram is where you showcase your company culture in hopes to attract top talent. It may not be the best place to showoff your new integration module for your accounting software.
You’ll also want to determine what metrics you want to measure, and over what period of time.
For example, impressions, comments, likes, shares, CTR, website referrals, revenue…
As with most things in life, success rarely happens overnight. Coca-Cola, Nike, Apple, Rolex… these brands spent years developing and refining their brand. Social media is the same way. Don’t expect results to happen over night. Think long term. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Choose the platforms
Despite popular belief, you don’t need to be on every platform. Choose the ones that make sense for your business and that your bandwidth can handle. It’s often better do not be on a platform, than to be a ghost on a platform who only posts once every 3-6 months.
In general, I would focus on the following platforms (in order of priority):
B2C
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Facebook (ads only)
B2B
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Medium
- Instagram (talent acquisition only)
- Quora
- Facebook (ads only)mmunity is not synonymous with your custom
Determine what you want to post
It’s best to find your niche, which is usually a combination of your passion and expertise.
Determining what to post also ties back to your goals.
If your goal is to find and attract top talent as part of your recruitment strategy, then posting candid office videos or company perks on Instagram Reels may be your best bet.
If your goal is to attract more people to your webinar or event, then it’s usually best to post content showcasing your authority or expertise in your niche on LinkedIn. I would even suggest putting some ad spend behind your event post to ensure your target audience will see it quickly.
In general, posts fall into one (or more) of the following categories:
- Inspirational (aspirational, lifestyle, getting to a desired future state, etc.)
- Educational (how-to, thought-leadership, hot take, etc.)
- Entertainment (clever, funny, trend jack, etc.)
- Promotional (sales offer, feature showcase, competitor takeout)
- Trust building (awards & recognitions, case studies, partnerships, etc.)
Determine who will be creating the content
In many organizations, there will be a dedicated person or team who is authorized to create and post content on social media. This ensures content will adhere to your goals, posting schedule, brand guidelines, and will be optimized for current trends and hashtags.
Batching content is a great strategy to hyper-focus on content creation on specific days, and allocate other days for other tasks.
Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose... and Repost
Often your best content has already be created in another format. A blog or episode of a podcast can be sliced and diced dozens of different ways, giving you content for weeks or months.
Make the most out of your video content by putting it on multiple platforms.
Since we don’t know which platform your content will get the most traction, it’s best to post on all of them. What pops on one platform, may not pop on another. Or, what doesn’t pop on one day, may pop on another.
One thing to keep in mind is that at the time of this writing, the length of video is different per platform. Here are the following video lengths by platform:
- TikTok – max 10 minutes
- Instagram Reels – max 90 seconds
- YouTube Shorts – max 60 seconds
- LinkedIn – max 10 minutes
If you want to promote a blog post, one of the best ways is to summarize the main points in a shortened form – either an infographic, carousel, a video, or micro-post (condensed text-based post on your feed). Determine what makes the most sense for that content for each platform – it doesn’t necessary mean a quick copy and paste will be sufficient.
This way, people don’t need to click the link and leave the platform to consume your message. This is also algorithm friendly as the platforms don’t want to promote content that requires users to leave the platform.
Determine posting schedule
How frequently will you be posting? Depending on your goals, you may want to consider posting 1-3 times per day. Each platform will also have recommended posting times.
What I would recommend, is to write a list of all the possible types of content you could post, such as:
- Native video
- Carousel
- Blog
- How-to
- Poll
- Single image
- Curated
- Holiday
- Welcome new team member
- Team member shout out
- We’re hiring
- Text only
- Award or recognition
- Downloadable (white paper, ebook, etc.)
- Case study
- Interesting stat
- Segment from your podcast
Next, I would determine the bandwidth of what you can consistently post each week. Then break it down by day. So perhaps every week you post a snippet from your blog every Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m. So for the next 6-12 months, you can schedule a blog post to published on social automatically.
Choose your distribution method
This is perhaps the most overlooked, but impactful part of social media marketing. You could, in theory, create the world’s best content and post it to your feed, but that doesn’t guarantee it’ll take on a life of its own and go viral. For that, you need amplifiers – people, or tactics, to get your message in front of the right people, quickly and abundantly.
There are four really effective ways to promote content in your social feed:
- Organic + Paid
- Stakeholders post (often having staff or the CEO post the content will get more traction than posting on the company page)
- Work with influencers / amplifiers
- Trend jacking (search trending hashtags or topics and get in early)
3 common reasons why brands fail on social media
- Commitment. Often if brands don’t see the value, or cannot attribute revenue, they will quit or neglect it. Trying to attach revenue goals to social media is usually a mistake, especially for B2B brands.
- Consistency. Similar to a lack of commitment, consistency is also a form of neglect. Often brands are enthusiastic at first, but when they struggle to gain traction or attribute revenue, they lose their excitement. It then becomes a thing you feel you have to do, rather than trying to do better.
- Your content sucks, or is too self-promotional. If you’re just posting product shots, or single stock images, or it’s too self-serving, it’s not going to resonate. Your motto on social media should always be ‘give value before you try to extract value.’ This is very common with community building as well. Your community is not synonymous with your customers.
Our last closing remark is this: it is much easier for a person to have a large following on social media than it is for a brand.
Often, brands are conservative, they want to appeal to the broadest possible audience and not upset anyone.
Individuals on the other hand are more willing to take greater risks (embrace or seek out controversy), they have a stance or point of view they want to get across, they weigh-in on sensitive subjects, they are less concerned about self-promotion and revenue goals, etc. They are not trying to speak to everyone, but grow a loyal fanbase in their niche.
Read more about this in my post: 5 Reasons Andrew Tate is Blowing up on Social Media
People connect with people more than they connect with some faceless brand, especially if you’re selling accounting software or some productivity tool (no offense).
So if you are selling accounting software or a productivity tool, don’t get discouraged if you’re not blowing up like Andrew Tate. Unless you’re selling the same thing and make the same content, you’re not competitors. Each person / brand has their own journey on social media and grows at their own pace.
If you need help with your social media strategy, get in contact.
