There’s a lot more to social media marketing than funny videos and catchy slogans. It’s about creating a deeper connection with your audience through new platforms of mass communication. To do that, you need good content that is both entertaining and informative. The content will always be king when it comes to social media marketing, and it’s never always easy to know how to market your brand.
By the end of this article, we hope to get you and your offshore marketing team jump-started and ready to create your first social media content calendar. What’s a content calendar? Well, read on to find out!
The Human Element in your Content
Let’s start with the social media basics: it’s a platform for people to talk with other people online. This means that the human element of social media is invaluable, especially when it comes to marketing. When you’re a brand that wants to hone in on good content marketing or customer service via social media, then hone in on the human element of the online space.
If you’ve seen titans of the social media game like Steak-Umm or Wendy’s, you’ll notice crucial components in how they add that human element:
Authentic and Consistent Voice
Keep your writing voice consistent in both the post and image copies of your content. It’s essential to give your brand a personality reflective of your core values. Use simple and engaging words that aren’t afraid to delve into the funny side. After all, good content is not only informative but also entertaining.
Relevant Social Media Content
Trends come and go, and stuff moves quickly in the online landscape. With this, content creators know how to leverage and take action on new trends, jokes, or even working with other up-and-coming content creators. Be sure to expand on the holiday or birthday postings, and stay updated with recent events. This way, your content is not only timely, but you’ll have fresh material to work with using content creation. The best – and most recent – example of this was how brands leveraged the successful marketing of the Barbie Movie, by building on their tagline and incorporating the film’s aesthetic into their own brand.
Social Media Customer Interaction
Don’t forget to engage with your audience! Most companies have a dedicated Support page on different platforms. This acts as an accessible avenue for customers to ask questions or assistance. You may also just answer comments, or look through posts made about your brand and engage in small yet entertaining ways. It’s an invaluable source of insight and feedback into customer perception!
Content Creation Tools
Content creation tools should always be in your social media arsenal. It’s a great idea to have your team be familiar with new and exciting content tools that fuel the creative passion. It’s no longer just video editing or article writing. We now have short-form videos and succinct captions.
Short-form Video Editors
Although short-form platforms like TikTok or Youtube have their own platforms, they may be limited in features. New tools like CapCut and Adobe Premier Rush are great tools for making short and sweet videos.
Copywriting Tools
Copywriting is a tricky trade. Your copies need to be concise, entertaining, and eye-catching to accompany great visuals.
Two fantastic copywriting tools that your team can leverage proofreading tools and copywriting databases. Proofread tools are a great way to remove the worry of accidental typos using AI – it allows you to focus on the content and not the small mistakes. While content databases like Harry Dry’s marketing copy examples or Facebook’s Ad Library are amazing catalogues to beat the copywriter’s block.
Content Planning and Scheduling Tools
The greatest step you and your team can take toward good social media marketing is to create a content calendar. This calendar ensures that you have regularly planned content throughout the month.
Through content planning tools like Hootsuite or Wistia, you can create and schedule your posting! However, always remember to not plan all of your content. Your posts should still be relevant, so make room for timely and trending content.
Social Media Metrics
It’s always good to be smart with how you’re advertising your business. With organisations putting huge trust in the ROI for marketing – especially social media and digital marketing – you need to be able to objectively measure a good post through analytics.
Luckily, most platforms know this, and will always give you the data you need. Problem is, what do you do with the data? Well, we’re here to give you the lowdown on three of 2023’s more important social media metrics.
Before we start, always remember that ads and marketing are not always just numbers. While it’s great to know that your posts are doing well and your keywords are successful, the posts themselves need to still be interesting. Never remove the creativity in marketing, and make sure to still put passion in the numbers game.
Engagement Rate
Engagement signals how involved your audience is with your content. Rather than passively scrolling through your post, the audience chooses to interact and engage usually through comments and sharing. Audiences engaged with your content are likely to become customers, and will continue to be customers through engaging content.
To calculate your engagement, simply total your engagement, divide that by your total followers, and multiply the sum by 100. However, despite being one of the most important metrics, what is considered as engagement varies based on the platforms:
LinkedIn – Impressions, Likes, Comments, Reactions, and Followers gained.
Facebook – Likes, Comments, Clicks, Reactions, and Shares.
Instagram – Likes, Comments, and Reel or Story Views.
Of course, as new platforms emerge, so do new ways of engagement – which makes engagement hard to define. Luckily, most of the major social media platforms have their own way of calculating engagement rates based on their own metrics.
How Do We Use This? Engagement rates are a great pulse check to know which type of content or product your audience is responding to. It’s also a vital source to know who your demographic is, and if it aligns with your target audience.
Amplification Rate
Expanding on the well-known Audience Growth Rate, the Amplification rate goes beyond your normal follower limit to calculate your reach. This was coined by Avinash Kaushik, a former Digital Marketer from Google. According to him, “Not only do you have a network, but every node in your network has a network of its own.”
The higher your amplification rate is, the more your followers are willing to associate themselves with your brand. Not only are they following and engaging with your content, but it’s also interesting enough that they share it with their own friends or family.
Calculating your post’s amplification rate is simple. Just add up the number of times your post was shared (Forwarded, Retweeted, Quote Tweeted, etc.) during a specific time period. Divide that by the number of your followers and multiply it by 100.
How Do We Use This? Through amplification, your content isn’t only confined to your current follower limit. A high amplification rate promotes organic growth for your brand through engaging content without any boosted ads. A low rate could indicate non-visually appealing content, not posting at peak hours, or content that isn’t timely.
Click-Through Rate
To make sure that you’re getting your money’s worth for boosted ads, you’ve gotta up your posts’ Click-Through Rate (CTR). This measures how much your audience clicks a link in your posts to know more about your brand. This means that the platform you’re paying to boost your ads is targeting the right audience, and your posts are working.
To calculate, simply divide the total clicks on your post by the total views/impressions and multiply it by 100. A good CTR depends on the campaign you’re running, keywords and even each type of industry has its own benchmark.
How Do We Use This? The high CTR means that your audience finds your ad helpful enough to be interested in your brand. This means that your posts are visually appealing enough to attract attention and informative enough that they want to know more. You may use this to gauge successful keywords and to see if the platform you’re using to advertise is worth it.
Never Remove the Creative Passion from your Social Media Content
While social media marketing is a strategic move, your content should always be passionate and informative. We’re in an amazing time where businesses like yours have an accessible avenue to speak with your customers. It’s no longer distant, you can have a direct connection with your audience. All that matters now is how you use the platforms you have at your disposal, and what kind of connection you want to make.
We know social media marketing may seem like a lot. It can definitely be if you’re focusing on running a business as well as your online presence. It’s always best to have a dedicated team to help you out in connecting with your customers. If it’s a social media marketing team that you’re looking for, then HGS’s might just have it. Contact us today and let’s see about getting you set up with a team that’ll turn your social media page into a social media phenomenon.
Citations:
Bradley, Diana. “How Wendy’s, Denny’s and Steak-umm are approaching Twitter amid a pandemic.” PR Week, 8 Apr. 2020.
Facebook Ad Library. Facebook.
HGS Offshore Staffing Solutions. “The Importance of An Offshore Digital Marketing Team.” HGS Offshore Staffing Solutions, 23 Aug. 2021.
Irvine, Mark. “Google Ads Benchmarks for YOUR Industry [Updated!].” Word Stream, 14 May 2024.
Kaushik, Avinash. “Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value.” Kaushik.
Marketing Examples. Harry Dry.
Rubin, Rebecca. “Inside ‘Barbie’s’ Pink Publicity Machine: How Warner Bros. Pulled Off the Marketing Campaign of the Year.” Variety, 23 July 2023.
