Social Media is no longer an “ad-hoc” addition to your marketing strategy. Businesses are starting to think social-first, as they are hyper aware of communities growing on social media.

Debbie, our Digital Marketing Expert is here with 5 tips to help get your strategy off the ground.

1. Listen

Online Communities are everywhere, and often where you least expect them. If you know your target audiences, go where they are! Facebook and LinkedIn groups are perfect for this. Start following  these groups and listen in on these conversations. It can tell you a lot about potential customer pain points. If you start engaging in these conversations, you’ll know what content you need to create in your own channels! 

2. User Generated Content (UGC) 

A picture says a thousand words! Let alone a thousand pictures? Encourage your customers to develop user generated content that you will then be able to share. UGC is the ultimate compliment when customers are happy with your product or service. 

Smile recently ran the Pyrmont Festival of Food and Wine. By building engagement before the event through our organic and paid social media strategy the event attendees loved the event so much that we received over 100 pieces of UGC content. We will now use this as the basis for next year’s festival’s marketing. 

See UGC from the Pyrmont Festival:

3. What does the data say? 

Monitor progress. Some audiences love video, some do not. Some love long form content, some do not. Watching data is a great compass for what your target audience wants to hear from you- so use it! Here are a few basic terms to start monitoring.

Reach: The number of people your content has been seen by. 

Impressions: The number of times your post has been seen in feeds (for example, one person may have seen the same content 3 times- so this counts as 1 for reach, but 3 for Impressions. 

Engagement: The amount of times your audiences have taken an action on your post- like, click, share or comment. 

Clicks: The number of times a person has clicked on your post, including with in the post. 

4. Repurpose 

Got a company newsletter? Repurpose that content across social! 

Got a brochure? Save it as a PDF for your website, and develop posts for social media! 

Got a website? Send traffic there via social media! 

We already work hard to create that content, so repurpose it for many uses. 

5. Get everyone involved. 

Your team is your best asset for creating content. Brainstorm ideas for getting everyone involved. Everyone usually has a smart phone so can easily take photos that can then be shared on social media.

Here are a few content ideas involving staff:

• At the next Team building exercise take a team photo to use on the company LinkedIn page
• If you have front of house staff get them to take content for social of your product or service in action 
• At the next training session remember to take a photo of everyone and share something you learnt at the training.

We hope these tips were helpful. Should you need more advice, book in for a free consultation call with the experts.

Debbie Hatumale-Uy is Smile Marketing’s Digital Marketing Expert. As a corporate marketer for 15 years, Debbie was the Senior Social Media Manager at Transport for NSW, and the Online Community Manager at McDonald’s Australia. Debbie also has extensive experience running e-commerce businesses and looks after her crafting community of almost 10K across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, while working on social and digital clients for Smile. She is a mum of 3 and a fur mum of two, and enjoys spending time making personalised gifts for her friends and family.