You should not step into 2019 without a clear plan for your social media content. 2018 is almost behind us and we are ready to step into the next year. This is the time of counting our winnings and losses and celebrating a year of hard work. But don’t drink that champagne so fast – your work is not done yet.
Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail
This is an old saying in business and it applies to every aspect of your operations. The social media content strategy is as important as your sale plans, marketing campaigns, and product R&D. Your followers are loyal to your social media pages because they find interesting and useful content there.
However, social media loyalty is fragile – if you do not keep up the good work, your fans will unlike your pages and, what’s worse, stop buying your products. Out of sight, out of mind, that’s the rule. They will be wooed over by your competitors and you will lose a lot of hard-earned clients.
Get Ready to Rule the Social Media in 2019
Our mission is to help you stay successful in business with professional services and useful advice for social media marketing. Right now, we will show you how to put together an effective and high converting social media content strategy for the coming year.
Here are our top tips:
1. Audit Your Social Media Content Performance in 2018
The starting point is seeing what worked superbly or not so good in your social media posting efforts this year. The analytics panels offered by Facebook™, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter will give you clear and detailed information for the respective platform.
If you want an overall look, you should use a social media automation suite like Buffer or Hootsuite. Look at the types of posts that performed best and worst, and what they have in common in order to define your strong and weak points. Pay attention to the way your keywords and hashtags performed, not just the visuals.
Once you have a clear picture of your social media performances in 2018, you can start shaping your strategy for next year. Improve what needs improvement and ditch what has very low performances.
2. Plan for Lots of Video Content
The key trend in social media is sharing or creating video posts. Video is easy to consume on the go – the message is easier to grasp compared to a written text. With fast internet speed and very busy people, we have the perfect combination of conditions that promote video as king of content.
Remember that your videos do not have to be professionally shot with an expensive camera. Phone cameras are already capable of filming in Full HD. Also, people appreciate the direct and honest approach of a film made in the style of home videos, where authenticity and spontaneity prevail.
3. A Growing Trend: Stories
Stories are a new format for social media posts. They represent snippets of film or carousel photos (15-20 seconds long, depending on the platform) that are available online for 24 hours only.
The Story type of content is increasingly popular among private users and business pages on Facebook™ and Instagram. At the moment, business pages can reach audiences with their Stories for free – so take advantage of this promotional tool before it becomes monetised.
4. Update Your Customer Personas
People change from year to year. They grow older, more experienced, their lives change. A new job, a marriage, a child, and new responsibilities – all these life events change people’s needs and interests.
Thus, you should take a look at your customer personas and compare them to actual marketing data you have on your leads and clients. You will certainly find some areas that need updating – and these updates will influence the type of content you create and share on your social media pages.
5. Be Present and Sociable More than Ever
2019 will be all about micro-moments and live interactions with the audience. You must be ready to share your views on recent trends and events in your niche. You must engage your audience with live videos on Facebook™ and be prompt in your replies to questions on Messenger and Twitter.
As you can see, 2019 is all about being flexible and focused on direct visual interactions. This does not mean that you should not have a clear calendar for your posts. Just don’t make it a rigid schedule and forget that social media is all about socialising in real-time.