.png)
The mere mention of social media marketing content strategy can cause headaches for many time-poor small business owners. A huge question that surrounds social media is the differentiation of content, especially if your business is active on several platforms. Even if you've done your research and strongly believe your business should be active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, how does one figure out how to tailor content to suit each platform?
There is no obvious solution to such a question. Each business has it's strengths, weaknesses and priorities that will directly inform the nature of the content. However, taking a step back and figuring out a goal for each can be priceless.
Creating goals is the first step in defining a brand's voice and a fantastic way to make a social media platform work for your brand. After all, social media should give back rather than just slurping up all your content all day long like a hungry baby!
In mid-2014 when I was hired by one of North America's leading home décor e-commerce businesses, I inherited responsibility for several social media accounts. The overall social output prior to my arrival was passionate yet ultimately unfocused. Although some of the content was stellar, there was also a lot of drivel and lazy duplication across platforms.
One of my first actions was to work out a goal & theme for each platform:
Defining a goal for each platform has been invaluable. Rather than grow frustrated at the limitations of a certain social media network, one simply must make suitable adjustments. This will often mean limiting the scope of your output, which is perfectly fine. A curated voice that speaks clearly to it's intended audience is far more valuable than a weak generic voice that tries to speak to everyone.
And why a theme in addition to the goal? This is a trick I picked up from the grandmaster overlord of storytelling, Francis Ford Coppola. I listened to a podcast interview with Coppola in which he recounted that when making The Godfather he used a single word to guide the creative process. Whenever Coppola reached a fork in the creative road he would use a single pre-determined word (“family”) to help him decide which way to turn.
This same principle can be applied to social media marketing. By developing goals one can tailor content for each platform. There are of course certain situations where it's impossible not to have duplicated content i.e. seasonal promotions. However, utilizing a single word as a guiding light for each platform will help you tinker with your phrasing just slightly to get your message across exactly as intended.
This exercise is by no means a quick-fix to social media strategy problems. To truly see the results of acheieving truly nuanced output across different platforms a business must passionately commit to working towards each goal day after day, week after week. Yet for those lost in the social wilderness, creating platform-focused goals can provide a definitive map for the future.
Are you interested in revamping your social media strategy but have no idea where to begin? Feel free to get in touch with me directly and I'll be happy to discuss how Bobsled Marketing can help create goals that will refine your digital voice across each platform.
