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How Senior Marketers can reduce Social Media Clutter in a Matter of Hours
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Discover the powerful combination of a simple tool and expert coaching with Willow.
Book a free demoUnsurprisingly, social media marketing is an important part of any good marketing strategy nowadays.
Have you been working as a marketeer for a few decades? Were you born in a time when the worldwide web didn’t even exist yet, let alone social media? Then you might find it very difficult to stay on top of social media, with so many aspects that seem to be continuously changing. But no worries, we are here to help you out!
The challenge
Are you a senior marketeer with a few decades of experience, then you might recognize this. Your client or employer expects you to be an expert that knows exactly what to do to achieve results quickly. And this also goes for social media. But you are in over your head.
Most likely, you have a fixed monthly marketing budget. This budget must be used as efficiently as possible for the different social media channels. You have a strategy, but you are not too happy with it.
Social media strategy
Is social media marketing knowledge based on your (university) education and previous jobs? If so, your knowledge and consequently your social media strategy might be outdated.
Do you listen to marketing gurus, regularly watch YouTube movies or read blogs on websites like HubSpot to help you out with your strategy? Although you can find interesting content there, you also risk to lose focus easily and get overwhelmed.
Maybe your main strategy is then simply going in overdrive. You are dividing your budget over all the social media platforms that currently exist, both old and new ones. That way, you are hoping to get at least some results. Because you want to follow the trends, but at the same time you don’t want to set aside ‘older’ platforms such as Facebook.
Or perhaps you are listening to younger (marketing) colleagues or experts – Millennials or members of Gen Z – and spend all your budget on the flashiest and most trendy channel, such as TikTok. In this case hoping that your posts will go viral in no time.
Whatever resonates with you most, you are probably struggling to achieve the target numbers your client or employer is looking for. And this might make you feel like giving up, which ultimately has a negative impact on your mental state.
Are you struggling with your social media strategy as well? In what follow we will explain some very useful tips.
The importance of buyer personas
You probably recognize this: you are scrolling through Facebook and unless something is very appealing to you personally or catches your eye, you will just ignore it. The point is that the competition on social media is extremely high these days. And this is why it is so important to target your audience. And only your audience.
So what is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is simply a (fictional) ideal customer from your target audience. It is a persona that could be interested in your product or service.
Define the characteristics of your persona as detailed as possible. Write down the age, gender, hobbies, interests, but also the day-to-day struggles. This will help in determining which images and content are appealing to your audience.
In addition, you have to find out where your persona is spending his or her time online, which of course includes social media.
The social media behavior of your persona
Zooming in on the social media usage of your buyer persona is an essential part of your social media strategy. That is, if you want to make sure that this strategy is efficient. In other words, you have to find out which social platforms your audience uses.
The conclusion of this exercise will most likely be that your persona is mainly active on one or two social media channels. And then it becomes easy-peasy: put all your focus and budget on these channels.
Some tips:
- Analyse your current social media data, such as via the tab Statistics on Facebook. This shows the age of your fans and where they live.
- Dive in Google Analytics. You can set the source of traffic to your website, and select for example Twitter or Facebook. This way you can make a comparison and find out which social media channels generate the most website visitors.
- Launch a survey. In this survey you can ask which content people like, which platforms they prefer, but also what their interests are, as well as demographic characteristics.
No idea where your buyer persona spend his time (online)? We will explain some basics.
Which social media apps for which audience?
The usage of different social media platforms changes every year. If not faster. While Facebook was still the place to be about five years ago, we now hear that Zuckerberg’s first baby is slowly ‘dying’. We hear that Instagram is growing, but also that TikTok is on its way to become number one.
Although this is all true, it does not mean that your audience is also using these social media apps. A short overview:
- LinkedIn is an amazing platform for networking, especially for service driven companies. LinkedIn is the best platform for B2B content. With the exception of the youngest people, you can find professionals of all ages and fields.
- Facebook remains the biggest social media platform today. For many companies, from all fields – B2B, as well as B2C – Facebook is the place to be to share news, updates, positive reviews and tips. In addition, this platform is extremely useful for employer branding content.
- Instagram was originally strongly visually-oriented, and this is still true today. Especially teenagers, twenty- and thirty-somethings are very active on Instagram nowadays. Instagram is also very useful for employer branding, brand awareness and B2C content.
- TikTok is the biggest video platform used by Gen Z, but has also gained popularity among somewhat older generations. TikTok is used to share playful and funny content. If your company doesn’t really have a fun factor, you should forget this app.
- Twitter can be seen as some sort of mini blog platform. Here you can share the latest developments within your company, as well as give your opinion on news, relevant for your domain. It may come as a surprise, but the last few years twenty- and thirty-somethings constitute the largest active group on this app.
Do you need help defining your buyer persona and the most important social media channels to focus on? The coaches from Willow are here to help you out!