Sunday, October 30, 2016

To Choose and Sustain Social Media, Look at Content, Audience and Metrics



When a company or organization decides to utilize social media as a marketing channel, the primary objective should be to drive engagement, interaction and conversation. But as in life, there are many kinds of conversations to have, depending on the situation and the people you’re chatting with. The organization has to decide the flavor of the conversations it can best start and sustain based on its business and its customers; those decisions will drive number of and types of social media platforms it spends time and money on. 

I will play out this social media platform selection process using the example of a community college. Given that these institutions deal with many different programs, services, offerings and audiences, they will most likely need to employ at least a few platforms to allow such varied content and appeal more directly to certain segments of their audience. Plus, once platforms are selected, content has to be carefully monitored and measured to ensure engagement is being maximized.
   
Types of Conversation
The first step to finding the right social platform(s) for your organization is to look inward and determine what you have to offer social users, that is, the kind of conversation starters in which you can excel, and then see which platform is most conducive to those. Examples of questions you may ask at this point include, “What is theunique purpose of this platform?” and “Do its attributes relate to mybusiness’s needs?” 

A community college has a variety of content to share -- helpful how-tos about enrolling and succeeding in college, news and information about campus life and offerings, personal stories of students and staff, and much more. The mostflexible platform that allows for such variety is Facebook. There’s a reason it is said that “Almost any business can benefit from having a Facebook page."

But some of the college’s news needs to get out quickly and succinctly, such as sports scores, day-of event reminders and so on. Given that Twitter is more of an “in the moment” type of platform, the college may also choose to use it as a social platform. 

Then there is the college’s Workforce Development arm, which offers professional development courses and training to local businesses and professionals. To convey that area’s expertise and reach more of a B2B audience, the college may want to establish a presence on LinkedIn. And assuming there is a robust library of imagery to use – campus photos, student photos, etc. – a visual platform like Instagram or Snapchat may also be useful.  

Confirm Audiences are in the Room
Of course, just because these are the kinds of conversations the college feels prepared to have with its students and district residents doesn’t mean those audiences feel the same way. Before launching on any of these social media platforms, the college, like any other organization, has to make sure its prospective and/or current customers are in the room, so to speak. 

Start by looking at third-party data regarding the platform’s demographics and usage statistics to find out. Not only is Facebook the most versatile platform in terms of content possibilities, it’s also the largest in terms of user base. More than 70%of adult Internet users are active on the platform; in other words, 62% ofAmerican adults are on Facebook

Compare that to LinkedIn, where just a quarter of online adults are active. Still, when it comes to audiences, quality trumps quantity, and LinkedIn can deliver the desired audience for those professional training opportunities. “Fully 46% of online adults who have graduated from college are LinkedIn users, compared with just 9% of online adults with a high school diploma or less." LinkedIn also skews a bit older as the only major social media platform where users ages 30-49 outnumber those ages 18-29.

To reach its core audience of current high schoolers and other young adults looking for traditional college courses, visual platforms may be the college’s best choice.Just over 40% of smartphone owners ages 18-29 use an auto-delete messaging app like Snapchat, while 55% use Instagram

Third-party data is valuable, but so too is any organizational data you can bring to bear on the decision. For example, an organization can upload its current customer lists to Facebook and see how many matches there are; that will demonstrate what percentage of your current customers use that platform. 

Of course, another option to find out not only where customers are, but where they want to engage with you, is to ask them directly through a customer survey. Sure, third-party data tells us that a majority of young people are using Snapchat, but given its private, ephemeral nature, are they really looking to engage with brands there or just their friends? A survey can answer that question for your organization.  

Is Conversation Lively or Listless?
Once an organization establishes a presence on a social media platform, the work is far from over. Granted, if you’ve done solid work on determining content and audience up front, no chosen platform should be an absolute failure or waste of resources. Still, you must continually test your conversation starters to see if they’re resonating and driving that all important interaction. Most platforms have built-in analytics tools that track things like comments, shares, etc. To get even more sophisticated, a marketer can do as Chris Lake suggests and create an “interaction index” in which different kinds of interactions are scored differently based on audience effort and engagement value. For example, a comment would be scored higher than a like as it requires more effort on the part of the user and so denotes a higher level of involvement. Marketers can then look at what kinds of content and posts generate the highest interaction scores and add more of those to their editorial calendars. They can also compare interaction scores by platform to see which deserve the most time and resources.    

Conclusion
Entrepreneur’s website asserts, “When it comes to choosing which social media platforms you'll utilize, select those that offer the best potential for reaching your ideal audience and broadcast the type of media you've decided is best suited for your company." I agree with that formula of content/media plus audience for the initial platforms choice; however, when it comes to determining ongoing resource allocation and measuring overall success, organizations must also add in meaningful interaction/engagement metrics.     

1 comment:

  1. Super rationale and case for the various platforms. Excellent writing.

    ReplyDelete