Does The Shoe Fit? How To Make Your Social Media Marketing More Strategic.

In the CMO survey, 17% of marketing budgets are spent on social media and this is expected to increase to 20% this year. With increased spending, it is more important than ever to ensure you are spending that money effectively and efficiently. Placing the wrong content on the wrong platforms can be like showing up to a track meet with dress shoes or a wedding in track spikes.

What does the wrong content look like?

Let’s say you’re an apparel company and your audience believes your brand is out of style. You won’t convince them with Tweets about quality materials. High quality images of your new styles on Instagram and collabs with fashion influencers on TikTok would be a better fit. Yet a Twitter post sharing stats and facts about climate change could be good for a nonprofit cause that supports the environment.

When considering social media platforms, think about the kinds of content that will work best and the platforms ideal for that type of content. A good way to think this through is to first answer these three key questions about your target audience:

  1. What does the target audience currently think?
  2. What would we like the target audience to think?
  3. What visual/verbal message will move them from one to the other?

Why is the right place, for the right people important?

Getting the right content in front of the right audience at the right place is key. People go to different platforms for different reasons and may be in different stages of the buyer’s journey. You don’t want to squeeze a longer how-to video for current customers into a short Facebook video trying to attract new ones. Current customers would be searching for tutorials on YouTube.

Also, consider that different target audiences spend more and less time on different platforms and different products and services require different content. A gum brand like Orbit doesn’t need a tutorial or testimony, but for a business software service company like IBM tutorials and testimonials work. Each requires specific types of content to shift thinking.

How do I plan out the right content for the right platform?

The social media content planning template below considers different types of businesses or industries such as finance or fashion that tend to require different types of content.

First, decide your industry sector or category. Research and list the types of content customers in that industry market tend to seek. You can do this with consumer reports from market research firms like Mintel, conduct your own surveys, or simply talk to current customers and/or your front end employees and salespeople. They are the closest to your customer’s questions and needs.

Next, consider that your target audience may also need to see different types of content based on the stage in the buyer’s journey. Take your long list of content ideas and categorize by buyer’s journey stage:

  1. Awareness
  2. Interest
  3. Consideration
  4. Conversion
  5. Use
  6. Opinion
  7. Sharing

Finally, consider the type of content appropriate for your industry, ideal customer, and stage. Keep in mind the following categories of types of social media content:

  1. Educational
  2. Interactive
  3. Inspirational
  4. Authentic
  5. Entertaining
  6. Promotional

This social media content planning template presents what we just discussed with example types of content under each category to help jump start your thinking.

Don’t let another day go by this year before considering if you’re sharing the right content in the right places to improve your social media marketing.

A social media content planning template can help you brainstorm content for your client, company, or organization based on the industry and content needed in the buyer journey stages.

This could be especially useful after conducting a social media audit. To turn audit recommendations into a social media plan, use the content planning template above to brainstorm types of content for the most effective and efficient social media.

Does the shoe fit when it comes to your social media marketing content and platforms?

This Was Human Created Content!

TikTok’s 1 Billion Users: What You Need To Know For Social Media Marketing.

Tiktok is a social media short-form video app for creating and sharing lip-sync, comedy and talent videos. TikTok first grew in popularity in Asia and then the app’s parent company bought Musical.ly and merged the two apps under the TikTok name. In two years, Tiktok has quickly grown to 1 billion global monthly users. Unlike previous social networks that relied on organic growth, TikTok has invested in a huge advertising campaign on competing social platforms. Globally, TikTok users are younger than most other social platforms with 41% aged 16-24 years-old and 60% under 30.

Statistic: Most popular mobile social networking apps in the United States as of June 2019, by average session duration (in minutes) | Statista
Find more statistics at Statista

In the U.S., TikTok is the second most popular mobile social network app.

Facebook users spend an average of 13 hours per month on the app, while TikTok users have risen to 6 hours per month over Snapchat’s 3 hours. Average session length is high with nearly 10 minutes per session compared to Pinterest’s and Facebook’s 5 minute average and Snapchat’s 2 minute average. This isn’t surprising when you learn TikTok is one of the first social platforms to use artificial intelligence to show users more of what they like with advanced interest behavioral targeting.

Despite the growth and active engagement, TikTok is a niche audience.

With just 2% reach among U.S. mobile users placing it 16th behind Facebook with 91 percent reach and Snapchat’s 26 percent reach. Even among Gen Z, Instagram (65 percent), YouTube (63 percent) and Snapchat (51 percent) are still the most popular social networks based on daily use compared to TikTok (11 percent).

TikTok has unique and similar features to other social networks.

Like other social platforms TikTok users have a profile that includes a photo, username and bio. Users follow other accounts to see their videos. Popular videos are liked with a heart counter appearing over the video and organized by hashtags that appear as trending on a Discover Page. Examples of trending hashtags include #whywebrokeup, #rocktober, #facetrackingchallenge, and #MosaicZoom creatd by TikTok to promote use of a new creative effect.

The For You page is TikTok’s front page as it is the landing page when users first open the app. The For You page is based on an algorithm designed to show you more content similar to what you have liked in the past from people you do not follow. At the bottom of the page users can find content outside the For You algorithm through the Search and Explore page. This is the opposite of Instagram where when you open the app you first see content from users you follow, then you can switch over the Explore tab.

Getting on the For You page is important to going viral and is a goal of many users to grow their followers much like brand trying to get into the newsfeed of Facebook users. TikTok has not released information on what goes into a video making the For You pages, but many speculate it has to do with engagement such as likes and more people watching all the way through (retention rate). Hashtags related to what users have indicated they like also most likely matter, but many also include #foryou, #foryoupage, or #fyp trying to get on this page, gain more exposure and become TikTok famous.

TikTok enables users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. Videos can be sped up, slowed down and edited with filters and background music is selected from various music genres. Users can also create short lip-sync videos to popular songs. The react feature allows filming reactions in a small window over the main video. The duet feature you can film two videos beside each other. Unlike Facebook videos the default is to have the sound turned on. Therefore, subtitles are not has important.

Businesses can participate in the social platform.

Brands can create a brand channel and uploading and sharing relevant content. Brands can work with influencers to spread messages to a broader audience. TikTok offers social ads with some creative formats. TikTok ads include standard native in-feed video, brand takeovers that run full screen, and branded lenses that use AR face filters and 3D objects. Brands can also sponsor Hashtag Challenges that encourage user-generated content such as the #JumanjiChallenge.

 

TikTok offers social media advertising options.

TikTok ads can be targeted by age, gender, state-level geo-targeting and custom audiences from CRM lists. The platform also boasts advanced interest targeting based on their AI technology. Marketers set campaign periods and budgets paying on a cost per thousand (CPM), cost per click (CPC), or cost per view (CPV) basis. Advertisers besides Jumanji include Grubhub driving app downloads and the NFL courting younger viewers. TV stars such as Jimmy Fallon have embraced the new platform. His #TumbleweedChallenge created 8,000 videos with over 9 million views in just 7 days.

This fast growing social platform is not without controversy. The U.S. government opened up investigations into TikTok owner ByteBance alleging the Chinese company may be censoring politically sensitive content and questioning how it stores personal data. Users have also complained that their videos are being used in TikTok ads on other social platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram without being asked for paid. Yet, everyone who signs up for TikTok agrees to their terms of service (whether it is read or not):

“You or the owner of your User Content still own the copyright in User Content sent to us, but by submitting User Content via the Services, you hereby grant us an unconditional irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable, perpetual worldwide licence to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, make derivative works of, publish and/or transmit, and/or distribute and to authorise others users of the Services and other third-parties to view, access, use, download, modify, adapt, reproduce, make derivative works of, publish and/or transmit your User Content in any format and on any platform, either now known or hereinafter invented.”

These terms are similar to what other apps and social platforms have included in their small print, but perhaps they have been noticed more with the high profile of Tiktok’s ad campaign. California’s new data privacy law (CCPA) takes effect January 2020 with similar privacy protection and disclosure requirements to Europe’s GDPR. Many companies will be changing the way they disclose and what they do with people’s data to avoid fines.

Despite these concerns brands have moved forward on the platform to reach its young user base. How will your brand leverage TikTok? How will TikTok fit with your larger social media strategy? Ask These Questions To Ensure You Have The Right Strategy and consider Top Social Media Channels By Category.