Social Media Strategy Archives - Post Control Marketing

I began college in engineering, switched to another major, and then journalism before finding advertising in undergrad and marketing in grad school. Yet I don’t view those other classes as wasted. I firmly believe that diverse knowledge helped make me a better marketer. The same is true for social media strategy.

Marketing via social media is unique and requires different skills from marketing, advertising, public relations, personal sales, and customer service professionals that can be more relevant to different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Customers’ needs and interests change when they’re in different stages of the buyer’s journey. Social media marketers should create unique content and engage in unique ways during these stages. Yet, the best person for the job isn’t always a marketer.

In your business or organization, you have different people or departments better suited for various content and response depending on buyer stage. Diverse employees and departments are best suited for communicating with and appealing to consumer interests and needs in these distinct stages.

Optimize your social media strategy with appropriate content and engagement from those employees, disciplines, and departments. Distributing social responsibilities to the most relevant people can be more effective and efficient. This often requires alignment of goals and objectives, software integration, and a system to identify, sort, and assign social media tasks across siloed departments.

A cross-discipline approach tailors content and engagement to consumer needs. It also can help scale one-on-one social media engagement spreading out time and costs across department responsibilities, budgets, and staff. To ensure the most appropriate people are creating the content and engagement follow these suggestions for each stage.

Pre-purchase Stage Content, Engagement, and Disciples.

During the pre-purchase stage, B2C or B2B consumers are not actively seeking to buy. They may have a general interest and are simply exploring and learning. Or they may have a problem but have not realized the solution yet. In the pre-purchase stage use social media listening to find people in the market who haven’t purchased. Listen for brand, product, category, competitor, or specific product and service mentions.

Marketing and advertising can contribute by creating relevant messages and content. This includes content from followers and reviews. Monitor conversations to engage with marketing-related questions.
Public relations can monitor for reputation issues and negative mentions must be managed. PR uses media and influencer outreach to generate earned media awareness.
Sales reps create and share valuable content and answer consumer questions to generate leads.
Customer service can create satisfied customers who share positive experience reviews and make more purchases turning customer service into marketing.

Purchase Stage Content, Engagement, and Disciples.

During the purchase stage, people are interested in buying and are seeking the best options. They’re looking for value, convenience, special offers, guarantees, and signals that your product or service is the best for their needs and budget. In the purchase stage use social media listening to find people seeking purchase information such as prices, offers, stock numbers, contact information, shipping options, or store hours.

Marketing and advertising can help answer questions, and provide additional information related to the product, service, and offers.
Public relations create content to educate via media and influencer outreach. PR looks for competitor comparisons and 3rd party endorsements for social sharing.
Sales reps in B2C directly interact with customers to facilitate sales. B2B sales reps engage identifying leads to set up appointments and sales presentations.
Customer service can respond to any technical and account issues or complications in the purchase process that may prevent a sale.

Post-purchase Stage Content, Engagement, and Disciples.

During the post-purchase stage, people have purchased your product or service but are looking for validation that they made the right decision. In most markets, there are many options and buyer’s remorse may creep in. There may be complications, issues, or hiccups that come with a new purchase. In the post-purchase stage use social media listening to look for current customers seeking help with product usage, problems, and account issues. Also, seek happy customers who share positive product and service experiences.

Marketing and advertising can create messages that reassure purchase decisions, share messages of happy customers, and build brand community through offers and loyalty programs.
Public relations creates relevant brand and earned media that engages current customers, other stakeholders, and influencers to maintain relationships.
Sales representatives can follow up with customers to ensure they are happy with regular interaction while encouraging referrals and additional sales.
Customer service can resolve any post-purchase issues to help with retention and loyalty, plus contribute to positive social media comments and reviews.

Social media marketing is more than marketing. Are you missing out by not working across disciplines and organizational department silos?

Customizing listening and response with cross-discipline teams in social media can help scale social media engagement. Meeting different needs of consumers through all stages of the buying cycle can help businesses achieve their overall goals more effectively and efficiently.

Another way to improve your social media content is to consider the right content in the right places. For help see my post “Does The Shoe Fit? How To Make Your Social Media Marketing More Strategic” including a Social Media Content Planning Template.

This Content Was Human Created!

I taught a social media strategy class this summer and I was surprised to find most students were not very active on social media personally. At first, I was stunned. This was a social media class after all. Would you take a film class if you didn’t watch movies?

After getting to know the students I found two reasons for this inactivity. It was a graduate course with a mix of older professionals and younger students right out of undergrad in our 4+1 MBA program. The older professionals never really got into social media. The younger students deleted personal accounts like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat for negative personal effects.

To see if this was unusual, I posted on a social media professor’s Facebook group asking if other instructors saw this in their classes. The number of responses indicate it’s not unusual. Most professors notice students backing away from personal social media use and mention reports of people limiting social media to focus on wellness.

This is a graph showing a stead increase in the search term

Focus On Social Media Wellness Is Increasing.

Social media apps have faced increasing scrutiny for their negative effects on youth. It’s been a year since the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on youth mental health and social media. This fall an increasing number of U.S. schools are Implementing student cellphone bans amid a mental health crisis and decreased learning. I instituted tech limits in my classes after the pandemic due to negative learning outcomes.

A recent article from Very Well Mind shared the news that TikTok is adding automatic 60-minute daily time limits for users under 18. This may not be surprising considering the recent scrutiny over teen social media use. What was interesting is that the article also posed the question, “Could everyone benefit from similar time limits?”

The article makes a good case for restrictions citing a study from the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking which found people who stopped using social media (Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram) for a week had significant improvements in their anxiety, well-being, and depression. The average age of study participants was 30.

Very Well Mind interviewed Jamilia Jones, a clinical therapist who says, “By learning to set boundaries on the time and energy we invest in scrolling through our feeds, we can potentially reduce feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness often associated with excessive social media consumption.”

Limits Can Help Users Maintain A Healthier Work-Life Balance.

In full disclosure, I had particular trouble writing this article because I kept feeling drawn to check my social media. That Facebook group and my LinkedIn. I’ve been posting about AI recently which has sparked a lot of conversation. I wanted to see if anyone else has Liked or commented.

Ex-Facebook president Sean Parker has admitted that Facebook was developed with the objective: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” This led to features such as the “Like” button to give users “a little dopamine hit.” Parker continued, “It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

Some return to social media to see how many Likes a post, picture or video got to feel good. Others, turn to social for news or to fill time but find themselves “doomscrolling” as algorithms serve up more negative content because it keeps us engaged. This can lead to anxiety, depression, and isolation. That’s the bad. But there’s still plenty of good.

What If Your Job Is Social Media?

Social media still has many positive personal benefits. It is also a driver of business for large companies and local pizza shops. We need social media professionals and I teach students how to become them. How do you strike a balance between professional social media use while guarding against negative personal social media effects?

Boundaries to consider are social personal use, professional use (career), and company use (posting for a brand). It’s easy for these to bleed together when all are accessed anytime, anywhere from the same device. Social media professionals specifically report having a hard time with work-life balance.

We’ve talked about the negative health effects from social media, and social media professionals spend the most time there. The field is changing all the time so there’s pressure to keep up and it’s hard to leave work at the office when social media is 24/7/365. Emma Brown at Hootsuite suggests several ways to avoid social media burnout.

Ways to avoid social media burnout:

Set boundaries. Have social media–free time. Turn off work streams after work.
Give eyes a rest. Eye strain can lead to irritated eyes, neck and back pain, plus can cause headaches.
Get up and move. Walk (without your phone) regularly for mental and physical health breaks.
Get some sleep. Sleep (without devices) is healthy and makes you more productive.
Structure time. Assign parts of your day to specific activities (one-hour blocks).
Delete apps. Make your phone a personal device. Manage brand social on a laptop.
Digital detox. Take digital free time off for a night or weekend to recharge.

Do You Have To Be Personally Active On Social To Be A Social Media Professional?

This question got the most responses in the social media professors group. Some clearly say that you can’t make students be on social media even for a social media class. But others make a strong point that you can’t be a social media marketer without knowing what it is like to be on social media.

Companies used to want to hire college students to run their social media because they knew grew up spending their time on social media personally. I worried that they didn’t know enough about the business side of marketing strategy. Twelve years after I began teaching social media strategy we may see the opposite.

Today students could be studying social media marketing but limiting personal use or even deleting social media apps. A survey of 18-to 27-year-olds found significant regret over social media use. While 52% said social media benefited their lives, 29% said it harmed them personally. In fact, about half of Gen Z wish TikTok (47%) and Twitter/X (50%) were never invented.

What about current social media pros? Do they need to be active on every social platform to do their job well? Or can they run social media business accounts on platforms like TikTok and Twitter/X but not have their own account to limit personal exposure?

What Does All This Mean?

I’ve been teaching social media marketing for over a decade, have created social media campaigns for clients, and have a social media marketing book. I have benefited from social media personally and professionally. I’m obviously not recommending deleting or banning social media. But I think it’s obvious we need more balance.

I resisted having AI write this article, but I did turn to Copilot for some ideas on how to find more balance in our social media use. I think the suggestions are a good beginning.

An image of suggestion that Copilot had for balancing social media use by setting boundaries, using technology like screen time, prioritizing real-life relationships, curating your feed, and mindfulness. — Copilot doesn’t use social media, but has good suggestions for us to manage our social media use. Generated with AI (Copilot) ∙ September 6, 2024 2:30 PM

Have you seen the social media wellness trend? What does it mean for you personally and professionally whether you are a social media pro or a social media professor?

This Was Human Created Content!