Jason Davis — December 20, 2017 Our social media accounts reflect our story and culture at Element 502. We share content and our brands mission on 4 channels. First is our blog then Facebook and finally LinkedIn and Instagram. Each channel is unique in how we approach this. Facebook is everything and whatever in between. Instagram is behind the scenes. Our blog is the hub where all podcasts and videos reside. And finally LinkedIn is how we connect professionally through our company reps personal profiles with case studies and white papers.
Sounds simple right? It couldn’t be farther from the truth. Using Social Media can enhance morale and attract new customers. It’s worth coming up with a strategy and sticking to it. But be ready for the hard work.
Social media is not just a marketing tool
Social media doesn’t just aid in marketing your company to attract business. Social media is extremely useful to engage and create a culture where employees are encouraged to come to work. Every job should have some mechanism where there are monthly social activities with the team. Not just Holidays and Birthdays. This allows your team to gel. It also allows them to detox from the stress of the job and to step back and evaluate how far they’ve come in the company. As well as how far the company has come thanks to their efforts. All this boosts moral and translates to cleaner and better work flows. It leads as well to productivity.
Making you look attractive to businesses
Being social online lets potential customers see you and your team as they work and play. No one wants to work with a person that is combative or difficult. Moreover, no one wants to work with someone that never smiles. Social media is usually the first thing people look at before your website to see the faces behind the company. Be aware of the impression you are giving online.
Social Media is hard work
I’ve heard a lot from people about how Element 502 looks like we are playing more than working. Well, thank you. But you’ve just been marketed to. Because our social presence shows you who and where we do the creative things that people want us to make for them. Planning a podcast with the team starts with a calendar invite and the hope that at least one person is available for a 20 minute recording. Doing tutorial videos takes an entire Saturday in a small quiet office or at home to record. Editing comes later. And writing this post has taken almost two hours to think about thoroughly, edit and type.
Crafting creative content takes hours and hours of time and creativity to make. It’s not production. Moments that happen in and out of the office are not always planned. Therefore, you have to be ready all the time and sometimes it feels more like a job than it should.
Not all content is worth posting. But not all content belongs to every channel. We use Instagram for the behind the scenes stuff. Video production, photoshoots and office antics. Facebook is the results of the photoshoot or video shoot or project we were working on. It’s a pretty simple strategy. But it takes some planning and time. So it’s not all play, but we’re happy that it looks like we are not stuffy, because what you see is what you get.
Be Authentic
Rehearsed moments look exactly like that. The tough situation is that if you are in a work environment that is not healthy, then doing social media is going to look staged and hallow. It’s actually best to wait to build up moral and implement social events with wide participation before doing social media. You can’t manufacture fun. And you can’t expect that strategy to work because when outsiders meet you in person, it’ll be very obvious that what is posted versus what is real doesn’t match.
Have a plan and stick to it
We’ve shared about social media strategies and how to implement them. It can’t be stressed enough about how after your environment is healthy and everyone is ready to participate and buys in on the strategy internally that you know have to set parameters.
Without parameters, you could see things posted that don’t genuinely reflect your companies values. Having a great space (office) helps show a lot to the outside world how awesome it is there. But most of the time it’s “what” not “where” you post.
3 fun things, 1 serious
There’s four weeks in a month normally. So try to at least post once a week. If you can post daily once a day then good. Just don’t spam by posting multiple times at once. Posting socially interactive content, my fancy way of saying “fun” things is a good start. Focusing on SEO, Conversions and other things first is way too early if you are not doing anything on social. So focus on getting eyes on your brand.
Brand Awareness is neglected in almost every situation we start with on managing customers social media. It’s all about a sale, not the friendly fun faces that you’ll engage services with. Again, no one likes working with negative Nancy’s. Share 3 things that are entertaining, then a blog posts, someone else’s posts or a case study. Ease your audience into “what you do” after “who you are.”
Don’t forget to reply, or sweat reviews
Once you get traction on social media something amazing will happen. But like meeting that person you are attracted to and they give you that look, be cool about it. Not every reply should be immediately jumped to the “sale.” If I like, comment or react to your post, that’s not a green light to post a link, or pitch me on your stuff. Take it slow. Like the comment back or leave a reaction. If it is a question or implied one, then respond.
Reviews are a nice feature on social media, particularly Facebook. however, if you don’t have anything I’ve written above worked out, then don’t turn these on. Also internal processes and tings need to be worked out if there are quality issues that are not rectified. Negative review however will occur and irate customers or just mean Facebook users will arise. No matter what happens do not lash back, just be apologetic (not show your belly) and move on after working to resolve the issues.
Reputation management is tough. No one on your team or ours wants to have to deal with a bad reputation of a company. It’s really difficult to win back trust and respect once it is lost. If you don’t have anything in place to manage reviews, don’t use them. Because it takes a lot of time to do so.
Finally the tools you’ll need
Creating content requires a workflow like anything else. You’ll need an editorial calendar to follow. This can be achieved in any time management app or production tool. Then you have to write the content and find imagery that works. Evernote and Pixabay are good places to start on a budget. Buffer is a great app to schedule posts to social media, but I would recommend using Facebook’s built in tools to schedule posts. Their algorithm works in strange ways that if there is a short-link from an external posting tool that is automated you’re chances of having that content seen or even noticed is slim. Facebook wants real people posting not bots.
We hope that this post is useful and you can take away something from it. Please like and share and leave a comment below if you have any questions or stories to share about how you are using social media.
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