Hurry! We need to react to the social audience and jump on the Kim Kardashian cover bandwagon. Get a meme ready!
(Does Social Media Timing Matter and Small Business Marketing …)
Cats are so hot right now. Make some viral content with cats.
What are the hottest Viners, YouTubers, and Instagrammers doing right now? Do that!
We need to stay relevant! What is everyone talking about?
Does any of this sound like you, anyone you know, or quite possible these are orders that are being directed to you? The desire to create viral content and content that we feel is relevant to the hottest trends creates a detachment from our actual consumer base. The resulting factor is content that doesn’t actually engage and build relationships with your consumers.
In Kim Kardashian’s efforts to #BreakTheInternet, she created a lot of noise; a lot of noise that a lot of people and brands tried to piggyback off of, but to what benefit? Before we jump on the latest trend or try to create content that is simply relevant, we must first ask ourselves what we are trying to accomplish by doing so. In the end, social audience media is meant to be social. It’s a medium to build engagement, not to spam or to post meaningless content that does nothing to build consumer trust and loyalty.
The following are 4 ways to engage and build a social audience with your media:
Table of Contents
Don’t get caught up in vanity metrics
Vanity metrics are numbers, and that is all they are. They don’t tell the whole story. They cannot tell you what your customer is trying to tell you, what drives their behavior, and what they want from you. If your content strategy revolves around “organic reach”, “likes”, and “followers”, you are not paying attention to your customer. Pay attention to your customer!
Relevant Content may not be relevant to your brand
If you focus on pushing content that piggybacks off the latest trends and topics you are not maintaining a consistent brand image. This diminishing factor hurts your overall brand because it confuses your customer. View relevant content as content that is relevant to your brand, your brand’s image, and is relevant to your actual customer while maintaining alignment with your brand.
Create content that actively promotes engagement
This means you have to talk to your customer and ask them to talk to you. Use content as a means of asking for their feedback. You’ll find out what like and dislike, but also what their desires are, what motivates them as a consumer, and how your brand fits into that.
Engage, engage, engage
When your customers engage with you in an open forum, you must reciprocate. Social audience media is social, and it is a very public forum. When your customer speaks to you, good or bad, or engages even in the smallest way with your content, do more than simply acknowledge their engagement. Keep in mind, other consumers see this, and you say far more about how you treat your customers by not engaging with a customer than you ever could by engaging.…