The Basics of an Effective Growth Social Media Strategy

First things first: keep it simple and keep it true to your brand. It is nearly impossible to create customer interest if you do not have any core values defined. Secondly, it’s essential to know how to communicate these values. Storytelling is a significant element for any successful CRM strategy. Suppose you figure out how to successfully establish your identity, and translate that identity and brand ethos via unique imagery curation. Voilá! You will find yourself standing out in a crowd with provocative and engaging storylines for your customers.

It’s time to grab your brand bible and pinpoint what you think makes your brand unique. Take those thoughts and transform them into keywords. For example, if you were building a yoga brand, perhaps you would use words such as wellness, wellbeing, or healthy lifestyle. Try to describe the industry you’re in and the lifestyle associated with it. 

You also have to think of your brand as a person and ask yourself: Where do I like to eat? Go shopping? Find entertainment? Work on my wellbeing? Which other similar brands do I like or buy? Once you have done that, research images representing this brainstormed lifestyle and bingo - you’ve got your “brand mood board”. 

To create these visual mood boards, we suggest getting creative and using classic sites such as Pinterest, or perhaps even crafting hand-made collages from magazines. Old-school or fully digital, you need to create a vision by dissecting the brand message hierarchy at its core.

Although it may seem obvious, we cannot iterate enough the importance of showing “support” within your industry. Follow, like, and share the posts, tweets, videos, or ideas of the brands that relate to your very own brand or industry. Not only does this boost SEO rankings, but it improves visibility in the feeds of people who otherwise would have never naturally stumbled upon your product. 

If you’re a small brand, you can follow 50-100 new followers a day. If you have a budget, you can automate that process with reliable third-party software. Remember, social media is all about “socializing”. Make sure you also invest in outbound marketing by boosting posts and creating campaigns. The more pages and people you tag in your posts, the more reach and impressions you can get.

This strategy bleeds into how you can achieve new potential targets. Analytics provides the strength and convenience needed when selecting a target audience. Still, you can also utilize social listening to understand what users are talking about and what aspects might be related to your industry. Nailing this gives you the power to start conversations with your audience and potential new users. You can monitor Social Media popular subjects and hashtags with Mention.

Once you’ve chosen how to communicate your core values through social media, translating that into imagery becomes relatively easy. And here you have two options: first, creating content in-house. Secondly, using user-generated content. 

Bear in mind that your content needs to be valuable, actionable, educational, relevant, and ultimately shareable. Make decisions when it comes to image style, color pattern, and filters. Invest in professional tools such as a DSLR or a mirrorless camera to optimize your content, and always shoot your images in RAW. 

Apps or programs such as Facetune, VSCO, Adobe Photoshop, and Snapseed can help you edit your pics. You can also create a content calendar to time and schedule each post using apps such as Preppr, Crowdfire, or Hootsuite.

A great way to generate awareness is by putting together an "Influencer Campaign". Part of this process includes planing your campaign, goal, budget, copy, briefing, and deadline. Make sure you have a good mailing of influencers to reach out to for collaboration too. We highly recommend being very clear when it comes to the terms of the partnership, and what the expected outcome is. If you don't have someone in-house to take charge of this, you can outsource the campaign from Influencer Marketing Platforms such as Takumi and Tribe.

Lastly, brand collaborations play a significant role in generating potential brand awareness and exposure for social media. We recommend reaching out to potential brand collaborators and inviting them to join a specific campaign to help cross-promote products related to the same industry. Growing alone is great, but growing together is better: an idea that applies to both small independent brands and well-established organizations.