Social media strategy should start off small. The most important thing is to get your social media presence off the ground, learn as you go, and improve over time. Use the steps of creating goals, developing good content, and creating a simple monitoring plan as a launchpad to either get your social media interactions off the ground, or improve a stagnating online presence.
Create Goals
It might seem obvious, but your financial institution’s leadership team should sit down and have a conversation about your goals of your social media presence. In particular, you should think about the following:
- Who is your target audience? This factor alone will drive a number of decisions and shape the way you think about your brand, your content, the platforms you use and your overall approach to communication. This target audience might consist of multiple audiences, which should be thought of as unique entities that require varied approach for your social media presence.
- What platforms do you want to use? Popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat offer unique pros and cons, from their ability to leverage visual storytelling to their age demographics they do the best at engaging. Consider the capabilities of your team and the pros and cons of each of these platforms, identify what you want to leverage, and build your social media plan with those diferent mediums in mind.
- What level of engagement are you willing to commit to? Your team should understand the capacity of your resources, how often your want social media postings to happen, what type of content you want to post, and how responsive you want to be to your customers’ comments and interactions on your various social media forums. Additionally, you should pre-define what kind of analytics, measurement, or follow-up processes you want to occur on the back end of your social media strategy.
Develop engaging content
Once you have a concrete strategy in place, your team should work to develop meaningful, engaging content that will drive traffic to your pages, garner interaction and promote your brand in a positive manner. Focus on these aspects of your content:
Visual Appeal. Image-focal content grabs the eye during a “scrolling session,” captures the readers attention, and is a gatekeeper for interaction. Make sure you utilize visuals to deliver content quickly, whether from a photograph, infographic, or other form of visualized data.
Storytelling. If you have meaningful statistic, think of a customer who exemplifies that positive statistic. Use personal stories to communicate greater ideas and personalize the message you’re delivering.
Actionable content. Make sure you evaluate the goal of every post. Are you trying to improve your brand’s appearance, drive a sale, re-direct people to your website? Make sure your content provides an opportunity for action and deeper engagement with your brand.
Brand personality. Try to develop a consistent tone in your brand’s postings. Whether informative, appealing to sentiment, or comical, you should try to strike a consistent personality through your posts and interactions. This consistency helps people identify with your brand and think of you as a person or friend, rather than a service provider.
Promote, Monitor and Adjust
Once your strategy and posts are in place, pour fuel on your social media fire! Investigate ways that advertising, affiliates and other services can increase your reach. Make sure to monitor your various stats, like unique impressions per post, likes and number of shares, and point your organization in a positive trajectory, trying to increase your reach over time. Pay attention to the types of post that garner the most engagement, and work hard to replicate that success in creative and unique ways.
