Social media savviness is THE way to get people talking about your brand. Boosting web traffic, increasing brand exposure and gaining an insight into your market can all be achieved by utilising social media wisely.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and whatever the next generation of social media brings, are all powerful tools to build positive relationships. Our strategic approach assists our clients to select the right social media platforms to engage with their audience as well as plan their content strategy.
We pride ourselves on being an agency that listens to our clients to understand their market and their place in it.
We build social media campaigns to catapult brand awareness, enhance customer service or drive sales. Our team of designers can produce anything from style guides for self implementation to completelymanaged social media content design.
Not having a social media presence today is like making yourself ex-directory in the 1980’s. You cannot expect to reach your target audience if you don’t let the world know you are there. With over 2.5 billion social media users projected by the end of 2017, can any business really afford to not be connected?
Well executed social media content design will drive targeted traffic to targeted information, with killer content for SEO leading to better search rankings. At the same time social media acts as a powerful tool for connecting with an audience and industry leaders.
Social media marketing is also one of the most insightful methods of relationship building. With instant reactions to posts or information gathering about the products/services customers are buying, liking and sharing leads to more relevant contact and more beneficial interactions.
Choosing the most relevant social media platforms is a crucial element of your social media strategy. This is something that your social media design agency should be able to provide a deep level of insight on. For the vast majority of organisations, being on every network is not the right choice. Creating a strong presence takes time and knowledge and it is better to concentrate on the social media platforms that work best for each specific set of circumstances.
Your social media design agency will know the audiences that different platforms reach and what content works best where, helping you to make the first important steps in the positive use of social media.
Any social media design agency will automatically be considering the top 5 and how they fit your needs and that of your audience:
Facebook – the most used and recognised network in the world with over 1.79 billion monthly active users and the number of likes generated daily increasing year on year. The average time per visit is a healthy 20 minutes and every 60 seconds around 510,000 comments are posted.
With statistics like this Facebook reigns supreme but that does not mean it is by default the right social media platform to post on. Facebook suits B2C social engagement especially with young to middle aged demographics. Typically speaking, it is simply not used for B2B social media content.
Your fans on Facebook are also likely to be incredibly content hungry. Posting every now and then with half-hearted or poor quality content will invariably not deliver satisfactory results. Facebook is a perfect example of where your social media design agency should be providing you with good quality social media content design that is targeted to your audience.
Instagram – Content is based purely on photo or video posts with this platform and is almost entirely mobile. Ideally it is suited to the more creative and artistic industries as well as other highly visual industries such as travel, retail and fashion. Instagram is also the staple diet of nearly every teenager on the planet for showing the world what they are doing at any given time making it a huge stage for an audience eager to know what is hot right now.
As with Facebook, quality of content is key so having a good social media design agency that can produce and advise on great social media content design, will pay dividends.
Twitter – with its limitation on character number, Twitter is perfect for short, sharp updates boosted with video, images, links and more. Hitting a global audience in a very short space of time, Twitter is also extremely effective for customer service and customer support applications.
At the end of 2016 there were over 300 million active monthly users posting content, retweeting and sharing for instant results. The key is relevant, well designed and snappy content that is worthy of being shared and going viral.
Twitter is a social media platform that will likely have a mix of own published content as well as more strategically focussed content that is developed in conjunction with your social media design agency.
LinkedIn – the most popular platform for professional networking and industry connections to share business related information. With over 400 million registered users and available in 24 languages, content shared on LinkedIn is within a truly global business network.
Primarily seen as a recruitment tool for many, it is actually an effective platform on which to connect and forge relationships with target business spearheads all over the world or why not become a global thought leader yourself?
Your social media design agency should ideally help you set the strategy for your social media content on LinkedIn. This will enable you to develop content and profit from this excellent channel for B2B.
YouTube – with an average of 1 billion mobile video views per day and reachable in 76 different languages, YouTube is a huge platform on which to place content. With over 3 billion searches every month, YouTube is also considered by many to be the second largest search engine in the world. That is if you class a search engine as a site that only serves its own content. In any case, YouTube and more importantly, video content is just huge.
Whether it be as a promotional tool or as a means to get recognition for posting industry insights and expertise, YouTube is the most important place you can be sharing video content.
Of course the big five mentioned above are the usual suspects in the Social Media realm but there are so many others that should be considered too. There are other big names such as snapchat, Google+, Pinterest and Flickr. Newer platforms are already making big waves such as Periscope, as well as a whole host of industry specific and niche platforms.
While these lesser known platforms will have much smaller user bases, it is important to realise that they often have the most committed and devoted users too. Therefore these smaller platforms can in some cases put you right at the centre stage of a perfect audience. Knowing which platform is best for a business and having the right content for that platform is where your social media design agency will be invaluable.
A good social media design agency is one that listens. What a client needs and what a client wants can be the same thing or they can be miles apart but any project should begin by understanding a clients’ market and their place within it. From here a social media strategy can be built to push forward brand awareness, sales and customer service.
There are a wide range of methodologies and each social media design agency will likely tackle your project in their own unique way. However, as a general guide there are certain steps a social media design agency will take to ensure maximum results are achieved:
Making a positive forward progression is only really possible if you know what you are working towards. Creating an understanding of the client and their aspirations within social media will help put a structure to the fundamental strategy. For example, increasing brand awareness or reducing marketing costs. Your social media design agency should be able to help you clearly define and document what your goals should be.
There is simply no point having objectives if they are not measured constantly and consistently; monitoring for performance and relevancy. If the KPI’s are not being met, it may be that content posted or platforms used need to be adjusted in order for them to be met.
Social media design agencies will also be able to advise and implement analytics and tracking tools which will expose strengths and weaknesses in a social media campaign.
A social media design agency will do all the leg work needed. Background research in to which audiences to target and how best to target them through social media is vital for success.
Knowing relevant ages, occupations, interests, likes, dislikes and many more attributes of the audience a client wants to attract, will determine which social media platforms to use and how to design social media content that will be consumed, shared and liked.
Targeting relevant audiences and positively engaging with them will also help to make your social media investment cost effective as your campaigns will be kept specific and effective.
Checking out similar organisations and their social media presences not only keeps you up to date with who is doing what but it can also give a social media design agency insight in to what works and what doesn’t.
Seeing what platforms are used, how successful other social media content design has been and what the responses are, will show what is currently trending and engaging audiences. Successful competitor analysis could be the key to finding an angle or competitive edge.
All the information gathering above will ultimately lead to deciding which platforms will work best for which client to bring the best returns on investment. Your social media design agency can also help to deliver a content plan. This will cover what to post, when and where so that the right spread and frequency is achieved.
With all the elements of an underlying strategy nailed down, the creative work can begin. Content is king, without it there is no social media presence. The wrong or poor quality social media content design will often result in a negative presence. The right content to the right audience brings with it engagement, shares, likes and improved conversion rates.
