Arek Dvornechuck:
Let's start with some basics. What are the basics of social media strategy?
Jody Haneke:
Sure. So the basics of social media strategy are essentially about, in my mind. It's extending you know, what we've done in a physical world in a virtual world, right? So as far as networking socializing even the way you interact with people and you build relationships. Social media strategy allows you to take that and scale that online through the various digital media platforms.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Yes, that totally makes sense.
Arek Dvornechuck:
What kind of tips you can give us to create contents?
Jody Haneke:
Sure. Yeah, so you know, talking about social media marketing is It's really not the starting point. The starting point is what is your content marketing strategy, right? So, you know in that in that regard it it's kind of the new version of marketing, which is not. It's kind of less in-your-face sales and more about like hey, who is our target audience? What type of content are they interested in that's kind of related to our industry? Or our area of specialization. How can we create unique and compelling content around that that our target audience is interested in consuming? And then and then publish that. And then the social media strategy really is a way to get people to engage with said content. So every It needs to start with a strong foundation and that strong foundation is a content marketing strategy.
Arek Dvornechuck:
How to perform data research to point about your target audience?
Jody Haneke:
Sure, yeah. So usually at the point when you're trying to define your target audience, you usually already have like your product or service right? And I think what you need to do to take a step back and say, "Alright. What problem are we solving?" So you make sure you can clearly articulate that there's a pain point that you have a solution, that you do it unique and more compelling than your target audience or I'm sorry, than your competitors. And then you say, "Okay? Well, well who in this market has this pain? You know and they have it to the level where you know, they have a high level. of need as far as need to buy is concerned. And then you start making some assumptions and again I use the word assumptions all the time because until you actually perform any form of digital marketing, you are making some assumptions, right? So you make some assumptions about who they are, where they are, where they hang out online.
Arek Dvornechuck:
How about doing research? Researching your competitors. Do you have any tips on you know finding about your competitors?
Jody Haneke:
Yeah! I mean, obviously you know any areas of social media strategy marketing, you know, taking a real Deep look and research into the competitive landscape is not only going to help you see what they are doing that is successful and things that maybe you do want to adopt but also like what the white space is within the competitive landscape. So, you know the idea being that you know, you've got five direct competitors out there and they're addressing very similar things. But hey, there's this one area or one unique part of our solution that they're not. Maybe we need to hang our hat on there so that we can stand out and like I said fill in that white space within the market. I think people underestimate looking at comparable companies to notches competitors, right?
Arek Dvornechuck:
So how about creating engaging content? You know, people say that the best way to create content is to actually create videos and then would be audio next and then text would be probably last on the list. Would you agree with that?
Jody Haneke:
Yeah, I mean the numbers are there to support that multimedia content, video content, audio content and all of that stuff definitely rates better as far as responses are concerned. The challenge there is just, you know, just the dedicated production time and effort required to produce that content, right? You know, it's pretty easy to whip out a tweet. It's a lot more challenging to create like a 5-page you know, white paper on some, you know, advanced topic. So I think what we do is we try to have a mix of those things.
Arek Dvornechuck:
What kind of tips you can give us to help us to help us figure out what social media platform should we use? Is it just a competitive research or what do you think?
Jody Haneke:
Well I think the competitive research helps. But again, that's still that's still just assuming. I think I think what you want to do is you know again, I don't look at things as black and white as that especially without the data to support it. I I would assume that you know, B2B you know LinkedIn is probably the way to go but I mean Let's face it. We’ve, our company performs very well on Facebook and Instagram, right? You know. So I'd like to make some assumptions but then just keep an eye on on the results. So again, 'coz back to what I was saying earlier about figuring out where your target audience is it's also figuring out where they are. I'd like to cast it a little bit of a wider net on that and then look at the results and then tune it from there because you might be surprised by where the best activity comes from.
Arek Dvornechuck:
And how about some tactical tips, you know how to post on those social media platforms because each of those social media platforms they have, they are different.
Jody Haneke:
Absolutely yes. So I think a common mistake that people make is they try to automate that whole process right? So they create a piece of content on their website, blog journal, whatever. And then they want to automate the process of sharing that with link backs and into the various different social media platforms. The problem is you really need to kind of tailor the message and the imagery per platform. A lot of times you see all the time where somebody's thumbnail of the related to the article is cropped in a way that's just sub-optimal and you know, you know bastardizes the brand.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Can you walk us through using hashtags and keywords and tagging other people? And how to go about that?
Jody Haneke:
Sure! Yeah, I mean. One of the one of the most effective social media campaigns that we ran was for a it was actually for a food truck rally in downtown, Tampa. And that's where our office is located and were very involved in the local community and that sort of thing and end up what we did is we created a piece of content. We shot the video interviews of the various different chefs and their food trucks and what not. And then we we edited that into it, you know, a short kind of viral social media video. And then it was the Food Truck Rally was put on by the mayor in the city of Tampa. So we went ahead and created that content shared in social media and then we went ahead and tag those various other entity.
Arek Dvornechuck:
How about from visual standpoint? How to stay consistent with your brand identity design?
Jody Haneke:
Yeah, I mean that goes back to the just optimization. Like I said earlier, it's just really crafting, you know, the post on a per platform basis so that you can make sure that, you know, if you're including images, iconography, photographs that you know, they're being displayed in a manner that's extremely consistent with your brand. The style that you use in, on the communication side on the written word side. You know, slightly different based on the platform, right? You know just kind of the way in which you work things in the length and it is a little bit different different from LinkedIn to let's say Instagram, right?
Arek Dvornechuck:
How do I schedule all of this?
Jody Haneke:
The answer to that question is going to come through kind of trial and error because it's depending on who the target is. When they're online? When they're not online? I mean it's going to be vastly different between you know a local bar restaurant versus a company that's selling you know, business to business software solutions. It really depends. And so again, I know it's kind of saying the same thing but it goes back to making some assumptions based on that, right? Who they are? What timing might make the most sense. But at the same time it also goes back to looking at the analytics and saying "Hey, you know, when we post on Tues our newsletter on Tuesday mornings, we get a much higher response rate than on Friday afternoons, right? So I think start with the assumptions and then and then monitor and see what's working and what's not.
