Optimizing Your Social Media Strategy

As social media continues to grow, we continue to see an increased role for businesses and influencers worldwide. Social media has the power to allow you to raise awareness, engagement, and communication with your target audience. That’s why it’s become crucial for brands to establish an identity and social strategy to best optimize all that these platforms have to offer.Here are some tips I have learned:

Brand Consistency

Brand identity is important for growth and recognition. When your brand is consistent, it is easily identified by these key factors. Start with a branding kit; Planable provides a great article on how to build a branding kit. First, establishing colors that fit your brand and the messages you wish to convey to your audience. Once you have chosen your colors, it's time to pick the font that best showcases your brand tone. From here, it's all about consistency in color palettes, logos, bios, and messaging across all platforms.Another way to establish consistency is within the content you post and share on your business’s website. Evaluate your current communication goals and establish content pillars that are working actions to achieving your goals. Once you have established these pillars, you can then implement them into your content calendar, making content creation easy.  

Understanding Target Audience

As all Public Relations professionals know, our main goal is to integrate mutually beneficial communication between the brand and its audience. Understanding your audience's needs and wants is just as important as achieving your own business goals. The better you can understand your audience, the better you can curate your content to their interests and desires, thus improving engagement rates. Beyond just your current audience, having a solid understanding of your desired audience’s demographics and physiographic provides the ability to build content to reach new audiences.

Research Industry Trends

Research. Research. Research. If there is one thing I’ve learned while studying Advertising and Public Relations, it is to back up all actions you take with research evidence. There is an abundance of information out there about industry trends. The largest trend we are currently seeing across all markets is the use of visuals. On social media, you only have a few seconds to gain attention to your post. Visuals are a quick eye-catching way to provide interest and information to your audience. Another trend we are currently seeing great success in on social media is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing was projected to become a 10 million dollar market in 2020. Influencers at both a Macro and Micro level can bring excellent traction to your brand.Social media is constantly changing, and the way we interact with it will continue to change along with it. It is important for professionals working in social media to ensure that they stay updated on all current and upcoming trends to best ensure they are fully optimizing their social strategy.

About the Author:

Whitnie Keyworth is a senior at Grand Valley State University studying Advertising and Public Relations. Whitnie is serving her second semester as an Account Associate for GrandPR. She has a huge passion for women’s empowerment and plans to work in the nonprofit industry. Whitnie hopes to create her own nonprofit that aims to educate and help women of all ages through their self-love journey. In her free time, she loves to take photos, travel and is always up for an adventure to try something new.

Twitter: @Whitnieeee_