What’s a Game-Changer in Your Social Strategy?

I run the socials for a nonprofit that helps children with disabilities unlock learning and find their place in the world. We’ve seen so much success lately in video content that focuses on a single moment vs telling a full story. So a video of a student using a mobility device to go to one location, or doing one classroom activity with a teacher, or interacting with one piece of technology, instead of a video showing them doing all of these things. The reach on these singular moments (even if the video is the same length as the combined footage) is much higher because it’s easier for a general audience to digest and only focus on one thing at a time. That also means we can turn one filming session into many different pieces of content!

Game changer in my social strategy has been user-generated video! Video reaches our non-followers and it makes it possible to generate more video content that resonates with our audience. 

Seems basic, but trying to get my management to understand that social needs to be based on content our followers want to see rather than what WE want them to see. Always analyzing engagement and trying to understand what hits or misses and why.

I oversee my company’s owned channels, managing everything from content strategy to audience engagement. Through our efforts, we’ve discovered that LinkedIn performs best as a platform for sharing people-focused stories, such as employee highlights, customer success stories, and community initiatives. It’s far more effective for building connections and engagement than using it to promote product information or sales-driven content.

On a whim, we started sharing our email newsletters as LinkedIn newsletters. It has been a huge success! In less than a week we had more subscribers on LinkedIn than we had gained via email in over a year. 

Aside from using Sprout Social to help maximize our social strategy 😉, I’m getting traction by applying trending music or social tactics to our business-oriented socials. It’s important to us to start reaching a younger audience and this approach moves the needle as far as reach. 

Hello! I am part of the social media team at Agilent Technologies 
 

One shift that’s really changed how I think about social media strategy is leaning into micro-moments instead of trying to tell the whole story at once.

We used to pack a lot into our posts… multiple messages, full event recaps, or long form type posts where users could get lost with technical jargon.  But we started experimenting with content that focuses in on just one moment such as a single quote from a speaker, one behind the scenes photo, etc

Turns out, those smaller pieces of information perform better. They’re easier to digest, more shareable, and they give us more post able content from the same event or asset.

When creating content or auditing a social account I look at what is the customer walking away with? Am I entertaining them, teaching them, what is their take away? People don’t want ads. Social media is an exchange. No one keeps coming back to an account if they aren’t getting something of value. So I always ask why would someone share, save, or interact with this content and how can I show my product without it being sold. 

I’ve seen so many people talking about how important authenticity is in content, and that ‘people’ want to see ‘people’ not brands (which also means not heavily branded content). So I’ve been leading an initiative to help get our experts more active in advocating for themselves, which can in-turn bring more awareness to the brand behind them (us). Those Visible Experts (s/o Hinge Marketing) have been moving mountains in regards to brand awareness just within one quarter. Never thought I’d be in charge of ‘influencers,’ but here I am.

In-line with that, I’ve been the main video content creator/editor and trying to keep points SUPER simple & under a minute within our industry has been TOUGH.. but also paid off a bit more. Though I’m battling the entertainment factor with higher-ups, which is what social media is based off of, I’ve had a lot more folks within our firm open to creating content this year.

Lastly, I agree with a person above about: why would our audience engage with or share this piece of content? That’s going to be what each of the social platforms wants to see from your profile, more people actively engaging with your content. So it’s a nagging reminder in the back of my head whenever I create content.

I manage a non-profit social pages and one big mindset change I’ve had is posting more content that relates to the community and creating video content has really changed my impression and engagement metrics. When our followers see their own story or a story that comes from the community they’re in I receive so much more organic engagement.