It all begins with understanding your audience and the spaces they occupy.

Then you can craft value-adding content that speaks to your audiences in the channels they love. Doing so allows you to have a trusted voice on social media, as opposed to bombarding your target audience with generic content everywhere.

Here are the five key aspects to consider when selecting your social media channels:

1. Who uses this channel and what are they using it for?

Questions regarding this include:
  • Is it an important channel for your target personas?
  • What conversations are going on here?
  • What content type works best?

2. Will this channel help you achieve your objectives?

Consider why it makes sense for your business or brand to use this channel. Subsequently, think about what goals will you pursue through your activities on it.

3. Does the channel align with your content mission?

Questions to ask in this area could be:
  • Will your content be viewed as unique and valuable, or will the community find it intrusive or irrelevant?
  • Have your competitors established a strong presence?
  • Could you lead the conversation on this channel for your brand’s positioning?

4. What results do you want to achieve?

Think about what you should be asking followers to do after engaging with our content; is it to share, comment, visit, subscribe or shop? Consider whether this community would be likely to take an action.

Following this, ensure that you have the right metrics, monitoring and KPIs to measure success. Make note of the content that best performs on your platform, and keep your strategy relevant to your specific audience. 

Talk to your audience, not at them. People trust brands that give back, whether you're providing valuable information, entertaining, sharing news, or simply providing a safe place where they can be with other people going through similar experiences.

Tools can make social media management easier and aggregate your posts over several platforms using real-time stats, however, repetitive posts on multiple platforms run the risk of brand blindness and unsatisfied target audiences wondering why they're seeing duplicated content.

This leaves marketing professionals with the challenge of not just streamlining social media presence, but also making content that matters. Quality over quantity is the rule of thumb; take more time strategising and producing relevant content for your channel that connects and adds value to your followers.

For more information, visit www.gullanandgullan.com. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.