Educate, entertain, engage & inspire — Part 02 A step by step guide
Quick disclaimer: If you haven’t read my last blog post “Educate, entertain, engage & inspire — Part 01 Creating social media content that matters” I would highly recommend doing so before heading straight into this step-by-step guide. The first half of this two-part series gives you a quick overview of the “E”s and “I”s of social media marketing whereas this blog post has a more practical approach to the topic.
So without further ado, let’s jump right in with how to apply the “E”s and “I”s of social media marketing in real life.
In my last blog post, we’ve established that trying to blatantly promote your services & products in every post, might not be the best way to run your brand’s social media account. And we’ve also had a quick look at the mysterious “E”s and “I”s of social media marketing. But how do you implement this concept into your social media strategy? In this blog post, I’m going to elaborate further about how you can give your content value with a couple of simple techniques.
Step 1: Find out what your target audience wants
No matter if you use buyers personas, market research, or the good old trial and error method to find out what your target audience wants and needs, this step is crucial to every social media strategy. Digging deeper into the desires of your viewer and adjusting the content accordingly, can be the key point to a successful brand identity.
But defining your target audience is a whole other topic and deserves a blog post itself. So until then, here are some resources where you can find more about target audiences from my colleagues at contentopolis:
Why Buyer Personas are the mirror to your target audience’s needs
Step 2: Find out what value you can provide to your customers and followers
Yes, you probably have an awesome product or service that hopefully already enriches the lives of your fellow customers. But when developing a social media strategy, there’s one question every brand should be asking: How can I provide value to my followers with my social media content? If this question is still too broad and abstract, think about the bigger picture and the market your brand operates in. What related topics are there that I can incorporate into my marketing strategy? What additional service can I provide besides having an awesome product? What knowledge and skills can I use to enrich my social media content? People don’t usually open their social media apps to look at product advertisements. People open them to be — drumroll please– EDUCATED, ENTERTAINED, ENGAGED & INSPIRED. But before we dive deeper into those “E”s and “I”s, there is one more step left:
Step 4: Find out what fits your brand identity
Now I know, finding the thin line between posting educating, entertaining, engaging, and/or inspiring content and still operating within sometimes strict brand guidelines and an existing marketing strategy can be a challenge in itself. Especially when you’re a social media strategist and have to convince a team of stakeholders to think a little bit outside of the box. But do not despair, tweaking your already existing content strategy a little bit to incorporate topics that are more valuable for your followers, can oftentimes make a huge difference. If you are on the opposite end and work for a small startup or own a brand you might have a little bit more creative freedom. So which topics should you incorporate? How do you find the thin line between strict brand guidelines and a creative social media strategy? Unfortunately, those are questions I do not have a one size fits all answer to. But if there is one suggestion I could give you it would be to dive deeper into your brand values and elaborate on what you want to communicate throughout your channels and you can think of how those values and communication goals can be incorporated more creatively.
Step 3: Let’s add the “E”s and “I”s of social media marketing
Now is the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Hopefully. Buckle up and fasten your seatbelts, in the next paragraphs I’m finally going to explain the mysterious “E”s and “I”s of social media marketing and how to put what we’ve learned into action
Entertain
Those cute cat videos you’ve been watching for the past 2 hours? I’m assuming you feel pretty entertained by them. Now that doesn’t mean you’re brand should switch their content to contain more feline pictures and videos. But finding a way how you can incorporate entertaining content into your social media can make a huge difference in not only attracting more followers but also keeping your followers hooked. Depending on your brand, having a light-hearted approach to content creation and marketing not only helps to get the attention of your followers and not yet followers, but it can also lead to an overall positive association with your brand.
Educate
I presume your brand has a lot of in-depth knowledge about a certain topic, so share those gifts with the world. Infotainment has gotten a lot of recognition as a topic in the past couple of years. Especially when your brand operates in a sector where you can share valuable information and knowledge that helps people to level up their lives. Sharing those snippets of wisdom can help tremendously to stand out from your competitors. And as with the other “E”s and “I”s — sharing something valuable for free always shines a positive light on your overall brand image.
Inspire
No, not those cheesy quotes your aunt likes to share on Facebook! Inspiring someone online can happen in many different ways, whether it’s showing how your followers can easily redecorate their bedroom, motivating them with success stories, or telling tales of different travelers to inspire your followers to pack their bags and book a trip with your travel agency. Think of how you can positively impact your follower’s life or how you can inspire them to take action in a certain direction.
Engage
Every conversation, every interaction, and every piece of published content is part of a relationship between your brand and your customers — and it should therefore be treated as such. You want your customers not only to trust you but also to feel like they have a connection with your brand. So engage them in a conversation or interaction, build a meaningful relationship with them and THEN you can think of generating action or sales.
Step 4: Have fun creating content
I see it like that: Your customers should be treated as friends, and in this scenario, your brand’s social media channel is your home. If you invite them over to your place, you shouldn’t focus on the gifts and who brought the most expensive bottle of wine. You offer them drinks, entertain them with good music, you engage them in meaningful inspiring conversations and make sure everyone has a good time. And that’s how I see social media marketing — it’s important to make sure your followers enjoy the content you’re publishing. And that’s the well-known secret to creating a good content strategy. And now have fun creating content that matters to your followers.
“Educate, entertain, engage & inspire — Part 01 Creating social media content that matters”
Here you can find out more about the different“E”s and “I”s of Social media:
Educate, Entertain or Inspire: The Marketing Holy Grail
Before You Sell: Educate, Entertain, Engage, Inspire
These 6 Types of Content Will Boost Your Traffic and Engagement. Here’s How to Do Them Right