In the age of social media, paid advertising has become less efficient and more expensive. People try to avoid ads at any cost because these uninvited messages annoy them. Customers don’t want to be sold to.
However, people research and educate themselves before making purchasing decisions. Your prospects crave educating, inspiring or entertaining content. That’s when your content marketing strategy comes into play. It helps you reach out to your audience and be part of the conversation. It’s a win-win situation.
How can social media align with your content?
Coming up with the right topic and writing a great article is not easy. On the top of that, according to HubSpot, only 10% of your articles perform well. These articles can generate 38% of your traffic. That’s impressive, huh?
One of the most important aspects of content creation is research. There are several ways to find out what topic you should write about.
And social media is one of them. Social media is content marketing’s bestie. It can help you analyze your audience and find out what can trigger high engagement. Social media insight report can help boost your content strategy and make sure you create a genuinely useful piece of content.
Social insight is the Holy Grail of online marketing
I’m pretty sure you love checking out your social media results to see how many likes, shares you’ve got. Of course, there is much more when it comes to data. However, if you don’t know how to use your data, it’s quite pointless.
Social insight is the outcome of your social media analysis. Observe the data and try to discover the patterns behind and what triggered them. Once you have the answer, you can prepare an actionable plan and start rocking on.
Find the right social media metrics that matter
You may think that good performance equals the high number of likes. I have to disappoint you. The number of likes and share can lead you to the wrong conclusion. Your main KPI should be conversion rates or the number of visitors to your website for instance. Although the latter only matters if you aim to increase your brand awareness.
Top performing posts
Once you defined your S.M.A.R.T. Goals, you can find out which posts were the best-performing ones. Use Facebook Insight or other social media research tools to get this data.
Gather your data into a spreadsheet and organize it so you’ll get a clear picture of the situation. Create a process you can follow and stick to it, so you’ll be able to discover the patterns.
Successful posts do put the value on the table. Supposing, your insight shows that some of your articles trigger high engagement. It suggests that it’s worth it to explore certain topics at a deeper level and write some articles about them.
You might find that videos over-perform other posts. This happens quite often on Facebook. What can you do in this case? Consider creating more video content!
Analyze your social media competitors’ posts
Luckily, social media platforms allow you to stalk on your competitors. This is a fantastic way to learn from their mistakes and best practices.
Check out their best performing content. What do people say on their social media platforms? Pay attention to what customers ask and what they complain about. Discover their pain points.
Once you joined the conversation, you’ll be enlightened. You’ll be able to come up with your amazing content idea to solve your audience’s problem.
Hint:
Mention is a great tool to track what they say about you or your competitors.
The Hilarious Ikea Frakta Case
Source: Adweek
You must have heard of Balenciaga, the French designers who sell their luxurious blue bag for as little as $2,145. I’ll tell you the story, in case you’ve been living under a rock.
This bag looks like Ikea’s Frakta bag. This fact steered up the social media quite a bit. Of course, Ikea was aware of the buzz and came up with a funny and creative response.
The creative director, Johan Holmgren knew exactly what to do and his idea was brilliant. These Swedish folks have a good sense of humor, I have to say.
Holmgren calls Balenciaga’s move “unexpected and brilliant. I liked the flirt. And I thought, why not flirt back? And we did.”
Meanwhile, a rep for Ikea told Today: “We are deeply flattered that the Balenciaga tote bag resembles the Ikea iconic sustainable blue bag for 99 cents. Nothing beats the versatility of a great big blue bag!”
So the fashion photographer took a photo of the Frekta bag using the same lighting of the Balenciaga’s bag.
And here is the result. The guide was born to recognize the original Ikea Frakta bag.
Source: Mad Art Lab
Segment your audience
Google Analytics helps you peek behind the curtain. For example, if you find that more men convert on your website than women, you can target women with your next campaign.
Sport England used the same tactic for their campaign. Their research showed that fewer women exercise than men in the UK. The “This Girl Can” campaign is a great example of using data to create targeted messages.
Source: The National Lottery
Which social media platform performs the best
Last but not least, see which social media channel performs well. It’s a misconception that you ought to use every single social media channel. You don’t. Don’t waste your time and money on channels that don’t help you reach your goals.
Try Buzzsumo to see which topic is popular on what channel. You can also discover who the influencers are in a certain field. This information allows you to distribute your content or build precious backlinks.
Conclusion
The main purpose of your social insight is to improve your content, product and increase the ROI. Social listening and creating an actionable strategic growth plan based on your social media insight is crucial. Seeking patterns in your data helps you focus on your audience and create useful content.
Love your customers and give them what they need.
This post was written by:
Erika Csorba is an experienced content marketer and blog manager at Intellyo.
