Are your social media accounts being neglected?

By Karen Morgan

Imagine this… you’ve set up a Twitter and LinkedIn account for your business, published a couple of posts, and the followers are trickling in…now what? Do the accounts become neglected over time? It’s not enough for a brand to have an online presence with no fresh content because it comes across as inconsistent and unprofessional. 

A fantastic example of a B2B company that is crushing it on social media is WeWork. As a multi-use workspace, they share high quality content of real life client experiences and they post new content on a regular basis that appeals the demographics of the audience. Five stars from us at Flame! 

In this week’s blog post, we’ll explore why this consistent pattern of behaviour is favourable to social networks and how to ensure a clear online presence. 

What does it mean to be consistent and why is it important? 
Social media is a fierce battleground, with new accounts being opened daily. To compete, content needs to cut through the white noise and offer high quality content with a unique spin. When your audience is scrolling through their feed, you want your content to be instantly recognisable. So whether the brand is found on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, it should be obvious that it’s the same business through a number of traits. 

• Each channel has the same logo as the profile image
• Social copy is written with the same brand messaging and phrases
• Consistent posts about the same content across all active channels
• Clear links to the brand website and contact details 

By working towards achieving consistency across social media, this will help to grow your audience, increase engagement and strengthen your social presence. The implications of not being consistent on social media is that your audience will get mixed messages about what your brand stands for and the professionalism of the team. We don’t want that – so here’s how to avoid social embarrassment. 

How to work the algorithm 
Each social network is run by an algorithm and it looks for social accounts that post fresh content, therefore, in order for a social media network to prioritise your content, you need to post regularly. By following a content strategy this will help to drive higher follower retention and increase engagement because your posts will show up on an audience’s feed more often. Followers like to see regular content rather than sporadic updates and periods of silence because even if a follower is not a paying customer, they will remember the brand when they want to make a purchase in the future. For example, Squarespace is an online tool for creating websites and the purpose of the social channels is to create brand appeal to new and existing customers. They post about client work and feature the benefits of the platform through creative videos and images. This means that followers who are in the website building space can be inspired by the visuals on a consistent basis. All the while, the social media algorithm sees fresh content and actively pushes the content more frequently. The key to appealing to the algorithm is to balance posting often but also having high quality content. So there you have it, the power is in your hands. 

Tone of voice
Our Flamers work with teams across the globe and this means that when different team members write and produce content for the same social channels, it needs to look indistinguishable to the audience. This is achieved by following the same tone of voice that has been crafted by the brand. The difference between tone and voice is that tone refers to who the audience is and which social channel you are writing for. Whereas, voice refers to the brand personality that is usually described as an adjective such as lively or professional. Tone of voice is super important because this ensures that all team members ‘sing from the same song sheet’ . 

So how do you know how to alter social copy for different channels? Well, each social media network has different audiences, which means that altering each post to suit each platform is important for gaining the most engagement. According to Hootsuite, Instagram caters to a younger, digitally-native demographic, in comparison with Facebook that is used by a more mature, diverse range of ages. By evaluating your audience’s demographics, this can determine their preferences and how they like to be communicated with via social media. Getting this right from the offset will save you time and encourage more engagement. 

Key takeaways
The key to being consistent on social media is maintaining regular content that appeals to the audience visually and intellectually. Consistency also means posting content at the most optimum time, but without spamming users with low quality content that isn’t relevant. By following our guidelines for how to not neglect your business social accounts, you’ll be a social sensation in no time! However, this is easier said than done, and if you’d like to discuss writing for social media with our team, do get in touch. For more updates, visit us on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.