Small businesses on budgets, or larger companies who are looking to increase their social media marketing results without increasing budgets, sometimes struggle with generating the response they’re after. Getting your name, brand and products out to new audiences without spending a lot presents a challenge. Social media posts with a positive tone tend to have a higher engagement rate than those with negative tones. Using inspirational content can activate your audience to take the steps necessary for your business goals to be met.
Here are 4 steps to using inspiration-themed content to be more successful with social media campaigns.
Find Your Hook
The first step is finding your hook. Take a look at your social media engagement rates for different types of posts. Analyzing Facebook Insights, as well as a number of social media dashboards, will allow you to identify recurring themes. Is it quotes, images, a particular topic or something else? Your hook will tie directly to the trends you find. Evaluating how these trends relate to your strategic goals can help you get started with the new campaign. An example could be a trend of increased engagement with celebrity quotes and your hook would be positive celebrity quotes that tie back to your business.
Gather New Material
Based on your hook, what new material can your team gather? Focus on acquiring additional quotes, new images, or new content pieces of content from people or businesses with audiences similar to your own. How much new material you need is dependent on how long your campaign will run for. Contact a wide audience in your attempt to gather new material. Do research on who the outspoken supporters of your business or industry are and collect new material unique to this campaign that ties in to your hook and goals. While repurposed pieces are okay, you want something inspirational and new to draw new people in.
Embrace the Social Media Mindset
Design your new material with social media in mind. How easy can each piece be shared on each relevant social network? Make sure your logo and a simple vanity URL are included in every piece of campaign content you produce so that it is easy for customers to take action. If colors are involved, use your brand’s color scheme to keep things consistent. With each piece of visual content, make sure the emotion experienced by your audiences is a positive one. Display visuals in such a way that it encourages interaction on the network and an action that meets your goals.
Enlist Employees
Get employees involved. Sending them shareable content to push out on their own networks or in e-mails to out-of-the-office colleagues can help you reach a greater scope of people. It also shows a great culture in which employees stand behind their business and its goals. Asking employees for their own contributions or encouraging them to share the contributions of others can help them feel a greater sense of teamwork. Chances are, if you’re using inspirational content, they’ll feel inspired to share it on their own. However, a little encouragement and a focus on employee engagement never hurt.
Social media can have a real impact on your business KPIs (key performance indicators) and can help your social campaigns be more successful. Focusing on inspirational pieces will generate a positive response and will place your business and efforts in front of more eyes. Activating your audience with inspirational content comes by finding the right hook, gathering new and related material, embracing the social mindset and increasing employee engagement.
Have you run an inspirational activation campaign? If so, what were the results?
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