Research into social media strategy

With my focus now on my MA by Practice project, one of my first tasks was to create an initial content plan to guide my research and gathering of media. I have had experience planning content before, but creating a detailed plan for social media was new to me. I wanted to use my content plan to experiment with the concept of ‘content packages’, where social media is used to provide supplementary content to web articles, engaging the reader. I began my research by focussing on social media strategy.

Brand Strategies in Social Media

A study by Tsimonis and Dimitriadis (2013) explores why companies use social media for their brand, how they use them and how users are benefited. Although this study was aimed at brands selling a product, the theory behind the use of social media was beneficial to my research. There were several concepts which interested me, such as:

• ‘the creation and exchange of User Generated Content’ following the development of Web 2.0 (p. 328)
• Users ‘form communities that interactively collaborate to identify problems and develop solutions for them’ (p. 329)
• ‘Twitter is the most popular platform with 82 percent of companies having a Twitter account’ (p. 330)
• ‘researchers [can] get close to the consumers and collect info about their preferences, desires, and needs’ (p. 331) (Kozinets, 2002)
• Objectives of social media use include ‘firm-customer dialog’, ‘a “small-world” network’, ‘establish and raise brand awareness’ and ‘create traffic for the website; (p. 332)
• Be prepared for ‘negative… comments’
• The ‘viral nature’ of social media (p. 333)
• Finding a ‘target group’ (p. 337)
• ‘evaluation of results’ is key (p. 338)

I was left with some issues to think about:

• Who are my target audience? What are their problems? How can I solve them?
• Use social media to show brand personality
• Develop a strategy to deal with negativity and research into laws
• Create content with specific viral intention
• Content ideas: competitions, daily messages, share new articles, extra advice and information, chatting with users
• My project is not about advertising, but creating a community. However, this works for both as I need to attract a community in the initial.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

The article ‘Social Media Marketing Strategy‘ by Passport to Trade was helpful in thinking about different aspects of social media marketing to gain an audience.

• ‘actively make customers aware of your support channels… with prominent icons’
• ‘identify the right networks for your target market’
• ‘social media marketing strategy… draws attention towards what the customer thinks about your product or service’
• Use; ‘Search Engine Optimisation’, ‘Google Trends’, ‘website analytics’
•  ‘Develop social media listening routines’
• ‘Seek community leaders in your field’

After reading this article, I came to a few conclusions:

• Following research, I have concluded that the best networks for this stage in my project will be Twitter and Instagram. If I develop a large enough interactive following, then a Facebook page would then have use as a community hub for engagement. Until then, Twitter and Instagram will be most beneficial in reaching a wide audience for my website.
• Klout could also be used to monitor social media analytics
• Develop aims specifically for social media separate to the aims of my website

My next post will focus on practically creating a content calendar to show both social and website content in a manageable format.

[Week 1]