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Social Media Goals in 2019: Leave no stone unturned and reach your audience wherever they may be

Elizabeth Leigh in Growth hacking on 16th of Oct 2018

October 16, 2018

This new year, create a social media strategy that maximizes exposure and impact through all new and existing platforms. Leave no stone unturned and reach your audience wherever they may be.

It’s hard to capture the attention of your audience, especially when research shows that attention spans are decreasing. According to a Microsoft report, attention spans have reduced from 12 seconds to eight. To put that into perspective, the attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds.

So, how do you capture the attention of ~~goldfish~~ your audience?

Here are the latest social media strategies that will reinvigorate your audience and optimize your content across all channels:

Personalization

It’s time to understand your audience and send them tailor-made content instead of batch and blast posts and tweets. According to an Infosys report, 74 percent of customers are frustrated by companies who don’t provide them with individualized content. And 63 percent of customers are annoyed by seeing generic messages repeatedly.

So, how do you personalize your content, especially when your audience is diverse and scattered across multiple channels?

Diving into the demographics of your customers and evaluating consumer data can help you develop a smarter social media strategy. To create personalized messages for every channel, look into your audience’s location, age and gender. Find what they like to consume, when they want to consume and what device they’re most likely to consume your content on.

Depending on your audience, you may need to optimize your blog for mobile, schedule your social posts at particular times of the day and look into providing a way for your customers to listen to your content instead of reading it on your blog. By knowing your customer, you can start to personalize your content and its delivery.

Personalized messages create an affinity with your brand, and as a result, customers look to you over your competitors for content and recommendations. Just by including the name of your customer in a message or a recommendation based on their behavior, you can increase your ROI and conversion rate.

See how you can personalize your Facebook ads right across the customer journey with Autopilot.

High-quality content

It’s not all about text. While blogs like this one are crucial for SEO, creating content for social media needs to expand beyond the written word.

Here’s a list from Social Media Examiner of the tops forms of engaging content:

Images

Visual images make up 80 percent of content viewed on social media. If an image accompanies written information then a person in 65 percent more likely to remember that content. Infographics are a great way to harness the power of text and images. They’re an easy way to share snack-sized content with your audience and help people associate what they read with your brand.

Videos

Videos make up 63 percent of content viewed on social channels. An engaging video is one that hits your customer’s pain point within two seconds. That’s not long to engage with a customer, but if you hook them into your content in that short amount of time, they’re more likely to keep watching and may even consume other accompanying content like a blog article.

Live content

Alongside blogs, images and videos you may also want to consider a live and real-time content strategy. Facebook Live videos engage an audience on a personal level with your brand, and more importantly, they show that you’re human. According to Facebook, live videos are watched three times longer than regular videos.

Influencers

Once a customer has developed a connection with your brand, they’re more eager to spread the word about you on their personal social media. The power of word of mouth is still a brand’s greatest asset. 92 percent of consumers listen to recommendations from their friends, family and influencers.

Building a thoughtful and meaning relationship with influences allow brands to jump on board an influencers marketing strategy. Brands may find themselves represented on an influencers channel, whether that be a social media post, a vlog or an online store.

It’s essential to give your influencers the freedom to use your product to create their own content. Their authenticity is what users love, so give them greater creative control and watch the benefits roll in.

Chatbots

Responding to your customers every beck and call can be a tedious and time-consuming task. Marketers automate social media scheduling and don’t want to monitor channels 24/7, answering customer questions. To create an easy line of communication, try incorporating a chatbot into your social media strategy.

Today, artificial intelligence mimics the natural flow of conversation and removes the effort of running, monitoring and managing your social media. Customers who follow a brand on social media may want to further engage with that brand, and an intelligent assistant can start that conversation.

According to Drift’s State of Conversational Marketing report, 15 percent of consumers have used chatbots to communicate with businesses to answer problems, make a reservation, pay a bill, buy an item, subscribe to a newsletter and much more.

Chatbots can refer customers to products, alert them on the latest trending blog topics or send them to support for inquiries. Without human assistance, chatbots can understand a user’s question and respond accordingly.

Integrating your social media strategy with Autopilot is easy. Learn more about how Autopilot helps you personalize content and deliver it to your customers wherever they are.