Local Social Management

Creating an Effective Content Calendar

Posted on June 30, 2020June 30, 2020 by Jared Lamoreaux

Creating an Effective Content Calendar

Your heart is beating, your palms are sweaty, and the clock on your desk seems to be ticking louder than normal. You need to produce an engaging social media post for your company today but your busload of ideas stalled during your lunch break.

Nothing is more stressful than not being ready for an approaching deadline. What can save you from the glaring eyes of your boss?

An effective content calendar will help alleviate this stress from your life. Having a plan long before the deadline is something that we all strive to do but have difficulty keeping up on.

Facebook recently came out with a new Facebook Blueprints course to help social media marketers create and manage a content calendar. So, just what should you do to create a content calendar that will allow you to avoid the piercing stare of your boss?

Know your audience

You should do some research to understand a few questions about the audience and intended audience of your social media accounts including:

Who your audience is and what they are interested in
When your audience is engaging with social media posts and on which platforms
How often your audience likes to see posts from businesses
What types of posts they tend to engage with

The answers to these questions vary depending on your business and the kind of people you want to target. Since no two businesses are the same, it is up to each business individually to research and experiment with these questions.

Your social media posts should focus on the intersection of the type of content your customers enjoy and the topics that are related and relevant to your business. Experiment with your posts to find that sweet spot.

Organize your ideas

When you understand your audience better, you can now start constructing a content calendar. You can use programs like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, or any other program that can create a table with rows and columns. Facebook offers a downloadable template that can help you get started.

Facebook suggests that there are 6 pieces of information that is needed in an effective content calendar. They are:

Date
Theme
Caption
Visual Description
Format
Platform

In deciding what content to use, it is recommended that you use a healthy mixture of content including curated, original and promotional content. Your audience will not like it if you talk about yourself all of the time. Put yourself in their shoes and be someone they can trust.

Remember that this is only a suggestion. Feel free to customize your content calendar by adding or taking away information so that your company can get exactly what it needs. The idea is to put down as much information as you need to make the creating and scheduling portion of your job easier.

Impress your boss

When you organize your ideas in a content calendar, you will have a great guide that you can lean on through the content creation process. It will give you enough time to efficiently create your engaging posts that will impress your superiors and your target audience.

You should have at least one month worth of content planned out the month before. That means that if it is June, you should have your content for July planned out on your content calendar. This does not mean that your ideas are complete and solid. Don’t be afraid to change your ideas if it doesn’t turn out to be what you want. Thinking a month ahead will give you enough time to get your best ideas out there.

An effective content calendar will ensure that your content goes out on time and will get rid of the stress of your boss breathing down your neck as the deadline approaches.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a whole month planned out right away. Start small and work little by little until you get to the point where you are able to regularly update your content calendar.

When you share engaging and interesting content consistently, people are more likely to have you in mind when they are in need of the services you provide. An effective, well-managed content calendar is one of the first steps in establishing these brand-to-consumer relationships that lead to business success.

Grow Your Twitter Following!

Posted on November 21, 2018March 29, 2019 by Kate Smith

So you made a company Twitter. You’ve nailed down the profile pic, the backdrop, the bio….Now what? Creating your profile is the first step to finding your Twitter audience but the truth is, if you build a profile, they probably won’t come. You have to invite them to you!

An active Twitter account can be a great asset to your company as long as you’re using it correctly. Twitter’s primary uses include customer service, reputation management, and keeping your audience informed. It is also the 5th most popular platform among US adults and roughly half of those users access Twitter at least once per day.

Twitter is an exciting social platform to be on! Implement these 6 tips to keep up in the fun yet fast-paced world that is Twitter.

Become a #Hashtag Jedi

Hashtags are your best friend on Twitter. The better you get at utilizing hashtags, the more people will see your tweets. People don’t only use hashtags to organize tweets but also to connect with other people. An example of this is the hashtag used during and leading up to the 2018 Super Bowl. Twitter users used the hashtag “#SuperBowlLII” 285,749 times to communicate about the big game. If you’re hoping to interact with other Twitter users on a trending topic, hashtags are the best way to go.

Make New Friends on the Playground

Twitter is fun! It’s a great place to get to know your consumers and even your competitors. Jump in on Twitter discussions and don’t hesitate to follow someone if you like what they have to say! Following more people as opposed to fewer can actually increase your account’s visibility. When looking for new people to follow I like to see who the top leaders in my industry follow. It helps me find more people within my niche that I trust will add value to my Twitter feed. Following the right people can also help you be the first to know about breaking industry news!

Construct Relevant Tweets

Who is your audience?

It’s important to know who you’re targeting. Would you follow a sports account that regularly digressed to post a political rant? Or a meme account that reviewed restaurants as well? These may be extreme examples, but my point is that these kinds of habits create sloppy Twitter feeds. The beauty of twitter is being able to pepper your feed with very specific themes and interests.

Once you’ve narrowed down your audience, it will be easier to post tweets that are relevant to them. So pick your target audience and make sure you have a goal in mind for your feed. Is it to educate your audience? Provide customer service? Maybe it’s both!

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Retweets

Just kidding. Posting an image will not ensure you 1,000 retweets. But it is one of the best ways to capture someone’s attention as they scroll through a constantly changing Twitter feed. A study conducted by Twitter proved that using images in your tweets is more effective for getting retweets than videos or hashtags. Tweets with images received 35% more retweets than those without.

You can use images as a dual sword in your social media strategy. Start by creating your own imagery to solidify your brand. Turn to your branding guide and create a theme for your images. You might find that you enjoy a clip-art look for your images. Or you may realize that you prefer to take your own photos. After you’ve developed a theme for branded images, start spicing things up with alternate pictures that suit your Twitter goals. For example, posting trending gifs and memes with captions that directly apply to your brand.

Don’t Ignore Twitter Analytics

Twitter analytics is easily one of the best ways to get to know your audience. Analyze your tweets and campaigns frequently. Which tweets performed best? Which tweets did people interact with the most? Be sure to give your audience more of what they want. Based on your findings, giving them more of what they want could mean posting more images or interactive polls. You may also find that shorter tweets perform better than longer ones. Remember you don’t have to use ALL 280 characters. In a lot of cases the quicker you can get to the point the better.

Make sure you’re regularly analyzing your data and adapting to the needs of your audience

Be Consistent

As I mentioned before, Twitter is a fast-paced platform. The lifespan of the average tweet is only about 24 minutes. This means you need to tweet regularly if you want people to keep you top of mind. Try to tweet at least twice a day and be sure to respond quickly to your followers.

If that all seems like too much for you, no worries! Use a digital planner like Lava Surf to plan everything out ahead of time! This way you don’t have to live on Twitter if you don’t want to.

There it is! Twitter is a fun and simple platform to use once you get the hang of it! Your Twitter account is a great platform to have discussions with your customers and get to know your target audience better. So tweet authentically, tweet a lot, and have fun!

Social Media Tips for the Holidays

Posted on October 22, 2018December 3, 2018 by Kate Smith

The holiday season creeps up on us a little faster each year. The leaves start to change color and before you know it, you’re wrapped up in Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The holidays are busy enough on their own but lets not forget modern shopping holidays such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Not to mention the new phenomenon known as “Sofa Sunday” which takes place in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The traditions surrounding these holidays provide countless opportunities for heightened engagement with your online audience. Are you doing everything you can to connect with your followers this holiday season?

Read on for a few tips to help boost your social strategy this season!

Start Now

First off, if you haven’t launched your holiday campaign yet, you’re running late. In case you haven’t taken note, it’s almost November. Maybe you’re the kind of person who doesn’t even like to think about Thanksgiving or Christmas until the first of November. That’s totally fine when applied to putting up lights or waiting to crack out the Michael Bublé Christmas album. But applying that kind of mentality to your social campaign would be a huge mistake. Why?

Research tells us that in the US alone, 40% of consumers plan to start their Christmas shopping in October and 20% intend to start even earlier. So if you’re hoping to increase sales this holiday season, start now!

Cater to Your Mobile Audience

The second tip you’ll want to implement immediately is catering your campaign to a mobile audience. Did you know that the average American checks their phone every 12 minutes? Your audience is always on their smartphone and as a result, they are always shopping. Maybe it’s just window shopping on Pinterest or browsing a boutique on Instagram, but the pattern is there.

Ever heard of sofa Sunday? The day before Cyber Monday, people browse online so they’re prepared to make the most of upcoming sales. In 2017, studies informed us that 45 percent of shoppers spend at least two hours of Sofa Sunday researching Cyber Monday deals. Thirty-six percent of these shoppers plan to do all of that research from their phone.

What can we take away from this? Well, marketing involves being where the people are. The people are on social media and more specifically, on their phones.

Introduce a New Side of Your Brand

The holidays are the perfect time to give your brand a little more dimension by showing off a fresh side of your organization. You might choose to do this by launching a new campaign centered around a good cause. Or maybe you’ll opt to show off a genuine side through introducing your audience to your team. One way of doing this is taking your followers behind the scenes with your posts and even a few live videos. The holidays are full of fun behind the scenes gems. Here are just a few.

Show off show your holiday office decorations
Post candid shots of team members celebrating
Go live at an event you’re hosting! (Ex. Christmas Tree Lighting, Food Drive, Party)
Do live holiday-themed interviews with your team members

These simple posts will go a long way with your audience. It helps people relate to you more and the holidays are all about remembering what connects us.

Hashtag Campaigns

The holidays are a great time to introduce a new hashtag campaign! While some contests involve a series a of complicated rules, I believe that the simpler the campaign, the better. One of my favorite examples of this is Coca Cola’s “#ShareACoke” campaign. The campaign promotes sharing and kindness without being overly complicated.

Hashtag campaigns are also helpful in gathering user generated content. You’ll definitely want to utilize UGC this time of year. Social media users trust UGC content so much that it has a 4.5% higher chance of conversion than an average post. One of the most successful UGC related hashtag campaigns was implemented by Starbucks in 2014. Their #RedCupContest resulted in at least one new #RedCupContest image appearing on Instagram every 14 seconds within the first two days. By the time the contest came to a close, there were more than 40,000 entries. That’s A LOT of user generated content to pick from.

Engage. Connect. Repeat.

Again, the holiday season is about highlighting things that connect us and make us human. Consider injecting pathos into your posts to help increase engagement. Posts that evoke emotions within a person are more likely to be shared than those that don’t.

So brainstorm ways you can connect with your audience in a more personal way than normal. Ask your followers to share their favorite holiday photos or Christmas songs. In 2014 Barnes and Noble ran a #BNGiftTip campaign to increase one on one interactions with their customers. The campaign encouraged people to ask Barnes & Noble for gift suggestions. This stimulated more Twitter conversations and gave B&N an opportunity to provide personalized content for their audience.

End Late

The last holiday social tip you need to remember is to end your campaign late. If the campaign has been going well, why stop on Christmas? Shoppers certainly don’t stop there. The day after Christmas is one of the busiest shopping days of the year and 45% of shoppers continue searching for post-Christmas sales in January! So keep that in mind and ride out the holiday season a little longer.

The holiday season is rich with opportunities to connect with your online audience. Don’t hesitate to jump in on the fun when planning your campaigns! This is a great time to grow your following and increase brand awareness! Take advantage of it by building strong connections with your audience!

Which Social Media Platforms Are Best For You?

Posted on August 24, 2018December 7, 2018 by Kate Smith

You know that social media will benefit your organization. But did you also know that all social media platforms are not created equal? Each platform functions like different items in a toolbox. You wouldn’t use a hammer to perform the same task as a wrench and if you did…it probably wouldn’t go too well.

So we’ve made you a list of the three most popular social media platforms and the unique benefits each can provide for your brand or business.

Facebook

Facebook is your one stop platform for reviews, ads, and customer engagement. In the U.S. population alone, 68% of adults are on this platform. Facebook has evolved from a strictly social platform to a semi-professional one. What does this mean? Well your Facebook page is likely to be a little more casual than LinkedIn, but a little more professional than Instagram.

The casual side of your Facebook page may include engagement posts, entertaining content, or questions for your audience. The professional side involves responding professionally to reviews, complaints, and personal messages.

Both the casual and professional side of the Facebook coin are important for building customer loyalty. Your audience wants to feel heard but they also need to be engaged.

Instagram

I’m going to let you in on a little secret about Instagram. It’s the happy place on the internet. Don’t ruin it for people. They won’t respond well to controversial topics or posts that seem too “salesy.”

People open their Instagram app for the stories, quippy captions, and quality photos. This means you have an opportunity to present your story and brand personality. Instagram is all about connecting with your audience. People are more likely to make purchases from people they relate to.

A great way to relate with people on Instagram is to find and repost user-generated content for your brand. Why? People relate to it more because of its authenticity. It also shows that somebody out there is endorsing your brand simply because of its quality and not because they’re getting paid for it. In fact, users trust UGC content so much that it has a 4.5% higher chance of conversion than one of your average posts.

Twitter

Twitter’s primary uses include customer service, reputation management and keeping your audience informed.

Twitter has stated that 80% of customer service requests come in through their platform. This means the majority of customer comments and complaints have now gone public. Some individuals may choose to view this as a negative. However, if you respond to your customers promptly and professionally, it can actually enhance your reputation.

An example of reputation management and customer service through Twitter can be seen in most airline services. For example, Southwest Airlines responds promptly on Twitter to both complaints and compliments. In the event of an accident, Twitter would be an important source for communicating with the public.

Brands that primarily use Twitter to keep their audience informed include news organizations and sports teams. Do you want to stay in the know during the next NFL draft? Do you want updates on the latest breaking news? You just need to follow the right Twitter accounts.

Depending on how many retweets you get, the lifespan of a tweet is only 20 minutes to 3 hours. The lifespan of your tweet is when you can expect it to get the most engagement before it’s lost in the Twitter-Verse forever. So if you’re using Twitter as a tool for your company, make sure you stay active. Be sure to check out our tips for growing a Twitter following if you feel like Twitter is the right platform for you!

What now?

Maybe your organization uses all the above platforms. Or maybe, you just stick to one. Whichever platform you choose, be sure to do your homework on it if you want to properly connect with your online audience.

Harnessing Social Media as a Franchise

Posted on July 25, 2018July 25, 2018 by Kate Smith

What Social Media Can Do For Your Franchise

Social media has opened up countless doors for organizations looking to expand their marketing efforts. Organizations can now, more than ever, take on their own personalities and develop relationships with their customers.

So why is social media so effective? Because it’s a two-way street. Your can put your brand on display in any way you want and facilitate discussions that will expand your online visibility. If you’re a social media pro, you’re also your customer’s best listener. People like feeling heard so interacting with your customers online is a great way to build trust and earn loyalty.

Challenges You May Face

Now with all of the benefits that stream from the kingdom of social media, there also come challenges. As a franchise you may find yourself feeling daunted by the idea of implementing a social media campaign. Properly applying social media as a marketing technique means investing time and money into strategies as well as having a strong sense of brand awareness.

When looking at your franchise as a whole you can easily take into account that they have a variety of locations, each under different management. Although the brand is the same, without guidance, each different franchise manager is likely to present your brand a little differently than the last. Attempts to localize content combined with different presentation styles can result in each of the local pages carrying a different brand voice. This will water down the strength of your brand and your attempts to market it.

Here’s Your Solution

So how can you utilize social media to stay ahead of the game while protecting your brand voice?

One powerful solution is a branding guide. Now a branding guide can be as complicated or simple as you like. But for the most part, the more detail the better.

A branding guide can be distributed to each individual location and define exactly how you expect employees to interact with your online audience. Train your employees to interact with customers on social media just as they would be expected to with customers standing right in front of them.

Your branding guide should clearly specify the voice and tone for your brand. Is your brand voice professional? Trendy? Playful? Whatever it is, stick to it. Your tone is a little different than your voice. The tone of your brand voice may change depending on the situation. What tone does the organization take in day to day conversation with customers online? What tone does the organization take when responding to negative reviews?

The guide can also include color schemes, fonts, and examples of copy that uses the brands voice. The more detailed and clear your branding guide, the more direction your individual franchise locations will have for their social media efforts.

If you’re not utilizing social media, your brand isn’t going to thrive. Don’t let multiple locations overwhelm you! Putting together a few simple ideas for a branding guide is a huge step in the right direction.

Local Social Media & Brand Integrity

Posted on November 20, 2017November 20, 2017 by Kate Smith

As a franchisor, one of your biggest concerns is brand integrity. If you’re a growing company with just a few locations, you may lack the resources needed to hire additional employees to monitor your online messaging and brand strategy. If you’re a larger company with hundreds of locations and multiple Facebook pages, you may find it difficult to make sure each franchisee is putting out content reflective of your brand voice. In either case, the answer can be found in understanding today’s on-demand economy and the importance of technology in your approach.

The Need

Advertising has always been about staying ahead of the game. While traditional advertising serves an important purpose, it is largely insufficient on its own. Over the past 25 years we’ve seen a transition in advertising from traditional to digital to social media. And recently we’ve seen yet another fundamental shift toward mobile and local content.

This is simply a consequence of the on-demand economy in which we now live. Consumers are less and less persuaded by the push/pull strategies of the past. They require quality, locally curated content and a relationship-centric approach.

A brand that posts local content is a brand that shows it cares about the communities in which it operates and a brand that people are more likely to engage with. Pages with truly local content can expect to see exponentially higher reach and engagement that will ultimately translate to increased brand loyalty.

The Challenge

Franchises present a unique challenge when it comes to local social management. How do you balance a local social campaign with an overall brand strategy?

Brand Strategy + Messaging + Consistency x Local Franchisees = Chaos

In approaching this challenge, it is important to note that franchisee concerns are very different from those of the franchisor. While corporate players may be focused on brand image, distribution, and PR, franchisees may be more concerned about staying connected to their community, getting enough people through the door, or simply having enough time to dedicate to online engagement.

All of these concerns are important to consider in determining your social media strategy. Here are three approaches to consider.

The Options

1. Top Down Approach

What it looks like: Corporate publishes the majority of posts uniformly across branded pages and reviews are managed from a centralized point. Some localized posts are allowed with approval from the corporate team. This is the most common approach among franchises because it tends to be the easiest to implement.

Advantages: Corporate control and consistency of messaging.

Disadvantages: Less online engagement and less community connection.

Tech Needs: Social tools that can mass-distribute posts, restrict permissions, and centralize social reviews and responses.

2. Bottom Up Approach

What it looks like: Corporate yields the majority of control to the franchisees to distribute localized content and respond to online reviews. Some corporate posts are distributed on the local level. This approach requires training franchisees to use different social media platforms and create engaging content.

Advantages: Truly local content and genuine community engagement.

Disadvantages: Less control of brand messaging, unreliable or inexperienced franchisees, and no guaranteed posting.

Tech Needs: None or a social platform that limits rights and requires content approvals.

3. Integrated Approach

What it looks like: Corporate controls messaging from the top through approvals and permissions. Reliable and competent franchisees can be given more flexibility, while others can receive corporate curated messaging. This approach requires a social management platform and training, but allows for corporate oversight and franchisee opt-out.

Advantages: Move at your own pace, retain corporate control of messaging, lower risk, and still get localized engagement.

Disadvantages: More planning and training.

Tech Needs: Franchise social media software that allows content approvals, roles and permissions, and localization capabilities.

The Solution

An integrated approach is the best solution. It helps retain brand integrity while also allowing local franchisees to be involved and engaged with their communities online. For this approach you will need to leverage a social media management platform that allows you to assign roles and permissions, grant content approvals, localize and post to multiple pages at once, and centralize reviews from all the top social media and review sites.

Lava Surf allows you to implement this integrated approach with ease. Though it will require some extra training, it will allow your brand to move at its own pace. If you’re nervous about diving into local social right away, you can take your time and implement your strategy in phases. We recommend a Crawl, Walk, Run strategy:

Crawl: corporate control
Walk: test the waters by allowing specific, trusted franchisees to have more freedom
Run: train and roll out brand-wide

To find out more about how you can implement this integrated strategy with your business, feel free to contact us here.

Lava Surf is excited to announce the addition of a new dashboard, Urgent Actions!

How about a solid case study?