Technology and social media go hand in hand. As technologies change, so must the ways we use them. I can understand the importance of making strategies for social media based on social data and analytics, but overall, I believe that we need to balance that with having no predetermined strategy at all. I like the way that Mark Schaefer described the field as “barely controlled chaos”, since that accurately represents social media and marketing in the rapidly-changing landscape of technology.
In some regards, having a plan can be helpful just like creating an outline for a research paper. If you create a social media strategy that involves a posting schedule, finding your voice/tone, and the kind of content you are sharing (i.e. videos versus links, text, and images). For example, there are some studies that show that videos are the most ideal posting format for viewer engagement, but it’s still good to create a variety of flat images and videos for the people who don’t have time to watch videos at work. Photos are also good because people can save them easily on their phones for quick access later on. Figuring out when the best times to post is probably the most trial-and-error piece of the whole ordeal, since that is completely variable on your particular audience. I used to read articles on what times of the day would be ideal to post to Facebook and the studies always came back showing that I need to be observant of my own particular audience, which requires that I simply post more often in order to continue testing theories.
If organizations don’t have a social media strategy, they could benefit in making one in terms of creating good habits and structure that they can adapt to any new technology and social media platform. While it’s all subjective, it’s helpful to understand the basics of developing a strategy in order to sense when it’s okay to divert from strategies as well. It’s similar to the concept of classical music. Every great composer of classical music became masters because they learned the rules well enough to learn how to break them in innovative ways. I believe that the same is true for social media. Overall, I think that we can benefit from creating some structure in our social media posts, but that we should also branch out of our schedules and content types in order to have a more natural and less robotic social media presence. This way, we will be more open to changes in technology while still keeping good habits when posting content.
VITAMINPEE 