If I had a dollar each time I saw shitty posts from various pages on Facebook, I wouldn’t have any interest in writing this blog post, but since I’m not getting paid for that, the next best thing I can do is to try to help turn this situation around.
Why so many people struggle with this?
Because they have no idea from where to begin. Just try doing a google search for social media practices – “get more likes”, “get more engagement”, “measure engagement rate”, “post at right times”, etc.
The first google result for facebook content ideas has this:
- Tell Stories. People remember stories!
- Post at the Right Time (based on Facebook Insights)
- Post at Non-Peak Hours
- Post About Trending Topics
- Post Behind-the-Scenes Shots of Your Business
- Post Selfies
- Share Random Thoughts
- Post Viral Photos
When I look at this, the first and only thing that goes through my mind is just “WTF is this”? How does this make any sense? How does this sell my product?
Such things like posting memes, viral photos and random stuff is filler content at best. These can be those small things in between of your content, not the cornerstone of your communication.
Big and very big companies can afford to do almost nothing serious on Facebook, since cornerstone of their communication is built within traditional media – their campaigns (and most of their budgets) run on TV, print, radio, outdoors and online banners. Their Facebook presence covers just a small part of their communication.
Put marketing back into the content plan
If we go back a little bit and take some lessons from traditional media and bigger companies and their campaigns, we can easily split different campaign types by their purpose and goals.
Different campaign types can be (but are not limited to):
- Category campaigns – talks about product category and why it’s good
- Product/product line campaigns – promotes specific products
- Brand campaigns – talks about brand/company itself, what it stands for, what’s its agenda in the world
- Corporate campaigns – talks about company from perspective of employer – why it’s good as workplace and society (banks and corporations do this a lot also to work with public opinion and influence lawmakers)
- Store campaigns – promots points of sale
- Cross promo – campaigns co-run by at least two competitors
- Direct sales campaigns – sells product directly (product ads, also TV shop ads)
- PSA’s – attaches brand to awareness of public safety or wellbeing issue
These campaigns when run by big corporations cost a lot. But do you see where I’m going with this? These campaigns can be replicated as social media posts within a fraction of cost.
So, I’ll give an example how I would create a social post themes for month based on this template if I would be selling, let’s say, wooden chairs:
- Category campaign – this is ecologically responsibly produced product
- Product/product line campaigns – chair “wilma” is the best for cosy winter nights indoors & it goes very well together with coffee table “bruno”
- Brand campaigns – we set out to create better future for us and everyone else by being ecologically responsible
- Corporate campaigns – we do not use poisonous materials at any stage of production – makes it safer and better both for our employees and customers
- Store campaigns – Visit our store to choose which chair works best for you and your family
- Cross promo – buy a chair now and get warm blanket from our friends at “company X” at half price
- Direct sales campaigns – buy this chair today and get 15% discount
- PSA’s – swinging on chairs takes 15 lives a year – save your loved ones and glue them to the floor
See what we did there? Full month of posts and no contests, inspirational quotes, memes or any other kinds of bullshit.
NB! This doesn’t mean that you have to be boring and give up un humour. Any of those posts can be made funny by some twist. Like the last one (PSA).
Now go and create your own content of the lifetime! 😉
