Three Best Practices to Celebrate Social Media Day the Right Way

Back in 2010, Mashable—the go-to source for social media news­ and insights—named June 30 Social Media Day. The idea was simple: an annual day to acknowledge social media’s impact on global communication and to bring the world together to celebrate it. In the decade-plus since, social media has become an increasingly major part of everyday life, impacting not just how consumers interact with each other, but how they engage with their favorite brands.  

As the reach of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and others has grown from niche to omnipresent, the sophistication required to plan and activate a successful social media marketing strategy has grown as well. Today, modern PR and communications pros are expected to engage in an ongoing dialogue with social followers across numerous channels, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It’s a lot to handle, and doing it well is nearly impossible without the right tools to support your efforts.

Thankfully, the Nexis^Ò Media Intelligence suite includes powerful built-in social listening that allows you to analyze and leverage the most important social data in a single platform. To celebrate Social Media Day this year, we’ve decided to explore three proactive steps you can take to elevate your social media strategy, as well as how the suite of Nexis^Ò Media Intelligence tools can help you implement them.   

Understand your audience

Understanding what consumers are discussing on social media is invaluable for crafting a better strategy. Nexis^Ò Media Intelligence tools can be used to cut right to the heart of the matter, allowing you to evaluate the frequency and sentiment of specific keywords, which can then be used to craft more potent messages. If, for instance, sustainable manufacturing is a major social media discussion point for your target customers, you’ll likely want to craft more posts that highlight how your brand strives to make more sustainable, environmentally friendly products.

And don’t forget that how you say something is just as important as what you say. It’s common knowledge at this point that most social media users prefer video content, but every demographic has its own quirks. Keeping track of which types of content perform best with your brand’s audience should be table stakes at this point. Do they prefer photos over video? Infographics over copy-heavy posts? Stories or in-feed Instagram posts? Understanding and leaning into these preferences can make a huge impact on your engagement numbers.

Keep tabs on the competition

Much like traditional media intelligence efforts, keeping track of the competition is often just as important as staying in close contact with your own followers. Nexis^Ò Media Intelligence solutions can help with this as well, allowing you to compare how much social media attention competitor brands are receiving in relation to your own. You should also be keeping an eye on what messages these companies are deploying via their shared channels. Knowing how these brands talk about themselves can reveal the ownable white space that you can leverage within your own messaging.

And don’t forget that people love to use social media to complain. Staying abreast of your competitor’s customers' pain points can be a proverbial gold mine for proactive conversions. Notice a common issue these customers are sharing? Lean in hard on how your company handles the issue better and prioritize channels where these potential converts are most commonly voicing their frustrations.  

Identify trends as they happen

Speaking of competition—staying ahead of the trends driving conversations within your organization’s industry is a great way to stay ahead of them. Your social listening practices should keep a continuous watch on what topics are most pressing to your customers, as well as what larger cultural conversations can be used to amplify your message. Nexis^Ò Media Intelligence solutions make this easy, not only allowing you to search for specific topics being discussed on social media but instantly visualizing the findings into handy charts and graphs. Below is a word cloud generated as part of a recent search on alternative and sustainable energy.

Leveraging data to build a better social media strategy is never easy, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. If you’re interested in how LexisNexis can help you step up your social media efforts, sign up for a free demo today!