Revisiting Your Social Media Goals
Has your organization spread itself thin over your social media channels? Is your team scrambling to keep up with massive organizations with equally massive budgets? Are you trying to do too much in too many places? If so, then it may be time to revisit your social media goals.
Navigating the social media landscape is both time-consuming and challenging. The algorithms that control who sees your content are unpredictable and prioritize those big organizations with big ad budgets. To compensate for this, some small teams will overextend themselves, producing too much content over too many platforms and spending tons of time and energy to do so.
We recommend taking back your time and energy by focusing on quality rather than quantity. You can make strong impacts and community connections by opting out of the social media rat race and getting back to the basics.
Here are our top tips!
Focus On Communicating Impact
Your impact is the main thing you want to share to your audience. Clearly communicating your impact helps people understand your organization’s value and inspires them to take action to support your work. Whether you’re crafting a post, email, newsletter, or annual report, your impact should be front and center.
Leverage Existing Partnerships
Your current network of partners and funders is your best asset – they already know you and care about your work! Ask them to help get the word out about events and opportunities to support your organization. Make sure to engage with them on social media in turn by liking, commenting, and sharing their own posts to support them. Reciprocity benefits you both! It also reinforces how your organization applies its values in the broader community beyond your own mandate and projects, which can help you reach people you might not have otherwise.
Streamline Your Channels
Producing too little may mean your organization drops off a platform’s front page, but producing too much exhausts your team and over-saturates your profile. While both under- and over-producing come with their own unique concerns, in our experience, most organizations try to over-deliver. Generally, less is more as long as you're being consistent, streamlined, and focused. A few posts crafted very well will get you better results than a flood of posts that aren’t.
If you’re anything other than a creepy, omnipresent Fortune 500 company, you really don’t have to be everywhere. Take a critical look at where your existing audience is and focus on those places rather than trying to be everywhere at once.
Streamline Your Processes
There are near infinite kinds of social media posts – not all of them will work for you. To better navigate the sea of options in front of you, consider:
Choosing a few types of posts to promote your main messages and sticking to them
Using templates to streamline post development and stay consistent across your organization, regardless of who is doing the actual posting
Creating and scheduling posts in advance
Using a social media plan to stay organized
Doing any of the above will help reduce the mental load on your team and make social media a regular part of your operations.
Leave Room for Spontaneity!
Sometimes, spur-of-the-moment content brings the best results! Consider having a ratio of pre-scheduled versus fun, candid or behind the scenes content. We recommend 80% scheduled and 20% spontaneous to keep your social media profiles lively.
Want More Support?
If you’re looking for more help with communications, please reach out! We’re happy to talk about your concerns and see how we can help.
