Social Media Channels with Jackie St. Pierre
Did you miss this month’s episode? Or maybe you’re just looking for a short memory refresher? Either way, welcome to the Spark Compass Blog! A place where we summarize the key takeaways from every episode and share some memorable behind the scenes moments.
This month’s episode featured Jackie St. Pierre, a professor at St. Lawrence College with over 20 years of experience in post-secondary education. With previous experience in economic development, fundraising, and business development, she helped us navigate the tricky topic of finding the best fitting social media channels for your business.
SHOULD YOU BE EVERYWHERE AT ONCE?
The short answer is absolutely not! The first thing you need to do is understand where your audience can be found. Are they joining communities on Facebook? Or sharing quick thoughts on Twitter? Maybe they’re curating a colourful feed on Instagram? Figuring out which platforms your audience are using and why are the best first steps you can take when deciding where to establish your brand.
Don’t be afraid to ask your audience where you can find them, either. Strike up casual conversations with your clients or consider sending out a poll to gather their responses.
WHAT’S SEGMENTATION GOT TO DO WITH IT?
If you aren’t familiar with segmentation, consider listening to or reading all about Episode 2: Meeting Your Best Customers with Bill Crowe, where we talk about the best way to segment your audience.
If you’re in a rush, segmentation is the process of grouping your audience together based on similarities in demographic or psychographic information. Ethnicity, religion, age, opinions and attitudes are just some examples of how you can group your audiences into targeted segments.
Jackie suggests also using geographics to segment your audience. If you have a store with no e-commerce channels or delivery options, then you wouldn’t want to target consumers in a whole other country. If, however, you know that tourists who visit your shop come from certain cities then you would include them in your geographic segmentation strategy.
That’s how segmentation plays into things! Once again, it ultimately circles back to understanding your audience and where they are coming from.
HOW DO YOU MAINTAIN AUTHENTIC REPRESENTATION?
It’s easy to think of branding and strategy as separate entities. Successfully incorporating both can introduce unity and cohesion across your media channels. You don’t need to include the entirety of a strategy into your branding, but it is important to include key elements that are foundational to your business.
It’s also important to remember that not everything you do on social media needs to pitch a sale. Include the consumer journey into your posts and messaging. Connection and recognition can go a long way in building brand awareness and loyalty. Consider whether the content you create will hold any meaning for your consumers and if it doesn’t, tweak what you have until it does!
IS THERE A STRATEGY TO ESTABLISHING YOUR MEDIA PRESENCE?
Build your brand into something that your audience will want to talk about. Create a presence that provides value and engages with its followers. Remember that branding and social media aren’t all about you, it’ll always be the customer who determines success or failure in your efforts. Using segmentation, demographics, and psychographics to create a persona document (essentially a fictional character based off real data) can help you better understand your audience and what interests them.
The best strategy for any brand is the willingness to change ideas and plans. The current social media landscape is never consistent for long and is prone to sudden changes. Making sure your brand can pivot to keep up with these changes can mean the difference between staying current or out of date.
IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TARGETING B2B AND B2C?
Yes, there is definitely a difference when targeting B2B versus B2C! Social media is a great place to develop your brand and audience but the end goals are liable to change depending on who you target. B2B targeting usually drives traffic to a website to conduct business or prompt a conversation, while B2C can now conduct sales on the social media platforms themselves.
In terms of marketing on social media, you can still tell stories but they’ll differ slightly. For B2B, sharing success stories and numbers can be a great way of catching people's attention. Then for B2C, creating stories based around the journey of your consumers can be an effective means of gaining their attention and trust.
TO SUMMARIZE IN THREE POINTS OR LESS!
Start with a plan
Develop a marketing plan
Integrate across all media platforms
If you want to know more, check out this episode’s video!