As with pretty much everything in life, creative marketing is all about balance. You want to make sure your campaign appeals to its key demographic – your regulars, the ol’ faithfuls of your relevant industry – whilst also being general enough to entice a broader audience to join this established group and follow your call to action.
It’s all too easy to tip the scales too far in one direction, either having no impact on your existing audience by not offering any insight or coming off as preachy to your newcomers.
But, luckily for you, I’m on hand to give you an insight into how to tailor your social media content and weaponise your channels into heat-seeking missiles for effective campaigns. By weighting your scales differently across different platforms, you create harmony overall (hurray for metaphors!). I take some pride in being the (self-attributed) music connoisseur of the office, so to illustrate my point I’m going to throw my very own Boardmasters replacement, and sell it to you via a collection of posts for a host of social platforms. Introducing Copymasters – named in honour of Idenna’s wonderful Words Team, naturally.
Here’s our guide to getting the most out of your various social streams…
Facebook is a creative toolbox. The jack of all trades with a specialist piece of equipment ready to be deployed in any scenario and direct an audience towards you. The share features multiply your initial post to several timelines, encouraging tags means your audience does your targeted marketing for you, and the lack of character limit provides a freedom to go into detail.
Your content should be flowing and conversational, appealing to the older user base who will probably see the post in amongst family and news outlets – you need to make that thumb stop scrolling by reaching out to them on a personal level.
For Copymasters though, I’m creating an Event, a unique hub for a community to gather and discuss the amazing time they’re going to have. This variety gives you a boost in Facebook’s algorithms as well, as long as you can keep your audience on the site, you’ll be rewarded with exposure.
Twitter
280 characters is less than you think, so making the most of your copy is vitally important. Twitter audiences are often passionate and interactive, with the bite sized nature of its character limit making engagement less of a commitment – hence the many, many, many arguments you find on there.
But of course, that’s not what we’re after, instead we’re looking to capitalise on the virality Twitter can provide. Your content here should be clear and concise, with the restrictions lending themselves naturally to a sense of wit or clever use of language, you need to stand out from the crowd with exciting statements. Facts that shock and amaze, up to the minute announcements and bite-sized observations that are as shareable as they are digestible.
Copymasters needs some buzz, so I can repurpose content (using the tips I learnt from a similarly insightful Idenna blog post), to shine a little more light on some of the smaller acts that might have gone unnoticed further down the billing – interacting with a guaranteed audience and being ultra retweetable in the process.
In a surprise to no-one, this one is all about the visuals – perfectly showing off the benefits of having a dynamic, talented, full-service creative team on your side. Whether it’s an eye-catching piece of graphic design, a breathtaking photo or heart-pumping film, your Instagram content should create a singular brand vision that just screams “this is me!”
Marrying this with copy that sinks its hooks into you from the first line (as this is often all a user gets to see without tapping) your average Instagram post is more about the feelings and tone of your brand, as opposed to information dumps or hard sales. This means a hearty mix of end product as well as insights into how the proverbial sausage is made, emphasising how your values and messages run throughout the core of your business.
So, Instagram is the perfect place for this killer behind the scenes shot I’ve got of our Copymasters team setting up the site. Likeable, real and yet entirely in line with the feel of the brand, this post is perfectly at home on Instagram.
LinkedIn
Okay okay I’ll admit it, I’m taking some creative liberties here. The professional LinkedIn network may not be the perfect place to advertise my indie rock concert, but in a way I’m proving my own point that not every campaign or post belongs on every platform. But for the sake of argument, let’s explore the different angles of my imaginary festival.
LinkedIn is a fantastic resource for sharing and adding to pre-existing material, be it a post from someone else in your industry or article from a credible news site, reposting the content with your own insights is an effective way to position yourself as an industry leader and voice of authority. Likewise, the original content you post here should share that focus on professional development. Maybe I have a PDF presentation explaining all the environmental steps Copymasters is taking to be carbon neutral, or I’ve recorded a podcast with someone from my network – anything that positions me as ahead of the trends is bound to perform well.
To finish us off though, I’m suggesting sharing an insightful, wise blog post from the genius behind the event – me. Taking the time to create content that directs your audience further into your community is always worthwhile, with LinkedIn providing you a direct line to the people that can relate and bring real change to your business.
As my inability to grow a beard will attest to, I’m still pretty young, so I find it easy to remember these adaptation tips through the internet’s latest language – the meme. I’ll leave you with one that made me blow air out my nose particularly hard; may it bring you luck on your newly informed social media journey.
