While we couldn’t welcome you to Birmingham as we hoped to, we had an incredible day packed with tons of insight and inspiration from some phenomenal speakers at our Inspired Social: Digital Experience!
Our virtual sessions and live Q&A’s contained way too much value to be condensed into one post, so we’re rounding up the top points from each session right now.
Working With Social Media Isn’t Easy: Cut Yourself Some Slack
Social media management involves marketing, PR, photography, videography, sales, copywriting, research, analytics, graphic design, strategy, advertising, industry knowledge, community management, crisis management as well as content curation. To add to the complexity, many colleagues/leaders don’t fully understand what you do, so can’t see the full benefit of what you’re doing and have unrealistic expectations.
The key to building your confidence with social media is to get out of your own head, stop with the imposter syndrome and shift your mindset to see yourself as the creative, effective expert in your organisation that you truly are.
You Don’t Need to ‘Pay to Play’ on Social Media
Despite what many social media gurus will have you believe, it is still entirely possible to grow an engaged community organically on social media. You’ll never get the meaningful engagement you want if you pay for it anyway, so focus on delivering organic content.
Understand what your audience looks to you for, what they like to see, and consistently publish content that entertains and delights them.
Take Your Time With Crisis Recovery
While a crisis is never a nice situation to go through, don’t try to rush through to the recovery phase before your organisation is ready. Evaluate where you are right now, how you got to this point and the decisions you made as a result of the crisis.
Once you have managed the initial impact, started dealing the long term aftermath, worked on rebuilding your reputation, as well as learned and took steps to prevent a recurrence, you are ready to move into the recovery phase.
Recovery from a crisis can be uncomfortable and difficult, so ensure you have support for your staff in place to protect their emotional wellbeing.
Inspiration Will Likely Strike Outside of the 9-5
It can be hard to inspire creativity at the drop of a hat, with not many of us being able to say that our best ideas have come from sitting in an office!
Inspiration comes from your experiences in the world, which feeds into your creative ideas. Make a note of things you see while you’re out in the world; simple ideas and approaches are usually the best.
Bad ideas are really useful, so don’t be afraid to share them. They could start the conversation and lead the thinking process towards a great idea.
Social Media is a Full Team Effort
We all know the importance of social media customer service, but does that responsibility fall to your customer service team only?
Engaging with customer enquiries on social media should involve colleagues from all teams across the organisation from sales and marketing, to PR, HR, and operations. That way, customers can get a timely and effective response on social media without the time-consuming back-and-forth.
Build Healthy Habits to Reduce Stress
Habits can either help or hurt your mental health in everyday life, so it’s important to foster healthy habits that work for you instead of settling into bad habits. By building healthy habits, you can reduce the amount of stress you experience at work by being more mentally equipped and resilient to the challenges.
If you have bad habits that you need to break, the best way to achieve it is to replace them with a healthy habit. Work towards a healthier habit a little bit every day until it becomes part of your natural routine.
The Facebook Algorithm is Not Your Enemy
Contrary to popular belief, the algorithm does not exist to make your life difficult when building a community on Facebook. The algorithm is there to ensure that Facebook only shows the most relevant, meaningful content to each individual person so that they have the best possible experience every time they visit the platform.
If you publish targeted, relevant content that your ideal audience will get value from consistently, the algorithm will become your best friend and your organic reach will flourish.
We had a blast at Inspired Social this year, and learned so much about how the role of social media has risen to the forefront in the current situation. A huge thanks to our speakers, and to everyone who joined us for the sessions!
