How to break through the noise on social media?
Don’t lose your cool in media chaos by anticipating 80% of your content production.
What keeps Investors away from your stock? Poor visibility. What makes any CEO speech empowering? Vision. What’s pacing project management? Deadlines. Undoubtedly, corporation efficiency is correlated with timing. Some managers come into the office with a good fresh attitude, do their routine job, and then go back home. But they are not thinking one step ahead. And they are not planning one step ahead. Very few businesses will survive being run that way. What about their business plan? Where is their forecasting? Which trends are changing? Where is the opportunity? How to split story across channels? How to take advantage of the Headlines? You can’t last in the fast-paced media industry if you mess up predicting futures interactions with your community.
Social Media — and PR as well — are like an Open-Outcry session in the Chicago’s Stock Exchange. Traders are screaming and yelling to make their voices heard into an electric mood! It is so loud in here, the message sender needs to use distinctive body language to be recognized by its receivers in a fraction of time across the ring. There are signals to buy or sell, to indicate quantity and expiration month, up or down trends and of course, signals for price. And this is exactly how social media content strategy works. Your narratives, branding framework, the way you deal with the timing, posts frequency, variety of your release, are all success-related to your strategic planning abilities. That’s what I learned over numerous launch campaigns and here is why I always anticipate 80% of my online content production.
It is just a matter of perspective.
At first glance, a trader’s pit seems messy and chaotic but it is rapidly becoming more pragmatic from an overhead standpoint. I mean this ‘ordered chaos’ is extremely well structured and effective.
Each colour jacket you see in the pit is a communication device in itself as it refers to a role mandate, from kickstarting the bid and make the deal, to safe the transaction and acknowledge it into the Clearing House. Envisioned as a scheme between a message sender and its receiver, traders, brokers, runners, clerks, keypunchers are the main characters of the value chain and the numerous triggers to generate Leads on social media.
Therefore, depending on where you set in the conversation, how close you are from the action, it will determine your impact through the path-to-lead. If you’re too close from the action, you will shape nothing but ‘nano-lytics’ because of a lack of visibility and anticipation. From an overhead view, it is far easier to monitor the transmission and to improve follow-up. To summarize, brand content without strategic planning is Air Guitar.
Plus, it is important to balance the pressure of speed and timing against the knowledge of transmission. The transmission occurs because your brand content fits the community interest. Its consequences are not bound to someone in particular, but rather shared by the whole group. So, the stronger the community structure is, the faster the information will propagate.
How you interact shapes how you impact.
Before you go viral, lock your narratives, graphics guidelines and keep an eye on the timescale. Then, activate a content planning as the one below, to bring added value to the community table, and considering both your competitors' analysis and sector recurring news (fair, holiday season, events, publications, etc). Whether you manage a public figure, firm, products or services, get into the pit and trade your story smoothly with care for your community. Be creative using an eclectic blend of branding resources all along your campaign: videos, infographics, quotes, chats, opt-in, and so on.
But don’t neglect a strong auto-motivational dose and regularity in the long run. I guarantee that an overall consistency and a disciplined method give results. Especially if you’re heading up numerous tasks simultaneously, this planning has your project roadmap covered when unexpected events knock on your door.
Here is an example of content planning and its return on investment below. Some companies publish that much content in a couple of weeks! Other in one month and a half. The key point is that you set your own cruising speed.
2 sell-out Stadiums behind my screen.
From that modus operandi, I’ve organized a Press Conference in France for one of the world’s largest market research group. In solely 90 minutes, more than 33,000 users joined Twitter’s real-time conversation. If you do the math, 33,000 users fill twice the Madison Square Garden in NYC or twice Paris Bercy Arena in France. A campaign featured by Strategies Magazine* as part of its Top 10 Social Media Best Practices and quoted among notorious consumer brands like ClubMed Resorts, Heineken or Carrefour.
Another reason to anticipate your content production and start managing an agenda to break through the noise on social media. Now please listen to the sweet music of the CME Stock Exchange Pit. Don’t you think it could sound like a fierce competition on a social media platform…unmuted?
- strategies magazine, issue #1,624.
About Raphaël Couderc
10 years of proven track record in marketing and communications activities backed by a business school master’s degree and a world cup level athletic career. Read more: about.me/raphaelcouderc
