Without question, social media is an essential part of your business’ marketing strategy. It can help you reach millions of customers worldwide. However, this also means there’s a lot at stake when you publish each social media post. Social media interactions must be handled with tact, efficiency and with your target audience in mind. Creating a social media playbook is a crucial step in telling your brand’s story in the most consistent, engaging and effective way.
A brand social media playbook or policy should act as a guide to help address situations that range from a standard customer interaction to a major crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides employees with a detailed explanation of key social media channels, highlights the importance of social sharing and provide tips to ensure ongoing success. A social media playbook will help you run your social media accounts smoothly and help employees to elevate your company’s messages while contributing their own viewpoints to grow their personal channels.
Your brand social media playbook will help you engage and interact more effectively online by:
Every employee has the ability to have an influence over your company’s social media efforts, so it’s essential to share your social media playbook with all current and future employees. Consider posting the playbook to your company intranet as well as emailing the content to your entire team so they always have ready access to the information.
The playbook should be shared as part of every new hire’s onboarding process so that they understand the rules and expectations surrounding your approach to social media. A member of the social team should discuss the company’s social media policies and guidelines and help new hires set up their channels in a brand-relevant way.
Today, 72% of the public uses some type of social media. With over 2.6 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2020, Facebook is the biggest social network. Meanwhile, there are more than 700 million users on LinkedIn and 1 billion monthly users on Instagram. And these numbers are continuing to climb. Recently, Twitter announced year-over-year user growth of 24% in the first quarter.
Figures like these make it easy to see the opportunity social media presents:
Maintaining a presence on social media helps build brand recognition and allows you to promote your products and services while staying connected with your key audiences. Brands can share important updates about product launches, personnel and industry news, and more. Social media also enables brands to connect quickly and directly with customers and employees. And most importantly, building and managing your own social media profiles helps establish your company as a thought leader. Your competitors are likely using social media and you should too in order to share helpful content and news.
With social distancing guidelines currently in place, brands must engage customers from afar by replacing in-person engagement with digital alternatives. This means that B2B buyers are relying on content more than ever to research solutions to business challenges. A recent survey of B2B buyers found that 67% of respondents said they rely even more on content than they did the year prior to research and inform purchase decisions. Companies can support customers’ initial research phase by making information readily available and easily digestible on channels such as social media.
An active social media presence can help B2B brands and their salespeople enhance visibility of key products, services and expertise, and communicate how they differentiate themselves from competitors. Social media also helps create an opportunity for two-way dialogue and relationship building with current and potential customers. Building and fostering these relationships and arming customers with the information they need to make a purchase is key to retaining and winning new business.
Social media is a great tool for building brand image and developing a loyal customer base. More than 90% of brands used social media to increase their visibility, managing between four and 10 accounts on average. In 2020, an estimated 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, so it’s never been more important than ever to get social media right. Whether you’re just getting started or you’re looking to restart your social media strategy, a social media playbook will show you how to use social media more effectively. By including guidelines, best practices and training tips for your employees, you can also help protect your brand.
Not sure where to start with your own corporate social media playbook? Contact Mulberry today to help develop your social media guide for employees and your business to ensure everyone is communicating consistently across your social media channels.
Christina Alvarez is a Senior Account Supervisor at Mulberry Marketing Communications, an award-winning full-service B2B communications agency based in Chicago, London and Australia. With over a decade of communications agency experience, she enjoys securing media relations wins and positioning clients as industry thought leaders.