Katy is a Social Strategist at McCann, one of the biggest advertising companies in the world.
“I've been working in social media for about three years now. I started out as a copywriter and transitioned to doing social media caption writing, to content creating. Managing social media is very similar to copywriting, as they both requires alot of writing and exploring your audience and trying to understand what they want to read (or watch)"
“I started with working mostly for small, local businesses. I was living and breathing social media. Most of my work would consist of analyzing competition and getting inspiration in any way you can think of to create fun content - relevant for a small brand audience. I would do the writing, the designing and would learn so many new things just by being a content machine."
How Valuable Is Social Media for SMBs?
“I think the potential with social media is limitless. Any brand, doesn’t matter how big or small, can have a social media account, whether it’s on Instagram or TikTok. I mean, it doesn't cost anything, though if you do have a larger spending capabilities it can definitely help. You can dramatically increase your visibility on different social media platforms and reach wider audiences just by paying. If your content is 'good', you can get the same results without paying".
"Traditional advertising still exists, but in today's world, if you're looking for a restaurant to go to, or you're looking to buy a new product, the first thing you do is pull up someone's Instagram page. If you want people to find you, you have to be on social media platforms."
"I think what's interesting about social media is that it coordinates in real time. You can be agile and make your business part of trends that are occurring on social media to gain exposure for your brand simply being aware of what is happening. Your business can gain loads of exposure on social if you stick with it and play your cards right".
How Do You Conduct a Basic Social Media Strategy?
“First you need to understand the landscape of your industry, which starts with a competitive analysis. What content is your competition creating? How are people responding? How do the comments on their posts look like? Are they getting a ton of comments or likes or reposts? Do people share their content? What makes their content unique? You try and categorize your competition’s content and presumed tactics which you can assimilate into your brand's strategy.”
“Simultaneously you need to get to know your audience the best you can. You should invest time talking to your existing audience, develop a relationship with them, and dive deep into their needs and the way they view your product & content. Visit relevant Facebook & LinkedIn group communities and gather information that could help you get a better understanding of what type of knowledge and content your audience is seeking or would be interested to consume.” Eventually, you need to find your own unique voice and figure out which tones sound best in your audience’s ears.”
How to Set Goals You Will be Able to Achieve
“Small businesses may prioritize things such as amount of likes or followers when their relevance is questionable. If you are looking to create content which aims to educate, you should be looking at ‘post saves’ and ‘shares’ on Instagram. If you are looking to build a community and approach new audiences, then you should look at reach stats and number of impressions.”
"Likes and followers may also have practical value, as they provide credibility to your brand when other users approach your social media page, so it shouldn’t be overlooked. My point is that you need to have a logical reasoning to the numerical goals which you are setting. Why do you care about likes, if you are losing followers? Why do you care about tags in no one is commenting?"
Measuring Success on Social Media
“It starts with setting realistic goals. Obviously, I want to have 100,000 followers on Instagram or TikTok, get 100 comments and 1000 likes on each post, but we need to proceed there with humbler milestones. I like to set monthly goals, and as low as whatever parameter I’m tracking, what’s important to me is seeing a positive trend, even if modest. Progress is key here.”
“There are many tactics you can utilize to jumpstart that progress. You can message different people or small brands and develop symbiotic relationships, respond to posts positively, and share different types of content on a consistent basis. All of these actions will get people to be aware of your business and follow up with what you are doing on social media. If you put in the work, results will come.”
What Advice Do You Have for Smbs Starting Out With Social Media?
“The most important thing is to stay true to yourself. When you don’t have much experience, your social media content may mainly stem from what other people are doing as you may be attempting to sort of of mimic content which you think can succeed with your social media pages. Developing engaging and valuable content which is authentic is very difficult. It takes a lot of creativity and effort. Once you have a basic brand strategy which should include a couple of content ideas, you should do testing, testing and testing. Your content doesn’t have to explode or even have mild success right away. Every time we do a few posts we can learn something new, adjust and produce superior content, which is more relevant to our audience.”
What Do You Think About Video Content and Its Emergence Around Social Media?
“Yeah, I think video is huge, and is leading the way for where content is be going. I was just recently speaking about how Super Bowl ads are moving from TV to TikTok, which says alot about the platform. People want short, digestible, entertaining content. TikTok, after all is on its way to being he most popular video content platform in the world.
"Our attention span is trending down, and you can see today’s content is shorter and aims more to entertain. The human attention span is only 8 seconds long - we're used to scrolling down, skimming. You need to hook your audience in the first 2-3 seconds of a video to get viewers to fully watch your content. You can’t rely on your viewers patience or affinity anymore. Facebook (Meta) just added reels, podcasts are being done on Linkedin, and Youtube is adding content creator tools. Video just works."
"If you can nail your video strategy on social in 2022, you’ll probably be golden.”
