Tweets, Reels and Catching Feels: Developing a Social Media Campaign

On 9th December, Urban Muslimz held its final session of the year, as part of its #LevelUp media training Campaign. If you have missed the summary of one of the previous sessions, you can find it here.

For those who missed the event, here is a roundup of the key takeaways. 

We were joined by Marketing Consultant Vahida Marić from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the creator of the Walaway podcast and director of digital learning partners Imran Nanlawala from Dallas, Texas USA.

About the Speakers

After studying Marketing Communications, Vahida Maric has worked as a Marketing Consultant for eight years for small companies to help them achieve their social media goals of generating and increasing leads. Imran Nanlawala is the creator and director of his own company digital learning partners. He is interested in combining technology with education for enhancing his entrepreneurial strategy for more efficient outcomes. His clients are not for profit organisations where he helps them become digital and incorporates graphic design into their marketing strategy.

So, here are some top tips from the session alongside my knowledge.

Understand Your Branding & Marketing Strategies

Branding is an extension of marketing, which forms a company’s unique identity, such as the company name, logo, slogan, values, mission statement and reputation. Marketing should not be confused with branding. Marketing is communicating with your target audience in a creative manner, which helps you achieve leads to sell products. This can be in the form of making your target audience watch videos, watch an advert, like or comment on social media content, enabling them to consume your marketing. 

Every business should set smart marketing objectives for their social media campaigns. Objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Marketing objectives can include achieving a certain number of followers, increasing visitors to a website by a certain percentage or having a certain number of people subscribed to an email list.

Create A Distinct Persona

Every business should form a distinct persona. This persona is the ideal customer who will consume the marketing and eventually purchase your product or service. So, ask yourself the following questions:

• What gender is the person?
• What is the age range of this person?
• What is this person’s job?
• How much does this person earn?
• What hobbies does this person have?
• What are the behavioural traits of this person?
• Which social media platforms does this person use the most?

It is crucial to target the correct demographic because it is impossible to target everyone! Try and acquire as much knowledge about your target audience as possible by conducting market research. By knowing your target audience inside out, you will tailor your marketing strategy to your audience, who will be more inclined to read and watch your content. You should learn about their social media habits. What time of day are they online? How many times a day is your ideal customer online? What social media platforms do they use? Younger generations tend to be more active online than older generations. This will allow you to schedule content at the correct time to enhance the visibility of your content.

Conduct market research on your competitors. 

Who are your competitors? How do you differ from them? What is your unique selling point (USP)? For example, Domino’s pizza may not sell the best quality pizza or use the freshest ingredients, but they can deliver your pizza in the fastest time in under 30 minutes. So hungry people are more likely to go to Dominos as their USP lies in speed. So, find the gaps in the market. What can your business offer that nobody else does, which adds value? A value-adding concept will be your unique selling point.

Build Your Brand’s Trust & Credibility 

When your audience finds the value in your brand, this will lead to brand loyalty. After trust and credibility have been established, followers will be more inclined to purchase from you.

When you first establish a brand, do not go straight for the sale, first, you have to come across as trustworthy to convert your followers into customers. Strive to keep your target audience engaged with your content to generate loyal followers. 70% of posts should be on the narrative of your target audience’s lifestyle, posts that resonate with them. Only 30% of your posts should lead to a call to action. A call to action may involve: 

• Asking your audience to sign up to your newsletter or email list
• Asking for a comment on a post
• Enticing your audience to attend an event
• Encouraging the audience to purchase a product or service 

Once credibility is established, you will start to form a reputation, encouraging people to purchase from you. You must have heard the quote, “it takes ten years to build a brand reputation and 10 seconds to destroy it”. So, maintain honesty and always stick to your values.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage 

Social media is most effective when done on impulse. It is essential to be on-trend to attract followers and engagement. Repost content which is trending and make use of hashtags to increase the visibility of your posts. Always engage with other people’s posts before you post anything yourself. 

Make Your Posts Visually Appealing

Creating compelling content is vital for engagement and capturing your audience’s attention. There are many image and video platforms which enhance the quality of images and videos; these include:  

• Filmora (Video)
• Final Cut Pro (Video)
• Invideo (Video)
• Adobe Premiere (Video)
• Adobe Lightroom (Images)
• Adobe Photoshop (Images)
• Canva (Images)

Canva is an excellent platform for creating posts and visually appealing graphics, which can be used for free. Templates can be made on Canva to create consistency with posts, contributing to brand recognition amongst viewers. An upgraded version can be purchased for a monthly fee to access visually enhancing features. These designs can be directly uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 

Research the various editing software’s and cameras to find the most efficient one for you. Through knowing your target audience, you will know which sound, colours and language to use to better resonate with your target audience. 

Use Different Platforms to Manage Your Social Media

Hootsuite, buffer and social pilot are also excellent platforms to create social media posts. These software also allows you to track every post’s analytics to know how well each post has performed. This will enable you to make changes on upcoming posts and tailor your social media campaigns according to which posts are doing well and change the posts that do not generate as much reach. These software’s automate social media marketing, where you can schedule the content into a content planner, which then goes out on the day and time you want in advance.

Good luck creating your social media campaigns!