A CEO for a startup business recently mentioned how he fell into the vanity trap and spent thousands of dollars trying to amass ‘likes’ on Facebook.
While it is important to build a community of followers for one’s business, it is even more critical for that community to be relevant. What good is a community that consists of people who ‘like’ a company but are not interested in its products and services? They are never going to convert into customers.
If a business has been lucky and does have a community that is relevant to its niche, the second part of the puzzle is how one keeps that community engaged. This isn’t easy to achieve but the following three tips are bound to help retailers find appropriate content for niche communities.
1. Scale content curation
Content curation is a three-step process involving a seek, organise, share cycle. This may sound simple but the process can be tiring as it’s essentially an ongoing routine in the 24/7 digital age. Luckily there are tools and strategies available to help content managers fight the battle. Here are some useful pointers:
Content seeking – setting up Google alerts is a great way to keep up-to-date on industry-specific news. The notification service sends emails to the user when it finds results that match the user’s chosen search terms. Helpful search terms for people working in jewellery might include ‘jewellery industry news’ and ‘diamond industry news’. Other services such as Newsle, Twitter, Feedly and Pinterest can also be good sources of information.
Content organisation – content curating doesn’t mean copying and pasting content from one blog to another; that’s plagiarism. It’s not difficult to add value to existing content even if that simply means sharing a 140-character tweet with an added personal remark.
Content sharing – business owners are in luck if their teams are curating content for them. Why not encourage staff to share this information further by promoting the content on their own social media networks too?
2. Create original content
There’s no doubt that curating may seem like an easy and fast option but it’s also important to create a sufficient level of original content. This is not as complicated as it may sound. Here are a few examples that are easy and don’t require too much time or effort:
Be an ‘event parrot’ – whenever attending a networking event or trade show, ask the team to create original content for each of the business’ social streams. This may mean videos, photos, tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts or even a live-video stream using a service like Meerkat. Be sure to create extra buzz by lacing the event with a hashtag.
Interview sales teams – whether it’s the latest product update or a new collection, asking staff to answer a couple of questions about their favourite products will form the basis of a great blog post that customers will appreciate. No one knows a retailer’s brand as well as its own employees.
FAQs – go to industry forums and FAQ sections of brand websites to find out the sorts of questions that consumers have. Keeping a finger on the pulse of such issues and providing relevant content via websites and social media accounts that answer their questions will help to ensure that a business becomes a consumer’s first port of call for industry-related information.
3. Optimising content
Ken Herron, head of marketing at technology-communications company Unified Inbox, shared a great quote recently: “Social Networks are like snowflakes; they may look alike but all of them are unique.” Retailers would be wise to make this their mantra. Content needs to be optimised and here are some tips on how to make that happen:
Do not copy and paste updates but rather optimise them for each network – Twitter is 140 characters, Facebook has a friendly tone, and Instagram is all about images. Audiences appreciate and respond to considered updates.
Use tools that save time and optimise faster – tools such as Outbox Pro, Buffer and Hootsuite allow users to set up approvals (an effective way to ensure consistency when multiple members are curating and creating content) and also enable for faster content curation, editing, scheduling and optimising for select social media networks at the same time.
By following these simple tips, there’s no reason why retail business owners and brand marketers can’t generate appealing, lead-generating content for their army of existing and potential customers.