There are so many different organizations following great social media strategies and some that are not. Below are two examples of organizations that have a plan, stick to it, and do it well followed by one example of someone who could improve their strategy.
Strong – You Need a Budget
YNAB is a budgeting app and they are doing amazing with their social media strategy. They focus on twitter, facebook, instagram, and tiktok and are doing a great job at showing up for each of those platforms. Their team does weekly meme round ups featuring budget related humour both crowd sourced from their followers and made up from their team. Their memes are typically very current and are quite funny. For example, they recently shared a tweet to their Instagram about the Oscars! They also provide a ton of knowledge on their accounts and blog for budgeting and financial literacy. I’ve enjoyed following them for years and have become a customer of theirs on a few occasions. I was drawn to them because of their ability to make financial wellbeing so easy and achievable.
Strong – Tula Skincare
Tula is a skincare line that sells a variety to products. Their social media channels are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Tiktok. I think they’ve got a great strategy going for them! I specifically like how they share their customers posts to their page. It defintely entices their customers to share their images of the brand and products and gives them great content that feels personable and relatable. They also have so much great information available for their customers to look at. Highlights on Instagram target common skin problems and what products to use, their tiktok also have these as playlists for their customers to watch. They are engaging and including their customers in the conversation and it is working great.
Weak – Bethel Sundridge Church
Bethel is a local church that I have attended in the past. They always come to my mind when I think about how to implement a social media strategy because they have just started in their social media ventures and could use some guidance. They are currently on Facebook and Instagram and Youtube. They have in the last year started posting consistently to their pages. This organization should be using new tools with their efforts because their goal is to reach people who cannot make it into their physical building and to connect with more people in their area. With those goals in mind there should be a focus on putting out engaging content for the people who can only engage online and using more targetted posts for reaching those in the area. To implement this there needs to be more effort into making sure that posts on one network work for the other. Their posts are only focused on how Facebook will present them which leaves their Instagram feed looking rough. Having someone edit their posts before getting them to Instagram would be a huge improvement for their followers. For example, this post from Facebook has a link in, but on Instagram that link doesn’t translate because Instagram captions cannot have clickable links in it. Another issue is that parts of their graphics get cut off when posted to Instagram meaning the follower can’t see the entire image. Another thing I would suggest is that they show more personal images, someone trying to connect with them online who can’t arrive in person would have a hard time seeing who was behind the account, the photos used are mostly stock photos or graphics with no people at all. There are a lot of fun features that both the platforms they are on have that they could be incorporating as well, video, lives, reels, stories etc, but until they can get a consistent schedule down that involves repurposing their content for other networks they should keep focusing on that.
Not everyone has the same resources or information so there will always be people who can improve. That is life! Fortunately there is so much information available that can help your organization improve. Not to mention, there are also examples to follow like You Need a Budget and Tula! Overall, I think there is always something to improve and work on.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 