So it seems only fitting that I use this month’s column to provide some handy tips on how we used social media to keep all stakeholders up-to-date and interested in our big transition to GWlegal.
Planning makes perfect
Planning is essential to any good project, but often continually on-the-ball, reactive social media users forget this.
Planning your campaign is essential if you enjoy a stress-free working environment. This includes: designing content; deciding the best times for that content to go live (maybe a tweet and Facebook post need to coincide with physical marketing materials distributed to stakeholders); scheduling everything in ahead of time (we use Hootsuite); and sticking to your goals.
Making your goals specific can help. For example, the Hootsuite blog suggests: “For Instagram we will share photos that communicate our company culture. We will do this by posting three photos a week. The target for each is at least 30 likes and five comments”.
Be responsive and flexible
A well-planned campaign will free up your time for the other essentials – listening to feedback, responding to comments and posting ah-hoc material. For instance, perhaps you are moving office and you are suddenly alerted to a major milestone in the process by your builders.
Having the time free to run over, take a snap, and post it on Instagram in real-time can make a huge difference to your engagement levels.
Social media campaigns should be balanced in that looking ‘too planned’ can be a bad thing. Tricky, I know, but doable with practice.
Keep content varied
Some examples of the content we used to keep stakeholders up-to-date and on the edge of their seats included:
- Teaser posts (‘something big is coming’)
- Video announcements (‘introducing GWlegal’)
- Blog articles on our website (‘what to expect.. coming soon’)
- Public relations (posting links to media coverage we were able to secure)
- A mix of professional photography (pictures of our new building), Instagram-style snaps (work in progress) and custom-designed promo (graphics, infographics…)
- Personalised content (for example tweets to individual people of interest letting them know about your announcement)
- Countdowns to the big day/event/announcement
- Other creative ideas you might come up with… the sky’s the limit (or should I say your Twitter character count is.)
You can see how we communicated our rebrand at our social media pages including Twitter (@GWlegal), Facebook (/GWlegalUK), Instagram (@GWlegal) or Pinterest (gwlegaluk).
