We just recently celebrated two years of being in business at Avenir. You may relate to time milestones causing self-reflection. Most of our time during the first 18+ months were spent building client websites, building our client’s business and managing social media … for our clients.
In January of this year, we started to look at our own marketing efforts. What we saw were some good ideas that never really took hold because we didn’t have the resources to follow through (you may have heard something about the cobbler’s children having no shoes).
What we decided to do was see what would happen if we dedicated resources to our own social media efforts. After all, we know a few things about social media, email marketing and the like, so why not apply it right here at home? Then, we figured, we’d report back to you on the results. What worked? Were our goals realistic? What flopped?
The first part of the plan was to get on a consistent schedule of emailing and posting to our blog. You may have already noticed we did that.
Twice a month we post on our blog and send out an accompanying email to our subscribers. We initially set out to publish like clockwork, with posts and emails going out the same time each month for consistency and predictability. A regular email you look forward to (every Sunday, once a month, etc) is the best kind of message to send and receive, in our minds.
But, busy happens and running a growing agency can be hectic; our best intentions have a tendency to be too easily cast aside in favor of a client request or pitch meeting. So we’ve settled on a looser, twice-a-month goal and we’ve stuck to it. Feedback suggests we’re on the right track.
The next part of our plan was to create bespoke strategies for each social platform.
Each platform requires its own strategy. It’s, of course, simpler to create content and repost it nearly identically on every platform at once. But the tone and purpose of each platform are different – Instagram is visual, Twitter is about tone, etc., so we’re being intentional how we post on each platform.
Since we are a B2B company, and because it was our most overlooked platform, we’ve decided to start with LinkedIn.
The basics of building a following are:
- Post updates regularly — obvi if you have little or no content, no one will be interested in following you.
- Optimize website for social — make it easy for people to find your social pages.
- Embrace employee advocacy — get everyone in your company involved.
- Keep your company page current — every time you update your page, it is shared in your followers’ feeds, which may encourage sharing to their network.
- Share rich media — just like on other platforms, videos, images, and infographics get the most attention and engagement.
- Exercise thought leadership in your industry — this one is a bit tricky because you can’t just say you’re a thought leader; you have to show that you are one.
So, we have our work cut out for us. We’re updating our profile and creating a content strategy that will have a bit of overlap with our other channels, but for the most part will be a place where we can create a B2B back and forth, sharing our ideas and engaging with other marketing professionals, as well as clients and potential clients.
After that, we’ll move on to Twitter. If you want to see what happens when a brand decides to put its own advice into action, stay tuned here. We’re excited to see how it all plays out.
