Social media for organizations is different than posting on your own channels. Before last year, I posted on Instagram only a couple times a year. I was no social media expert.  

But last April, I accepted a social media internship with an organization in Norman. Then in the summer, I started helping write copy for a different communication team. With the social media internship, I planned, created and scheduled all the social media for the organization. With the communication job, I ended up writing copy, scheduling social and dabbling in the strategy side. 

I learned a lot. 

When you’re not posting on your own channels, social media should be strategic.

It’s been so interesting. I’m not a social media expert at this point in my life, but after posting hundreds of times over the past year, analyzing analytics and creating content calendars, I’ve learned so much about the day in and day out of social media. 

Here’s what I learned:

Value connection over promotion

Connecting with your audience is the most difficult and most important part of social media. You can promote all you want, but if there is no connective tissue in your social media, you’ll never get eyes on your posts. Typically, an organization’s social media goal is to promote a product or service to its audience, but people can filter through promotional writing.  

So, how do we connect and establish bonds with our followers or prospective followers?  

1. Consistency: Post regularly!
2. Make it interesting: In journalism, we look for things that are ‘newsworthy.’ Does your post have one or more of the elements below?
   • Impact 
   • Timeliness 
   • Proximity 
   • Conflict
   • The Bizarre 
   • Human Interest 
   • Celebrity 
3. ASK: What kind of content do people ACTUALLY want to see? 

Over the past year, I’ve learned the hard way what YOU want your audience to connect with isn’t always what they will connect with.

For example, we wanted the audience to connect with the promotion of a Halloween party, but they really connected with a picture of a mural on the street. They were posted around the same time. One picture got 20 likes and no comments. The mural got almost 200 likes and several comments.  

Know who you are 

Know who you are as a company. What are your values, your mission? Why do you have a social media account in the first place? 

What are you trying to accomplish with social media? 

You should know what you want social media to do for you because without a clear identity, you will confuse and frustrate your consumers and your content can appear thoughtless.  

You have to know who you are to create a good social media strategy; I hadn’t realized this until I worked with social media accounts for vastly different organizations. Every organization needs its own, unique content. 

Try new content types and strategies  

Posting what isn’t historically star content can shock you. Sometimes I think something is going to flop, but I need some content. I put it up and it gets the highest engagement of the month.

Right now, I’m not convinced even the greatest social teams really know. What they do know is social media is a relatively new field considering how long traditional media like newspapers or TV commercials have been around. 

That means you can’t perfectly predict what will do well. If your content is still created with care, and your content calendar is ready to go with historically high performers, try something new.

Remember, you can’t always predict what is going to do well, so trying something new can help you figure it out. 

Work to connect with your audiences, know you are and try new things! It will hopefully lead to growth!