Lost in the Social Media Labyrinth?

Lost in the Social Media Labyrinth?

Today, all companies are expected to be active on social media. Social media has become the main channel for communicating with the market and something that has become a matter of course. At the same time, when we look at companies around us, we see a trend that only seems to be intensifying: More and more companies are investing more and more resources in creating many posts – but the response is frighteningly low.

Many companies, both small and large, have an inadequate response in the form of likes and comments if you look at the size of the company. They can often be counted in tens rather than hundreds or thousands. And if you look more closely at who gives feedback, it is not uncommon for more than half to be their employees. It means that significant resources are tied up in producing content for a few, leading to a very high cost per contact.

The clock can never be turned back

Before social media took off, there was a palette of media channels used to reach the target group; everything from newspapers, trade press, TV and radio advertising, direct advertising to outdoor advertising. They knew what the so-called contact cost was, i.e. what it cost to reach each person in the channel with their message. Then you could weigh the benefits of different media against each other and had a good idea of ​​what you paid to achieve.

Today most of these channels have a dwindling existence, and they will never come back to ancient times. Times have changed, and the clock never goes backwards.

Maximize the effects in the Social Media Labyrinth

How do you maximize the impact of your investments in social media? First of all, you have to think through what you want to achieve. For example, do you want to increase awareness of and create trust in the brand, drive sales or perhaps create a more robust corporate culture? There can be many things you want to achieve – the most important thing is that you have the right expectations of what you want to achieve.

This is how social media works

It may seem unnecessary to explain how social media works when we all keep Instagramming, Facebooking, TikToking, LinkedInning or Snapchatting. But to lay the foundation for an effective social media strategy, you need to look at social media from a commercial perspective. What opportunities are there, and how can we use them?

If you want to simplify, you can say that there are two ways to look at social media; and it is about what costs nothing to do, and what has a price tag. It is also complicated to really know what you are paying for. Do you get real followers, or is it bots that trim the numbers?

Social media for free

If you see social media as a messenger, and disregard all costs for producing content, then organic posts in the form of posts, videos, photos, contests – yes, really everything you can post as a post, story or similar – are free.

But if only a few react to what you do, you must include the production cost in the calculation, and then the cost of each contact quickly becomes very expensive. So free is often not free if you look at the whole picture; on the contrary.

Social media as a paid channel

But social media is the leading purchased media channel. And what you buy can be divided into three main groups/media channels: sponsored posts, collaborations with influencers & trendsetters and advertising.

Sponsored posts are purchased in the form of target groups where you may specify age, gender, interests, geographically and much more during a given period.

Collaborations with influencers & trendsetters mean that you pay people with many followers to support your brand. They can be narrow and niche towards a particular interest or segment or work with broad lifestyle profiles that attract the broad masses.

Pure advertising is also offered on many social media channels in various creative ways.

The Challenge

A change of how to store data from visitors is currently underway, read more here, which will change how you work when you can no longer rely on buying detailed individual profiles from social media companies. You will probably be required to make yourself relevant and interesting in a completely different way to be accepted by the target groups. Which is a topic for another blog post.

At the same time, the market is increasingly diversified when each person who is passionate about an issue starts their own social media profile to capture like-minded people. This means that it is becoming increasingly complex to find the right channel for your social media strategy – and it is not cheap. It costs a lot of money to reach your target audiences. The challenge is to find the right media channel for what you want to achieve. And you must set aside a relevant budget if you want to achieve your goals. Believing that social media is cheap is passé. You pay for the effect you want to achieve.

Get out of the labyrinth with a well thought out strategy

In summary, we can predict that social media as a media channel is here to stay, but it is constantly changing. In addition to the big ones such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok, there are constantly new players showing up such as Reddit, Telegram, Spotify and Clubhouse, who want to share the cake while others drop out.

By carefully thinking through what you want to achieve, setting clear goals, and setting aside resources, a social media strategy is the key to success. Then it will be easier to find the solutions for how your ideas arrive, whether it is posts, stories, films, pictures, competitions and more. And who knows, your target audience may not be where you think it is at all! In your evaluation, you can find grains of gold that are easily missed when being stuck in a rut.

Good luck getting out of the Social Media Labyrinth and making sure you get value for your investment! If you have any thoughts, feel free to contact us.