Information in this blog post was obtained from the HubSpot Blog, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social.
Communication goes far beyond just knowing what to say and in today's world of social media it is increasingly more important when working online and connecting millions of people. By looking at data we can gauge what stakeholders are doing and form effective communication methods to help in our social media marketing efforts after analyzing this data.
The bridge between communications and social media marketing goes past what consumers can see as it is also an important tool to be implemented in the workplace to get the most out of employees. You have to be engaged in the workplace and have appropriate communication skills if you wish to put them into practice when marketing on social media.
Forming a Plan
Social media marketing teams and communications teams work closely together and can use their combined knowledge to test future campaigns, pitches, and possible channels that could be best. In this stage of strengthening your social media
marketing efforts you would use communications by looking at what consumers are saying about your organization and how to use this data and understand it to better understand how to use social media for business look at an article written by my colleague here. External stakeholders have a lot of strength when it comes to the decisions that we must make in marketing so it is important to know what the dislikes and likes are so that an effective marketing strategy can be formed based on previous data that has been collected.
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By using a communications team and/or methods we can interpret this data in the most effective way possible because we can see the proper channels to take when we are launching a campaign and what type of words or language these stakeholders prefer when being presented with something new. These are all considerations that must be made and having the proper data to help us understand this as well as the proper people to help us interpret it makes marketing using social media easier and forms a stronger plan.
Data and Data Analysis
Data is a key tool when marketing because it helps to drive many if not all the decisions that are being made about what to post and when to post it. There are many categories that can go into consideration when collecting data and when looking at what will be most important for future use in a certain campaign.
When collecting data, it is important to know what people are saying and how you
want to communicate about your organization based on these relevant conversations. This is like identifying your target market on the marketing side of things, but you are identifying relevant conversations that are happening online in regard to your organization and how you can communicate to the proper people having these conversations. It is also up to a communications specialist to interpret some of these conversations to see if they are negative or positive so that the proper communication methods are put into practice in order to give the right message with marketing based on the attitudes of certain stakeholders in their online space. The main purpose of data collection is to gain a better understanding of your target audience so that you can fit your campaign to fit them and their needs.
The analysis of this data is where these two different departments work most closely in order to make sense of what all these numbers mean and how they can use them when marketing with social media. After analyzing online interactions, you can see what demographics are communicating positively about a certain product or about their positive response to a new marketing campaign. This allows marketers to know if their campaign was successful and what
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demographic to target in order to keep them happy so that they continue with their online engagement as well as spending more money on these products. After data collection, we really can make sense of it all through analysis and what these demographics are responding positively to.
Benefits of Communications Working with Social Media Marketing
Creating the most effective methods of communication in marketing is the most important thing when considering why these two different parts of business work together. By utilizing someone who is knowledgeable in communication and its best practices you can really get a better understanding of your customers and create a better more specific target market. You will also be able to create more finetuned plans on how to serve that market by looking at how they react to certain communication approaches so that you find the most effective channel of communication.
Using communication tools helps to stay engaged with your customers so that you know their true feelings because they will share them online. By continuing to look at these conversations and the data that we can pull from them we will be able to better understand our audience and what they want from us helping in the future with other campaigns so that they can get the necessary changes made to be as effective as possible. Without the knowledge of communication, it could be harder to know what this data means and to be on top of our customer interactions to be able to make improvements to much-needed things in order to stay competitive in the very fast-paced changing social media world.
Internal Communication
You cannot expect strong communication with external stakeholders from a team that does not practice strong internal communication. There are many benefits that come from a team with strong communication skills such as being more productive because
they can spend more time focusing on work rather than trying to sort out misunderstandings or being able to work through challenges easier whether it is with another employee or a customer. Many employees do not feel heard whether it is from the C-suite or if it's just from other colleagues. This can lead to more misunderstandings and other negative outcomes from either not having Image courtesy of Unsplash
enough trust or being too afraid to speak up. Being a more active listener can help employees feel heard but can also make them want to offer more effective information without any fear of retaliation. Something as simple as making eye contact can help to solve this issue and make the workplace better at communicating when they feel that you are actively listening. Actively listening will lead to more people sharing thoughts and ideas helping to further conversations and making them more beneficial to reaching your team's goal.
Communication in social media marketing is one of the most important tools that you will have to implement in order to be as effective as possible. There are many things that you can learn from putting it to use. The data that you receive from looking at communications will be very valuable to crafting a plan and how to execute that plan in the future when have looked over the data. The benefits that come out of putting these to use will help to create better more useful methods for interpreting data to be able to use to further your goals and have wider reach. Finally, the only way that you can maintain consistency with these practices is to be able to utilize them within your team and be a good communicator with your other employees as well. The proper methods of communication are an important part of social media marketing and can be a big difference-maker in the effectiveness of your future projects.
Resources
Bennett, P. (2023, February 17). How to Improve Your Communication Skills in 5 Simple Steps. Hubspot.com. Retrieved September 19, 2023, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-improve-communication-skills
Gomez, R. (2023, February 23). Social media for strategic communications: 4 ways to strengthen your brand narrative. Retrieved September 19, 2023, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-strategic-communications/
Macready, H. (2023, September 14). Social Media Intelligence: What It Is & Why You Need It. Hootsuite.com. Retrieved September 19, 2023, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-intelligence/
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