How Social Media Affects Our Brands
We all know that social media is a necessary evil in today’s world but it can be all too overwhelming. I talk about this subject at the workshops I speak at and it’s in fact one of my favourite parts to talk about. I often see the rolling of eyes or wincing in faces when I mention social media because often people don’t know where to start. How often should you be posting? What type of content should you be posting? What makes an image shareable? How do you find new followers? Concentrating on the Big Four (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest), we have to look at them separately as they are all different beasts and should be treated that way. Here’s how we at Wedding Sparrow work our social media as effectively as possible...
The King of Shareable content. We all see the cute cat videos and the videos of people falling over. And the article links to the Top 10 Funniest/Strangest/Sexiest Whatevers. But how do we compete with this kind of shareable content when we’re not in the Cat/Buzzfeed traffic market? Well the truth is, we’re unlikely to find that a post of ours will be viewed by 100 million people as we only share wedding related content. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t reach the best possible audience. Facebook has a tendency to not let us reach our own audience that has chosen to support us by ‘liking’ that page. Something that frustrates the heck out of us here at Wedding Sparrow HQ! We point blank refuse to pay money to reach our own audience (at least for the time being - ask me again in the future!). So we need to get clever and get people sharing.
What are you posting? Why? What time/day are you posting? All questions you should ask yourself prior to posting on any social media. If it’s just a pretty portrait of a couple, expect low numbers. Our readers love a great dress shot (especially if you link to where the dress is from), a great hair shot (back of the head), a wanderlust inducing venue shot (chateau in France anyone?) and the piece de resistance is always the bridesmaid shot. Think about your target audience. Female, 21-35, educated, professional. She loves to share things with her friends/family and seek out approval. All the types of images mentioned above are images that you can tag people in (“Did you see this dress?”, “I would love this bridesmaid dress for you!”, “I would love to get married here!” etc).
Our favourite social medium. We heart IG and with a following of over 130,000, our readers love us too. We keep our content separate for starters so if you want to find behind the scenes iphone shots from shoots or workshops, pictures of my kittens (who wouldn’t?!) or general randomness from me, you’ll have to follow me separately (@sara_weddingsparrow). Keeping the @weddingsparrow page professional with all film images helps keep it consistent and the brand clear. We also use Iconosquare regularly to make sure we know what our readers like to see.
Interestingly, you can see here our ‘Most Liked’ media is an image of bridal dresses from a bridal store in Australia. I say interesting because it’s an iPhone image rather than a processed film image. Then there’s more of the good old variations of a dress shot. This features four times in the Top 5 so we know our readers love to get wedding dress inspiration this way! The statistic we use the most is the ‘Best Time to Post’. We need to know when our IG followers are online and looking for pretty so we don’t waste a good post. As a general rule though if we post at UK bed time (approx 11pm) we also hit the US East Coast at dinner time/commute home time (approx 6pm) and the US West Coast at late lunch time (approx 3pm) so we hit 3 key timezones at perfect ‘checking phone’ times all with one post. BAM!
Our Twitter following rose pretty rapidly in the early days. It was new and exciting and people wanted to see what we were about. Being a very visual platform ourselves, we soon found that our followers plateaued. We don’t spend a huge amount of time on Twitter to be honest but that is not to say we don’t regularly post or interact on there. We utilise key hashtag groups on there like #weddinghour or #bridehour where Twitter users group together on certain days of the week to find their vendors and connect with similar brides or brands.
Ah the sea of pretty we can all get lost in for hours. Sometimes I go on there to look for something in particular and before you know it I’m lost in a Home Improvements board surrounded by images of hexagonal marble tile flooring. As much as it is a huge ‘time waster’, it also drives between 30-40% of our traffic regularly. So we have to make sure what we’re pinning is quality imagery with links back to our site. I suggest you pin in 2 different ways: Brand Building vs. Traffic Building. Brand Building is where we pin images that denote our style and branding but don’t necessarily drive traffic to our site. We all need images of textures, movement, art we’re inspired by, places we want to travel to etc so people can get a sense of who we are and what we like. These types of pins should be in equal measure to Traffic Building ones. When was the last time you pinned directly from your website? If you don’t, you’re not going to get any traffic. Make sure if you’re featured online too that the blog/publication pins your images to drive traffic your way! If you advertise, ask them to pin directly from your site thus sending their following straight to you.
GENERAL TIPS
Whilst it’s all ever changing and we’re constantly trying to stay ahead of Facebook algorithms, it should be enjoyable too. Dedicate a couple days a week where you have an hour to sit and update your social media. Have regular housekeeping clear outs (don’t let your clients see your first ever IG post of you on a drunken night out because you forgot it was there! Trust us, people really do scroll to the end!). And don’t forget to interact with others. A great way to network as well as grow your following is find other accounts that you admire, have the kind of client you want, or are generally amazing and you want a piece of their action. Commenting on their high traffic feed means your IG name appears in front of a key audience you’re trying to attract. If we’re looking to attract new brides to our IG account, we might find popular fashion bloggers online and comment there. Voila! New followers. Who love fashion and weddings.
If you have a comment about Social Media or want us to help you with your social media presence, contact us at advertise@weddingsparrow.co.uk.
Happy tweeting/posting/pinning!
Sara
Comments
Thank you for this post Sara. Very helpful and interesting to read. Love that you gave real examples. Would like to see more posts like this :)
