Being active on social media is no longer enough. Brands need a well-defined strategy that aligns with business goals, employs key tactics, and adapts to changing trends to achieve meaningful results.

In this post, we outline 12 essential steps to help you build a social media strategy that not only works for your brand but drives growth.

1. Define your goals

The first step to building a winning social media strategy is setting clear goals. These goals should align with your business objectives, and we recommend focusing on six core areas:

Awareness: Getting your brand in front of your target audience.

Traffic: Driving users to your website or landing pages.

Engagement: Fostering meaningful interactions with your followers.

Sentiment: Managing how your brand is perceived online.

Conversion: Turning followers into leads, customers, or subscribers.

Customer Experience: Creating loyal customers who advocate for your brand.

Developing SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound – are essential to keep your strategy focused. For example, “We will drive 5,000 unique visitors to our membership registration page on our website from social media by December 2024” is one example of a well-defined, measurable goal that you can build a tactical plan around.

2. Know your audience

Understanding your audience is critical to your social media success. Start by creating data-backed customer personas. These personas should reflect key demographic details, such as age, location, and interests, as well as psychographics like values and attitudes.

Rather than relying on assumptions, use data from surveys, social media analytics, and customer service interactions. This ensures that your content resonates with the right people, addressing their needs and desires. Fetch’s insights can help you dig deep into these audience behaviours, giving you the information you need to craft tailored content.

3. Study the competition

Competitor analysis is a crucial part of crafting your strategy. Analyse what your competitors are doing on social media, particularly what works well for them. Key questions to ask include:

– Which platforms are they most active on?
– What type of content gets the highest engagement?
– What tone do they use?

There are many competitor analysis tools available that enable you to study competitors in your industry with ease, helping you to benchmark against them and find opportunities to differentiate your brand.

4. Social media strategy – focus on the right channels

Not every platform will suit your brand’s goals or your audience’s preferences. After creating your customer personas and analysing your competition, identify which platforms are the most relevant for your strategy.

Whether it’s LinkedIn for professional connections or TikTok for younger audiences, focusing your efforts on the right channels allows you to engage with the people who matter most and will yield the best results for your audience and goals.

5. Create a content game plan

Content is the engine that drives social media. A successful strategy requires diverse content that aligns with your goals. At this stage, define content buckets – broad categories for the types of content you’ll post. These could include:

Educational content:
Tips and how-tos to inform your audience.

Engagement drivers:
Polls, questions, and challenges to boost interaction.

Promotional content:
Product launches, discounts, and offers.

Once you’ve identified your content buckets, use a content calendar to plan and schedule your posts. This ensures a consistent, organised approach, so you can avoid last-minute rushes and maintain a steady presence.

6. Create a paid advertising plan

In addition to organic growth, a paid advertising strategy is essential for reaching a wider audience and accelerating results. This involves careful budget allocation, defining your target audience, selecting the right ad formats, and choosing the platforms where ads will perform best. Having a robust paid strategy allows you to supplement your organic efforts and reach new potential customers efficiently.

7. Maintain a consistent brand voice

A consistent brand voice is key to building trust and familiarity. Whether your tone is professional, quirky, or bold, it should reflect your brand’s identity and remain consistent across all platforms. Think about your brand as a person – how would they sound?

Maintaining this voice across all your content creates a unified experience for your audience, helping your brand stand out and build deeper connections.

8. Social media strategy – leverage the right tools

Managing multiple social platforms can be overwhelming, but the right tools can make it far more manageable. Social media management tools help with everything from scheduling posts to monitoring engagement and tracking performance. These tools save time, improve efficiency, and give you the insights needed to fine-tune your strategy over time.

9. Budget

A solid social media strategy requires investment, so budgeting is crucial. Allocate funds for content creation, platform fees, influencer collaborations, and advertising spend. This ensures your team knows where resources are going and maximises the return on investment.

10. Set a timeline and milestones

Set a timeline that includes key activities, milestones, and deliverables. Breaking your strategy into phases allows you to monitor progress and ensure that each stage is executed on time. Establishing clear milestones also helps keep your team accountable and gives you points of reference to measure progress.

11. Define an execution plan

A well-defined execution plan ensures that your social media strategy gets implemented smoothly. This involves assigning roles and responsibilities to team members, setting up workflows, and detailing how each part of the strategy will be tactically executed. Clear planning leads to better coordination and more effective results.

12. Social media strategy – measure, refine and improve

Tracking the effectiveness of your strategy is crucial. Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like engagement, reach, and conversion rates to measure success. Tools that provide detailed analytics will help you track performance over time and make data-driven decisions for continuous improvement. Regularly assessing these metrics ensures that your strategy stays aligned with your business goals and you fully understand your return on investment.

And finally..

Crafting an effective social media strategy involves setting clear goals, understanding your audience, analysing competitors, and refining your content and approach over time. At Fetch, we provide the tools and guidance to help you navigate each step of this journey, turning your social media efforts into real, measurable success.

Ready to elevate your social media game? Contact the team today and let’s get building a strategy that works for you.

The post 12 Steps to a better social media strategy appeared first on Fetch Social Media.

Struggling to keep up with the constant demand for fresh social media content? You’re not alone. But if you don’t do social media content repurposing, you’re likely working harder, not smarter, to achieve your social media goals.

Social media moves fast and creating original posts from scratch every time can feel overwhelming. But what if you could maximise the impact of your best content without constantly reinventing the wheel? That’s where content repurposing comes in. By strategically repurposing your social media content, you can extend its lifespan, reach new audiences, and reinforce key messages – without doubling your workload.

Let’s break down how it works and how you can leverage it for maximum impact.

What is social media content repurposing?

Repurposing social media content means taking an existing post and transforming it into a different format or adapting it for another platform. Unlike simply reposting the same thing, repurposing gives your content a fresh spin while keeping its core value intact. This strategy helps you work smarter, not harder, by making your best content work across multiple touchpoints.

For example:

A high-performing LinkedIn post can become a Twitter thread.
A customer testimonial from Facebook can be turned into a carousel post on Instagram.
A long-form video can be chopped into short clips for Reels or TikTok.

By repurposing content, you maximise your reach while ensuring your messaging stays consistent across platforms.

Why do social media content repurposing?

Here’s some of the key reasons why you should be doing content repurposing as part of your social media strategy:

Extend content lifespan: Social media posts often have short visibility windows. Repurposing helps keep your best content in circulation for longer.

Reach new audiences: Different platforms attract different demographics. What performs well on LinkedIn may not reach the same people as a TikTok video, so repurposing ensures broader exposure.

Boost engagement: Presenting the same core message in various formats increases the likelihood of engagement. 

Increase efficiency: Constantly creating new content is time-consuming. Repurposing saves time while maintaining content quality.

Reinforce key messages: Repetition is key to brand awareness. By repurposing, you can easily reinforce your messaging without constantly trying to create evergreen content.

5-Steps to effectively repurpose social media content

STEP 1 – Identify high-performing content

Start by looking at your analytics. Which posts received the most likes, shares, comments, or saves? These are strong candidates for repurposing since they’ve already proven engaging.
For example, if a post on X.com gets significant engagement, consider turning it into a more detailed LinkedIn post or article, or even a highly visual Instagram carousel.

STEP 2 – Adapt content to different platforms

Each social platform has its own format and audience preferences. When repurposing, tweak your content to match the platform’s style and user behaviour:

X.com to LinkedIn: Turn a thread posted on X.com into a longer LinkedIn post with more context.
Instagram to TikTok/Reels: Transform an Instagram post into a short-form video for TikTok or Reels.
YouTube to Instagram: Cut down long-form YouTube videos into bite-sized clips for Instagram Stories.
Blog Post to LinkedIn: Take key points from a blog post and repurpose them into an engaging LinkedIn carousel or short-form text post.

Step 3 – Transform content into multiple formats

One post can be repurposed into various formats to appeal to different types of audiences:

Text Posts → Turn into quotes, infographics, or tweets.
Videos → Break into clips for Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.
Long Articles → Convert into LinkedIn posts or Twitter threads.
User Testimonials → Reformat into visual graphics or short videos.

By switching up the format, you can ensure your message reaches different audience segments in a way that suits their content preferences – as well as being able to stretch-out the life span of single pieces of content. 

Step 4 – Refresh and update evergreen content

Some content never loses its relevance. If you have older social media posts that are still valuable, update them with fresh insights, new data, or trending hashtags. For instance, a well-performing LinkedIn post from last year can be reposted with a fresh take or updated statistics to make it timely.

Step 5 – Create a content repurposing workflow

To make repurposing seamless, establish a system:

1. Create with repurposing in mind – When crafting new content, consider how it can be adapted later.
2. Use templates – Have ready-made formats for quote graphics, tweet threads, and short video snippets.
3. Schedule strategically – Space out repurposed content so your audience isn’t overwhelmed by repetition.
4. Test and optimise – Monitor engagement and tweak your repurposing strategy accordingly.

Content repurposing: common mistakes to avoid

Below are three key mistakes to avoid when looking to undertake successful content repurposing:

1. Copy-pasting without adapting:
Different platforms require different tones and formats. Simply copying and pasting won’t be as effective.

2. Ignoring performance metrics:
Repurposing works best when based on data. Don’t assume all content is worth repurposing – check the analytics first.

3. Not optimising for platform-specific features:
Use platform-specific features like Instagram’s carousel posts, LinkedIn’s document posts, or X.com’ threads to make your repurposed content more engaging.

And finally…

Social media content repurposing isn’t about taking shortcuts – it’s about making the most of what you already have. By strategically adapting content for different platforms, you can increase reach, engagement, and brand consistency without doubling your workload.

The key is to be intentional. Identify what works, reshape it for different audiences, and let your content do the heavy lifting. Ready to get started? Dive into your analytics, pick your top-performing posts, and start repurposing today. Need a hand? Get in contact with us today.

The post The power of social media content repurposing appeared first on Fetch Social Media.

Understanding your audience isn’t just about tracking metrics – it’s about uncovering the conversations, trends, and sentiment shaping your market in real time. Social listening tools give marketers the edge by transforming unfiltered online chatter into actionable insights. From identifying emerging opportunities to sharpening your strategy, these tools help you stay ahead of the curve and make smarter, faster decisions.

Here’s a breakdown of the 6 key tools that are team use for social media listening and intelligence. They help us make more informed decisions and may help you too:

AnswerThePublic
Great for: Deciphering Audience Curiosities.

Ever wished you could understand exactly what questions your audience is asking? AnswerThePublic aggregates search queries from platforms like Google and Bing to visualise the topics and questions on your audience’s mind. It’s a go-to tool for content marketers looking to create relevant, high-value content. With free daily searches and paid plans, it’s an affordable and highly effective entry point into social media listening.

Exploding Topics:
Great for: Riding the Wave of Emerging Trends.

The next big thing in your industry is already gaining momentum – you just need to spot it. Exploding Topics identifies rising trends before they hit the mainstream, giving you a head start on crafting campaigns that resonate. For marketing teams focused on innovation, this tool is invaluable. A free plan is available, as well as a range of paid options.

SparkToro:
Great for: Illuminating Audience Insights.

What does your audience read, watch, or listen to? SparkToro takes audience analysis a step further by showing you their habits and preferences. For marketers refining targeting strategies, SparkToro provides actionable insights into how to connect with your ideal customer. A free plan that offers five searches per month is available, as well as paid plans.

Mention:
Great for: Real-Time Brand Monitoring.

Brand reputation can change in an instant. Mention keeps you in the loop by tracking conversations about your brand, competitors, and industry across multiple platforms. With real-time alerts, you’ll never miss an opportunity to engage or address a concern. Mention currently only offer paid social media listening plans. Their entry level one covers up to 5,000 mentions, making it perfect for mid-sized marketing teams.

Brand24:
Great for: Comprehensive Monitoring at Scale.

Need to track your brand, competitors, and industry trends all in one place? Brand24 delivers keyword monitoring, sentiment analysis, and comprehensive reporting in an easy-to-use platform. For teams managing multiple campaigns, its robust capabilities make it an essential tool. It’s one of the more expensive options out there but is a great choice for marketers who need an all-in-one solution.

Brandwatch:
Great for: Enterprise-Grade Listening and Analytics.

For large-scale operations, Brandwatch is the gold standard in social listening. With access to over 1.7 trillion data points and advanced sentiment analysis, it’s designed for teams that require deep, data-driven insights to shape strategy. Pricing is customised, reflecting its enterprise-level capabilities, but its depth of features justifies the investment for those at scale.

And finally…

By leveraging these tools, marketing professionals can gain a deeper understanding of their audience, stay ahead of competitors, and craft campaigns that truly resonate. Choose the social media listening tool that aligns best with your goals, and start turning insights into impact today! Need help with your social media strategy? Contact us today.

The post Social media listening tools to help drive growth appeared first on Fetch Social Media.

In the ever-evolving digital landscape, the importance of a robust social media presence cannot be overstated. As a marketing professional or business owner, you likely understand the value of organic social media efforts. However, to truly harness the power of social media, integrating a paid media budget into your strategy is essential. This blog explores why paid media is crucial for complementing organic social media posting, and offers best practice tips for getting started and assessing performance.

The limitations of organic social media

Organic social media efforts involve creating and sharing content on social platforms without paid promotion. While this approach can build a loyal following and foster engagement, today it has several limitations:

Declining Organic Reach:

Social media platforms, particularly Facebook and Instagram, have seen a significant decline in organic reach over the years. Algorithms now prioritise content from personal connections over brand pages, making it harder for businesses to reach their audience without paid support.

Saturated Market:

With millions of businesses vying for attention on social media, standing out organically is increasingly challenging. Paid media helps cut through the noise and ensures your content can reach more of your target audience.

Limited Analytics:

While organic posts provide some insights, they often lack the depth of data and analytics available through paid campaigns. This data is crucial for optimising your strategy and analysing return on investment.

The benefits of paid media

Integrating paid media into your social strategy offers numerous advantages that will complement your organic efforts:

Increased Reach and Visibility:

Paid media allows you to reach a wider audience beyond your existing followers. With targeted advertising, you can ensure your content reaches people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services.

Targeted Advertising:

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer sophisticated targeting options, allowing you to reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviours. This precision ensures your content is seen by those who matter most to your business.

Enhanced Analytics and Insights:

Paid media campaigns come with comprehensive analytics tools, providing detailed insights into ad performance. This data helps you understand what works, refine your strategy, and optimise future campaigns for better results.

Cost-Effective:

Paid media can be more cost-effective than traditional advertising methods. With the ability to set budgets and bid strategies, you can control your spending and achieve a high return on investment.

Getting started with paid media

To maximise the benefits of paid media, it’s crucial to approach it strategically. Here are some of our top tips to help you get started:

Define Clear Objectives:

Before launching any paid campaign, define your objectives. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, or boost sales? Clear objectives will guide your campaign strategy and help measure success.

Know Your Audience:

Understanding your audience is key to effective targeting. Use insights from your organic efforts and market research to create detailed audience profiles. Leverage platform-specific targeting options to reach these segments precisely.

Choose the Right Platforms:

Not all social media platforms are created equal. Choose platforms that align with your business goals and where your target audience is most active. For instance, Instagram and Facebook are great for B2C brands, while LinkedIn is ideal for B2B marketing.

Create Compelling Content:

Your ads need to stand out and grab attention. Invest in high-quality visuals and compelling copy that resonate with your target audience. Test different ad formats, such as videos, carousel ads, and stories, to see what works best.

Set a Realistic Budget:

Start with a modest budget and gradually scale up as you gain insights and see results. Monitor your spending closely and adjust your budget based on performance. Remember, paid media is an investment that should yield measurable returns.

Utilise A/B Testing:

A/B testing, or split testing, involves running multiple versions of an ad to see which performs better. Test different headlines, images, calls-to-action, and targeting options to optimise your campaigns continuously.

Assessing performance and optimising campaigns

Effective paid media campaigns require ongoing monitoring and optimisation. Here’s how to assess performance and make data-driven decisions:

Track Key Metrics:

Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, cost per click (CPC), and return on ad spend (ROAS). These metrics provide insights into how well your campaigns are performing and where improvements are needed.

Analyse Audience Behaviour:

Use analytics tools to understand how your audience is interacting with the content your paid media budget is supporting. Look for patterns in engagement, demographics, and behaviour to refine your targeting and content strategy.

Adjust Your Strategy:

Based on your analysis, make data-driven adjustments to your campaigns. This could involve changing creatives, modifying targeting options, or reallocating budget to better-performing content.

Use Retargeting:

Retargeting involves showing content to people who have previously interacted with your brand. This technique helps re-engage potential customers and increase conversion rates. Set up retargeting campaigns to reach users who visited your website, engaged with your content, or abandoned their shopping carts.

Leverage Lookalike Audiences:

Lookalike audiences are groups of people who share similar characteristics with your existing customers. Use this feature to expand your reach and find new potential customers who are likely to be interested in your products or services.

Regularly Review and Report:

Schedule regular reviews of your campaign performance. Create detailed reports that highlight successes, challenges, and opportunities for improvement. Share these insights with your team and stakeholders to keep everyone aligned and informed.

And finally…

While organic social media efforts are vital for building a strong brand presence and engaging with your audience, paid media is essential for amplifying your reach and achieving your marketing goals more quickly. By integrating a paid media budget into your social strategy, you can overcome the limitations of organic posting, leverage advanced targeting options, gain valuable insights into your audience’s behaviour, and drive significant results for your business.

Need help with your social media strategy, implementation and management, contact us today.

The post Why your organic social media efforts need paid media support appeared first on Fetch Social Media.

Over the course of this quarter our social media team will be taking a look at some of the very best ways to use Social Media Data (including ones that you might have overlooked), to power the growth and success of your brand. In the first post of the series we look at getting back to basics.

According to a recent survey*, 56% of marketers use social media data to understand their target audience, but additional uses dwindle from there. Only 23% of marketers use their social media data to measure ROI and only 16% use it for competitive insights.

Now more than ever before is the time to use your social media data to power growth. Lets get started with getting back to basics using our 6 step approach.

1. Conduct a social media data audit

Before you can truly understand your audience and the way they interact with your brand on social, you need to know yourself. A social media audit of your data is a great way to set a baseline for performance and strategic plans. Review your engagement and publishing metrics, audience demographics, referral traffic and more to assess growth, opportunities and what you can do to improve your social media presence.

2. Track data to understand your follower growth

Follower growth doesn’t automatically translate to business growth; however, it’s an important metric to track, especially when you consider that 89%* of consumers will buy from brands they follow on social.

Follower count can also contextualise your data. If you’re a small business, you may not have the same following as a household-name brand. But instead of comparing your brand to others, focus on your own social data. Hone in on the rate at which your following is changing, rather than the total number alone, and use data visualisation to identify major surges of interest that align with specific campaigns.

3. Dig into demographic social media data

Millennials, Gen Zers (and all the others) all have different interests, cultural references, needs, experiences with social media and more. The same is true for people from different locations and genders. Using a social media analytics tool like will provide you with reports to deep dive this information. Generating an audience demographics report will give you a full breakdown of your fans across each social platform. And armed with this type of data, you can better understand your audience, craft more effective messaging and improve your content strategy.

4. Evaluate where your audience is spending their time on social and why

Each social media platform has its own unique user experience, features, content and audiences. If you’re not leveraging data to learn which platform your audience is most engaged on, your strategy will be about as good as a chocolate teapot. Use analytics to identify which of those platforms your audience is most engaged on. Then, you can more accurately target and reach the people that matter the most.

5. Cater to your audience’s interests

Demographic and performance data across platforms will help you understand your audience, but to paint an even clearer picture of who they are, investigate their interests, needs and intent. Identify top-performing posts and take note of patterns that you can use to influence content creation. So, if for example, posts focused on product updates consistently get the most link clicks, or thought leadership content gets the most shares and expands your reach, you might consider how you can double-down your efforts in those areas.

6. Look beyond your owned social media data

Social media platforms have unparalleled access to audience insights. Fortunately for marketers, many of them are more than willing to share. X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube all have resources that are full of business insights and audience data that marketers in all industries can use in conjunction with their own data when developing and evaluating their social media strategies.

Don’t forget to look out for our next instalment of – Using Social Media data to power your brands growth. Get this and more delivered to your inbox by subscribing to our email newsletter (scroll down to sign up). In the meantime If you need help with your social media strategy or management, contact us today.

–

*Sprout Social report 2023

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Social media platforms afford brands many opportunities to further their business goals, often with an emphasis on strengthening the consumer relationship; however, social media is also a great tool to easily monitor your competitors.

Getting the edge over your competitors on social media is super important if you want your business to succeed, but that’s easier said than done – just knowing who they are and what they sell isn’t enough to beat them. If you want to get out ahead and stay there, you need to undertake social media competitive analysis, regularly.

Competitor social media audits – 4 reasons why you should be conducting them regularly

But first. Before you dive into a competitor social media audit, there are a few things you need to do to prepare. First, identify your top competitors and take a look at how active they are on social media. The companies you consider to be your top competitors in the offline space may not be your main competition in the social media space. Knowing this now will save you from extra work later.

If all of your competitors are active on social media, you’re ready to start your audit. If you notice that a good number of your competitors aren’t active on social media, now is the time to identify additional companies to include in your audit. Again, you’ll want to ensure these additional competitors are active on social media before diving into your audit. There’s no right or wrong number for how many companies you should include in a competitive social media audit, but keep the amount manageable. We’ve gleaned a lot of insights from landscapes consisting of four or five competitors.

See how you measure up against your competitors

Social media platforms are a place to connect with your current and potential consumers and to exemplify your brand’s voice and thought leadership. It’s important to monitor how you’re doing compared to your competitors and what it means for your brand.

Using any number of subscription based tools available like Hootsuite or SproutSocial (for example), will help you quickly gather information so you can compare different metrics like followership, platform use, and post frequency among competitors, the overall competitive landscape average, and of course your results. Knowing how you stack up against your competitors can provide insights into how each brand is perceived and who has the highest reach and share of voice on social media.

Identify what content performs best in your competitive landscape

Another reason to conduct a competitive social media audit is to understand what content performs best in your competitive landscape. To be impactful, you need individuals to see and engage with your content. In a cyclical fashion, the more people who engage with your content increases the number of people who see it and so on. Facebook’s in-platform competitor analysis tool (for example) allows us to identify things like which platforms are used most, what hashtags garner the most participation, post types that are most engaging, if and how influencers are used, and any new formats or platform capabilities that competitors are using.

Understanding what performs the best will allow your team to make strategic recommendations on new ways to engage with your audiences, whether that’s through exploring the use of new platforms, tapping into new hashtags, investigating the use of an influencer, or testing different post types.

Competitor social media audits let you see how audiences engage with your competitors

Compelling content generates engagement, and from this, you can learn a lot about a group of people. A competitive landscape social media audit is beneficial in understanding how users engage with your brand. It’s likely your company’s target audience overlaps with your competitors’ audiences, so we encourage taking every opportunity to get to know and understand them better.

Through user engagements, you can learn how active or passive your audience is. If they’re commenting on content, you can learn what they’re thinking and feeling, what’s impacting their decision making, how brand loyal they are, and more. Tools like Brandwatch make it very easy to monitor conversations taking place on social media relating to a particular brand, product, or industry as a whole. Understanding exactly how your audience and your competitors’ audiences engage on social media can help you create better, more compelling content (both on and off social media) that resonates with users as they make their way through the decision-making process.

Understanding how your competitors engage with their audiences can help shed light on the expectations of your audience

The expectations for how brands communicate and engage with their followers on social media have changed drastically in recent years. Users expect quick responses, often in way less than an hour. Understanding how your competitors engage with their audiences can help shed light on the expectations of your audience because it’s likely if they aren’t happy, they’ll make it known.

When looking at how a competitor engages with their followers, note what kind of content they’re engaging with (positive, neutral, and/or negative), how they’re engaging (likes, comments, recommendations, or answers with external links), and who is responding (company, employee of company, or brand ambassador). Taking a look at how your competitors do it may give you an idea on how to further develop and improve your response plan (or demonstrate how you are currently leading the pack). It may also offer insight into how to or how not to respond. For example, if your competitors take days to reply to comments, you can work at increasing the efficiency in your response plan so you stand out as more responsive on social media.

And finally

It’s important to keep in mind your social media strategy plan and social media audit efforts are not a one-and-done task. Want to stand out in the social media space? Keep an eye on your competitors and plan on conducting in-depth audits at least twice a year (with an interim review every quarter). Of course, you may choose to conduct mini audits even more frequently depending on your industry, your competitive landscape and the social media channels.

As you build up your research, you’ll be able to compare how you’ve advanced compared to your competitors. These audits will help guide you strategically as you continue to look for ways to stand out in the social media space, especially as your competitors, the landscape, and the platforms evolve.

Need help? Contact our friendly team today.

The post Competitor social media audits (and why they’re important) appeared first on Fetch Social Media.

It can be both risky and expensive to implement a SEO change across your entire site, so its important you evaluate the impact of changes before committing to them. Using SEO testing can help you do this, and in this our latest blog we explore 9 testing ideas that you can use to ensure changes improve your websites SEO. 

The following 9 SEO tests cover a variety of SEO variables – all of which can help improve your SEO (although results are likely to vary).

1. Experiment with meta titles and meta tag formats

Among the most popular and useful SEO tests, meta titles, and meta tags form the first impression your site gives to searchers, making their optimisation crucial.

Remember, you’re not just writing for search engines. You want to rewrite meta titles and meta tags to be more click-worthy. Done right, and searchers may be more likely to select your page, even if it’s not the top result. The ensuing traffic boost may then lead to an increase in rankings as well.

Changing their format makes them more direct and compelling. Adding special characters like parentheticals, brackets, and em dashes, making them stand out from the rest of the results.

2. Change keyword-focused titles to narratively pleasing titles

Title tags are the single-most-important variable in SEO rankings, trailed by sub headers and body copy, the URL, and the meta descriptions. As such, headline tests are among the most impactful SEO testing experiments possible. How should you change your meta titles? People understand stories on a deep level. Try more story-centric headlines to attract searchers’ attention better; any increased traffic from them can lead to higher rankings, creating a snowball effect.

3. Place or remove external links

For a range of reasons, removing links may benefit your site. It might keep users on your site, remove associations to low-ranked sites, or it may make your site stand out better. On the other hand, including more highly-ranked resources that your readers find useful may make your pages more valuable, boosting your authority in Google’s eyes.

4. Play with social buttons and comments

There’s reason to believe that comments and social share buttons may be taking a toll on your site. Pages, without any comments or shares, or very few, may signal a lack of credibility to searchers, thus decreasing their likelihood to share or comment, creating a negative feedback loop.

5. Diversity of content

Google rewards sites that feature a diverse array of multimedia. Digital publishers, on the other hand, sometimes struggle sourcing and incorporating relevant and compelling visual elements.
After HubSpot optimized its content catalog, it saw monthly organic searches rise an average of 106%.

However, merely including more visual content may not get you the results you’re looking for. Such content should be relevant and add true value for those looking for specific answers to their search queries. 

6. Add or restructure internal links

Internal links are a great way to help search engines understand the hierarchy of your content. That’s just one of the reasons why 42% of SEO experts spend so much time building internal and external links.

While adding relevant internal links willy nilly is better than adding no links at all, you should apply some methodology here. Cornerstone structure, also known as the concept of pillar content, is a highly effective means of arranging your content’s subject matter in an organized, intuitive manner.

Create pillar pages that broadly speak to a subject and interlink them with content that delves further into the specifics. SEO testing experts recommend integrating two to five internal links per page. If your pages already use cornerstone structure, test by reorganizing the main navigation or featuring content pillars on your homepage.

7. Perform significant content upgrades

Content is king. When all else fails, or when pages don’t perform well enough to conduct other tests, it’s time to upgrade core content. Identify pages that perform poorly among the metrics Google values most highly:

1. Visits
2. Time on site
3. Pages per session
4. Bounce rate

Poor performance in these measures demonstrates that visitors to your site aren’t finding information relevant to their search. It’s an excellent opportunity to add content that may better answer a searcher’s questions and make pages more accessible for consumption.

1. Enhance scalability and readability
2. Add new sections that answer a broader range of questions
3. Expand pages to more comprehensively cover your subject matter
4. Insert table of contents
5. Insert an internal link structure to join together topics that are alike

Note that the optimal blog post length is between 1,000 and 1,500; bringing shorter pages into this range is in your best interest.

8. Remove bold tags

Much like the pre-penguin keyword stuffing of days past, it appears the gods at Google no longer smile upon <strong> tags either.

Some SEO tests appear to show that bolding keywords causes bad rankings. If you already have a habit of artificially strengthening content with such tags, now might be a great time to see what happens once they’re removed.

9. Modify URL structure by removing dates

URLs can provide significant search indexing benefits, provided they’re concise and contain clear keywords. While the former best practices have been known, SEO experts have recently started suggesting the dates often structured into URLs may be getting in the way of better indexing.

The theory behind this one is similar to that of share tags and comments. Google and users compare dates on their search results and may naturally favour newer ones, regardless of whether such content is evergreen.

Not all content is evergreen, though. For pages that have timely relevance, update them with new facts and updated context. Note: Should you try this method, you’ll first need to update your permalinks to avoid breaking links.

The point of SEO testing isn’t exclusively about raising rankings and getting more clicks. It’s about gaining concrete knowledge of how audiences interpret your content, how well you respond to their curiosity, and what the web’s largest gateway values. Need help? Contact us today.

The post SEO testing – 9 ideas to improve your website appeared first on Fetch Social Media.

Land Rover Australia leaves other luxury car brands in the rear-view as it claims social media top spot.

But social media index findings show a mixed bag of approaches when it comes to building automotive brands on social media, and an underutilisation of platforms outside of Facebook, especially Instagram.

Advocate, a full-service Marketing Agency based in the City has released the findings of its inaugural Social Media Index (SMI) for the Luxury Car Market in Australia. The intent of the SMI is to build a reputation as a key quarterly tracker of the social media performance of nine luxury brands: Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Volvo. And across key social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Over the January to March period (Q1), Advocate analysed more than 21 million automotive social media post engagements using technology and their own data specialists to develop a score-based ranking for each key social media platform, as well as an overall Q1 social media ranking.

‘Land Rover’s success in topping the rankings of our first SMI report for the luxury automotive sector is testament to their strong focus on putting out quality, relevant and frequent content on social media’. Comments Mark Milner, MD of Advocate.

Social Media Index Q1 – Overall Brand Ranking

1 Land Rover
2 Jaguar
3 BMW
4 Porsche
5 Mercedes Benz
6 Audi
7 Volvo
8 Lexus
9 Alfa

‘Land Rover displayed a good mix of local Australian content, supported by global content – not the other way round – an approach that we as an agency advocate as being critical in understanding, building, and creating long-term engaged audiences and ultimately first and repeat car purchases’, continues Milner.

The SMI report also uncovered some key areas that brands could improve on.

‘What we’ve seen from this Q1 Social Media Index report is that the luxury car brands are missing out on the power of Instagram.’ states Milner.

 

‘While Facebook recorded a total of 839,463 engagements across all brands in Q1 compared to Instagram’s total of 426,006, if you strip out the total number of engagements achieved by Porsche (665,459) due to the global nature of its Facebook page, Instagram (where all brands have Australian focussed accounts) then leads the way with a total of 426,006 vs. 174,004 post engagements, against a backdrop of 571 vs. 529 posts (respectively).’

 

‘Given the level of social media post engagements achieved on Instagram over Q1, all brands need to spend more time building their followers on this social media platform. As an example, Mercedes-Benz who top the Instagram page rankings has 137,000 followers, but 600,000 followers on Facebook. With higher engagement rates being achieved on Instagram, putting more effort into growing followers on this platform through quality, relevant and frequent content could reap massive rewards for brands.’

The rankings report also showed an inconsistent approach to LinkedIn and an almost complete abandonment of the use of Twitter.

‘Neglected social media accounts aren’t neutral. They can seriously erode consumer confidence in a business and the automotive sector is no exception. Social media helps to drive online findability and with the main platforms almost operating as their own search engines, ignoring any of them means a lost opportunity to be seen and engage with potential customers. And with 65% of new car buyers in Australia buying a brand different from their last vehicle*, there is a lot of business up for grabs.’ states Milner.

 

‘Even though Google and other search engines may not crawl the number of followers and other metrics on social media pages, you can rest assured that social media plays an ever-increasing role in helping brands get found. A healthy and robust social media presence helps create and build authority in a sector or niche. And from there, consistent interactions with social media pages and a brands website enforces that reputation, leading search engines like Google to rank websites higher in relevant search engine results.’

The SMI report also highlighted the need for luxury car brands to utilise the power of video more across all social media platforms.

‘Depending on the social media channel, between 74% and 96% of all content posted by the luxury car brands in Q1 was image based.’ Notes Milner.

 

‘With 70%* of Australian car buyers saying online videos convinced them to think positively about an automotive brand, and 65%* saying online videos introduced them to a new vehicle they had not considered before – the luxury car brands are missing out on the compelling power of video content in their social media strategy.’

Online videos have become a crucial resource at every step of the journey. More than half (58%)* of all car buyers watched online videos at some point during their research — including three out of four first-time buyers — and 75% said YouTube was their primary source.

‘It’s not just about social media channel selection though when it comes to video content, it’s also about frequency and relevancy of the content created. With all brands only posting a total of 111 times on YouTube in Q1, and with the overall amount of video content used, there is a lot of room for improvement.’ said Milner.

*Source: Think with Google Automotive Report 2019/20.

To view more of the findings from our Q1 Social Media Index report click here. Need help with your brands social media, find out how our services can grow your brand.

The post Social Media Index – Luxury Car Brands appeared first on Fetch Social Media.

In the second blog post of our series – the very best ways to use Social Media Data to power growth – we explore the importance of ‘testing the waters’ and ‘collecting data as you connect to users’ – two crucial aspects in shaping social media marketing strategy and planning – and one that is based on facts and outcomes rather than just ‘gut’ feeling!

To recap on blog one of this series visit: Using Social Media data to power your brands growth

Testing the waters and data collection >> 9 practical steps you can start using today.

Test the waters

1. Set or adjust your publishing cadence

Wondering whether increasing your social media publishing cadence will increase traffic? Or, do you want to scale back on publishing, but are worried you’ll lose momentum? Test it. Try a new cadence for a week and then compare your results against a control week or your average weekly benchmarks.

2. Show people what they want to see
Don’t work off a hunch or make assumptions about the kind of creative content your social media audience likes. Social testing gives marketers powerful insights to support creative decisions.

Identify the variables you want to test, like still images vs. video. Then, as you create your content calendar, tag your posts with those variables. Once your test has run its course, analyse your results based on the metrics that best align to your goals. Areas to assess here are metrics such as volume, impressions, engagements and link clicks.

3. Fine-tune your voice, tone and copy choices

Every brand has an established identity marked by its tone and voice. Social data and testing can help you further refine that voice for social. Make decisions about long captions vs. short, emojis vs. plain text, questions vs. statements, formal tone vs. casual and more based on your results.

4. Know when to pull back

Social testing can validate certain assumptions, but it can also show where you’re wasting time and resources. Video content, for instance, can be great but it also takes quite a bit of time and resources. So if you’re doing it, you want to make sure you’re doing it right. Data can clue you into whether it’s time to discontinue a strategy and explore new options.

According to a recent survey*, 56% of marketers use social media data to understand their target audience, but additional uses dwindle from there. Only 23% of marketers use their social media data to measure ROI and only 16% use it for competitive insights.

Collect data as you connect with consumers

5. Get answers to your most burning questions directly from your audience

If you’re struggling to understand your audience, create new content, evaluate customer experiences or gauge sentiment around your brand, ask your community questions. When we think data, we often think of numbers, but the qualitative data and direction you can get from your audience just by posing a question can be incredibly valuable. It also can bring your audience directly into decision making for your brand and build loyalty.

6. Poll your audience

Leverage social media polls, a feature that’s on most social platforms today. These are a simple way to secure audience data without doing a ton of work. Polls generate intrigue, engage your audience and show them that their opinions are important, all while providing quick-turn data for marketers.

7. Let your followers crown the winner of a contest
Create a fan-driven contest and use a combination of social polls, hashtags and mentions data to track results and crown a winner.

8. Give your audience a pop quiz
Want to see how familiar audiences are with your industry, products, services or brand? Try quizzing them. This may reveal education gaps that you can fill with your content.

9. See who’s checking-in
Location check-ins on platforms like Facebook are like a personal referral that can increase your brand awareness and reach. Encouraging your customers to check-in at your locations will give you demographic data that can help you select more accurate ad targeting options.

Don’t forget to look out for our next instalment of – Using Social Media data to power your brands growth. Get this and more delivered to your inbox by subscribing to our email newsletter (scroll down to sign up). In the meantime If you need help with your social media strategy or management, contact us today.

The post Social media – the importance of collecting data appeared first on Fetch Social Media.