In this digital omnichannel world, brands must have a presence on social media. People love social media, making it an ideal platform to connect and engage with existing and potential customers. With around 83% of US adults using YouTube and around 68% using Facebook, you can see why social media marketing is the focus of many businesses.
After all, using a social media platform consists of just posting something and waiting for the likes to roll in, right? Well, no – achieving social media maturity can take a lot more. But what is social media maturity? And how can you use it to elevate your brand’s social media presence, increase engagement, and drive new customers to your website?
What is social media maturity?
Social media maturity refers to your brand’s presence and relationship with social media and its complexity, how you govern the various social platforms you utilize, and what technologies play a part in your social media marketing work. Seeing where you are on a maturity scale allows you to spot areas of success and potential improvement.
Of course, you want your level to rise so that more people engage with you. To do so, you may have to invest in new tools that help your social media campaigns. You may also have to consider how you manage social media efforts and make radical changes to your existing infrastructure.
If your social media input comes from different sources within your business, then you need to look at educating all relevant stakeholders on the social media workflow to ensure consistent output.
Why does it matter?
All your marketing efforts matter, but social media stands out purely based on the number of users. Let’s say you post about your cloud phone system solution in the morning. By afternoon, your post could have catalyzed in-depth conversations that provide insights into customer behaviors and preferences.
As well as the potential to transform brand awareness into conversions, social media is also a gold mine of customer information. When you have high social media maturity, you can collect pertinent data to make informed decisions on everything from marketing material to what products to carry next year.
Crucial elements in social media maturity
Let’s take it back to the beginning and assume you have minimal social media presence and maturity. You only have a presence on a few platforms, perhaps Facebook and Instagram, and you realize your maturity level is relatively low.
If you were making a comprehensive plan to take to your C-suite, what should you add to it? Knowing what is needed allows you to customize your social media maturity model plan to suit your budget and aspirations to deliver an effective strategy.
1. Money
Money makes the world go around, and the same could be said for your social media efforts. You will not get far off the starting block without (often significant) investment. However, it’s not just a case of throwing money at the issue and hoping for the best. You must identify where investment is most needed or how to divide your budget. It may even be that some or all of your business needs rebranding to improve performance.
- Leadership: You need strong leaders Before you start building your campaign. That means executives at the C-suite level who understand what you’re trying to achieve and are willing to invest time and money to get there. You usually also need someone to lead the social media plan itself. They will coordinate between different teams and ensure that everyone is aligned. Leadership qualities are crucial for fostering effective collaboration.
- Team: A good leader needs a good team. You should look at building an agile team (or teams) who know your brand and what makes it unique.
- Budget: How much are you willing to spend to achieve social media maturity? You could look at how much each department spends on social media now and allocate a portion for your marketing maturity campaign.
- Software and tools: What tools and software are you currently using? Your sales team may use one or more sales enablement tools, but do they contribute to your social media presence? Look at specific tools that can help streamline and automate processes. A social media management (SMM) solution would be the ideal first step. Specialist email marketing automation software can also help keep your sales team productive.
- Collaboration: Even smaller businesses will probably have social media input from multiple sources. Fostering a culture of collaboration is crucial to social media success. Collaboration and cross-functionality may need specialist tools and software to help the process. To enhance these efforts, considering tools like ActiveCampaign and ClickFunnels is beneficial, as they offer functionalities that can significantly aid in automating marketing tasks and streamlining communication across teams. This automation is vital for maintaining consistent messaging and engagement across all social media platforms.
- Education: You need all your stakeholders on the same page, especially if they provide input on your social media presence. Hold meetings explaining your plans, insights, and expectations. Additionally, consider incorporating online coding classes into your training programs. These can provide valuable skills for automating and enhancing social media campaigns, aligning with the latest digital trends.
2. Processes and strategy
You need to audit your current social media processes to gauge effectiveness and pinpoint necessary improvements. It may be that your current processes provide a good foundation to build on, or you might have to tear it down and start again.
You also need to look at the different functions of your systems and processes. How is data collected? What analytics tools are used, and how is that information used in decision-making? Are you doing cross-posting between platforms? You need to examine every level, from creation to publishing to reporting.
What decides your social media strategies? You may have primary goals such as brand awareness, engagement, and sales. However, you need to incorporate the objective of climbing the social media maturity scale and integrate that goal with other existing ones. Almost everything you do should be based on current and historical data and the insights it offers.
3. Social media maturity stages
A core part of your planning is recognizing your current place on the social media maturity scale. By identifying where you are, you can know what you need to do to get where you want to be.
Evolving stage
Again, let’s assume you are at the start of your journey. You want to start climbing the ladder, and your first destination is the emerging category. What do you need to do to get there?
- Manager: Appoint someone to lead your efforts, report progress to upper management, and liaise and coordinate with all stakeholders.
- Goals: Have clearly defined goals that inform the strategies you will use.
- Policies: Implement policies that govern every aspect of your social media strategy. This may include guidelines on what to post and how to respond to users.
- Education: Let the entire organization know your strategies and involve them where relevant.
- Training: Provide relevant courses that align with your business objectives to ensure effectiveness and efficiency.
- Measure: Identify KPIs and metrics that highlight improvements so you can see progress in real time.
Mastering stage
Congratulations, you achieved your first objective! Keep up the momentum and learn how to get to the next stage.
- Intelligence: Use social listening tools to track conversations, gain insights into customer sentiment, and track social network trends.
- Inform: Use the insights you gain to inform decisions regarding what products and services you offer and how you market them. You might also consider using a social media aggregator.
- Build: While most of your content may be created in-house, build relationships with influencers and independent content creators. UGC (user-generated content) is another good way to build trust and customer loyalty.
- Tools: You may already be using several tools, but look at ones (that ideally integrate with existing ones) that tell you how effective your social media tactics are. To further enhance the effectiveness of your social media tactics, consider investing in high-quality creative assets for YouTube videos or Instagram, which can significantly boost visual engagement on this key platform.
- Collaborate: Boost your current tactics by encouraging collaboration between experienced social users. Have dedicated training if needed.
- Leverage: Your staff are brand experts so use them to spread brand awareness and advocacy programs.
- Automate: As your social media activities grow, it can become labor-intensive. Look to automate where you can to improve and streamline workflows. Using automated processes such as chatbots can be very effective.
Maintenance stage
Once you have reached the mastering stage, you want to ensure you don’t slip backward. Maintaining (or improving) your current position is crucial.
- Innovate: Place a high value on any innovation that can improve things. This can cover every area of your social media strategy, from processes and workflows to differing tactics.
- Monitor: Monitor any emerging technologies you can use, new channels that appear, and any new processes you can adapt. It can also help track your competitors' performance and whether it brings them success.
- Test and tweak: Use business intelligence (BI) and metrics to improve your performance measurement.
- Analyze: Look beyond your usual metrics and KPIs to gain insights. This can include market and online trends and what users say and think. Customer surveys on social media platforms are a great way to gauge consumer sentiment.
- Gamble: Don’t be afraid to take the occasional calculated risk. It may pay off.
- Utilize and integrate: Use all the tools possible in your SMM. If you identify other tools, see if they integrate with your current system.
- Educate: Any education and training programs should be ongoing. You may also want to consider refresher training where needed.
- Anticipate: Just as trends change in the market, it also happens on social media. If you understand the platforms you use, then you should be able to anticipate changes and new trends.
- Don’t stop: All your social media efforts are constant, and you should always look for ways to improve.
4. Establish a cycle
Social media is fluid, as are customer behavior and sentiments. You need to ensure that your social efforts are consistent and cyclical so that you keep improving and maturing. Think about every potential post. Ask yourself if a post answers the questions ‘what is a lead magnet?’ and ‘does this educate customers?’
The other thing to remember is that social media maturity is not achieved overnight – it takes time and focus. Start with relatively simple goals and then gradually gain momentum. Identify your strengths and weaknesses, and don’t be afraid to admit when you get something wrong.
You will find that you - and your team - will become more competent over time, improve existing skills, and gain new ones. Also, remember that how you respond to posts and comments can be just as important as what you post. Social media posts are the public face of your brand and your policies should include guidelines on online behavior.
The takeaway
Even if your social media capabilities are initially low-level, they will dramatically improve. You will likely have multiple social media channels, so you need a good SMM and a social media manager to run things. As with other tactics, customer experience is one of the cornerstones of your strategy and you should be looking at gathering feedback from your target audience whenever possible.
Of course, offering high-quality content is a sign of a certain level of maturity. But it goes beyond your content and should encompass every aspect of your work. Your social media content strategy is just one part of your overall social media approach. Together with other factors, it can help you achieve high social media maturity.