Spring Cleaning Your Community
For many cultures, spring is about starting fresh and renewal. It is no wonder that so many people take the opportunity to clean and clear out this time of year. The idea of spring cleaning got me thinking about how most people don’t take time to review, renew, and refresh their online communities on a regular basis. That’s why I put together a few simple ways that you can spring clean your online profiles, pages, and groups.
Update Your Basic Information
This is a simple but often overlooked step. If anything about your company or brand has changed, it should also be updated on social media. This can include simple things like your website, phone number, or physical address. It can also include incorporating more significant changes like logo revamps, shifts in branding, changes to your style guide, or announcing turnover in leadership.
Speaking of turnover, this is also a good time to review who has permission to post or access your accounts in any way. Remove anyone with admin status who is no longer working with your social media. However, make sure to leave at least one trusted person on the account other than yourself. This will ensure that if your personal account is compromised, someone will still have the ability to manage your business’s community.
Refresh Your Banner or Cover Photo
Unless your branding has changed, I don’t suggest drastically changing your main profile photo. You want your existing and potential clients to be able to find and recognize your brand. However, revamping your banner or cover photo to include fresh and relevant information is a great way to communicate with your audience. Reflecting holidays, seasonal promotions, or specific services regularly can ensure that your audience sees fresh content on a regular basis. Just make sure that it still appropriately reflects your brand and your mission.
Refine Your Mission
A company’s mission is definitely not something that changes frequently. However, when it does happen, it should be clearly reflected on your website, social media, and other marketing materials. Many companies have shifted focus slightly through the pandemic and then again as we shift back to “normal.” If you have not updated your mission in the last few years and your company has shifted focus, take this opportunity to make that shift clear to your audience.
Review Your Past Content
Reviewing your past content is important for several reasons. First, if you have changed branding, company focus, or have made any other major changes, you may want to do a quick review of past content. You definitely do not want to erase the past. However, if you have featured products or services you no longer offer, it may be a good time to archive that content.
Another great reason to review your past content is to inform your future strategy. What content stands out as having received the most engagement? What does the content that your audience engaged with have in common? Looking at engagement and the response you received from specific calls to action on past posts can give you an idea of what will perform well in the future. Once you have figured out a few key factors to what has been working, make sure to include those factors in future content.
Review Your Insights
Aside from reviewing the performance of individual posts, you can get other insights. While these vary by platform and between pages and groups, there are a few common KPIs across platforms. A few include reach, engagement, and information about your audience like who they are and when they are online. Knowing who your audience is will empower you to make content choices that appeal to those who follow you.
Check in With Your Team
When life gets busy, we often have an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude to communicating with our social media or community teams. How long has it been since you have really touched base with yours? Schedule a coffee date or Zoom meeting to see how everyone is doing.
This is a good time to talk about burnout and discuss any pain points that may have come up in the last few months. Understanding any frustrations before something “breaks” can prevent major problems before they occur. These check-ins are especially important if your company has had any turnover, is growing quickly, or is experiencing any sort of difficulty.
However, you should also take some time to focus on the positive. What is going well that your team wants to see more of? What ideas or vision do they have for future content or strategy? Make sure they know that their input is valued.
Check Out the Most Recently Released Tools
Platforms are constantly releasing new tools and features. Even someone like me who is looking at Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok all day, it is hard to keep up! For example, Facebook has recently introduced reels to groups. If you want to make a personal appearance and show your community your personality, you don’t necessarily have to do it live. Reels allow you the ability to let your audience see you with the convenient option of recording it again if you stumble on your words.
Meta announced a bunch of new and exciting features at their last Community Summit. More recently, they also announced new ways for creators to make money on Facebook. Plus they have given members more control over their Instagram feed. It remains to be seen how this will impact reach on the platform in the future.
In summary, there is no time like the present to go through your social communities and profiles to make sure that they are an accurate, authentic, and engaging reflection of your business. It doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. If you commit to doing just one of these things a day for the next week, you will make it through the entire list. If the idea of checking these tasks off of your list is stressing you out or you think you need to go a little deeper than a spring clean, reach out today for a free consultation.