November 2, 2024

Strategic Social Media: How to Engage in Unexpected Ways

By Eva Pozarycki

We wrapped up the term featuring Fatemeh Fakhraie (@digitalfatemeh) to give us insight into her social media work as a Digital Content Strategist at Northwest Community Credit Union.

Many companies have found its own unique voice on social media, whether it’s sassy like @Wendys or outlandish like @MoonPie, but it can be difficult to keep a professional online story representing companies with more of a serious target audience. And although Fatemeh wishes she could work for the Wendys of financial audit, it is important to respond kindly to customers with larger issues than complaints about a cheeseburger.

Issues about how to tackle the competitive aspects of social media arise for any company. For companies like credit unions that have strict privacy laws and can sometimes be perceived as boring, how do you create engaging content on social media that is relevant but also exciting?

While keeping your target audience and company’s values in mind, Fatemah recommends:

-Over-communicating when it matters.

-Setting up a vocabulary filter to ensure a respectful social media space.

-Reaching out to make a positive difference.

She also offered us ways to be helpful to customers online, for example, using the company website to educate your followers that may not run to Twitter with their first problem, as well as the occasional contest to keep things exciting.

Educating your followers and finding a professional voice that compliments your company is difficult for any company, but my main takeaway is relevancy. As Fatemeh explains, no one wants to look on their feed and ask “Why am I seeing this?” I have always felt relevancy is important online, especially as targeted advertising is becoming the new normal. Representing a brand that may not be relevant to many people means it is critical to balance reaching out on social media and answering customers needs that come to you with their problem.

Twitter: @evapozarycki1

LinkedIn: Eva Pozarycki

2 thoughts on “Strategic Social Media: How to Engage in Unexpected Ways

  1. Hi Eva,

    Your point about relevancy is so true. I am a social media manager for three clients (beer festival, nonprofit, jewelry designer) and all have such different content that is deemed relevant to them. I’ve noticed that engagement fluctuates the most with the jewelry account and the content I post related to the most “trendy” topics get the most engagement.

    The topic of relevancy also rang true for my group’s client for this class. As an institution that wants to strike a balance as both educational and entertaining, we suggested in the social media audit for them to curate posts on platforms that relate to trending topics. For example, we talked about how food blogs and magazines capitalized on the viral egg on Instagram, making their own versions and becoming a part of the conversation.

  2. Hi Eva,

    I really enjoyed your post. I think relevancy is key when it comes to managing social media. You don’t want people to get annoyed by posts or consistently getting ads that don’t pertain to them. I loved what Fatemeh said about overcommunicating when it matters. As brands embrace this new world of digital communication it can be hard to manage who they talk to or simply easy to not communicate at all, especially when there are negative comments on Twitter. really going the extra mile for consumers can be a good way to increase engagement and build a strong reputation.

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