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The start of a new year is an excellent time to take a look at what’s working well for your business and which areas are in need of improvement. If you want to boost your social media performance in 2024, start by taking a look at the results you achieved throughout 2023 and analysing the areas that went well and those that didn’t. Did your content generate high levels of engagement? Did your ad campaigns achieve your desired conversions? Did your customer service interactions leave your audience feeling supported and satisfied? If not, don’t panic - read on to discover how to get back on track and make the most of your brand’s social media presence this year.
Be Responsive
Shockingly, over half of customer interactions are ignored by brands on messaging apps, so if your 2023 analysis reveals that your response rate was low, use 2024 as an opportunity to boost those numbers. If you don’t have one already, consider hiring a dedicated community management team to handle all of your incoming messages and comments rather than leaving this task to your social media marketers - this could either be an internal team or an outsourced one like ours here at 3sixfive.
Avoid using chatbots and automated responses, as these often misinterpret customers’ messages, can’t offer true personalisation, require regular maintenance and give the impression that your brand doesn’t want to talk directly to its customers - that’s why 86% of consumers say they prefer interacting with a human instead of a bot.
Increase Personalisation
Personalising your responses on social media will become even more essential in 2024, with 63% of consumers claiming they won’t buy from brands that offer poor personalisation and 71% of them being frustrated by impersonal shopping experiences. Lacking personalisation implies that you don’t care about your customers on an individual level, and can deter people from using your brand again in the future.
Unless they aren’t displayed on the platform you’re using, you should use your customers’ names when greeting them, and be sure to type out a fresh response to each message instead of copying and pasting a generic, templated answer. Consider signing off your messages with your own name or initials to further humanise your brand too.
Always check your previous messaging history with a customer before replying, especially when dealing with an ongoing conversation that has been handled by another member of your team prior to you. This will prevent the customer from having to repeat information they’ve already shared, which can be frustrating, time-consuming, and again - impersonal.
Personalisation should also be applied to your social media advertising strategy. Make sure you’re targeting the right audiences with your campaigns and are delivering tailored messaging to each segment of your chosen demographic, rather than publishing one-size-fits-all ads that won’t achieve your desired conversions and therefore won’t make the most of your budget.
Keep Profile Info Up to Date
Throughout the year, check the information that’s displayed on each of your social media pages and refresh your bio sections accordingly to make sure they include relevant, up-to-date details such as your opening hours, address and phone number. Displaying wrong or outdated information can be frustrating for your customers and will result in higher message volumes as more people will need to message your brand to enquire.
Create Valuable Content
In 2024, your social media content should provide genuine value to your audience and should be interesting and engaging. Use high-resolution images and graphics to capture users’ attention, and write concise and compelling captions to accompany your visuals. While it’s still important to post regularly, you should prioritise quality over quantity, and focus on creating content that will leave readers (or viewers) feeling positive and fulfilled, not bored and dismissive.
Don’t forget that an increasing amount of people are now using social media platforms as search engines, so it’s essential to ensure that you’re including the right keywords, hashtags and phrases in your content that will aid your discoverability in search.
Short-form videos remain a firm favourite for social media users, so continue using Reels and TikToks to promote your brand and its offerings - or start creating them if you haven’t yet done so. This could involve sharing behind-the-scenes peeks of your store, office or location, participating in viral trends (more on these later), showcasing your product or service, or advertising your latest offers and deals. Monitor for popular audio clips and templates to make sure your Reels and TikToks are on trend and will be seen by engaged audiences.
Conduct Regular Audits & Sentiment Analysis
In order to find out how well your social media pages are performing, and to see how people feel about your brand, you should conduct regular audits throughout the year, as well as sentiment analysis. Audits are especially useful for multi-location brands with lots of social media pages being run by different people, such as retail chains, pubs and restaurants, as they can help you check for any inconsistencies between pages and will confirm whether your brand reputation is being upheld across the board or not.
The four main types of social media adults are:
• Content audit
Are your copy, images and videos appropriate for your target audience? Are you using the right tone of voice? How frequently are you posting?
• Interactions audit
Are you responding to all of your public comments, private messages and reviews? How fast are you responding to your customers?
• Backend audit
Are the correct page roles assigned to the right people in Meta Business Suite? Do all team members have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled in order to provide an extra layer of protection to your account?
• Page optimisation audit
Do your cover photos and profile pictures work well on both desktop and mobile? Are all of your business locations using the same @username format? Is your business type/category listed correctly on Facebook? Do your bios or ‘About’ sections contain all of the details your followers need to know?
When it comes to sentiment analysis, you should be sorting all of your incoming messages and comments into positive, negative and neutral categories, and labelling them with topics to see which areas of your brand are perceived well vs poorly. Tracking this sentiment data throughout 2024 will allow you to make key business changes that are based on real insights, instead of guesswork and assumptions - which can lead to wasted time, money and resources for you and your team, as well as disappointment for your customers.
Monitor Your Analytics
One of the biggest mistakes you can make on social media is not looking at your analytics after posting a piece of content or publishing an ad. Whether you prefer to use a third-party social media management tool or the built-in analytics on your chosen platform(s), closely monitor the results achieved by each of your posts so you know what to incorporate into - or leave out of - your future content. Keep an eye on the following metrics:
• Likes (and other reactions on Facebook)
• Comments
• Shares and reposts
• Saves
• Link clicks
• Reach and impressions
• CPR (cost per result - only applicable to ads, this metric determines how much you’ve paid for each conversion, aka how effectively your budget has been distributed)
Participate in Trends - But Only Those That Apply
Participating in viral trends and challenges is a great way to raise brand awareness, boost engagement and inject some humour into your content, but you shouldn’t try to force a connection between your brand and a trending topic, audio clip or meme that isn’t relevant. It’s best to pick and choose the ones that feel like a natural fit for your brand and genuinely align with your marketing goals, rather than creating low-quality, spammy content just for the sake of a trend.
In fact, 45% of consumers say they will unfollow a brand because of irrelevant content, and many Gen Z members find it cringey when brands try to shoehorn viral trends into their marketing strategies - so approach them with caution and make sure they tie in well with your company and product before participating.
Dive into Social Commerce
If your brand is in the eCommerce space and you haven’t yet set up a social media storefront that syncs your product catalogue with your social media page, 2024 is the perfect year to get started! All major social platforms now offer shopping tools where customers can browse items, add them to their cart and even pay for them without having to leave the app (if the checkout feature is available in your location). Social storefronts also enable you to run click-to-shop ads that show your products to highly engaged users and make it quicker and easier than ever to complete a purchase.
54% of Gen Z shoppers and 58% of Millennials agree that social platforms are better than online searches for finding out about new items, demonstrating how important it is to embrace the shift towards socially-focused shopping experiences.
Summary
We hope these tips will help you boost your social media performance in 2024 and increase your marketing results compared to 2023. Worried that your internal team won’t be able to handle every aspect of your social presence? We’re here to help! From 8am-10pm, 365 days a year, our team of community managers, review managers, live chat agents and sentiment analysts can assist your brand with a wide range of services, freeing up valuable time for you to focus on what you do best.
We’ll also provide regular reports so you can monitor your brand’s performance throughout the year, and implement changes that will ultimately bring you closer to your customers and improve your online reputation. Contact us today to kickstart 2024 with a new agency partnership!
