When you see content on social media garner huge numbers, you automatically assume that the viral campaign is wildly successful. Social media expert Nate Baldwin is here to remind you that isn’t always the case, and going viral doesn’t equate to social media success.
What do we mean by that? As we always refer back to here at Trinity Web Media, your social media strategy is everything. With that being said, what goals do you intend to achieve? Suppose you’re focusing on generating leads, but all your social media campaign does is collect an abundance of vanity metrics. In that case, you aren’t achieving your goals.
As nice as it can be to watch the numbers of likes and comments rise, it’s imperative to always keep your social media presence’s strategy in mind. Going viral may do less for your brand’s growth than you think!
[Transcript]
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to another Trinity Web Minute. Or if you’re catching us on pod bean for the bonus episodes, shout out Aidan for editing this, I hope you’re enjoying our content.
Greg’s been super busy with projects. I’m stepping in here with my social media expertise. But today, I don’t want to talk about anything technical, I want to get into the idea of how going viral doesn’t necessarily equate to social media success.
So what do I mean by that? I know a lot of people, when they see viral campaigns and all the money that’s put behind it, they automatically think, wow, that those guys are good at social media, those guys are killing it, you know, they’ve got all the likes, they have all the comments. But the reality is that being going viral, and putting all that money into a campaign doesn’t necessarily grow your brand. And it certainly doesn’t achieve all of your goals.
Something that I always stress here is the strategy behind social media, you shouldn’t just go out and just go posting and creating all this random content and hoping that something sticks to the wall, what you need to have a plan, and you need to have a goal in mind that your strategy is working towards.
For example, I worked on a medical account last year during the height of the pandemic. And I grew it to well over about 5 million impressions a month. And that was just purely organic, nothing was paid. But at the end of the day, this account was going viral.
But achieving the goal, which was to garner more leads and generate more leads through the website going viral. It wasn’t achieving that goal, that that strategy did not work. It worked, in a sense that when people looked at the page, when people looked at the numbers, they were blown away.
They’re like, how are you doing this? How are you creating all this content, it’s all original, and nothing’s paid. And you’re getting millions and millions of impressions and 1000s upon 1000s of likes on every post. But I always came back to the fact that Sure, we were doing great. And we went, quote-unquote, viral. But it didn’t necessarily grow the practice the way that I had wanted to.
Now I’m going I’m sticking to the strategy of really providing value to our audience, providing tips and giving them insight into the office. And believe it or not, with the reach cut in half or more. We’re generating more leads than ever, we’re bringing people to the website, we’re taking them to the contact form where they are getting in touch with the practice, and we are truly generating leads and adhering to the strategy, which is achieving the goal. And the goal was never to be viral. The goal was always to grow the practice.
So I just want you to keep that in mind when you’re on social media and you think, wow, I need to go viral. I need the new campaign. I need to you know, do this trend and that trend, if that’s what your goal is, if your goal is to increase, reach, perfect, that’s what you should be doing. But when your strategy is something different, and it’s not just vanity metrics, and it’s not just growing the perception of your brand and you really need to move the needle.
Sometimes you need to rethink your strategy, and always keep your goals in mind.
While I’ve known Greg for years from our time together in the marketing scene, I’ve only recently had the chance to work with Trinity Web Media on a client project. Not only was the team professional and their work spot on, they were amazingly quick to respond and required very little hand-holding along the way. I chalk that up to their past experience and a deep understanding of best-in-class services.
I have hired Greg and the Trinity team multiple times for work on my own websites, and have also hired them to work on behalf of multiple clients. He is simply a pleasure to work with, in every respect. Smart but without the giant ego of some developers, Trinity Web Media works with his clients to achieve their vision in the best way possible — with careful attention to their interests, and thoughtful recommendations based on his expertise. • Susan Baier – Founding Marketing Strategist – Audience Audit