Hitting the Nail on the Head with Authentic Social Media Posts

Written by: Jenna Jenkins, Fall 2022 Intern

Working as a social media intern this summer inevitably taught me numerous skills that I will continue to implement in my career, but the most important message that I learned is quite different from what I thought it would be. From an outside perspective, social media is assembled in an aesthetic manner. But, at the root, social media is not all glitz and glamor. It is about learning and understanding clients, coworkers, and targeted audiences. It is all about understanding people, including yourself. You must learn how you and those around you work, how each platform works best, and what the audience you’re targeting wants.

The three most important steps that I learned throughout the course of my internship are 1. Find Your Niche 2. Understand Platform Differences 3. Target Proper Audiences.

Find Your Niche

Social Media is About People by CEO Cassandra Bailey and Chief Strategy Officer Dana Schmidt explain how Slice Communications uses a people-first approach when creating a social media strategy. I quickly learned this firsthand, as I industriously reviewed The Five Types of Attention Model throughout my onboarding process. Aware, connect, engage, convert, and advocate are all key to getting, keeping, and using attention. Slice offers an Attention quiz for businesses to certify their strengths, weaknesses, and aid in setting goals. From here, it’s crucial to identify your business’ voice and tone. Is your organization informative and serious but authoritative? Or, maybe you teeter on more of the warm yet whimsical side? Finding your social media niche gives your business structure, character, and will help to target the audience you want to reach.

Learning this lesson was tremendously important to me as an intern. In order to properly work with clients, I had to study The Five Types of Attention Model and research constantly to ensure that I was promoting their business in a way that fits their niche market. Digging deeper than simple brand concepts and/or generalized ideas is not just important, but necessary. When you know a business like the back of your hand, ideas flow a lot easier.

Understand Platform Differences

No two platforms are the same, and while this is a great way to allow your creative juices to flow, it may be taxing at first to recognize differences and what works where. At the end of the day, social channels are ever changing, so it’s important to understand how the people behind the screens work. Social Media is About People has categorized platforms in the following way:

“Facebook: The Awareness and Engagement ‘Neighbor’”
“LinkedIn: Recruiting, Partnerships, and B2B Promotion”
“Twitter: Real-Time, Fast-Paced Customer Service, and Promotion”
“Instagram: Emotional, Visual Connection”
“Pinterest: The Lifestyle Search Engine”
“Youtube: Entertainment, Education, and Searchability”
“TikTok: The Star of the Moment”

Coming into this internship, I truly thought I knew the difference between every platform. However, I was very mistaken. It’s difficult to post the same thing on Instagram and Facebook and expect the same results. In reality, Instagram and Facebook tend to cater to different demographics. This means different wording, hashtags, and sometimes even images. Thinking about the different platforms as various people with different personalities and desires helped me prep for what I’d be posting.

Target Proper Audiences to Reach Goals

Coming up with goals is extremely important. However, following through with these goals to ensure that you are reaching them is also critical. KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) are a quantifiable measurement of performance. For example, after your ad is up and running and you have reviewed its performance, decide if your goal has been achieved. Did you reach your target audience? Did you gain new leads? Did anyone purchase your product? Forbes states, “Social media metrics make your campaign goals much easier to understand, measure, reach and analyze. Without these data points, there’s no way for you to prove if the campaign did anything.” The incredible thing about social media is that failure is not set in stone. If one ad did not reach the KPI goal you were hoping for, this should inspire you to go in and tweak some things. Maybe the age range was too broad, or too narrow. Maybe your CTA (Call to Action) was not clear enough. Whatever it may be, you can learn from it and be more successful the next time around.

One of the biggest things that originally made me nervous about joining the Slice Squad this summer was seeing the statistics on what I was posting for clients. I was on edge the first time I scheduled a post. So many thoughts ran through my head. How do I know if the time I’m posting is really the optimized time? Are the hashtags or emojis too overwhelming? Am I using the correct verbiage for this business? However, as time went on I started to recognize what works best. Setting goals and trying different things will help lead you down a path where you see the results you want.

Using a people-first approach on social media has vastly improved my skills. In order to create authentic posts, you must know the people you’re working with/for and what they want. Working with the team at Slice Communications has been an incredible experience that has helped shape me as a marketing professional. These are lessons I will take with me forever. Lastly, if I could give any final advice for future interns it would be to listen and take notes, build rapport, and never let the hard work shield you from the fun that is working in the marketing field.