{"id":1859,"date":"2016-04-21T11:39:49","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T06:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blogs\/?p=1859"},"modified":"2020-01-20T11:56:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-20T06:26:33","slug":"5-exercises-to-strengthen-your-social-media-marketing-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/5-exercises-to-strengthen-your-social-media-marketing-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"5 exercises to strengthen your social media marketing skills"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking to get your social media marketing abilities in tip-top shape? Columnist Timothy Carter shares some tips to help you influence your target audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only way to get better at something is to practice. You can read up on news, take advice from mentors, brainstorm and come up with new strategies, but the only real way to improve your skill set is to put it to use and gain experience.<\/p>\n

In the social media marketing world, this is difficult; your campaign is a running experiment, forcing you to adapt on the fly and feel the consequences of the harsh lessons you encounter along the way.<\/p>\n

In a way, this is like being on a professional sports team and only getting to sharpen your skills during actual games. The learning curve is steep in a high-pressure environment. But professional sports don\u2019t work this way \u2014 players engage in practice sessions, drills, and exhibition matches to refine their skills long before they ever compete for real.<\/p>\n

So why can\u2019t we develop the same approach to social media marketing?<\/p>\n

To solve this problem, I\u2019ve come up with a handful of exercises you can use to sharpen your social media marketing skills without the need to apply these changes and tactics to your live accounts.<\/p>\n

1. Theme and variation<\/strong>
\nThe first strategy is simple in concept but offers surprising depth when you put it into practice. The idea is to discover what\u2019s appropriate for your brand voice and target audience by simultaneously finding what isn\u2019t appropriate.<\/p>\n

The exercise goes like this: Think of a general topic for a social media update. Let\u2019s say you want to post that your brand is celebrating its five-year anniversary. Your goal is to write out an update for this in many different styles, voices and angles.<\/p>\n

For example, \u201cWe\u2019re honored to have spent the last five years serving our clients\u201d is much more formal and serious in tone than \u201cNo way! We\u2019ve been around for five years already \u2014 come celebrate with us!\u201d Yet both accomplish a similar objective.<\/p>\n

Playing around with these different options will help you distinguish what is truly unique about your brand voice and what to avoid when you craft your messages for real.<\/p>\n

2. Introspective feedback<\/strong>
\nThis method is a way of simulating user feedback using nothing more than your own mind and resources. Create a list of competitors\u2019 social media accounts, and when you\u2019re ready for this exercise, access that list.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll see a range of different updates here. Your job isn\u2019t to simply read or digest these updates, but to analyze them.<\/p>\n

What elements of these messages really work for you? What elements are off-putting? Are there any messages that stand out to you, and if there are, what is it about them that stands out? Isolating these variables will help you learn to criticize your own work proactively and play the role of the average social media consumer.
\n
\n3. Contrarian role-playing<\/strong>
\nSpeaking of role-playing, this is the most fun exercise on this list. Start by mocking up a debatable or otherwise controversial social media post, then have a friend, co-worker or even yourself play a \u201ccontrarian\u201d role, dedicated to nitpicking, arguing and debating your stance.<\/p>\n

Think of respectful, insightful and expert-level responses to everything the contrarian can dish out \u2014 and do so as quickly as possible, as if this were a live social environment.<\/p>\n

This will help you hone your social media conversational skills and put your industry expertise to the test. This exercise works better with two people, so there\u2019s a clear motivation to trip you up.
\n
\n4. The mock disaster<\/strong>
\nAll in all, social media \u201cdisasters\u201d are pretty rare, but they can happen, even to big brands. If it ever happens to your brand, you need to be ready, so try running a simulation of what would happen if your brand posted something devastating.<\/p>\n

Have a co-worker text you at a random time of his or her choosing \u2014 preferably when it\u2019s inconvenient for you, since disaster can strike at any time. See how quickly you can round up your team, check into your social profiles for damage control and come up with a strategy for how to respond.<\/p>\n

5. Crowdsourced posting<\/strong>
\nThis is another exercise that requires a bit of outside help. Gather up a handful of team members and have them play the role of social media audience members \u2014 this is even better if you can get existing clients, but at that point, it\u2019s less exercise and more market research.<\/p>\n

Present multiple post alternatives you\u2019ve created beforehand. These could be variations on a theme, like you created in exercise one, or simply different topics that you\u2019ve come up with in a brainstorming session. Have your team members collectively decide on the post they feel is best to publish, and ask them why they chose it.<\/p>\n

Most of the previous exercises have been limited in the sense that they rely only on your judgments and perceptions; this will compensate for some of your biases.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:-<\/strong> http:\/\/marketingland.com\/5-exercises-strengthen-social-media-marketing-skills-172878<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking to get your social media marketing abilities in tip-top shape? Columnist Timothy Carter shares some tips to help you influence your target audience. The only way to get better at something is to practice. You can read up on news, take advice from mentors, brainstorm and come up with new strategies, but the only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,31],"tags":[372,376,53,51],"class_list":["post-1859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-posts","category-social-networking","tag-smo-services-bangalore","tag-smo-services-in-bangalore","tag-social-media-marketing","tag-social-media-marketing-services"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2894,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions\/2894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}