Increasing Social Media Engagement through Agency Collaboration

While social is built into the name, you would be surprised just how many small businesses do not understand the importance of being social on social media. Especially as more and more established businesses start to recognise the need to market to younger audiences or make their sites accessible for mobile devices – smartphones are the standard of communication right now, and social media is a necessity for your business to utilize. 

With so many people on their devices and over 4 billion people using social media globally, this is a powerful tool that will provide a significant ROI – if you can harness the power of your local community. In this blog, we look at the value of creating unique social media management solutions for small businesses – who often have budget, staffing, and time constraints that we encounter regularly.

How does a collaborative approach work for SMEs needing social management? 

When working with small businesses, we have a collaborative approach. We have developed this style of working in order to maximise your social media’s benefit to your business. With budget and time constraints unique to small businesses, the best way to work on creating an effective social media strategy is to work together. At DangerDynamite, our approach works to create meaningful and effective local social strategies that can provide a meaningful ROI for your business. 

• The importance of client education 

• • • This is a critical component for many of the businesses we serve. Learning to use and understand the social streams we utilise to promote you is the first step in building good communication around our approach. 
    • We set up your social with you so that you can get familiar with the platforms and how they function – and we are always here to answer your questions.

• Create meaningful, locally-based social networks 

• • • For us, it can be challenging to know the connections you’ve made or all the different people you work with daily. Get onto your social platforms and follow them. Whether you’re a lover of office artwork or work with several businesses and brokers in your day to day – your social connections should reflect your interests, values, and needs as a business. 
    • Do you have businesses that you resonate with? Give them a follow on your platforms, and see how they engage with their market and what they post about. Try to understand what you think they are doing well.

• An effective + budget-minded approach to social media

• • • Collaborating means that you can manage some of the aspects of social media, like replying to comments and messages or posting stories, internally. This not only saves you money when you have a limited marketing budget, but it also allows us the flexibility to properly manage your upper-level marketing, such as brand recognition, visual continuity, campaign strategies, and metrics.  

• The benefit of combining informality and design 

• • When you manage stories, you’re allowing people to get familiar with your day-to-day operations and what makes you excited. This creates brand loyalty by building trust. Did you sponsor a golf tournament for a cause you care about? Did you have a float at the pride parade? Are you having a staff party? All these things remind people that you are people who have values and care about your community and have a healthy working environment – your community wants to celebrate with your team!! 

Using stories on Instagram and Facebook is an invaluable tool for generating brand loyalty + awareness. 

Storytelling is an integral part of human societies – so it’s little wonder that we are so drawn to the small daily narratives that make up each other’s lives; there is no difference when it comes to your small or start-up business. Your local community plays a significant and fundamental role in the success of your company; building networks of loyal customers can make all the difference in your future success. 

How Instagram and Facebook stories benefit your business. 

1. Increase click-through rates by a significant margin when incorporating links – there’s a great case study from Instagram and Gap here.  
2. Create short-form and time-limited content that is less formal than feed posts 
3. Increase overall brand visibility for people who already follow you 
4. Share sales + time-sensitive content effectively 
5. Allow you to generate data through polls + questions 
6. Allow you to share and encourage user-based content from your customers 

In our collaborative-based model, we see stories as being the perfect client-driven content stream. Not only is posting stories effective for all the above reasons, but this space allows you to be responsive, create promotions without approvals or over-communication, share your day-to-day experiences, celebrate your staff and achievements, and create limitless content, which will significantly boost engagement. 

How do stories differ from feed posts? 

Feed posts are designed to be a fixed representation of your brand – from values to lifestyle. While you can sell products from feed posts, they have less engagement than through stories. We believe feed posts should prioritise lifestyle, inspiration, education, and brand awareness. For a retail business, that could mean sharing lookbooks, inspiration, customer photos, and events; for a B2B company, you can focus on company values, staff appreciation, community engagement, and product education and resources. 

Stories are one of the most effective spaces to share new products, behind-the-scenes content, client reviews, and promote events. Since Meta has been prioritising authentic and original content and de-emphasizing organic posting for brands and businesses – stories represent the new frontier for gaining engagement. In tandem with boosted posting and active community building, businesses can see a high ROI through social streams. 

According to Facebook, surveyed users reported that, for stories, they wanted to see the following. 

•  51% of people want stories to be short and easy to understand.
• Sales and promotions were a driver for 51% of survey respondents.
• For 45%, education, tips, or advice were a priority.
• 44% of respondents wanted stories that introduced new products.
• Almost half of the people surveyed wanted authenticity.

These statistics demonstrate the immensely important role that story posts play on the two most common platforms for a diverse range of users. They also show that new and short-term promotions or sales can significantly benefit from the story format – especially since 54.9% of Facebook users and 62.3% of Instagram users research a brand or business using those respective platforms over any other source. This means attracting customers has a lot to do with how much you can attract them with your feed content first and then how well you can continue to hold their attention through your stories after they follow you. Understanding how to use feed posts and stories together is one of the most important ways to maximise your potential customer base on social media. 

Working with your agency is an effective social media strategy. 

For small businesses, seeing a return on the effort you or your staff put into social media can be difficult. When you work with an agency that can establish clear guidelines for effective collaboration, you are getting great value by using your labour time effectively and creating a more significant potential ROI by doing more with less. When your creative agency can focus on high-level deliverables (like creating a strategy, maintaining brand guidelines, developing tools for your staff, providing training, and posting effectively) and less time on day-to-day tasks like promoting products, services and staff, you can expect your investment in their services to deliver greater engagement, higher click-through rates, and a more invested audience. Healthy collaboration is the best way for small businesses to reach their potential for conversions without the investment in full-scope social media management. So, let your staff and agency work together to create effective, on-brand social media content – working together is one of the best tools for local entrepreneurs to maximise the potential of social platforms and create loyal customers without a huge marketing budget. 

If you’re ready to find out how we collaborate, reach out.