By: Meghan Macaya
In our personal and professional lives, the end of the year marks the close of one chapter and the beginning of another. This is a critical time to keep in mind for those in the social media space. Finish off the year well by leaving an impact on your audience, whether that be through striking content choices or a shift in approach. There are several strategies that can drive you toward success, but if you’re searching for that certain je ne sais quoi to take your brand to new heights, we’ve got you covered. Read on for several ways to optimize your social media for the ever-impactful year’s end.
1. Recenter Your Brand
As the end of the year draws near, assessing your brand’s trajectory is crucial. Magnify those objectives you’ve set and ensure they’re within reach. These goals could include increasing brand awareness, boosting engagement, or generating leads. If you’re straying from the course, try redefining your ambitions, then determine which strategies will best help you reach them. Whether it be personalizing your content or improving your responsiveness, you must keep your mission at the forefront. Your brand’s premise should inform each aspect of your social media content. We tend to get caught up in minor details throughout the process, but it’s essential to get recentered and remember your brand’s aspirations when it matters most.
2. Plan Ahead
More often than not, the key to social media success lies in consistency. By being proactive, you can stay in line with your schedule amidst the holiday frenzy at the end of the year. Draft your posts, videos, or blogs in advance, so you can focus more on improving communication and growing your audience. Consider utilizing automated resources across platforms, assessing which ones best suit your goals. With assistance from suggested replies and chatbots, you can increase brand reliability and impress a broader audience with your responsiveness—a quality that most brands overlook. Aside from the quality of content, social users value the brands that feel most authentic and accessible. In wrapping up the year, strive to build a stronger rapport with followers and forge new connections by staying on top of your schedule.
3. Prioritize Trends
Emphasizing trends is one of the best ways to engage with your current follower base and reach a greater audience. Ideally, trends should be woven into your content throughout the year, but if that’s not the case, these last few months are your chance to try your hand at them. The challenge with trends is that they differ significantly across each industry. There are some trends, however, that reign supreme. Short-form video content, specifically on TikTok, is a prime example of this. For the final phase of the year, emphasize video content across all of your social platforms. Along with TikTok’s features, explore the possibilities of Instagram Reels, Instagram Live, and YouTube Shorts. Though Instagram was not initially praised for its shift towards video content, Reels have quickly taken over the platform, adorning the pages of countless celebrities and businesses. IG Live lets you directly connect to your audience while promoting a product, service, or campaign. YouTube Shorts appeal to the rising generations with their short-and-sweet alternative to vlogs, tutorials, and reviews. Regardless of the role trends have played in your brand throughout the year, these final moments are your chance to play them up, experiment with them, and ensure they have the right impact.
4. Emphasize Your CTA
One of the most critical aspects of brand development is establishing an explicit and compelling call to action. At this stage of the year, your CTA should be revisited for your social media content to reach its full potential. All content should gesture towards a specific effort, ultimately fostering your brand’s aspirations. CTAs differ greatly depending on the brand and the scenario, but some of the most widely-used ones include “buy now,” “learn more,” and “subscribe.” For an e-commerce brand, encouraging followers to browse products and make a purchase should be at the forefront. An educational brand should have messaging that coincides with furthering knowledge on a specific topic or cause. A service-based brand must draw the eye toward the benefits of signing up for a particular amenity or resource. Regardless of the ultimate goal, there needs to be a clear avenue for your audience to recognize, helping them rise above the noise.
5. Monitor Your Competition
To build a truly remarkable brand, you should search for ways to move against the current. Staying ahead of the competition requires monitoring their efforts, delving into their content, and predicting how they’ll move forward. Is their social media content innovative, provocative, unexpected? Or is it underwhelming? As the year comes to a close, take note of their successes and failures. Do your competitors revel in high engagement? Determine which strategies have brought them success and replicate them in a fresh, exciting way. Assume the same process for their weak points. Are they struggling to build a following? What methods are to blame? Devise possible solutions and implement them into your social strategy. Ultimately, there are countless ways to further the potential of your social media, but the only way to truly rise above it all is by staying ahead of the curve.