Content, Conversation, Community

A few months back, when I was deciding whether or not to leave my current copywriting position to take on my current marketing/sales/communications/community management position (we’re a small business, so we all wear a lot of hats), I met my friend/former coworker, Nick, for a beer to discuss the opportunity. Nick has (successfully) devoted his entire career to social media marketing and, knowing that this would be perhaps the most important and most challenging part of my new job, I wanted to pick his brain about a couple of things. One of my main questions/concerns was: “How do I convince a management/ownership staff that has hitherto been resistant to social media to not only invest in it, but embrace it?”

I’ll never forget Nick’s response: “Just let them know that there’s a conversation going on out there—about them, and around them—and they can either choose to be a part of that conversation, or ignore it.” 

This is the attitude I believe all companies should have toward social media—to opt out of participating is to opt out of the conversation(s).

While it might be unlikely for a company nowadays to be flat out against social media participation, attitudes regarding how they approach it inevitably vary. Coming from an large advertising firm with entire departments and personal devoted to social media to a small business that only used social media to communicate class cancellations or other seemingly negative information has allowed me to experience a significant amount of the love-hate/attached-detached/invested-apathetic social media attitude spectrum.  And while I still have a long way to go in terms of developing and implementing the social media strategy I dream of for this company, I can at least say I’ve succeeded in convincing the owners/managers that such a strategy is worth investing in.

As He (2016), Kaushik (2010) both allude to in their writing, joining the conversation is about far more than simply talking (i.e. posting), it’s about listening.  Competitive analysis (He, 2016) has been a crucial part of my initial work in starting to build our social media. Our athletic club is in a unique situation as it is a small, family-owned business whose amenities are more comparable to a Lifetime or Equinox than a Powerhouse or Planet Fitness. Because of this, and because of the club’s location (not far from Lifetime, but in the center of some of the areas more suburban, family-defined neighborhoods) it has secured a solid and predominately loyal member base. However, with more boutique fitness facilities on the rise, this security is no longer enough.  Bikram Yogas, Pure Barres, and Orange Theories are popping up everywhere, many of which come with strong social media presences and voices. These companies have been part of the fitness world’s social media since the start.

Social media affords smaller companies who might not have the corporate backing to be as loud of a voice as, say, an Equinox or a Lifetime, to still have just as strong of one. Arguably, this strength is measured less through what a company says/does and more through the company inspires other people to say/do.  And in the health/wellness/fitness industry, people seem to say/do a lot.  

For example, one of the first things I called attention to was the fact that when we only post negative things (i.e. class cancellations, broken saunas, closed pools, under-repair equipment, etc.) we bring out negative voices. A post from our company in a member’s newsfeed evokes an “oh no” response (or, worse, and “I don’t want to know” response) rather than any sort of positive ones. My biggest goal thus far has been to fill our page with content that is more positive than negative. People go to gyms because they want to feel at least good if not entirely inspired—why not develop a social media presence that also makes them feel this way? 

Facebook has been the primary channel of focus for our social media and the fact that the company already had at least a small Facebook following made it my initial focus, too. Focusing on Facebook has allowed me to quickly and thoroughly discover the reason many social media managers are called “community managers”—from reviews, to inquiries, to likes, shares, and check-ins, Facebook seems to provide a direct window into the minds of community members I might otherwise never notice.  For example, one man checks in every day, posting a selfie in the pool and announcing what race he’s training for with the hashtag #KickingCancersAss. I want to do a #MemberMonday story on him and other members in the hopefully not-to-distant future—if there’s one thing our members engage a lot with, it’s our members. The most engagement I see is when I post either #TrainerTipTuesdays or images of one of our older members, George, who works out twice/day at age 80 and always wears motivational shirts when he does. 

While having a social medium of primary focus can help, I think companies should be open to expanding their focus to include additional social media that either compliments or serves an additional purpose for their brand. For example, I thought that not having an Instagram account was a big miss for our gym and creating one became of my first projects. This medium definitely attracts a different community within our community (hello, weight-room mirror selfies), but I think it has been an important addition to our online voice and presence.  One thing I notice with Instagram, particularly with the fitness community, is that it is one giant conversation, often characterized/categorized by hashtags such as #SundayRunday, #MotivationMonday, #FitFam, #GirlsWhoLift, etc. It’s a fun and easy conversation to join, so why stand outside of it?

At the same time, I do not think a company should be on a platform just to be on a platform. This is our current state on Twitter—content we share on Facebook and Instagram feeds through Twitter, but we have yet to establish a platform-specific voice of our own there, making us 100% guilty of the “content without conversation” Novak (2010) speaks of. 

Whether content is king (Greenberg, 2009) or conversation is king (Novak, 2010) for social media seem to fall under the notion that community is king. This seems to be what Novak (2010) is getting at when she writes, “we all want to be treated like a person, and not just a “consumer”—we’re more likely to consume social media content that sees us as human. Consumption here, likely measured via interaction as in Lake’s (2009) KPIs. The above “Crush Excuses” image George had great community engagement (108 reactions and 30 comments was a lot for us at the time!).

But will member-focused posts like these ultimately yield any sort of measurable profit (Kallis, 2017)? My hope is that focusing on the community we have and the one we want to inspire will eventually show an increase in both member acquisition and, perhaps even more importantly, member retention.

References:

Greenberg, M. (2009, October 20). Content is king of social marketing. MultichannelMerchant.com. Retrieved April 12, 2012 from http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/1020-content-social-marketing/

He, Wu, et al. "ACTIONABLE SOCIAL MEDIA COMPETITIVE ANALYTICS FOR UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES." The Journal of Computer Information Systems 56.2 (2016): 145-55. ProQuest. Web. 25 July 2017.

Kaushik, A. (2010) Web Analytics 2.0. Wiley Publishing.  

Kallis, P. (2017, December 13). 48 Social Media KPIs You Need to Know. Retrieved from: https://www.dreamgrow.com/48-social-media-kpis-key-performance-indicators/

Lake, C. (2009, October 30). 35 social media kpis to help measure engagement. Econsultancy Blog. Retrieved on March 23, 2012 from http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/4887-35-social-media-kpis-to-help-measure-engagement.

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. SocialMediaToday.com. Retrieved April 12, 2012 from http://socialmediatoday.com/wordspring/152636/why-conversation-not-content-king