“Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally, it comes from what you do consistently” Marie Forleo, Entrepreneur.
Think about your favourite restaurant, the one you recommend to others and visit often yourself. They probably have good customer experience, value for money, good quality food and a great atmosphere. You know what you are going to get when you book a table there. Everything is consistent. The owners wouldn’t tolerate rude waiting staff, below-standard ingredients or a lazy chef, because that would be inconsistent with their brand.
That consistency helps to build a strong brand. All the pieces add together to form a clear picture of what that business is and what it stands for.
Here are three ways consistency in your social media marketing will really pay off.
1) Post consistently for better reach with your social media
Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram rely on data to decide who sees your posts. In 2021, you can expect only around 2% of your followers to see posts on their newsfeed on Facebook!
Social media platforms want to keep users on their apps for as long as possible. How do they do that? With good content that gets good engagement, and if that’s your stuff then you’ve hit the jackpot.
Posting consistently is one of the ways that you can improve your visibility on social media. The algorithms love it. Decide how much content you can post in a day/week and do that consistently.
Take a look at your insights and see when your audience are online and schedule posts during that time for maximum effect. At any given time, there are around 1500 posts that Facebook could show you on your newsfeed, so they filter it down to what it thinks are 300 of the best. Posting consistently can help your business posts be one of them.
2) Brand consistency = A strong brand
When it comes to building a strong online brand, a good place to start is with your brand persona. Are you fun, serious, local, global, friendly, formal?
Once you’ve decided that, then you need to think about the images and tone of voice that would match your persona. Any time you create content, make sure it matches your brand persona. But, what does that mean?
Imagine you run a high-end clothing store aimed at a 55+ males who dress formally. Using terms like ‘on fleek’ and sharing video clips of cats on a skateboard are probably not matching your brand persona. Leave that kind of content for the skate shop.
An interior design business that is all about modern, fun, bold, bright colours, will want to make sure their social media posts are also modern, fun, bold and bright.
Use your logo, brand colours and straplines consistently too. Imagine if Coke branding was sometimes pink, sometimes blue, sometimes CAPITALS, sometimes not. It wouldn’t be that strong iconic brand we all instantly know.
A consistent brand = a strong brand because customers will know it’s you and know what to expect when they chose your product or service.
3) Consistency is good for a positive customer experience (unless you are consistently bad!)
Do you get back to customer messages promptly?
Is your website up-to-date?
Do you have store policies that you apply to everyone fairly?
These are the kind of things that you need to be consistent with if you want to generate a positive customer experience online. Have you ever seen a special offer online only to realise at the checkout that it’s not on anymore and they just hadn’t removed the advert? So annoying!
Or how about when you send an email about a product or service you are interested in and they never respond?
People talk, especially online. Make sure they are talking positively about your brand by being consistent.