Essential Social Media Strategies for Club [Including Free Tools]
If you are seeking ways for your club to distinguish itself among the multitude of existing brands, this article will guide you through leveraging social media effectively for your club.
Additionally, it will highlight essential (free) software that should be part of your toolkit.
Written by: Vuong Ngo
Published at 12/4/2023
Why social media is important for your club?
Utilising social media offers a significant advantage as it presents a cost-effective approach to enhancing your club's brand visibility. While it demands time and resources for content creation, leveraging a dependable phone and a few tools can result in producing high-quality content. Moreover, social media facilitates the potential to reach your desired audience at a fraction of the cost incurred through targeted advertising.
For instance, investing $199 in crafting video content for Tiktok or Reels could potentially reach 50,000 users, whereas reaching the same audience via ads would likely require a substantially higher investment.
Furthermore, social media provides avenues to:
- Drive increased website traffic and generate leads.
- Advertise products and services.
- Foster a community.
- Establish connections and gain insights from your target audience.
Fundamentally, the utilisation of social media for your club aligns closely with its application in medium to large-scale enterprises. Both involve aspects of sharing, engaging, monitoring, and optimising content. The primary distinction lies in the club's emphasis on growth, whereas established brands might prioritise expansion.
Strategies for your club's social media presence
Maintain consistency.
Establishing a consistent presence on social media is crucial for club starting out in the digital realm. Often, clubs become disheartened if they don't see immediate results. However, social media growth tends to be gradual. By maintaining consistent activity, you'll eventually yield positive outcomes.
Consistency involves regularly sharing high-quality content, aiming for at least one post per week. This practice serves several purposes. Firstly, when visitors explore your profile, having a substantial amount of content ensures they gain a clear understanding of your brand. Insufficient content may lead to user disinterest and prompt them to leave your page. Similarly, sporadic posts can have a similar effect.
Social media provides a platform to narrate your club brand's story. Prioritising consistency and coherence enables users to anticipate what your page offers, comprehend your brand's voice, and understand your offerings. This approach is key to attracting your target audience
Expand your content variety.
Social media platforms offer abundant space for creativity and experimentation. Often, clubs discover a successful strategy and exclusively rely on it. While the saying 'If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it' holds merit, social media is in a constant state of evolution. What was effective yesterday might not yield the same results today due to platform updates and changes in user behaviour.
Therefore, it's essential to diversify content formats whenever feasible. For instance, TikTok primarily allows video posts, while Facebook offers live streaming, image sharing, polls, and more.
Embrace various content formats such as:
- Photos
- Videos
- Illustrations
- Stop-motion
- Live streams
- Polls
The possibilities with content are virtually limitless.
According to Hubspot's Social Media report, clubs find the best return on investment by creating educational and relatable content, or entertaining and engaging content.
Here are some initial content ideas to consider:
- How-tos
- Customer spotlights
- Industry updates and insights
- Behind-the-scenes glimpses
- Trend coverage (viral sounds and dances)
- Product highlights
- Q&A sessions
Prioritising Quality over Quantity in Content and Platform Selection
When it comes to your social media strategy, emphasising quality over quantity holds immense importance, not just in the content you publish but also in choosing the platforms you utilise. From a content perspective, while regular posting on social media is encouraged, there’s a crucial caveat: every post should offer genuine value to your audience. If a post fails to meet this criterion, it's advisable to explore alternative strategies, such as sharing brand-related content from non-competitive sources or showcasing user-generated content (UGC). These UGC can be from your own club's training session, competition or parents' submitted content.
Turning attention to platform selection, clubs often grapple with limited time and resources, making it impractical to manage an account on every social platform—and that's perfectly acceptable. Instead, the focus should be on one to three platforms that align closely with the demographics of your target audience. Our 2022 social media marketing research underscores the prevalence of prioritising Facebook and YouTube among small businesses this year, despite acknowledging that Facebook and Instagram generate the highest quality leads. However, for clubs targeting Gen-Z audiences, concentrating efforts on TikTok to expand and engage with their audience might be a strategic choice.
Embracing Trends in Content and Platforms
Understanding and adapting to trends is crucial, both in content creation and platform selection. Our research highlights that numerous clubs are delving into live audio chat rooms and short-form videos, identified as two major trends in the past couple of years. Venturing into a new platform, however, demands more commitment than experimenting with new content formats or styles.
Previously, many clubs were hesitant about TikTok, perceiving it solely as an entertaining platform for Gen-Z. However, clubs now recognise its immense value as a network capable of expanding their outreach and boosting brand awareness significantly.
The key isn’t necessarily jumping onto every emerging trend as soon as it surfaces; rather, it’s about vigilantly observing trends and their progression. Trends have a diverse trajectory—while some fade away, others evolve into enduring strategies that become fundamental elements in your marketing arsenal. Therefore, the recommendation isn’t immediate adoption but rather attentive monitoring and assessment, enabling the integration of enduring trends that align with your brand's goals and audience preferences.
Social Media Tools for your club
Tiktok Creative Center
The TikTok Creative Center stands as a valuable tool empowering marketers to uncover the most popular audio and video content circulating on TikTok. This tool enables users to explore trends based on keywords, sounds, or specific regions. Additionally, it offers meticulously curated collections showcasing creative ideas from other content creators who have previously utilised these sounds or videos, providing inspiration for the creation of one's videos.
Why prioritise keeping abreast of TikTok trends? Well, TikTok boasts a staggering user base, with over a billion active users—a vast audience your brand could potentially engage with by crafting pertinent and captivating TikTok videos. Moreover, given TikTok's highly visual nature, it serves as an ideal platform for showcasing products or services in an intriguing and engaging manner.
So, how do you navigate the TikTok Creative Center? The platform's functionalities are more extensive when accessed through your logged-in TikTok account. Upon entering the site, head to the "Trend Discovery" tab. For trending audio, explore the "Sounds" section, where you can search for sounds via keywords or browse by title and artist. Once you find a sound of interest, you can preview it and gauge its popularity by checking the number of video incorporations. Furthermore, you can explore the top videos utilising that particular sound, drawing inspiration for your content creation.
In essence, the TikTok Creative Center serves as an invaluable resource for staying at the forefront of trends on the platform. It aids in identifying trending audio and videos while offering creative inspiration from fellow creators. Ultimately, leveraging this tool allows you to produce videos aligned with the latest trends, catering to your potential customers and fanbase on TikTok.
P.S. If you excel in Reels but hesitate to dive into TikTok or vice versa, explore our blog post detailing tips on repurposing content effectively across both platforms.
Leveraging Google Analytics for Analytics
In a survey querying small businesses about their preferred tools for monitoring social media metrics, a significant 75% acknowledged relying on Google Analytics. This platform serves as a robust instrument enabling the tracking of social media accounts' impact on website traffic. Notably, it provides insightful data such as the volume of visitors arriving from social media channels, the duration of their sessions, the most frequently shared landing pages across social platforms, comparison of conversion rates from social media to other channels, and identification of successful social campaigns generating traffic and conversions.
Google Analytics presents both free and paid versions, with the free variant offering a plethora of features that adequately serve the needs of small businesses. The extensive functionalities available in the free version often render the need for an upgrade negligible for small-scale enterprises.
Canva: Your Go-To for Graphic Design Solutions
Lacking the financial means to engage a professional graphic designer? No need to worry—Canva steps in as your solution provider. This versatile graphic design platform boasts a vast array of free social media templates, enabling you to construct a cohesive visual identity seamlessly. Additionally, within Canva, you'll discover an extensive collection of stock images and videos available for both commercial and non-commercial use, serving as valuable resources for your content creation endeavors. However, it's essential to note that while Canva excels in crafting branded templates, caution should be exercised when using it for logo creation, as locating truly unique designs may prove challenging.
Topics:
Facebook Marketing
Instagram Marketing
Tiktok Marketing
