Key Messages

And the next stage in the development of this social media strategy is to articulate the key messages. Now key messages are the most important pieces of information that you need to convey to your audience. A huge mistake businesses make, is that they try and tell customers everything, and they don’t need to know everything. And that can actually end up confusing your customers so much that they turn off and disengage from you.

So with this, you need to really think about the goals of this strategy, and what are the key messages related to those goals that your audience needs to know. So, for example, the key message really should inform and be understanding about your brand, but it should also have a persuasive effect as well by including some form of Call-To-Action and less is more.

So the recommended number of key messages for strategies between one and three. And so, this is quite challenging sometimes because it makes you really think but what are the most important things that you need to convey and just forget all the other stuff.

One way to approach key messages in a social media strategy is to include three and devote each one to a different topic. So firstly, the first key message should focus on your branding. So in one sentence, it should explain who you are as a business. The second key message should focus on the problem that your business can solve for your customer.

So revisit your customer persona, and look at one of those pain points and the solutions that you provided, but only include one. The key messages must be written each one as one distinct sentence. The third key message should be a Call-To-Action. So revisit the goal of the strategy and then write in a sentence, what you want the audience to do.

And the purpose of including these key messages in a social media strategy is to ensure that when you reach the tactics stage, and you’re developing social media content to implement the strategy, that the content contains at least one of these key messages.

It is also advisable, not to just blatantly write in these sentences into your content, because that can get repetitive and boring, instead show rather than tell, the key to all storytelling. So an example could be, that you video a customer testimonial, and you put it on Facebook, for example.

So, what you could do is, have that customer explain who you’re business is, and how your business helped them to overcome a problem or a challenge, and then in the end frame, you have a Call-To-Action to call, to visit the website. So you can see here, you’ve gone through those three different components.

You’ve got key message one, the customer explained to you why and what you do, key message two, they explained the problem and the solution that you provided, and then key message three, the Call-To-Action is part of the video at the end.

And now, here’s one of my own examples. So here we had a key message one branding. So Dr. Karen Sutherland, Social Media Coaching and Workshops, that’s what I deliver and it’s very succinct and clear. I don’t need to go into detail that’s explaining exactly who I am and what I do.

Key message number two, the problem your business solves. So here it is social media education customized to your needs and expertise. So are they providing a solution? And then third Call-To-Action, visit drkarensutherland.com for more information. So I am sure that if I’m building a social media strategy around developing this side of my business, I’ll include this information in all of my content.

And now it’s your turn to write some key messages. So write one to three key messages for your social media strategy and consider applying the approach that I just explained. So key message one, related to your branding, who you are, and what you do. Key message two, the problem your business solves. So revisiting your customer personas will really help here. And then key message three, the Call-To-Action, revisit the goal of your strategy. What exactly do you want people to do and it’s in this part that you will tell them what to do.