The whole team are busy working on a plan for a ‘hot prospect‘ that we would love to win.

We brainstorm together. first ensuring we all understand the brief, and then we agree the key objectives and what we need to achieve by the plan. We then assign the different parts of the plan to the different team members who are best suited for each element and we go to work.

Often I will work out the social media strategy and the plan for the ‘new client‘ and when all our different parts are done we reconvene and review the collective plan making sure all parts work together – Fuzion!

I went off and worked on a plan that I felt would work for this new client who were targeting a stylish, cool and savvy social media audience.

My crew pulled me aside and told me my they thought my plan was boring – “the client have big expectations from you around social media and we need to ‘wow’ them. What you have put together is boring and won’t achieve that wow“. Ouch ..that was harsh!

Now here is the dilemma ….everyone wants the big trick, the big wow, the magic moment that sends their plan into orbit but I find 100% of the time that you will never ever get near the possibility of this happening unless you first get the basics right. In particular with this target audience I also felt they would see any tricks and gimmicks as trying too hard.

Unfortunately the big trick is actually doing the boring basics right and being diligent enough to do this consistently day in day out, including those days when you are up the walls and your social media posts seem trivial and a waste of precious time. Because I believe this I find it hard to pop out tricks and gimmicks in a genuine plan.

I guess I wrote a social media plan for this prospect that was designed to succeed, which probably did read as very boring and ‘trickless‘ but unfortunately that’s what I believed was needed.

In a way there were huge ‘tricks’ in the plan even if they appear boring:

1. Get your objectives and key messages right and stick to them
2. Concentrate on the main social media platforms and until you have these up and running properly forget about the others
3. Make sure all the key imagery used is strong and supports these objectives
4. Have a clear follower strategy
5. Post regularly and at times when you know your target audience are watching – that isn’t once a day!
6. Make sure that the posts are well balanced covering all of your key messages
7. Stop selling, be helpful, craft your posts so that your unique personality shines through
8. Use great and natural photos that show the best, authentic version of the organisation and not something plucked out of a corporate brochure
9. Apply some advertising budget to carefully push your message out to the target audience
10. Don’t always talk about yourself and start interacting with others
11. Listen to your target audience and get the ball rolling with your followers
12. Write blog posts that really show your unique personality and not just facts
13. Train your internal team so they can look after your social media (always the best option)
14. Organise your team so that social media activity is always looked after
15. Keep doing it!

Reluctantly I agreed to a ‘wow’ social media brainstorm with the team and we did add a few quirky ideas, gimmicks and tricks because if we want to ‘wow’ them we have to give them what they expect but I did make sure the real ‘tricks’ were still in the plan.

When they master the real ‘big tricks’ those ‘wow moments’ will occur naturally and then they will be ready to fly into orbit!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training in Dublin and Cork