Ready to take your “World’s Greatest Social Media Strategy” to the next level? Excellent! As you know, late summer/early fall is that time of the year when companies start looking ahead to next year and putting together marketing plans for 2015. Are you just now considering social media tactics as a way to drive overall business goals and objectives and looking for that secret ingredient? Or are you spinning the wheels in regard to how you can ramp up successful social media programs that are already in place? If so, I have great news for you in the form of a simple, one-word answer: Creativity.
The Creative Dividend
A recent finding from Adobe’s The Creative Dividend study suggests that creativity drives business results. According to the study, “companies that embrace creativity outperform rivals in revenue growth and market share.” As an added bonus, creativity also apparently makes work a fun place to go to everyday. “Of those companies surveyed who were ranked highly for fostering creativity, 69% have received awards and recognition for being a best place to work.” So there you have it! Get creative and good things should happen.
Are You Really Creative?
Okay, so let’s say you are on board with the creativity thing. The results from Adobe’s study are intriguing, seem logical, and now you’re ready to invent an awesome, creative social media strategy. What’s next? First, we need to find out if your company is, in fact, actually creative. This is based on The Creative Dividend study also revealing the following juicy nugget of insight: “Despite the perceived benefit of creativity, 61% of senior managers do not see their companies as creative.”
What makes a company creative? What are perceived characteristics of creative companies vs. non-creative companies? To answer these questions, Forrester Consulting (who helped Adobe prepare The Creative Dividend study) interviewed big wigs at large organizations and asked them to shed light on the issue. Here are a few qualities they said define creativity and creative organizations:
- Willing to pursue the unconventional
- Pushes the limits
- Tries new things
- Refuses satisfaction on the first attempt
- Accepts failure
Adding Creativity To Your Social Media Strategy
Now that you have a better understanding of what defines creativity and how others perceive creative companies, the next step is to add creativity to your social media strategy. For some, this may be hard to visualize because creativity is also an intangible. How do you creatively generate X dollars? How do you creatively add X new customers? How do you creatively get X Facebook Likes? How do you creatively add X Twitter followers? You get the idea.
Here are the answers:
- Set business goals and objectives around creative social media outcomes
- Collaborate and get involved with customers via your company’s social media pages
- Brainstorm ideas and invest in technology/creative resources that support those ideas through your social media presence
There are tons of ways to do this at the tactic level to support your marketing plan. Please feel free to contact me if you need help adding creativity to your social media strategy.
