MDG Solutions

Mastering organic social content for multi-location businesses

Organic social content is a key contributor to building brand awareness and brand loyalty, and it also provides a cost-effective way to get in front of diverse audiences for multi-location businesses. However, the proliferation of generic AI-based content has shifted the landscape and made customers wary of engaging with social media the same way. The good news is that there is ample opportunity for pioneering multi-location brands to stand out from the generic social media crowd, but it requires some strategizing. It’s time to review and rejuvenate your brand’s processes around organic social content to make it more impressive and to achieve more on social platforms. In this article, we discuss how to master organic social content in light of the proliferation of generic AI content.  

Start with an attainable strategy! 

Marketing is sometimes one of those disciplines that starts the year with a strong, ambitious strategy, and six months in, everyone is excited about twelve new ideas and the marketing strategy is nowhere to be found. Building an attainable strategy means setting clear goals, defining roles and and responsibilities, and giving steps as to how those goals can be achieved, but the how is the part that can evolve throughout the year. To avoid a strategy that doesn’t fit, or grow with the team, we recommend incorporating space for social experiments in the overall marketing strategy from the beginning, so no one is surprised. 

To ensure widespread adoption, share the strategy and constantly evaluate its effectiveness. Social media can become a time- and resource-heavy activity and the returns might not warrant the investment in certain cases. If your social media strategy becomes too cumbersome, pair it down to focus on the areas that deliver the most value for social media and the easiest ways to measure those. Don’t just create a strategy for strategy’s sake. 

Stop following and start leading with bold content

This might be considered the most important piece of the puzzle; create and publish bold, captivating content (most of the time). We know it can feel almost impossible to create something new these days and break out from the trends, but it’s worth trying. That is not to say that your brand should avoid social media trends, rather just pick the ones that make the most sense for your goals and audience. Ideally, your social media should be tied together by an authentic, transparent, and engaging brand voice. This will help create cohesion across locations, but it also allows audiences to connect and build trust with one brand.  

Bring together team members across locations to ideate and build a robust list of content they would like to try and other content they have found that works well at their location. (Hint: Go crazy, it’s only a list of options after all.) Overall, we find incorporating the following unique content into your organic social media strategy can start to improve results:

  • Incorporate user-generated content as it will always be different and it’s by the audience, for the audience. If you have a healthcare organization, just ensure the posts adhere to the HIPAA compliance rules and regulations otherwise you risk a hefty fine! 
  • Get the leadership team involved in posting either on their areas of expertise or have them provide an inside look into the topics most important to them and the brand.
  • Highlight experts, either in the organization or those that you partner with, to provide relevant and engaging content to your audience. 
  • Videos and live streams are going to get far more engagement these days than static posts. 
  • Once you have an engaged audience, deliver more interactive content, such as polls, quizzes, and promotions or contests.  

Build out and keep to a schedule

After deciding on the strategy and the type of content, make sure to build out a comprehensive schedule. When you have a schedule there are no surprises and the team can plan accordingly. If you know next month is gong to be busy, create the plan and content ahead of time so you can invest in the things that have a high ROI or add lots of value. This is a great opportunity to incorporate AI tools for scheduling and optimization. 

Engage different audiences appropriately 

Hopefully you have a very clear picture of your audience and where they get their information. It is generally accepted that a large number of GenZ use TikTok, millennials are mostly on Instagram and YouTube, and boomers still love Facebook. Pay attention to where and how your audience is consuming information and adjust accordingly. You don’t need to have the same content on all platforms, in fact, it might be better if you don’t!

Engage each location teams/owners 

As a multi-location business it can be challenging to engage all the locations, teams, and owners, but it will benefit you in the long run. They are well versed on their local audience and what has worked well for them in the past. It makes sense to engage them and have everyone learning from each other rather than trying to invent the wheel or create processes that do not scale across all locations. 

If you are out of ideas for captivating social media content, or don’t have the time to manage it, contact the MDG team today!