For an individual or business which chooses to prioritize social media marketing, the easiest part is done.  The potential for return from a potentially small marketing budget for social media content posting is itself an overwhelming case to proceed.  The ability of social media to capture eyes, and then eventual sales, at relatively little cost to the business owner makes social media marketing an absolutely essential part of the business plan, for both small and large-sized businesses.

As with many great business ideas, the real challenge is in the implementation.  Social media takes time, effort, and dedication.  Without these underlying drivers of success, there is little to be gained from even having a social media account.  For many customers, the first information they see about your business will be the Facebook account that appears from a Google search.  If the account is out of date, with no recent or fresh content to show, the very first impression that your customer has of your business is to wonder whether or not you are still in business.  Showing an active social media page, however, can very quickly convey a sense of activity and, more importantly, your own enthusiasm for your own business. 

And therein lies the first challenge of the social media strategy, deciding how you want to portray your business, and trying to engineer – through original and creative content – the impression of your business that customers will carry with them.  When the average time spent on a social media page is twenty seconds, the feeling you leave in the customer’s mind is all-important, and can make a significant difference in whether or not they would like to continue learning about your business, if they would like to continue doing business with you, and even whether or not they will remember anything about you. 

How can businesses manage, and even, engineer that feeling?  How do businesses decide on a theme that will carry them forward to the development of 250 social media postings per year (one every business day)? 

As with most aspects of marketing, the answer may be more art than science.  Fortunately, there are some solid building blocks that can be used to build your social media foundational theme.

• Let your customer lead:  that is a more practical way of saying, know your customer and what drives them.  Specifically, what are the key factors in their decisioning over accepting your products or services?  For many businesses, the underlying driver of decisions is trust.  Do they trust your care, your skills, and your pitch?  Trust can be conveyed in many ways, through demonstration of your knowledge of the business, by highlighting your experience in the business, or through customer testimonials.  Where comfort and identity are most important (identifying with the business brand, for example), the social media theme must focus on building a positive association with the business.  As an extreme example, cute photos of puppies or kittens are always attractive and always appeal to an individual’s emotions.  These are the types of themes that will drive the selection of social media themes.
• Spontaneous versus deliberated:  Another factor that will drive content development is understanding how your customers’ decisions are made.  For spontaneous purchase of products or services, a highly emotional appeal must be made, and must be reflective in the content postings and blogs.  For other purchases (such as a professional service), customers’ decisions will be driven by research, and by the confidence they have in the service delivery.  In other words, the customer may deliberate extensively, and compare other service providers over time.  Images and content on social media must convey authority and knowledge to convey comfort and trust. 
• Level of controversy or intrigue:  For some types of businesses (or social causes, for example), the conveyance of passion can generate action.  Where professional skills and trust of the customer are critical, drama or any type of controversy should not even be considered.  In attracting donations for a social cause, for example, personal stories and controversy-driven activism may be the core of a successful campaign.  The key point here is that your target audience must positively identify with the angst that is being portrayed.  Without this positive identification, controversial viewpoints will lead to a vicious downward cycle of indifference (at best) or opposition (at worst). 
• Mainstream versus unique:  Early adopters of technology and invention are fundamentally motivated by a desire to stand out from the crowd through their adoption of leading-trend gadgets.  Tapping into that motivation is possible through conveying themes of uniqueness, extreme innovation, and viewpoints which (positively) challenge the status quo.  Mainstream products and services have more competition in the market, and therefore (with some exceptions), campaigns which focus on uniqueness may risk alienating customers whose core motivation is the security that comes from fitting into the crowd.  Instances of non-conformity tend to raise doubt over the applicability of the product or service to their own identity.
• Multiple themes or single focus:  Very few businesses would fall into one single motivator or theme for the business.  Themes which convey both knowledge and authority may also be mixed with personalized testimonials and individual examples of transition and achievement.  Several motivating factors can be at play in each posted meme or published blog. 

These are the major factors to consider in the development of a social media marketing theme.  Other, more detailed considerations will reveal themselves throughout the content development process, but with a foundation built on this analysis, the second layer of development can be easily iterated throughout the process. 

Being clear about what themes are most relevant to your customers is the first step in optimizing the social media effort and in realizing its fullest potential.