Feyaza Khan: What are you putting in your shop window?

For retailers, their shop window is the most important part of their business. According to Modern Retail, a well created display increases traffic to your store and also leaves a lasting memory of your brand.

This is exactly how social media should be seen to companoes - it is either the first time people come in contact with your brand or what people use to research your firm. 

Yet still, in 2021, I still find startups fail to understand the importance of social media and either hire sub-par companies with no specialisms or get the most junior member of staff to take care of the vital shop front. Recently, I worked with a charity that mainly used interns to build their social media strategy for an event, and needed my advice on why nobody showed. Simple answer - there was no strategy.

Social media is also seen as a young person’s game - why? The largest age group of instagram users are 24-34 year olds but twenty percent of instagram users are between 35 and 54 and almost ten percent are older than 55. The figures are very similar on Facebook and even on TikTok, which is still seen as the home of the teen- at least seven percent of UK users were over 45 last year.

Social media has been around for far too long now to be seen as either the intern’s job or for the team's most junior member.

To put this into perspective, some of the most-used platforms are older than you might think. If Google was a person, it would be finishing university. Facebook would be completing A-Levels and even TikTok has been around long enough to be in primary school. 

On average, an individual will search for a company 13 times before deciding to buy into whatever that company is selling. This means businesses need to pop up into that individual’s consciousness through the power of the web 13 times -  from your Trustpilot reviews all the way to your Google information page - which, by the way, is free to create and you should be in charge of it!

There are a myriad of ways to tell your story successfully online, away from your website. Bizarrely in my experience, there are a large number of tech companies that don’t seem to understand the importance of the “shop front” and either ignore it entirely or create too many platforms, even dropping in a few arbitrary ones like Reddit, that they are unable to manage.

What I also find from companies interested in updating their social media; they create the same content for all their platforms. Think of the four main platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter) as four seasons - and each season needs a different window display to reflect what it stands for. 

Even if you use a social media manager, I think it’s important for business owners to understand what their shop front is saying to their customer. I would encourage directors to look at their platforms and ask the questions: 1. Do they each have a personality? 2. Is this the personality I want them to have?

This is super-important because in this day and age, with social media platforms at an advanced age, users subconsciously expect something more from their brands. They want escapism, not to be sold to. This could be through being funny, thought-provoking, educational, silly - even a controversial/ unpopular stance is better than being bland. 

Besides which, unpopular opinions tend to swing from one way to the other.  Look at James Blunt. On Twitter, he’s the King of Comebacks - and it’s making him money. He’s even released a book on his best retorts. Usually to normal individuals who hate his music, which has either turned those people into fans or made his fan base even stronger because he’s entertaining AF. My favourite James Blunt comeback:

My one advice to companies is always: it’s better to have one account that you pay all your attention to, than 3 accounts you can only give 30 percent of your time to. Your platform should be used to tell your authentic story regularly, and in the most engaging way. Now, all you have to do is figure out what your story is.

Feyaza Khan presents the TribeTech Podcast for Tech South West. She is also a broadcaster and writer who runs a media consultancy with a specialism in social media.