How to Walk the Line Between Flashy and Strategic on Social Media

August 30, 2019
8:15 pm

Posted by DMA Solutions Team

For social media marketers in a day and age where social media is everywhere you look—and it can be bigger and flashier than anyone ever expected—it is easier than ever before to be inspired with out-of-the-box BIG ideas. On the other hand, one of the most frustrating side effects is that it is also easy to get roped in by the glitz and glam of a competitor’s approach and become tempted to throw your strategy out the window in order to keep up with the crowd. So how do fresh produce marketers, who want to stand out in the crowd but also refuse to abandon a plan based in strategy, learn how to “walk the line” like our good friend Johnny Cash?

Staying fresh, unique, and engaging in order to stand out among from the competition is important for brand success on social media, but if your dazzling ideas are not based in strategy, they will quickly fade (and will likely not provide the desired results, anyway). Here are some ways to help you determine if you are going down the right path:

Flashy vs. Strategy

Why Flash Alone Does Not Work

Sure, glitz may be an attention-grabber, but at the end of the day, that is not what really keeps your customers around. When creating a social media campaign, understand that there will always be someone willing to spend more money than you and take bigger risks, and there will always be another big idea. The good news is, if you know your brand advocates well enough, you don’t always need to be the one with the wildest idea or the biggest budget!

Think about it: how many campaigns have you seen that have caught your attention, but when you look deeper, you couldn’t even recall what the promoted product was or what action the brand wanted you to take? Simply put, flash alone won’t get you anywhere: it doesn’t tell your audience what makes your product special, why they should pick you, or what your brand stands for.

Flash is Necessary to Keep up

We get it, you want people to pay attention to your brand, and a little pizzazz can help in that endeavor! After all, it is true that without a little flash and the willingness to change things up every once in a while, your content, promotions, and advertisements can become stale. If your audience is seeing the exact same thing over and over, they are going to stop paying attention. So yes, it’s important to keep things fresh, especially with the current pace of change on social media, which means that staying relevant requires new, out-of-the-box ideas. What’s important is that those ideas are rooted in a strategy that makes sense for—and aligns with—the brand using them!

Strategy Always Pays Off

It’s true that sometimes being too caught up in small strategic details can limit creativity, but it is also true that creative ideas need a backbone—or they will just get lost in a sea of all the other ideas out there. There is so much noise on social media—with every other brand around trying to dominate the conversation too—that if your brand just throws greats idea out there with no planning or strategy and hoping they stick, you will almost certainly not get the results you were hoping for. In those cases, marketers are not only limiting the potential of their great ideas, they are also wasting the energy, resources, and money put into them!

It may feel like a bit of a journey on a high tightrope at times, but learning how to walk the line between flashy and strategic will make you a more successful social media marketer—and will contribute to the success of your brand, too.

Want more useful resources on social media marketing and strategy? Here’s a great place to start: