Make the most of your social media strategy this National Grilled Cheese Day

Today is National Grilled Cheese Day, an annual celebration that honors one of the most popular sandwiches in the United States. Americans eat approximately 2.2 billion grilled cheeses per year. In 2012, one man set a new world record for eating 13 grilled cheese sandwiches in one minute. And, at Spitfire, we often use this cheesy delicacy as a conversation starter for another popular phenomenon with our partners: social media.

To help get our partners’ wheels turning on what they want to accomplish with their social media, we often ask, “How would we use social media to share the news that we are enjoying a delicious grilled cheese?” So, this year, in honor of National Grilled Cheese Day, enjoy your sandwich with a side of social media strategy. Here are four #cheesy tips to bring your social media smarts to the next level.

1. Start with strategy. Seriously.

When people think about using social media as a way to spread their message, they often jump right into tactics. “What hashtags will we use? Do we need to create shareable graphics? Should we consider paying for social media ads?”

While these are valid questions and important components to consider, it is best to take a step back to ask yourself why you are doing this in the first place and what you hope to accomplish once your digital campaign or action is completed. As a starting point, consider asking yourself and your team the following questions:

• Who are our priority audiences?

• How will social media support our communication objectives?

• What do we want our audiences to think, feel and do once we have their attention?

2. Pick the right platform.

Social media is constantly evolving and new platforms continue to pop up left and right. While it might be tempting to jump onto the newest, shiniest social media platform, make sure that doing so aligns with your strategy. It takes a lot of effort to build a successful social media presence, so make sure that you are investing in the platforms that will give you the most return toward accomplishing your goals.

For example, Twitter is an incredibly fast-paced platform. Success on Twitter can rely heavily on your ability to track trends in real-time and jump into relevant conversations as they are happening. Ask yourself, Do you have the staff capacity to engage consistently and share perspective on timely topics? Alternatively, a platform like Instagram might not require sharing content as frequently. However, Instagram is entirely built on visual content. Do you have the capacity to regularly create high-quality images and videos for an Instagram feed and across Instagram stories? Whichever platforms you use, make sure they are helpful in supporting your strategy and engaging with the audiences that matter most to you.

3. Incorporate these best practices for creating good content.

Tell authentic stories. It’s called “social” media for a reason. It pays to humanize your content and make it personal. People are also more likely to share and like your content if they can empathize with your story.

Address your audiences’ barriers but don’t reinforce them. What might keep your audience from participating or agreeing with your position? Address those obstacles in your message, but be careful not to repeat potential oppositional messaging within your content. Stay away from “myth vs. fact” posts because studies show that sharing the myth only reinforces it.

Include an emotional call to action. Emotion makes content powerful. Research tells us that the two most motivating emotions are anger and hope, so consider tapping into one or both of these as you encourage your audiences to act.

4. Measure and evaluate success.

Let’s say you create an incredible social media campaign that goes viral, recruits dozens of new champions for your cause, and becomes the envy of all other organizations in your space. If that happens, amazing! Pat yourself on the back and celebrate. But, don’t stop there.

Measuring and evaluating your social media activity is critical. The issues you fight for every day will not be solved with a single social media campaign, no matter how successful it becomes. It is important to set benchmarks, measure your social media performance regularly and take time to review and debrief after you’ve completed a campaign or activity. To get a comprehensive look into the analytics of your social media activity, there are a variety of third-party evaluation tools available. However, most platforms allow you to measure and evaluate your performance without paying for something separate. For example, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics and Instagram Insights offer a variety of options for analyzing trends across your followers and your content’s performance.

Earlier this year, a TikTok video went viral, begging the question, “Have we been flipping grilled cheese sandwiches the wrong way for our entire lives?” And while for some of us (myself definitely included), the answer is “yes,” we can thank social media for steering us in a better, tastier direction.

So, to honor this year’s observance, use our graphic above to practice sharing ever-important grilled cheese news across a variety of popular social media platforms. To learn more about online communication, check out Spitfire’s Digital Smarts tool to advance your social media strategy on this year’s National Grilled Cheese Day and for many more to come.