5 Lessons to Learn from Companies that Do Social Media Right

In today’s day and age, you can hardly find a company that’s not active on social media. 

It makes sense—considering that 50% of the world’s population has at least one social media account, there is no other platform that can give you as much reach and engagement. 

But adding social media to your marketing mix doesn’t guarantee you immediate success. Think about enhancing your online presence with an efficient visual production platform Creatopy. You can put it to good use and make a banner or create unique content without other costly tools or design experience. Besides that, you can use an online photo editor perform, e.g., background removal.It’s quite hard to surprise an average social media user because there isn’t a single content type they haven’t seen yet. 

So, if you find it hard to engage your social media followers, here are five lessons from companies that have excelled at their social media strategies. 

1. Leverage TikTok to Go Viral

Recently, many companies started incorporating TikTok into their marketing efforts, but none of them have been as successful as Starbucks. 

On its separate Starbucks Creations account, the company posts the most unusual drinks it creates for its customers while also encouraging average users and successful content creators on TikTok to try these drinks:

Video credit: Starbucks Creations

Now, if you go on YouTube and search for the keyword viral TikTok Starbucks drinks, you will see how many influencers joined the trend, contributing to its virality. 

There is a good reason why TikTok has so much viral potential. The content on this platform is easy to consume. As a result, it opens the opportunity for creativity. And, as TikTok content is also easy to share, users can quickly spread the word and make any TikTok video viral. 

However, TikTok can be tricky to navigate as you’ll need to jump on trends before they pass while still marketing your company. So, to avoid slacking when it comes to content, reach out to a TikTok advertising agency with professionals who have a deep understanding of how the algorithm works and help you plan your content by offering creative thinking.

 

Here are a few tips to help you start:

• Post consistently. Prepare a content calendar for the upcoming months and create a schedule for each content piece to ensure steady engagement growth. 
• Get help with sharing content. Try to incorporate third-party tools like ViralContentBee, where you can ask people to share your content to improve engagement. 
• Make friends with analytics. The viral potential of your TikToks depends on the trending songs and hashtags you include in them. Monitoring TikTok analytics will help you detect these trends and use them while they’re still hot. 

TikTok is all about trends. So, if your goal is to go viral, learn how to catch them and use them to your advantage. 

Become the face of your niche– With every other business jumping on to the latest trend, increasing your chances of your video being viewed is important. And you can achieve this visibility by differentiating your business from other businesses doing the same thing. The best way to do this is by using the trend to communicate something valuable and original about your business.

 

 

 

2. Incorporate Branded Hashtags

If you’re racking your brain over the ways to improve your brand’s visibility on social media, take a look at Hello Fresh. 

The company tackles this problem by using its own branded hashtag, under which people can find company updates as well as content shared by Hello Fresh fans:

Image credit: Instagram

A branded hashtag sounds like a great idea for better brand awareness, but you need to approach it responsibly.

First of all, check how often social media users mention your brand. If you haven’t made a branded hashtag yet, social media users might have already created it for you. So, go to the social media platform of your choice and enter a hashtag with your brand’s name in the search bar to see if there’s content that’s already featuring it. 

In case there is no content that mentions your brand in a hashtag, you need to create one from scratch. Of course, there’s a chance your branded hashtag won’t perform well for a while but keep using your hashtag tracking tool to analyze its performance, which should improve over time. 

You can also make your branded hashtag more popular by asking your followers to share their user-generated content with you via this hashtag. This way, you kill two birds with one stone – your branded hashtag starts performing better, and you get more engagement from your followers. 

Adding branded hashtags on your posts will help push your content to other users who aren’t following your brand but already have an interest in the topic. And with better visibility, there is a chance many of the new followers will want to engage with your content by commenting and liking your content.
Over time, these followers create a community around your business and enjoy your content to the point of actively engaging and sharing it with others. Branded hashtags also offer a great way of scoping out competition that you may not already be aware of. This way, you can monitor their page and benchmark their performance against yours, improving where necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Share Social Proof with User-Generated Content

It’s a well-known fact that today’s average consumer would not buy anything online (and offline) without reading some reviews and recommendations. Besides, consumers are also quite picky about the feedback they read: 92% of people only trust non-paid recommendations rather than online ads. 

And this is where user-generated content comes to play on TikTok. Most successful businesses have leveraged users to create content about the brand rather than the business itself. And with clients trusting user content and more branded content, these businesses have built credibility.

Fashion Nova, an e-commerce apparel company, excels at incorporating non-paid feedback in their social media strategy by simply sharing user-generated content:

Image credit: Fashion Nova

Fashion Nova started its USG campaign by collaborating with 3,000 influencers who shared content under the hashtag #NovaBabes. This campaign started snowballing very quickly, as more and more regular users started posting content under the same hashtag featuring Fashion Nova’s apparel.

This campaign is a perfect example of how you can leverage social proof in the form of user-generated content. Fashion Nova didn’t force its products on anyone. Instead, the company let the power of word-of-mouth do its thing as influencers passed the torch to their followers, who keep posting content under the same hashtag to this day. 

Thus, Fashion Nova’s example is a great case study for any e-commerce on how to include social proof to its social media strategy creatively and naturally. 

So, to take advantage of USG content, consider coming up with a TikTok challenge that’s entertaining enough. This challenge should allow people to show off their creativity and generate alternative results.

 

4. Bring Social Media and Customer Support Together

Over 150 million people message brands through Instagram Direct, and 76% do so to get customer support. So, it would be an understatement to say that your company absolutely needs social customer service. 

However, you don’t have to use your primary social accounts for customer support. Instead, you can follow Nike’s footsteps and create a separate account on Twitter for customer inquiries:

If you would like to incorporate social customer service software yourself, it would be better to test the waters first using your most active social media account.

So, start by going through the analytics on each social platform you’re using and check your audience’s activity. For instance, in the Facebook analytics tab, you can find this information under Overview, which shows how often your audience interacted with your brand within a given timeframe. 

If you have the link with the contacts of your customer support on your social media page, you can also check out how many people clicked on this link under the Actions on Page section:

For example, if more people usually click on this link on Facebook than on Twitter, then try incorporating social customer support on Facebook first. 

5. Draw the Attention of the Public to Social Causes

Your brand is not just about your products, it’s also about your values. Consumers know that and want your marketing strategy to be not just about materialistic things. Reportedly, 70% of people say they want companies to take a stand regarding important social and political issues. 

That’s what Procter & Gamble are doing by dedicating their entire Instagram to various causes they support:

Image credit: P&G

Of course, you need to choose a social cause with caution. And, your followers will quickly expose you if they see that you’re supporting an important cause just for the sake of publicity. 

Here are a few tips on how to avoid that:

• Connect your product with a social cause. Procter and Gamble promotes recycling because people don’t often know how to sort packaging from their products. So, think about your product and which social causes can be connected to it. 
• Ask for public opinion. You can also engage your followers and ask them to help you find the perfect cause for your brand to support. Chances are that you might already have some suggestions in the comments section under your posts. 
• Involve your employees. You can also follow Google’s example and outsource volunteering and social activism to them. It is also a great strategy to show the faces of people who help you shape your brand. 

Keep in mind that your choice of a social cause should be in line with your brand identity and values. As a brand, you already have more power than others to change something. But if the cause doesn’t resonate with your brand’s values, all your efforts will just seem artificial and lack genuineness. 

So, What Did We Learn Today?

First of all, don’t be afraid of experimenting with new social media platforms. Judging from the example of Starbucks and TikTok, such experiments might give you all the chances to go viral. 

Want to improve brand awareness? You can follow HelloFresh’s steps and try a branded hashtag. 

If your goal is to get more people to trust you, get inspiration from Fashion Nova. Take advantage of social proof in the form of user-generated content to show how many people tried and loved your product. 

Maybe your goal is to improve customer service? Try to move your interactions with customers to social media, as Nike did. 

And, if you want to show that your brand is more than just your product, follow Procter and Gamble’s experience and choose a social cause to support. 

But remember, these examples are just for inspiration. Learn from them, but stay true to your brand’s values and journey.