4 ways to be a more Socially Interesting Brand

Social Media is now more part of our lives than before, and a mainstream platform for advertisers.

Consider these statistics, every 60 seconds:
510 000 post comments are made, 293 000 status updates are posted and 136 000 photos are uploaded on Facebook;
120 000 Tweets are Tweeted;
1350 photos are uploaded on Instagram;

Social media has officially risen. What does this mean for brands and their marketing on social media? With all the noise on social media, brands need to cut through the noise and provide clear marketing messages that are easy to consume.

The average time a brand has to connect with their audience on social media is just 3-seconds, in other words, if you can’t connect with your audience in 3-seconds you have a below-average chance of your message being delivered.

With an increasing amount of time spent on the platforms, it is no longer OK for brands to simply exist on users’ social media channels. The new challenge for brands is to move from being tolerated through gritted teeth, to become intrinsic to their audience’s social media life. Creating successful campaigns on social media can be a challenging and daunting process for many brands as there are so many formats to consider within each platform, and so much content posted each day that it can feel hard to make any significant impact.

However, by focusing on some core principles, you can give your content a great chance to cut through the noise and deliver your brand’s message. Below are a few tips to get you on your way.

4 Key areas that need to be addressed in order to transition from a tolerated annoyance on social media to a genuinely followed and socially interesting brand:

1. The Audience is King

The truth is, many people could do without adverts spamming their social feed. Therefore, it is vitally important that you only serve your ads to people that are actually interested in what you are selling! Broad targeting, at people who are never going to engage with the brand, is both a waste of money, and even more precious time.

Social is an intrinsically personal space, and therefore, for your brand message to cut through, it needs to feel incredibly personalized to the user to get their attention.

Platforms are always collecting data to help, and as such, it is possible to get extremely granular with your targeting, cutting into the heart of your target audience. All you need to tap into this incredible wealth of data is to know where to look, and how to distinguish what is useful for the brand in question.

2. Always keep your brands objective in mind

As with any advert, it is vitally important that the business objective behind the work remains in mind. Many say that this is social media we talking about, and content can often be more light-hearted, but it is now a genuinely profitable way of advertising for brands and is often the source of online sales.

Always consider why the brand is posting on social: Do you want to increase your brand awareness? Do you want to drive people to a website? Do you want to drive people to a physical store? Are you simply trying to sell a product?

All these questions lead to your objectives, and these objectives will be totally achievable on Social, and remarkably easy to track! You just need to keep them in mind through the creative process.

3. Social by design is not just a saying!

If you have ever worked with social media creative, you probably heard them say – have you got this in a square format? Is there a version with less text to meet guidelines? etc. etc…  Other than a blatant attempt to brag about their wealth of social knowledge, these seemingly small issues, are vitally important to the success of your advert on social.

All platforms provide ideal specs for their ad formats. We found that sticking to these specs is fundamental to success, as ads literally perform better by default if you follow the ‘rules’.  Success is the platform’s way of rewarding us for listening – after all, they know their platform best and their decisions are based on data and numbers don’t lie! These platforms often give the advice needed to improve your creative – if Twitter tells you to put branding in the first 3 seconds, it may be worth listening. Basically – every asset needs to be tailor-made for the social platform it will go on. This cannot be stressed enough.

Just a few extra steps (and a conversation with a social creative) and you can have social-by-design creative work coming straight out of your TVC(Television Commercial) shoot. This is a small change in the pre-production process with valuable results. The extra time you put in will transform your success on social, and save you from a nightmare further down the line when you decide that you want to ‘see their ad on social’.

4. Make sure someone sees it! Spend

The biggest mistake would be to follow steps 1-3 and ignore the final point – get some money behind your content and boost it!

If you only rely on organic, it may genuinely only be seen by 2 people. We’ve seen it happen, and it’s less than ideal for all involved.  Think about it – platforms want to make money – a free ad is highly unlikely to go viral.

Paid ads are now vital to successful social advertising. Schedule a call with a paid strategist as early as you can, to review the media plan, and make sure you’re on the right track.

So, there you go – four steps to potential success. Now you just need some awesome creative, and you’re good to go.