More Self-Aware Can Help Your Brand Succeed on Social Media

The recent case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby is just one amongst a string of Supreme Court decisions that have legally classified corporations as people. effective social media marketing Even if corporations are considered people from a legal standpoint, the notion of corporations as people is, intuitively speaking, pretty absurd.Yet, if you’re online, you will likely encounter corporations pretending to be people every day as branded profiles and pages on nearly every social media channel.While brands have long adopted a voice to use for corporate communications and advertisements, the social, back-and-forth nature of online communications have forced that branded voice to become increasingly personal to fit in. In order for brands to participate in social media, they have to (in some sense or another) pretend to be people.However, this is a huge challenge for brands because at the end of the day they are not people. How can brands effectively create personas out of thin air, that are not just convincing, but that win a customer’s trust and affection.
Type in “social media marketing” into Google and you’ll get about as many search results (23 million) as there are social media tactics being promoted. social media as a marketing tool As with any type of marketing, social media promotions center around matching content with interested audiences as well as stimulating conversation and buzz. Content can be created from scratch, mashed up or you can “borrow to build” by piggybacking on someone else’s social media success. The key is to listen and participate. Is there really a way for a brand to translate believably on social media? Brands can’t hope to join the conversation when they don’t speak the language. Oliver compares the way most brands act online to Tony the Tiger busting through the wall at a cocktail party and proceeding to barge in on everyone’s conversation to tell them how “Greattt!” Frosted Flakes are. Not only does their marketing message fall on deaf ears, it often does more harm than good.

Authenticity is Not Always Genuine

The prevailing wisdom on the issue is that in order to establish a brand as credible on social media, social media marketing pricing all branded communications should strive for “authenticity.” I use quotes, because authenticity seems like a contradictory idea in regards to the game of pretend that corporations play online. A fictional brand personality meant to personalize a corporation consisting of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people can never really be authentic in a meaningful sense.In fact, if you think about it, the only really genuine thing a brand can do is acknowledge the absurdity of trying to pass itself off as a person. Any attempt for a brand to take itself too seriously on social media is inherently disingenuous and will likely be ignored at best or scorned at worst.For the “digital natives” whose social norms have been shaped and learned online (and to whom many brands aim to appeal), seeing through these corporate accounts is second nature. Even if they see these phony brand profiles, their eyes will roll right past them.
Speaking of social media tactics, social media marketing blog I recently wrote/facilitated an article on social media marketing for Larry Chase on his famous Web Digest For Marketers newsletter and web site which includes social media tips from some of the most opinionated minds on the topic: Brian Solis, Neil Patel, Chris Winfield, Mike Moran, Rohit Bhargava, Jeremiah Owyang, Muhammad Saleem and Jason Falls.Only after you know why you’re active in social at all, and how you’ll measure social media strategy success should you turn your attention to the “how” of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and the rest. This channel plan should be distinct, in that you have a specific, defensible reason for participating in each .Each of these social media experts provided tips of their own as well as resources from: Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble, Charlene Li, Andy Hagans, Pete Cashmore, Chris Brogan, authors Huba/McConnell and Emanuel Rosen. Irony, self-reference and hyperbole are the language of the social web, and any brand not fluent will inevitably be ignored.

The Key Mistake Brands Make (and How to Fix It)

Most brand missteps don’t come down to poor taste or ill-will. They’re almost always due to a lack of self awareness. social media marketing experts As John Oliver points out in this hilarious clip, oftentimes brands put out seemingly sincere messages that simply don’t make sense in the context of their brand. Tweeting to commemorate Pearl Harbor is fine. Spaghetti-O’s tweeting about Pearl Harbor (even if they really mean it) comes off as awkward and offensive. So how can brands avoid this mistake? What lessons can brand managers learn to avoid being ‘that’ guest at the cocktail party that is social media?All the best social brands seem to have one thing in common — they don’t pretend to be anything they’re not. The best community managers don’t try to make the brand into a faceless corporate persona. Instead, the best brands online make it seem more like their social media accounts were hacked by their fan.In other words, great social media accounts are not brands pretending to be people. Rather, they are people pretending to be brands.
When we’re working on social media strategy for major companies, the plan and the deliverable is quite a bit more comprehensive than what you see above, social media marketing articles but it’s based on this scaffolding and thought process. I hope you’ll find it useful in your own endeavors. They enthusiastically respond to any message that comes their way, no matter how small. Each opportunity to tweet is a chance to represent the brand they love so much and to share that enthusiasm with others.Social media managers do not sit around playing on Facebook all day. They have a schedule crammed full of activities and tasks and to-dos. In our post about social media managers, we identified 12 elements of their job that get handled on a daily basis.Whew! Now imagine finding a way to identify the most vital parts of this 12-step schedule and perform them in a 30-minute window. It’s a tall task.Let’s take the list from above and see if we can chunk it into manageable sections. Consider it like batching the tasks of social media marketing.