3 ways to connect with your audience using social media
A solid social media strategy can tremendously influence your business's reach and brand recognition, and overall bottom line.
Not only are roughly 3.96 billion internet users (more than half of the overall global population) on social media, but roughly 55% of consumers make purchases via social media channels, too.
To have a meaningful presence on social media, digital marketers can't just plunge into the conversation and start directing users to buy from a brand or visit a website. Instead, marketers must carefully curate a strategy that attracts attention, answers questions, nurtures relationships, and delights customers, even after conversion.
Let’s explore three ways to improve your social media strategy today.
1. Humanize your content for authenticity
Customers don’t spend their money with just anyone. They want to feel connected to the brands they purchase with. In fact, 86% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support.
Showing authenticity is about humanizing your content to connect with your audience. Brands might choose to create content that shows its:
Social beliefs
Sense of humor
Honesty
Adventure
Among other things.
Take for instance, the infamous chicken sandwich debate that rocked Twitter in 2019. The back-and-forth over who makes the best sandwich was a great showing of both Chick-fil-A and Popeye’s social media sense of humor.
The battle started after Popeye’s began promoting their new chicken sandwich, and Chick-fil-A emphasized their position as the market leaders in the sandwich game:
Popeyes responded with a message of their own:
This seemingly innocuous correspondence caught fire, prompting customers to vocalize their sandwich preferences, submit photos of them testing each sandwich, and defending their brand choices.
The two fast food brands fanned the flames by continuously engaging in the debate.
Though Chick-fil-A overwhelmingly won the title of best fried chicken sandwich. Popeyes didn’t lose the war. Apex Marketing Group estimated that Popeyes reaped $65 million in equivalent media value—nearly triple the $23 million media value the sandwich generated in its first few days of sale, according to the company.
How to implement authenticity in your social media strategy
While we don’t all have the same ability to shoot friendly fire at our competitors, there are lessons to take away.
The two brands humanized their product by:
Involving customers
Having humor
Not being afraid to put themselves out there
You can work from these techniques through the use of ‘stories’ on platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Real-life videos of you, or a spokesperson of your business, show what it’s like to be day-to-day with your brand, and involve your customers in your lifestyle. It also gives an opportunity to show your personality whether you’re humorous, serious about social change, or amplifying another type of message that resonates with your audience.
2. Create a hashtag strategy for user engagement
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all allow users to add hashtags on their posts, which opens up the unique opportunity for businesses to broaden their exposure and amplify content in a strategic way.
Twitter has conducted a number of quantitative studies on the power of hashtags, and their researchers find that using hashtags in a tweet increases the chances of it being retweeted, favorited, clicked on, or answered between +50% and +100%.
There is more to a hashtag strategy than adding basic keywords to describe your product or service, like #Handbag or #Restaurant. Hashtags also provide a unique opportunity to:
Create communities
Brands use strategic hashtags to build communities that:
Allow followers to submit user-generated content
Deepen customer’s involvement with a brand
Create earned media for broader brand exposure
For example, on Instagram #MyWestElm is a community hashtag created by the furniture retailer West Elm. The hashtag allows customers to contribute images and videos showing off how they stage their West Elm items.
There are more than 300,000 posts to the hashtag.
The popularity of the hashtag encourages others to post their creations, so their personal accounts get acknowledgement, and also helps boost brand recognition for West Elm.
Encourage engagement at events
Brands also use hashtags to promote, collect images from, and communicate about events.
An interesting example of the power of hashtags for event coordination is actually demonstrated by a recent event gone wrong.
In June of 2020, workers in the music industry organized a social media protest called ‘Blackout Tuesday.’ The goal of the protest was to show solidarity with black victims of police violence.
The problem was, those participating in the protest began using the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #BLM. These two hashtags are channels in which the Black Lives Matter organizers share vital information about protests, donations, and documents.
So, as more social media users posted black squares and used the hashtags associated with the Black Lives Matter Movement, the more difficult it was to find important information about the organization.
Though the silencing of the movement was not ideal for BLM, you can see the power of hashtags. Social media influencers were called to tweet and ‘gram’ about the issue, and hundreds of thousands of protestors changed course as a result.
Improve localization
Small, brick-and-mortar businesses can reap the rewards of hashtags by adding geographic location to their social media posts.
For example, in tourist towns, businesses can use the city they operate in as a hashtag to attract the attention of visitors searching the area.
Visitors might not necessarily be looking for your goods or services, (they might only be browsing for Instagram-worthy backdrops in the area.) but, by letting them know you’re located in the area via hashtags, you can attract business who didn’t realize you were around.
You can see this strategy in play with Sweet Grass Boutique in the small town of Garberville, CA.
This small boutique, located in a city with a population of around 1,000, leverages location-based hashtags for their account. Not only do they have more followers than the city has people, but they also have a 20% engagement rate on their images, which far exceeds the 4.7% average of all Instagram accounts.
Local stores can also add a service in addition to their location to be even more niche. For example, #SFEats has more than 650,000 posts targeting restaurants in San Francisco. The submissions of delicious food photos are curated by both restaurants and patrons alike.
How to implement a hashtag strategy of your own:
Somewhere between 5 and 10 hashtags is the ideal number to include in each of your posts.
Find hashtags on individual social media platforms, and then rank them based on the volume and frequency to see which works best for your industry. For example:
To research on Instagram, you can type a hashtag into the search bar and see how many posts are tagged with the word or phrase you selected
On Twitter, advanced search options can help find popular keywords and hashtags, as well as how they’re used
There are also paid tools you can use, like Hashtagify that give you more granular insights, or help connect you with influencers in your industry.
3. Curate your visual presentation
According to an Adobe Q4 2013 report, social media posts containing images drive 650% more reactions than text. That’s because visuals play an important role in appealing to your audience’s sense. Through imagery, you can evoke all types of emotions, and help connect with your audience even more.
Curate your aesthetic
If you’re a movie buff, you might recognize the name Wes Anderson. Anderson is a director with a very distinct style. His unusual mixture of color palettes, costumes, set design, and technology is always symmetrical, often with a pop of color, and somehow evokes an almost nostalgic feeling -- even if you’ve never been to his set locations.
Though Anderson doesn’t have social media, there are Instagram accounts that mimic his style:
When a fan sees a movie with his particular visual style, you don’t even need to look at IMDb to know it’s his film.
Many successful social media accounts borrow from this concept of a consistent and appealing visual style -- and use it as a way to make their audience immediately recognize a brand or page.
For example the Australian-based clothing store, Spell, has selected sunset tones for each of its posts.
The mix of blushes, browns and occasional pops of teal or green help reinforce the brand’s bohemian vibe, and overall brand identity.
Visual storytelling
The social media account Humans of New York has mastered the art of visual storytelling to grow its brand.
The account uses images to complement stories about people who live in New York. By following the account, you soon see that everyone has a unique (and often wild) story to tell.
For example, the account recently wrote a story about a woman named Tanqueray, who documents her entire life, including what it was like to experience the underbelly of New York in the 70s.
The 32-part series covering Tanqueray’s life captivated hundreds of thousands of people, so when the final message in Tanqueray’s story was about her declining health, it was impossible to feel indifferent about the fate of this woman.
As a call-to-action, the creator of Humans of New York, Brandon Staton, started a GoFundMe page to assist Tanqueray.
The power of storytelling and social media is shown in the result of this GoFundMe page. Over $2.5 million was donated — by more than 127,000 people — to Tanqueray to help her overcome her health issues.
Help build brand personality
Since the dawn of social media time, people have taken it upon themselves to create parody accounts. But, more recently, brands targeted in the parodies are seeing value in the humor as a way to build their own brand personality.
For example, Harrison McNeill, the creator of the Twitter handle @goodbeanjokes was hired by Bush’s Beans to run its social media account because McNeill demonstrated the ability to engage an audience solely using bean jokes.
Slim Jim is another example of leveraging a jokester to build a corporate account’s online personality, and how images -- memes in particular -- are helping carry out the vision.
In 2018, Slim Jim noticed the Instagram account @SlimJimsDoingThings had 10,000 more followers than the official Slim Jim account. So, they reached out to its creator, Andy Hines, about a job. Hines now runs the Slim Jim Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Through the humorous use of his memes and the community hashtag #LongBoiGang, in a matter of two years, Hines increased Slim Jim’s Instagram account by roughly 1.1 million followers.
As brands are realizing memes play a huge role in adding humor to its personality, they are placing a special emphasis on the visual style. For example, Bud Light was recently hiring a ‘Chief Meme Officer’, responsible for producing 10 Bud Light Seltzer memes per week, to generate organic chatter on its social media accounts.
How you can find your own style
Start understanding your own aesthetic and voice. Do you have a natural knack for TikTok videos? Are inspiring quotes your thing? Is there a color that represents your brand?
The key is to understand what comes most naturally to your brand, then staying consistent:
Create a color palette, and only post images that use that color scheme
If you’re unsure what colors to use, create a Pinterest board to test out different options
Brand consistency means your aesthetic remains the same from all social media accounts, including any live stories you post
Accompany your images with thoughtful text to tell the story
If you can’t find high-quality photos, try creating images that fit your color palette with a service like Canva
Tap into culture, and create content that’s socially relevant and engaging as it relates to your brand mission
Want to learn more? Let’s have a conversation about social media strategy!
