As part of a 'How To' series - we will show you how to enhance your social media strategy, build your online community and engage them!
Here is the first part in the series: How To: Use Visual Content
What does visual content entail? Videos, photos, graphics linked to landing pages and links posted with text. We will go over a few brief points for each type of visual content and how they should be used on each social media platform. Social media is a creative place for like-minded and product-loving individuals to connect and interact about something they are passionate about. How are you going to engage users and make them love your product?
Twitter: Twitter is another platform that users go to for the latest news about their friends, celebrities and brands. Brands are starting to monitor hashtags and comments made about their company on Twitter to better serve their customers. In the search box on Twitter (either the smartphone app or the website) keywords or names associated with your brand can be searched and tweets that contain those words will pop up on the feed. You can scroll through these and find the ones that have to do with your brand and respond to any questions, comments or concerns. This is a great way to engage with your users and show them you are paying attention to their needs.
Not only can you monitor the negative comments but Twitter is another place to promote products and encourage users to tweet what they like about it, maybe participate in a contest or give suggestions. There are so many ways to be creative with this platform.
Facebook: Everyone knows that Facebook is one of the most visited social networking sites on a daily basis - people obssess over Facebook. Users want to know what the latest update or news is about a brand, their favorite band or group page. The great thing about Facebook is that each post shows how many people viewed the post, how many virally saw the information and how many "likes" there are. When we talk about visual content we don't want to just stick with photos and videos as posts on Facebook. We also want to point out tab apps and the opportunity they provide to users for different content to be involved with. For example, using a tab app for a contest. Enticing people with a visual of what the contest is about AND interesting text - the contest should be a successful one.
Pinterest: Even though Pinterest is known as a product-selling based site, it can also be a good place to promote and market your brand and products. Starting an account is easy [See our Pinterest 101 for Business whitepaper to get started and learn the basics] and pinning your products to the site is a simple process. Including a "Pin It" button to your product pages is a great way for your site visitors to include a product on Pinterest which exposes that product to all the user's friends. Hence starting a viral "pin" of that product and more and more people will see the product.
Another great idea is to create a few boards on your brand's account around what your followers might like. For example, Lowe's has an amazing Pinterest account. Since their main concept is "DIY" they created boards around projects that people can complete with products from their stores. Check out their boards for some creative ideas. Lowe's took a brilliant idea and made it genius - connecting with their customers in a completely different way.
Instagram: Instagram is a unique social media platform because it functions off of smartphones rather than the internet. With the Instagram app, users can post photos from their photo library or even take a snap shot and upload that image to their account. Instagram also uses hashtags and @ accounts to engage the community of users. This is a great tool to use when trying to spread an idea or concept - even making a photo viral via the app. If you master this platform, the number of follows and photo posts you will get is very high. For example, Jason Mraz ran a contest on Instagram and asked users to post photos they felt described what I WON'T GIVE UP means to them.
"Jason will select 25 winners whose photos will be printed on beautiful 20″ x 20″ canvases provided by CanvasPop and displayed at a gallery event in NYC on March 8th (featuring a special appearance by Jason!)
The winning photographers will be cordially invited to this exclusive event and have their canvases signed by Jason." (Jasonmraz.com)
What ideas can you come up with as a brand to draw in users and have them interact with your products in a creative way?
For the entire 'How To' document, stay tuned to download our 'How To' whitepaper and see how else you can enhance your social media platforms!
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