To succeed on social, you have to do three things:
Test constantly and fearlessly
Be prepared to fail
Iterate and optimized quickly
Here’s how to fail better on social for your brand.
1. Exercise Lean Research Tactics
Consumer research looks very different than it did ten years ago.
Where expensive, time-consuming, qualitative methods like in-person focus groups used to be the only way to gather real human feedback, social media now provides the fastest, most honest consumer feedback loops for a fraction of the cost.
Easily run keyword and hashtag analysis with Simply Measured Social Listening.
By using leaner tactics and an iterative approach to content creation, marketers can easily incorporate research into their weekly schedule and reduce costs by identifying which content will and will not resonate with their audiences.
Here’s an example of a lean research process. Learn more here.
Kick-off time. Get key stakeholders in the room, share your plan, and set objectives.
Examine initial data. Present your social analytics and consumer feedback.
Analyze the user experience. What’s it like for a consumer to experience your brand on social? What’s it like to be a user of your service? Use a listening solution for empathy mapping, customer journey mapping, and even to identify audience members for one-on-one interviews.
Form an initial hypothesis. This is an inferred insight about your product, service or feature from your initial research that you believe to be true.
Deliver actionable insights. This is your recommendation for what you believe will improve the situation or create a new opportunity.
2. Embrace Rapid Experimentation
It may not necessarily be realistic or efficient for you to design and build out fully finished, high-fidelity concepts to test, especially since you’ll need to iterate a few times before reaching a final version.
Instead think outside of the box about what the smallest ways of testing ideas could be, and focus on the highest priority that will satisfy your consumers.
Which topics does your audience actually care about?
By experimenting with low-fidelity concepts and testing with rapid prototypes, you can learn quickly and iterate toward a final solution that meets your market needs. This process is often thought to be a cyclic pattern:Think. Make. Check.
3. Remove Subjectivity
Creative content is completely subjective and there’s no one right way to design it. But when marketers push an idea forward without a proof of concept, they often find themselves implementing a strategy that does not meet market needs.
Take the subjectivity out of your social game with Simply Measured Cross-Channel Social Analytics.
One of the greatest benefits of incorporating research throughout your process is that tangible market evidence helps remove personal bias.
Gone are the conversations about whether or not a marketing campaign, headline or visual are “good.” Now what matters – and can actually be measured – is whether it’s effective.
One surefire way to avoid failures as much as possible on social? Understand your audience inside and out. For help with this daunting enterprise, download the guide below.
Influencer marketing. What was a disruptive buzzword a couple of years ago is marketing table stakes for most consumer brands today.
There are a number of reasons for this, but chief among them: The nature of social leveled the playing field, making it easier than ever for influential personalities to establish large audiences and easily publish content.
So how can today’s agencies stay one step ahead of the lackluster #spon crowd? By remembering what makes social a special medium: Diversity and relevance.
How Macro-influence Killed Authenticity
The high visibility of social performance data has always made it easy to equate reach with success.
Agencies and clients alike got sucked in by the vanity metrics and the relative affordability of leveraging an influencer’s audience over buying more traditional media exposure. Many a successful social personality sacrificed what made them compelling—their voice, their visual style, their approachability, their uniqueness—in the service of brand dollars.
Most knew that these “partnerships” didn’t make sense for their personal brands, but they looked at the fee as a means to support the content they did want to create—you know, the content that drew their audiences to them in the first place.
This combination of clients willing to co-opt influencers as an alternative to digital media and influencers willing to sell their reach was lethal to authenticity because it failed to acknowledge the ability of the audience to smell a particularly stinky rat: Irrelevance.
Relevance to the Rescue
Smart agencies are starting to realize that all of the reach generated by macro-influencers doesn’t necessarily translate into measurable business gains. That’s because research has shown time and time again that the closer the influencer or referrer is to the audience, the more powerful the recommendation.
Even if you don’t personally know someone, the degree to which it appears their life connects to yours seems to determine how influential you find them to be.
That’s why many are shifting their considerable influencer investments—expected to top $10 billion by 2020—to niche content creators who have smaller audiences but significantly more influence with them.
These so-called micro-influencers are often authoritative in a specific area and have “real lives” that feel more connected to those of their audiences. From beer brewing to camping and motherhood to motorcycle maintenance, smaller but highly engaged audiences are drawn to influencers who seem to know what they’re doing in an area that is of interest to your client’s target consumer.
And because these influencers are still living lives that resemble those of their audiences, there is room alongside their personal brands for the kinds of brand partnerships that make sense to them.
Relinquish Control, It’s OK
Let’s be blunt: Doing influencer marketing well means giving up creative control of the messaging. Micro-influencers are highly protective of their personal brands, and it’s unlikely that your off-the-shelf brand content will fit the style, tone and appeal of the content on which they built their influence in the first place.
This means being open to content co-creation and, yes, to potential criticism or the dissolution of partnerships if the influencer doesn’t feel like he or she can authentically endorse your client’s products.
But in the end this is a good thing. If an influencer is not authentically feeling the brand or product, the content they create on your behalf will fall flat. Know when to walk away as confidently as they do.
Don’t Forget the OG Micro-influencers
The greater news for those agencies who choose to believe in the power of micro-influence: Your target audience’s peers are the most influential referrers of all. And you don’t have to do all of the legwork—82% of consumers proactively seek out recommendations from people they know before making a purchase.
All you have to do is make it easy for the people who already love your client’s brand to recommend it. Referral bonuses and codes are a low-risk, low-investment place to start.
Keep in mind, some of the most valuable micro-influencers are closer than you think. Your client’s employees are sometimes the brand’s biggest fans. Similar to the difference in how consumers interact with micro-influencers versus macro-influencers, employee advocates are widely considered twice as trustworthy as even CEOs or brand spokespeople.
Employee advocacy tools arm the people who are passionately engaged with the brands they represent with a simple way to amplify the message. It’s more effective in every aspect—cost, reach, sincerity and even clout—because your client’s brand has real, informed, believable people behind it.
So remember: Reach is nothing if you don’t make an impact. Rather than investing in the high-priced, low-relevance exposure offered by celebs and macro-influencers, consider investing your influencer spend on the focused authenticity offered by people closer to your client’s target audience.
Niche content creators, peer recommenders and even your client’s own employees can form a powerful network of informed, enthusiastic and authoritative advocates that has the potential to affect brand perception, recall and your client’s bottom line.
*A version of this article was originally published on Adweek on April 10, 2018
Facebook now reports that as many as 87 million Facebook users may have had their data exposed as part of the Cambridge Analytica situation. The company’s stock price has dipped more than 10%. #DeleteFacebook campaigns are making the rounds. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s own COO, has acknowledged that advertisers have curtailed spending.
So where does this leave the millions of brands that rely on Facebook to share their message with customers and with the world?
The short—and possibly surprising—answer: in a good position. The chaos of the last few weeks belies a critical fact. The events at Facebook have accelerated an important shift—one already in progress—toward restoring faith and trust among social media users. And we all stand to benefit.
In the span of a decade, social media has gone from dorm rooms to the global stage, with networks now counting more than 3 billion users worldwide. The accompanying cultural and technological changes have been profound, to say the least—and not always easy to anticipate. Networks built on authenticity and real human connection saw their efforts undermined by malicious bots and bad actors.
Facebook is now spearheading the charge to restore exactly that kind of trust and connection. They’re reining in the ways third parties can access data, cracking down on foreign operatives, recalibrating algorithms to surface more meaningful content, clarifying privacy settings, offering users a bird’s-eye view of their data, complying with General Data Protection Regulation rules (increasingly, the gold standard globally), and updating terms of service to spell out more clearly what data their services collect.
Behind all of this is a recognition that transparency and trust have always been what makes social media special—its greatest virtue and greatest vulnerability. Facebook’s commitment to restoring this sense of trust is earnest and its vision is long-term. They know that their future, in no uncertain terms, depends on it. There’s no doubt that the Cambridge Analytica situation has set off shockwaves. But it’s proved also proved a critical wake-up call.
Let there be no doubt. Users will increasingly demand more from their networks. Social platforms, across the board, will up their game—weeding out malicious bots, safeguarding privacy and prioritizing meaningful connection over short-term gain. In fact, we can see these changes already afoot in Twitter’s efforts to reduce duplicate posts and Instagram’s follow limits. As trust is restored, we’ll see more and more of the infectious energy and immediacy that drew people to social media in the first place.
What does this mean for brands? To be clear, Facebook isn’t going anywhere. It’s a plumbing of the Internet and a crucial component of how we live our lives and do business today. The present may be trying. But as these needed changes unfold, brands that engage with transparency and creativity—i.e. the right way—will find a more receptive and bought-in audience than ever on Facebook and other platforms. Spammers, trolls and manipulators, however, will be increasingly out of luck.
With social network updates happening faster than you blink, using hashtags to raise brand awareness is not as easy as adding # to your target keywords.
Brands must not only rely on the popular hashtags now, but also must be aware of emerging trends among consumers and influencers. This helps optimize your hashtag usage so social media users don’t miss your posts.
To increase their reach among an increasingly global market, more brands use social media analytics tools to change their hashtag marketing strategy and keep up with shifts in trends the second they happen. It pays to know how to market hashtags, but first you have to know how to get the most out of them.
Don’t worry—we’re here to help. Here are nine hashtag marketing tactics that actually work.
1. Research Keywords vs. Hashtags
Like your target keywords for search engine optimization, you should research hashtags via keyword analysis before using them in any campaign. Find out the volume and frequency of posts related to your chosen hashtags. Research variations of your hashtag to see what is used the most.
Easily run keyword and hashtag analysis with Simply Measured Social Listening.
On Instagram, users can type a hashtag in the search bar and instantly see the number of posts tagged with that particular word or phrase with results organized by “Top Posts” and “Recent Posts.” Here are the results found when searching Instagram for #Soda with some big brands featured in the top posts.
Find out which hashtags your fans and influencers in your target markets use and join in on their conversations by using the same keywords and tagging their usernames.
2. Use Branded Hashtags
It’s a no-brainer to use your brand name as a hashtag. However, there are a variety of other ways to grow buzz around your company. One way is to use slogans or keywords designed around a specific marketing campaign as hashtags.
Posts with the hashtag #ShareaCoke surged after the beverage maker launched a campaign featuring Coke bottles imprinted with common names, encouraging others to share a drink with a “Brian” they knew, or their “Sis.”
Source: Coca-Cola
The Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” hashtag connected with the brand’s audience and naturally spread to people within their networks. Social media users Tweeted pictures of names of loved ones or friends found on Coke bottles with the hashtag #ShareaCoke, with many tagging others so even more people knew about the promotion.
3. Celebrate Special Days and Seasons
Social media is usually flooded with themed hashtags during the holiday season, and you can tailor these hashtags to suit your brand. If you were a food or beverage company, you could use hashtags like #HolidayEats or #HolidayFood to boost interest.
There are also particular hashtag holidays dedicated to countless foods, causes, and occasions you could build a hashtag campaign around. For example, Sonic Drive-In shed light on the need for teaching children about handwriting skills with the hashtag #NationalHandwritingDay.
4. Promote Branded Hashtags Via Giveaways
Hashtags work not only with annual holidays, but also with famous events, pop culture happenings, and other festivals like SXSW and Coachella.
These event names lend themselves as their own branded hashtags during promotions, such as product or prize giveaways. Since events like film and music festivals are talked about year after year, these hashtagged posts get plenty of views.
In fact, Forbes wrote about the most-used hashtags at SXSW, including #EsuranceAccess by Esurance, which is the official home and auto insurance sponsor of SXSW. During Esurance’s marketing campaign at the festival, the company held giveaways and encouraged festival-goers to use its hashtags. In total, the brand’s hashtag collected 32 million impressions and had a reach of more than 6 million.
5. Listen to What Users Are Actually Saying
Use a listening solution to understand what people are saying, build content and campaigns around this conversation on a quick turnaround, and directly respond to users talking about your target topic, especially those with big reach.
When a winter storm hit the East Coast earlier in the year, Dunkin’ Donuts capitalized on trending posts using hashtags related to the blizzard. In one post, the donut maker Retweeted a fan’s post and took it a step further with another post asking others to share pictures of their own Dunkin’ Donuts coffee or other beverages.
This was a good opportunity for Dunkin’ Donuts to interact with fans and encourage a positive experience with its followers.
6. Partner with Influencers in Your Industry
If you know your audience well, you know which influencers they follow and care about. Partner with these influencers on campaigns and create a branded hashtag to go along with it.
For instance, Instagram user Oliveandrye featured the hashtag “chewyinfluencerprogram” to promote the online pet store Chewy and collect all the sponsored posts in the campaign in one place.
Using branded hashtags for influencer campaigns makes it easier to track performance and increase brand awareness.
7. Perform Better with Competitive Analysis
Even if you’re confident you’re up-to-date on trends in your industry or market, it’s worth checking out what your competition is doing to avoid falling behind.
When researching your competitors, take note of the exact hashtags they use, the campaigns associated with them, the follower engagement around these posts, and reported outcomes.
Run regular competitive analysis with Simply Measured Social Analytics.
Once you’ve finished your competitor analysis, you’ll likely uncover some content ideas you hadn’t considered before. Use all the data you collected to come up with new hashtag campaigns for your own brand.
In addition to the built-in hashtag search features on social media platforms, you can also use more advanced analytics tools to create improved social media posts, blogs, and more.
8. Start Using Twitter Chats
Post about Twitter chats with your hashtags to spark conversations between users that can eventually lead them to want to learn more about your brand. For example, if you’re in the financial services industry, you could start a chat to celebrate National Financial Literacy Month.
There are generic hashtags for Twitter chats like #MoneyChat, or you could even insert your brand in the chat’s hashtag. Things like this help start the conversation with your followers.
To get responses to your discussion, come up with questions about your chosen topic and let your followers know when you will hold the chat in advance.
Experian tagged participants from its #CreditChat, so followers of accounts in the same industry like the NFCC know Experian through this hashtag. The credit reporting firm also used the hashtag #FLM18 to bring attention to Financial Literacy Month and join the conversation with other users celebrating the month.
9. Measure Reach of Hashtag Campaigns
As you come up with strategies for hashtag campaigns, how you measure your results will impact your success now and in future marketing efforts. To measure the impact of your hashtag campaigns on your followers and current business pages on social media, be sure to monitor the following:
Mentions: Effective hashtags should inspire followers to interact with your brand, including mentioning your hashtag in posts. Monitor the number of mentions to determine whether followers think your brand message is memorable and shareworthy.
Views: These are views related to hashtagged posts, your business page, or related content like videos. Compare your views before launching a hashtag campaign and after to see if you achieved your goal of getting more eyes on your brand. Also try to compare organic vs. paid views for posts with hashtags. More organic views indicate there is bigger buzz around your brand as users are sharing posts with your hashtag with their networks.
Followers: Ideally, you should see your follower numbers grow after a successful hashtag campaign. If numbers stay the same, redo the keyword analysis step of your marketing strategy.
With analytics tools, you have more insight into what is working for your hashtag marketing strategies and how to improve future campaigns. For example, it’s easier to identify influencers based on their number of followers or other metrics after analyzing your hashtags and social media posts.
Through optimizing your hashtag strategy, you can grow the stage for your brand message and have more meaningful interactions with consumers that ultimately go beyond social media platforms.
Find out which hashtags your fans and influencers in your target markets use and join in on their conversations by using the same keywords and tagging their usernames.
