Ten BE's To Increase Your Social Media Followers

By Lorena Grijalva

As a business owner or marketing strategist, social media is an important tool to increase brand awareness, we can see social media like a cocktail party, where you can have networking and fun. I will explain 10 Must-Haves in your campaign to rock your social media strategy.

1. BE INTERESTING.

According to BBC News the average attention span is less than 12 seconds, thanks to multiple devices and a lot of distractions is really hard to stay focused and maintain the audience entertained. The only way is generating interesting content in relation to your service or product, there are a lot of formats according to each channel like videos, interactive images, and useful information applicable to their needs.

The best example is TED Talks, their content is about generating content through guest speakers of the most trendy and interesting topics in different industries.

2. BE AN EXPERT ON YOUR AUDIENCE INTERESTS.

Rule number 1. The more you know about your target, your strategy perform will better. Who are you talking to? What do they do? Why they buy your product/service? What are they doing? Where are they from? Which type of content are they interested in?

Netflix knows us well, if you are watching comedy movies, they will recommend other ones of the same type, the recommendations are driven by machine learning algorithms analyzing your interests and behaviors.

3. BE PART OF THE INFLUENCER TREND.

The storytelling of influencer marketing is more realistic, and the followers can feel connected and identified with their daily life. Marketers are increasing their budget on influencers thanks to the impact on their audience.

Fiji water did a partnership with the influencer Danielle Bernstein who is a fashion blogger offering workout videos with her personal trainer. The goal was to highlight the importance of hydrating if you want to feel and look good, the campaign name is #weworewhat with #bodyworewhat.

4. BE EMOTIONAL.

We are human beings and even we live in a connected world, we want to feel different emotions on ads and campaigns to take the experience to the next level. The campaigns that get a connection with their audience are the ones who will last for a long time in their minds.

Dove is the brand taking the beauty perception as its core strategy, they don't sell soaps, they sell beauty to women empower them to gain esteem.

5. BE FUN.

To engage your audience, you need to be unique and enjoy this job. Choose a game, a funny quote, a meme, depending on your service or product to get your audience attention.

Test, measure and repeat, you never know how your campaign is going in comparison with other campaigns, just make experiments and make them run to see what happens.

6. BE AWARE OF YOUR DATA.

Imagine if you just do campaigns and don't measure their performance, you maybe will get the results you want but, you don't know what exactly is causing a conversion or working with your audience. With your data, you can optimize your campaign and bidding.

A great example is Amazon, do you imagine this revolutionary business without data? Data gives the information and the information gives the power.

7. BE INBOUND.

Inbound marketing is a whole strategy to increase the traffic to your website and create conversions to get new customers. Content marketing is one part of that strategy, the first step is identifying the pain points of the brand and competitor's analysis. Then, create a persona (with the information you have on point 2), create content offering value to your audience and make it with a CTA (Call to Action) where you can redirect them into a landing page and you can proceed with a sales strategy.

Chipotle captured gaming fans, chipotle fans with a successful inbound strategy about "Chipotle Taste Invaders" with a laser tag shooting burrito, fighting against additives and educating the customer about the burrito ingredients.

8. BE CREATIVE.

Remember you need to captivate your audience with your campaign and it's not necessary just explaining the products and services. One of the best campaigns is Metro Trains with "Dumb ways to die" with catchy music and cartoon characters getting in the top 10 on iTunes in 24 hours.

9. BE HONEST.

And this is a little related of why influencer marketing is so successful now, the truth is that you will obtain your customer's loyalty and retain them with honesty and transparency; if they trust you, you are a winner. Put yourself in a scenario where you are really hungry and there is a new restaurant that someone told you about it, but you're not 100% sure of how healthy it is, then, you realized they cook your meal in front of you; that will make you feel confident about how they prepare the food, what type of ingredients and if it's fresh. The same happens with your company, the more transparent your product or service is, the better your audience will accept it.

One company with a lot of negative comments about their quality food is McDonald's. To attack this, the company creates a transparent marketing campaign called "Our Food. Your Questions" Where McDonald's answer all your concerns about their food.

10. BE A FRIEND.

This is my favorite part, to see the importance of these channels. Back in the days, we wouldn't think about Facebook to a way of communication of resolving inquiries or issues with a brand. Today you can take Customer Service to a whole experience making it so personal like you're in the store, providing that, you are saving time, energy and effort to the customer having a satisfied customer or just changing their perception if they had an inconvenience.

The best example is a lovely response from Lego, who could just reply with a "standard message" but it was so personalized and unexpected that went viral to all channels.

Check out your current campaign strategy and think about the above information and try to implement it to your own business.