Enable your following to create your advertising... #Hashtags to the rescue
Captivating content is becoming something we all strive for. But as we all strive for it, the more our messages and content get swallowed up by everyone else’s content. Us marketers are all competing for our customers attention.
The marketing mainstream tells us that our landing pages are what drive our conversion rates and fulfills a websites call to action.
Video is supposed to be short, but informative. High-quality, but produced quickly. Created with a clear purpose, but only subtly mention purchasing your good or service.
The experts of marketing say our social media accounts should be 80% personality and interactive, but 20% informative and selling. Bring in new followers and make each of them feel uniquely connected to your brand.
Clearly everyone else in the world has more than 24hrs in their day, because there is no way that I have time to produce an epic video of my brand that has the potential to go viral while answering the post on all six of the brands social channels. This is why it is important for marketers to realize it can be okay to regurgitate content that was created in the past. Actually creating social media post that link to past blog post or articles creates back links that continue to help your SEO score and remind your customers of a popular peace of your brand that is still valuable to them. This simply utilizes repetition in your brands favor, sometimes all a customer needs is a friendly reminder to revisit and invest in your content.
If you and your staff are tired of shooting footage and advertisement campaigns than it is time to request something from your following. There is a reason they are loyal fans, so why don’t you ask them something about it. Doritos and other popular companies do this all the time, it is like fan sourcing your next big campaign.
If I had to pull a magic Instagram campaign out of thin air right now it would go something like this:
Small town burger joint called the Burger Bar wants to boost the desirability of its food and become more welcoming to families. Using the hashtag #SayCheeseBurger (notice those capital letters make it readable, and it is relevant to the business) you then tell your customers you are giving away a free soft drink to each of them when a they post a video of how big of a bite they can take out of their cheeseburger and post the video to your Instagram handle.
All of a sudden you are creating ridiculously funny, gross, and cheesy content on your Instagram account and your interactions are buzzing through the roof. But on the other side of that campaign, you can now pull the videos from your “crowd sourced” content, and create a compilation video to use on other social platforms.
Why would people engage in this? Because they get a free drink, they have the chance to be in a video short promoting your business (turning the customer into a small town celebrity), people love doing crazy things, and people love commenting on their friends’ craziness.
What you got? Exposure to all of your existing follower friends who will then look at your hashtag/account and turn into new followers, created tons of raw footage for future video/photo post, reminded your target market that you are a fun place to bring the entire family… And you got all that for the cost of a few soft drinks.
Well that is an example created on the fly, I think that crowdsourcing from your brands customer following can bring creative juices in from angles that you may have been particularly blind to in the past. Use caution because involving your following in anything always has the potential to take a wrong turn. Never leave any campaign unsupervised, if you are on the ball you will be monitoring the interactions and reach of your post to ensure quality. Unique hashtags for your brand are something that can set you apart from other conversations, but experiment with a variety of hashtags in your post, this can allow your brand to appear in similar or contrasting conversations.
Put yourself out there, put your customers to work talking about you, and repost what you already created.
