Brands and engagement on Social Media
I stumbled upon the Instagram account of a Nigerian beer brand and their caption “celebrating friends” caught me. It is a tag that connects emotionally and can be easily bought into.
The brand really makes a big deal of love and friendship with their #cityoflove campaign, hosting several events across Nigeria, inviting top music artistes.
I went through their profile, they have about two thousands followers, average engagement level at 100.
What! Are they doing well?
They represent their brand with lovely pictures of their event, guests, videos of same and some stars behind the scene. The A list artistes will naturally attract attention to the brand and having clips of these serves well.
Looking at the caliber of A list stars and the engagement levels, I felt something was lacking.
Why is the engagement low?
Are they are not speaking the customer's language?
Let's examine this..
Why do people follow brands?
Association, love, updates, passion, satisfaction from product or service..
With this at the back of their minds, they click the follow button, “I want to see more of them, experience them because I love the brand.”
So why the low engagement?
Critical question.
First, Uncle Mark Z and his team are continually reducing the organic reach of posts. Greedily it seems right? Yes, they want to make money. We are not certain the percentage of those that can see a post organically, but it is a single digit and for business pages, the reach is nose diving.
Aside paid promotion or boosting posts, people see the content of those they follow and engage. The algorithm was designed to keep away those you don't engage.
What can a brand do?
After paying ads to get attention for people to follow them, do they pay to retain such attention?
Not really.
Let's see what brands can do organically to grow using social media.
Always put your best content.
Now, best is good. And best is relative.
What is best for your branding might not be best to engage your audience.
Do I mean you put out crap because of engagement?
No!
See, traditional marketing communication usually puts the brand first, how are we positioned, let's be perfect, we are the best. All sounding egoistic, sometimes irritating to the customer, seeing it as a way you want to massage your ego. He moves on to the next content and the brand loses.
Remember, the longer they spend on your content, the number of likes, comments, shares or saves, improves your ranking and it is kept in their feeds. The more the algorithm will “feel” they love your content and hence show them more of it.
Cool right?
This means your content is really KING.
What then should you do?
Let your content be customer focused first before the brand. It seems counterproductive but think of it. Who would you rather hang out with? Someone who tells you how great his life is, perfect family, perfect dentition and keeps on and on without giving you audience or someone who opens up the conversation to hear from you and your perspective.
Being human, the second person seems more like the choice we will make. We always want to be a part of the conversation.
So, brands should put content that will generate healthy conversation.
Who are the major followers and what do they really care about?
Is it sports, music, movies, business, family, relationships, education? Depending on your product, you stir up conversations and naturally, they will warm up and connect.
Which brand do you follow on social media? Do you engage their content and if you do, which content do you engage most?
Kindly share with me.
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