Whether you’re doing international marketing or local marketing, there is a key to help unlock some of your company’s potential.
BE SOCIAL
A key to unlocking your company’s marketing potential is being social on social media. This includes posting content that’s more native to the platform you’re on. Since you likely want to improve your company’s marketing since you’re here, think about what kind of content is native on the platform you choose. For example on Facebook, looking at my Facebook wall I can see many reposts of puns and other humor, some posts sharing other peoples’ opinions on society which I can chalk up to personal hobby posts since I majored in a social science, and I just realized that takes up all of the wall I’m willing to scroll through right now. On a similar site, Minds.com which could be a website to look out for for marketing in the future, I have similar content such as humor pointing out that the movie Soylent Green was set in 2020 and now in 2020 the Impossible Burger is more prevalent as far as I can tell, more reposts of other peoples’ opinions of society, and a post showing a breakdown of someone’s social media following on various social media platforms. Out of these, there is no mention of me sharing advertisements for rice, or for a smartphone, or for some other kind of boring ad. Out of these, there is a mention for humor. One of my somewhat recent reposts included an ad that I thought exemplified how a video ad should be done. As of writing this video’s Youtube version has almost 2.8 million views and it was posted about 20 days ago. Even though embedded is the Facebook version for continuity sake, the amount of views this has is still a testament to peoples’ desire to share this for social reasons.
That’s funny and is worth sharing to spread the joy. Spreading joy is part of being social. My goal was not to advertise Pringles, which is now also getting a mention in this post and is therefore being inadvertently advertised through being a good example of advertising done right. Through spreading this joy via social media, Pringles also happened to be advertised. I usually don’t even eat Pringles and I haven’t for at least a decade as far as I know. But one of my friends who saw the repost of the ad might want to buy Pringles now, and try stacking the chips as shown in the commercial which means they could buy more than 1 can. Sharing enjoyable things is a part of being social, and your brand should embrace this as part of its social media strategy. This ad also was shared through Adult Swim which is where Rick and Morty, the cartoon shown in the ad, is shown. This Facebook video isn’t even on Pringles’ Facebook page as of writing even though that page has over 24 million followers compared to Adult Swim’s 6.6 million followers, but its arguable that was the right decision to post the ad through Adult Swim in order to get more views since that kind of content would be more native to Adult Swim’s page where people could be more likely to know who Rick and Morty are, compared to Pringles’ page where the amount of people who know Rick and Morty are less of a known quantity. That’s another example of the native space mattering for the content.
Now let’s compare this to some of McDonald’s Facebook advertising. Do any of these look like content you’d want to share? It’s possible that it is.
(If you shared this ask yourself, what social utility would you gain from it? Personally I wouldn’t gain much. This ad doesn’t interest me and I don’t think it would interest my friends either.)
(Actually this one is a good example since people can get social satisfaction from sharing knowledge of a new enjoyable thing, even if the enjoyment is from the fact that it’s unique, limited time, and a little weird compared to the status quo of not having shamrock shakes.)
(To me this ad seems like a nice father and daughter moment, and I see what they were going for and it has a sweet message, but the emotional response I got was like, “Meh, that’s so-so.” It’s not enough for me to want to share it with my friends, since they might have similar reactions of, “I see they were going for a sweet moment but meh on the delivery.” From a storytelling perspective there isn’t enough dramatic tension and I don’t care about the characters’ storylines so much as a result. Another example of why dramatic tension matters is like how random ships explode or background characters die in movies and it’s like, “Meh,” on an emotional scale, but there are other death scenes that are a lot more dramatic and thrilling because you have more dramatic tension and story behind it. Dramatic tension is still possible in commercials, such as in the Pringles commercial or some of the Doritos commercials.)
Back to Youtube, comparing the already almost 2.8 million views of this Pringles commercial versus McDonald’s Youtube all time high of a bit above 2.55 million views for a video shows a key indication of how much people wanted to interact in some way with the ad. Take notice of the difference in how many likes versus dislikes interactions there are. The McDonald’s ad possibly was boosted using money without people wanting to share it a lot, but that’s speculation on my end. The Pringles ad shows a lot more people interacting with it, and interaction is a form of socialization in this context since it’s like telling the world and/ or the poster of the content, “Hey I like this,” assuming it’s a like button click.
Sharing funny videos or pictures isn’t the only way to be social. Being a good listener is a big part of it. For companies that deal with customer service complaints through social media, listening to complaints and dealing with them well is important. If you get any interaction on your social media channels, it’s good to respond. If someone says something good or inquisitive to you in real life and you just ignore them that can be seen as unsociable, and seeing as you want to engage in social media marketing it’s important for you to be sociable. There are a couple great books I recommend on the topic of online customer service by the way called Hug Your Haters (https://www.amazon.com/Hug-Your-Haters-Complaints-Customers/dp/1101980672) and The Effortless Experience (https://www.amazon.com/Effortless-Experience-Conquering-Battleground-Customer/dp/1591845815/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/131-5918607-6811164?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1591845815&pd_rd_r=46f30996-929f-4dca-a681-518643a24670&pd_rd_w=v03jW&pd_rd_wg=iLPo8&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=66ZZM4ZNRET71P8TYEJB&psc=1&refRID=66ZZM4ZNRET71P8TYEJB).
Another part of listening to others is asking people about themselves, and this has an additional benefit of having the possibility of being a type of market research. For example you can ask a market research question such as, “What’s your biggest problem with ______?” That last part can be the topic of your company’s value proposition. So if you sell international marketing services you can have, “What’s your biggest problem with international marketing?” Then people can post their stories which makes them feel heard which is good for social situations, you can ask more questions back if you’re interested, you can respond to comments, and all of that engagement is a form of being social through social media that can help your brand. When people engage on your social media page, I’ve read that social media algorithms can favor pages with more engagement. This means there could be more of a chance that followers can find your social media page when you do post content that advertises your brand more.
It’s also important to know that people can use different platforms for different reasons. A meme that was recently popular (but the moment is basically gone as of writing) is fantastic for illustrating this point. This meme was called the “Dolly Parton Challenge”.
People post different things on different social media platforms. Keep the audience in mind when you are being social with the people on these sites. For example on Twitter, the #1 reason in a research study had, “To be alerted to or find out more about breaking news,” as the #1 reason that people use Twitter (https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/how-people-use-twitter-in-general/). If you use Instagram, Minds, or Facebook, you might use those for different reasons than Twitter. It’s important to keep the different uses of the social media platforms in mind when posting your content.
Overall the main point is that to market your company on social media, you need to be social. It’s important to avoid ads and posts that would be not so good in the medium for example ads with not good stories, and make ads that would make people want to be social and interact with them. I hope this helps you!