Eight Lessons Brands Can Harness to Break Through the Noise on Social Media
We don’t have to tell you that social media is an oversaturated landscape. How can organization break through the noise and take back control?
JT’s digital team shares insights and lessons learned at Digital Summit 2021, a digital marketing conference featuring industry leaders and innovative strategies driving the profession forward.
Digital audiences expect brands and organizations to stand for something. We’ve witnessed a shift in how brands align themselves with social movements in the last several years, and this will only continue to grow. Luckily, for organizations in the social sector, this is not a challenge, as many stand for values and causes relevant to the daily news cycle. Digital audiences expect organizations to care about the issues of the day and take a position when appropriate. This will increase supporters’ affinity to the organization and drive future action.
Data is the new commodity. It’s more important now than ever to focus on collecting and organizing owned data (i.e., phone numbers, email lists, website analytics, etc.) instead of relying solely on social media platforms’ data sets for personalized, targeted campaigns. The “fourth industrial revolution” will be about intelligence, and those who own their data will be better positioned to succeed and reach their target audiences.
Expand the definition of influencers. Some organizations may not have the budgets to work with influencer agencies or the capacity to directly engage with macro-influencers, but that does not mean they cannot utilize influencer marketing. We need to expand the definition of what an influencer is to include micro-influencers (influencers with 1,000-100,000 followers), internal employees and brand advocates that already your organization in their content.
Break through the noise. Social media is oversaturated with content. The average person will see an average of 5,000 ads per day. To help break through this noise, organizations must capture their audience’s attention by educating, inspiring or entertaining. Creating ad campaigns that consider the three C’s of storytelling can help tell a compelling story.
Context: Defining your audience and making them the main character
Contrast: What problem is your main character facing? What is the climax of the story?
Call to action: Affirm that your brand can solve the main character’s problem
Use social media to test content, then repackage elsewhere. Think of social media as the beta environment for content. At the end of every month, do an audit of posts and decide what resonated best with your social media audience based on success metrics like shares, comments and other engagements. Then repackage that content into longer-form articles, blogs or videos that can be used on other channels or your website. Aim to create digestible and watchable content. Continue to reassess what quality content is as audience grows.
Social video continues to dominate any other content form. YouTube alone is the second largest search engine (Google is the first) with more than 500 billion videos consumed daily. Video results are 50x more likely to rank organically than text results, and blog posts with video have 53x higher chance of engagement. The first three seconds of a video are the most important and should grab viewers attention. Short form videos should be no longer than 60 seconds (closer to 15 seconds is better), generally vertical format and work well as Instagram and Facebook stories, YouTube shorts and on Snapchat and TikTok. Social audiences expect and sometimes prefer less polished, more raw and relatable videos — what they would expect to see natively on the platform.
LinkedIn is one of the best platforms for organic growth today. Achieving organic (unpaid) engagement on LinkedIn is easier than on other, more saturated platforms. For example, a “like” on LinkedIn is the equivalent of a share on other platforms. Organizations should consider polling their digital audiences, asking: “How many times per day do you check LinkedIn?” and “What content do you want to see from us on LinkedIn?” Their social media audience is an ideal focus group and should be included in content decisions. Use polls, questions and/or quizzes to drive your audience to answer questions that can guide strategy and serve as content.
On the other hand, TikTok has the best opportunity for paid growth. TikTok currently has the lowest percentage of posts in feed that are ads (2%), compared to Facebook (21%), Instagram (20%), LinkedIn (19%) and Twitter (14%). There is an opportunity to take advantage of this less saturated platform with effective digital advertising, when it fits with our clients’ target audiences. TikTok users skew young (about 70% are younger than 40), but Gen X has a growing presence on the platform.
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