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Spice up your Social Strategy

PUBLISHED ON 30 AUGUST, 2017

Ready to dazzle and engage your target audience through your Social channels? Then it’s time to get creative and have some fun! In this post we’ll go over how to ingeniously employ basic Social Media features in order to give your brand personality, while enriching relationships with customers and prospects.

#Hashtags

Social platforms use hashtags to describe and categorize content and make it searchable in order to increase reach, as well as build communities around common interests. Categorize and make your content discoverable to interested and broader audiences with the strategic use of hashtags. Take care though – not all networks use hashtags in the same way:

Rule of thumb on how many hashtags to use by network:

-Twitter 1-3
-Instagram 11+
-Pinterest 2-3
-Facebook 0 (Posts perform better without hashtags)

Do	Don’t
Customize hashtags by network Use relevant hashtags to find the right community or audience Proofread & choose informative rather than abstract hashtags Consistently post using the same hashtags	Use more hashtags than words Hashtag every single word Make Hashtags too long – 2 words is optimal – no more than 4 Break up your hashtags with symbols

Branded Hashtags

Show your audience what you stand for, create communities, engage with fans, and build your brand’s identity with branded hashtags. These tags are often created based on a catchy idea or campaign. For example, Lays’ #DoUsAFlavor, new flavor creation campaign, or Nike’s popular fitness slogan, #Justdoit.

Branded hashtags give organizations that extra ounce of character and open up a world of opportunities to engage with audiences around meaningful (or just fun) ideas. Not to mention, allowing them to act as direct brand advocates within communities.

Emojis & Emoticons

Did you know that Emojis and Emoticons aren’t actually the same thing? Emoticons are images formed by using symbol keys, for example: a smiley face 🙂 or a shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Emojis are precoded images that can be used to express an idea, emotion, object, or to form a story. Some platforms, however, will automatically translate emoticon text into emojis.

When used on social channels, emojis allow marketers to humanize their brand, speak their audience’s language and convey a message where words or 140 character limits are just not enough.

Let’s take the Green Bay Packers, for example. Their use of emojis throughout their Twitter feed, specifically to express emotion around local community events, makes theirs brand relatable and fun.

Fun fact: The word “Emoji” comes from Japanese! “E” means pictures and “moji” means character.

Stories

SnapChat, Instagram & Facebook are all proponents of “Stories”, a unique way in which users or marketers can share their daily activities with followers. Stories are not saved to your profile, so they give the sense of a raw look into authentic company culture.

Stories are usually composed of multiple images or videos, which expire after 24 hours. Story elements are often modified with filters or stamps. Audiences can also reach out to brands via direct messaging in order to comment on their stories.

Brands can have some fun, and give fans an inside look at company culture, with this neat little feature. Take AT&T, for example, who gave their audience a real laugh by recreating scenes from iconic movies such as Jurassic Park with SnapChat’s dancing hot dog lense.

Would you like some more advice on how to spice up your Social Media strategy? Download our new Social Media Guide for practical tips on how to optimize your Social Media Marketing.