How brands leverage social topics for effective social media marketing?

Garima Juneja of Viral Curry shares how brands have been latching on social topics for an evolved social media marketing game.

These days, social media has become an important tool for every business out there. Every company is trying out something or the other to make their social media marketing work for them.

While one can explore several marketing strategies to engage with their followers on social media, emotional marketing and creating campaigns around social topics works every time!

The audience is human and they would love to know that the brand they are associating with is also human and feels what they feel. Thus, let’s explore how some brands are leveraging social topics for effective social media marketing and how you can do it too. Here’s how you can create marketing campaigns around social topics:

1. Selecting Industry Related Social Topics

A study conducted in 2011 found that 91% want to be heard by companies. They want companies to address their pain points and show them a possible solution for the problem they are facing.

To effectively tap into the relatively untapped pool of consumers on social media, you’ll need to pick a social topic that is related to your products, service or industry and something that your target audiences are talking about.

Here’s an example of how a brand used a trending social topic to their advantage:

In Union Budget 2018, Indian Finance Ministry reintroduced the LTCG (Long Term Capital Gains) Tax that mandated investors to pay 10% tax on the gains made by them on selling shares or equity mutual funds held for a year.

As soon as the news of LTCG broke out, a large number of investors started talking about the impact of LTCG tax and its implications on their investments. The dominant emotion around the tax was of panic. Most investors were confused as to what they must do safeguard their savings.

Web Insurance aggregator, Policy bazaar picked up on this social topic andstarted helping out the worried and confused consumers. The company started a hashtag campaign (Nivesh Kar Befikar) and started publishing a series of expert videos and ‘Facebook Live’ sessions to help investors figure out how they can stay invested for a long-time without having to worry about LTCG taxes.

Here’s a tweet published at Policy bazaar’s Twitter page for its Nivesh Kar Befikar Campaign.

By using helpful videos and posts, Policy bazaar ensured that their campaign would reach a large number of their target market. The campaign received more than 5,300 tweets and a massive engagement rate helping the company to quadruple investment related user queries and sales during the weeks following the viral campaign.

Here are some quick tips:

1. Identify social topics that may concern your target audiences.
2. Design a campaign around the social topic.
3. Include videos, images, etc. to engage your users.
4. Aim at addressing the concerns of your target audiences and provide them with a possible solution.
5. Collaborate with an affiliate to increase visibility, boost brand awareness or reach out to a larger user base.

Now let’s move on to the next strategy on our list:

2. Using Humor to Spread Awareness about a Social Topic

Humor is a great icebreaker and a great way for fans and followers to relate to your brand and actively participate in the social topic you’ve instigated.

Also Read: Beginner’s guide to digital marketing: Pros & Cons

In fact:

29% people ‘like’ a company on Facebook if they are funny or humorous.

According to Pew research, 58% YouTube users prefer watching humorous videos.

And that’s not all:

A study of 10,000 top most shareable articles by Buzzsumo found that the top 3 invoked emotions are awe, laughter and amusement.

This means:

Using humor in your social campaigns could prove to be an effective way to humanize your brand, appeal to your audience emotionally and easily start a conversation around a social topic.

Want proof?

With over 30 thousand followers and several viral tweets, Mumbai Police has long been wining hearts with witty, humorous and funny tweets supporting issues such as cyber stalking, traffic safety and anti-drugs campaign.

With smart and strategic use of hashtags, memes and puns, humor has helped Mumbai Police successfully start social topics and quickly build an engaged following.

If you too are planning to mix humor with social topics, keep these 5 quick tips in mind:

1. Stay away from controversial topics and ensure that your humorous posts are not in bad taste.
2. Keep your humorous posts short and simple. Make sure your posts are direct, pithy, and swift.
3. Make sure your humorous posts are consistent with your brand. Your posts must clearly communicate your brand’s position.
4. Share humor that your target audience can easily relate to.
5. Use humor selectively. Don’t try to too funny or humorous. Remember, 32% social media users get annoyed when a brand tries to be funny.

3. Collaborate with Influencers to Spread a Word

We’re sure you know:

Influencers can help you build trust for your brand.

But here’s something you don’t know:

Collaborating with influencers can help you drive meaningful conversations on social media about your brand and the social topic you’re associated.

Why?

Because 49% consumers take influencer recommendation seriously!

And that’s not all:

For every $1 spent on investors, you’ll be able to ensure an ROI of $6.50.

Here’s how influencers add value to your social campaigns:

Four popular Twitter influencers were roped in for Policy bazaar’s Nivesh Kar Befikar campaign. The idea was to create a buzz for the blogger’s meet that the company had organized as a part of its campaign amongst social savvy investors.

The campaign worked remarkably well in letting investors know how they can stay invested for long time without having to worry about LTCG taxes.

And that’s not all:

Mumbai Police sought the help of Commissioner of Police - Ahmad Javed in instigating social conversations around its anti-drug campaign (Hosh Mein Aao).

The campaign picked up soon after Mumbai’s Police Commissioner’s hilarious tweet and helped Mumbai Police garner several thousand likes and more than 30K followers.

And it doesn’t end here:

A tweet with reference of Netflix’s popular series ‘Stranger Things’ forced Netflix India itself to jump into the conversation adding to the popularity of the campaign.

Now that you know how influencers can help you instigate social conversations, we’re sure you’re all excited to jump into action and collaborate with some influencers to spearhead a successful social media campaign.

But before you do that, check out these 5 quick tips:

1. Get well acquainted to your target audiences. Build your marketing strategy around the requirements, tastes and preferences of your target audiences.
2. Find influencers who are right fit for your brand. Remember, if you’ll rope in influencers who aren’t good fit for your brand, then you’ll not be able to drive user interest in social topics of your choice.
3. You’ll need to build content that yields enough power to entertain and engage your target audiences.
4. Give your influencers creative freedom. Allow them to create their own content. But remember to keep a track on your influencer’s activities.
5. Analyze the performance of your social media influencer campaign against your brand objectives, and measurable KPIs.

 4. Stay Away from Negative Topics & Concentrate on the Positive Message

We know that leveraging social topics for social media marketing of your brand is a risky road to tread. If you go wrong, people might think you are insensitive. However, if you stay away from negative topics and concentrate on the positive message in the form of images, videos, tweets, contests and also involve influencers; there are high chances that you can attract the eyeballs and engagement from genuine users online.

Do try out something innovative for your social media marketing and share with us how it was. Whichever social topic you select, be sure that you are passionate for the cause and implement it with all the creativity that you have.