Spread EffectThe Lazy Marketer’s Path to Social Media Gold
When it comes to social media, companies fall into one of three categories.
1.) They’re connected, involved and consistent
2.) They’re connected, but their strategy is less than impressive (inconsistent, bad content, overall flawed strategy).
3.) They have no presence on any of the social media networks.
If you’re reading the Spread Effect blog, chances are you know the importance of social media. We talk about it regularly, and with good reason. Social media is not only a key metric for the SEO world to pay attention to now, it’s going to gain importance in the coming years with the declining value of backlinks and an increased push for great content. The 3′s are obviously irrelevant in our community, so the real question is:
What separates the 1′s from the 2′s?
Good question. The answer is actually pretty simple. Great strategy and implementation is all it takes to win the social media war. As simple as the answer is, people often don’t know the difference between “great” and “pretty good” until they see it firsthand. That’s what we’re going to do today.
Coca-Cola is the undisputed king of social media, and with good reason. Their content is some of the best of any big brand on social media. They are innovative and engaging and consistently pushing the envelope of what you can do with social media.
Here are a few things we can learn and apply to our own pages.
Engage
Things like this show that the social media team at Coke knows all about how to get the most out of their fans in the Facebook EdgeRank era. We know that EdgeRank only shows your message to fans based on perceived interest. The easiest way to increase the total number of fans you reach is by posting engaging content on a consistent basis. This type of image screams “ENGAGE” and takes advantage of two key things we know about EdgeRank.
1.) More engagement = higher total reach
2.) Images reach more people than text
Take that, EdgeRank.
Ask Questions
The old adage goes, “People are given two ears and one mouth so that they will hear more and talk less.”
Coca-Cola does a great job of listening by constantly polling its audience. They did this during the Super Bowl by allowing the audience to decide the ending of their “Cowboys and Showgirls” commercial and met with wide acclaim from the social media community. Asking questions is a winning idea in the marketing community. People like to know that they matter and there’s no better way to show them by allowing them to help make decisions.
Their use of polls isn’t limited to the Super Bowl. Coca-Cola is consistently using polls to let their fans decide everything from “America’s favorite park” to choosing song lyrics for their jingle.
Use “Other” Forms of Media
Images, video, text, polls and combinations of media are proven winners for Coca-Cola.
Here’s just one example of integrating different forms of media into their social media campaigns. In this example, Coca-Cola allowed their Facebook fans to see their newest commercial before anyone else. This is offering added value to their fans, as it gives them a reason to “Like” the page in the first place. As small as the gesture might have been, people still like to feel as if they are benefitting from the relationship. Coke delivered.
We often get caught up in having to deliver status updates consistently and in the process we forget that there are usually multiple ways to deliver the same message. Experiment with different types of media on your business page to deliver the best results.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for What You Want
Here we see two easy examples of Coca-Cola asking their audience for a desired result (a “like” or “share). If you’re providing value and giving people a reason to stick around, there’s nothing stating you can’t ask for what you want in return. Of course you should use this tip responsibly so that the relationship doesn’t appear one-sided, but you certainly can’t go wrong asking your audience to help spread your message once in a while.
