Social Media: quick and easy tips to optimize your channels
Written by Marcelo Cidral — Social Media Lead at AMARO
The quarantine brought on by Covid-19 has given social media a new boost, with brands finding new ways to connect with their customers. TikTok finally became mainstream in the Western world, Instagram is projecting an increase of around 14% in followers, and even Facebook, which was considered “dead” to many, will end the year with a surge in the amount of time people are spending on the platform. We’ve seen several reports with examples of innovative content produced during this period, so my objective with this article is to bring some overall tips, that, when combined with the right message, could help brands leverage their presence on these channels.
Before I start, I think it’s important to introduce myself: my name is Marcelo Cidral and I’m the Social Media Lead at AMARO. I’m responsible for the brand’s organic social media channels, which is an important pillar of our marketing. In Brazil, we were pioneers of the Instagram Shopping feature, being the first fashion brand to have access to the beta version and successfully integrating the tool into our content strategy. In June 2019, we were also the first national brand to create a hashtag challenge on TikTok. We’ve also had numerous successful cases of partnerships on Pinterest, content production on Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook (page and group). Before AMARO, I was a part of several agencies in São Paulo, as well as completing a specialization in Digital Marketing at Hyper Island in Stockholm and a Master’s degree in Fashion Marketing at the London College of Fashion, where I also worked.
Having a set strategy in social media is obviously important, but things change quickly in the digital world, so I tend to have a more tactical, hands-on approach to my work. With this in mind, I’ll summarize some tricks that are easy to test and quick in bringing results.
INSTAGRAM — FIND A BALANCE BETWEEN AN AESTHETICALLY BEAUTIFUL FEED AND ENGAGING POSTS
Eva Chen, Head of Fashion at Instagram, has repeatedly said that brands should focus on posts that actually generate engagement rather than the overall look of their feed. This is particularly true for large brands that use several channels to communicate with their customers. Leave the perfect airbrushed images to magazine ads and use more relatable or even “amateur” photos for social media channels. Brands like McDonald’s, Nike, and H&M focus on inspiring images and videos that resonate with their followers and promote their products. The images are usually produced exclusively for social media.
Now, if you’re a small business and your Instagram is the main way to reach your target audience, it’s important to find a balance between what engages and what accurately communicates your brand positioning. For many of your future clients, this will be their first contact with your brand, and they have to “get” it immediately in order to feel attracted to it. I’m not talking about those huge mosaics with images that don’t make sense when they appear out of context on the timeline. Create content pillars and a “mood” for your posts so people know what you’re about. It doesn’t have to be aesthetically perfect, but it does need to be cohesive. Even brands that focus more on user-generated content like Glossier (and therefore have super strong engagement rates) try to have something in common in all of their posts: either a color scheme or a filter, the lighting, the type of people they usually repost, etc. Fashion brands are particularly good at creating these “moods” depending on seasons, their collections, and what people are looking for.
To plan your feed, you can use a tool like Plano.ly to see an overview of what your feed will look like. With just three rows of posts, you can get a good idea of how cohesive your communication will look.
Remember: Instagram is not the place for unrealistic, unrelatable images, as people are free to comment and are usually very vocal about things they don’t relate to. On the other hand, don’t forget that your brand image is your most valuable asset, and your images and videos need to tell a story when posted on a visual platform like Instagram.
INSTAGRAM — MONITOR UN-FOLLOWS
Brands tend to focus only on follower growth and sometimes forget to track how many people are unfollowing them. Unfollows can happen for a variety of reasons: people leaving Instagram, people getting disappointed with the brand, people getting tired of your content, etc. While it’s rare to unfollow a brand that doesn’t appear on your timeline (since we usually forget we even follow them), we are more likely to unfollow companies that produce too much content, which starts to feel like spam.
- Try not to pack your Instagram Stories with too many different topics and if you have to talk about two or three different things that day, make sure you can find a connection between them so there’s some sort of storytelling.
- Experiment with producing less content and check if your unfollows decrease or increase.
- Analyze which days you have more unfollows: did you post something controversial? Was the image too unrelatable? Perhaps the wrong timing?
- Don’t get desperate if you get too many unfollows after posting something about a subject that is considered polarizing. Sometimes it’s a good thing to “filter” followers that don’t agree with the values of your brand. This way you can focus on pleasing the lovers and not always trying to remedy the haters.
- And once again: NO MOSAICS. No one wants to have their timeline filled with 8 images that make no sense on their own.
INSTAGRAM — TEACH YOUR FOLLOWERS HOW TO USE FEATURES
Always remember that not everyone on social media is a Gen Zer that can quickly learn how to use every feature available. When AMARO became the first brand in Brazil to incorporate Instagram Shopping in our strategy, we had to educate our followers on how to use this new feature.
The process took a while and required patience: not only did we have to respond to each person who asked for the price of an item, and explain to them to click on the image, we also produced visual assets and created a Highlight on our Instagram where we directed people to a step-by-step tutorial on how to shop via Instagram. We also used this feature for brand positioning and had a series of ad stories introducing the feature to a lookalike base, gaining new followers along the way.
The main point is: always assume your followers are rookies and be didactic and patient with them. What will happen, eventually, is that your “brand lovers” will start to educate other followers and you won’t need to do it by yourself. Nowadays, when we don’t tag a product for some reason in an image, our followers complain.
INSTAGRAM — USE ITS CUSTOMER-CENTRIC FEATURES
Many companies are renaming their Social Media Customer Service departments to Social Insights, as interactions in these channels are a valuable source of information for the brand. People usually leave comments or messages on social media when they have a very intense feeling about the brand. It could be either an amazing shopping experience or a terrible one. The good thing is that many people will tend to use social media channels as their first channel to vocal positive feelings and probably the last when they are upset (they are keener to using other official customer service channels such as the website’s chat, e-mail or phone before getting really upset and commenting on your Instagram posts). With that in mind, take advantage of your lovers’ loyalty and use it to gain some insight into their shopping behavior:
- Use features like surveys to ask questions about products and content. Remember that if you launch a product based on your customers’ answers, you should remind them that this decision was based on their responses (“YOU ASKED FOR IT so we…”).
- Besides sentiment analysis (positive, neutral, and negative posts), also categorize your clients’ interactions into themes. Then, send monthly qualitative insights to different areas of your company. At an online fashion brand, for example, you will have positive and negative feedback about products, delivery, returns, website and app, etc.
- Remember that public comments must be dealt with extra care: always try to drive a more critical situation to the message box and be cordial to everyone as the way you answer people will also be visible and must be friendly and in-line with the brand’s language.
- On Instagram, don’t only reply to negative comments. If you do, they will rise to the top of the post, and people will get the feeling that you only get complaints. Engage with compliments as well: this also encourages your lovers to keep sending love on your profile.
LIVE STREAMS — WHY?
Instagram Lives are very popular nowadays but before you step onboard or make one, make sure you have a clear objective. They are much more complicated and unpredictable than you can imagine and involve a lot of planning behind the scenes. Always ask yourself: is this content something that would also make sense on Stories or in a feed post? Is it really essential to have a live stream about it?
If the answer is yes, make sure to use some tricks to attract people to your content and keep them engaged.
- If you have a social media influencer featured in it, ask them to produce stories inviting their followers to your profile while the live stream is on, not just before it. Many times, people join live streams in the moment and remain there if they find the content relevant.
- The timer stickers on Stories are also interesting because people can choose to be reminded when the time runs out. If you have an app, also use push notifications to invite your customers to tune in.
- Interact with your followers to keep them engaged: use Q&A’s, listen to their recommendations, or even do a giveaway. But remember: people can complain about anything and you can’t moderate the comments in real-time. So make sure your giveaway has very clear rules and there’s at least someone in your team taking care of it. Also, constantly repeat the rules as many people join live streams after it has started.
- Some live stream formats, such as “commerce live streams” are enjoying much success. These types of live streams feature someone selling a product, in the style of Shoptime. In China, the main live platform, Taobao, estimates an increase of 150% in conversions coming from the platform, and brands like Dengo are already adapting the format for Brazil.
PINTEREST — MORE THAN JUST INSPIRATION
Pinterest is a major source of “brandless” inspiration for many people, but it’s perfectly possible to have a strong presence as a brand on it too. This is possible as long as you are able to raise awareness of your brand by:
- Making sure that all your Pins are linked to your website: even if people accidentally click on images they will be redirected to you, and they may be interested in getting to know more about your brand.
- Optimize all your Pins and Boards with long-tail descriptions to improve ranking in search results. Remember that Pinterest is huge in English speaking countries: even if you don’t sell to these countries, make sure to have some content in English so you appear on their search results and improve your pins reach overall.
- Work with influencers: very few brands have used influencers on Pinterest. Co-create boards with them and take advantage of their large followings. This will also help increase your own fanbase. There are several successful cases worldwide. AMARO has collaborated with several creators using pin codes on their Guide Shops that redirect customers to a board with outfit inspirations. The link below explains how.
https://business.pinterest.com/pt-br/success-stories/amaro
- Leverage Pinterest’s digital personalization and visual search by following examples like “Styled by Levi’s”. The brand created a quiz where people pick images that represent their style. Based on their choices, Pinterest generates a board filled with Levi’s images of products that might interest the person.
TIKTOK — DON’T TRY TOO HARD
Before hopping on the most-hyped social media channel of the moment, ask yourself: does it make sense for my brand to be there? Who will I be talking to? Even if people there aren’t my current target audience, will this help me in the long-term to develop a loyal following?
If you still think it would make sense for your brand, the first tip is to hire a GenZer to run your channel. You don’t want to be that “cool dad” that’s trying too hard to fit in with the younger crowd. To generate engagement, have a native user tell you what’s trending and help filter which type of content you should be producing.
Try to reproduce hashtag challenges that make sense with your brand: this will help your content show up more.
- Work with creators: ask them to post content on their channels and drive traffic to yours. Make sure you have videos already on the platform so people feel interested in following you.
- Use the local language: videos created for other channels like Youtube usually don’t engage so well on TikTok. Unless they look more amateur and are short, keep them on their original platforms.
TWITTER — JOIN THE CONVERSATIONS!
Twitter is the perfect platform to attract a loyal audience and gain insights. Not only it is the most efficient for social listening, once you find your language and embrace the subculture, it can be one of the most fun and rewarding environments to produce content for.
- It’s always important to be close to your followers. Many brands tweet in first-person and act as a person tweeting. Some even go as far as humanizing their accounts by having a persona behind it, like Magalu’s “Lu”, Natura’s “Nat”, and AMARO’s “Mara”.
- Have a real-time strategy on the platform. On Twitter, you can’t plan out too far ahead of time. Have some “cold” content prepared for slower days but keep checking what people are talking about and try to join conversations. Giving flash discounts or throwing giveaways related to what’s happening is also a great way to drive engagement and loyalty.
Don’t forget: these tips and strategies are not written in stone. Social networks are constantly changing and some of them may not make sense for you or your business. The main message is: experiment, get it wrong, get it right, and draw your own conclusions. And if possible, share them with other colleagues in our area, as I have done here. This collaboration helps everyone and inspires us to take more chances and try new things.
