How to Keep Your Brand From Sinking into the Sea of Social Media
62% of people get their news from social media, according to a new Pew Research study. This is up 20% from 2012, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. For business owners, marketing coordinators, and social media managers, this digital playing field presents a constant battle for your customers’ attention and means one thing:
If you’re not visible on social media, and if you’re not building an audience with relevant content, you’re soon to be completely invisible.
The good news: Social media reduces the distance between you and your customer. They’re just a click away.
The bad news: With so much competition vying for their attention, you need to strategize and coordinate effective and engaging content that laser-targets your intended audience or your campaign will flop.
I’ll quickly run through the modern content gathering trends and tools that’ll save you time and money.
Influencers
Influencers are people who’ve built a loyal, like-minded social media following as industry experts, personalities, artists, YouTubers, bloggers, you name it. There may be hundreds or thousands of influencers, but be selective. Marketing your product through an influencer offers you direct access to a very specific demographic.
The following might be obvious, but if you’re in the video game industry, you don’t want an influencer who blogs about food even if they have a massive following. Do your research and find out which influencer best represents your brand.
Content Discovery Platforms
These platforms help gather content related to your industry and find your target audience. Some of them can do a ton of the heavy analytical work for you, but they all function with their own discrete advantages:
Buzzsumo
BuzzSumo provides social insights for content marketing and SEO campaigns.
- Discover what people are sharing the most in your niche
- Analyze what topics, headlines, and content formats work
- Get content alerts whenever your brand or a topic is mentioned
- Find interesting and trending content to curate
- Discover guest post and interview opportunities
- Analyze your competitors top content
BuzzSumo is a no-brainer. It’s the best resource when it comes to analyzing trending content relative to your industry.
Feedly
Feedly brings content to you. Rather than seeking out content via search engine (who has time for that?), feedly gathers it neatly into a sharable, easy-to-read, minimalist user interface. You can set alerts for your topic of choice, connect with others to find out what they’re reading, monitor trending news, and find the content specific to your interests.
Nuzzel
Nuzzel sorts content shared by your social media friends on Facebook and Twitter so you can stay on top of the conversation. With people spending more and more time on social media, nuzzel might be the future of content aggregation:
“In the early years, the most tech-savvy users used RSS readers. Then news aggregators like Google News, Digg and Reddit began to appear. In the past five years, aggregation has been democratized by social media. A growing number of younger readers don’t actively seek out news at all. Instead, they read the news that’s recommended to them by friends on Facebook and Twitter. That’s more convenient, because most young people are spending time on Facebook and Twitter anyway. More importantly, it serves as a finely honed news filter. Probably the best predictor of what news stories you’re going to want to read is what news stories your friends and colleagues found interesting.”- Washington Post
StumbleUpon
SumbleUpon is perfect for those who know what kind of content they want to see, but don’t quite know where to look. With just a click of the mouse, users can endlessly ‘stumble’ from topic to topic as the app keeps track of the content they like.
Reddit, commonly known as the ‘Front Page of the Internet’, is a online platform with ‘communities’ of specific interests that bridges ideas, the latest trends, breaking news (okay…and maybe cats). Each community ranks its relevant content, and the most popular and important content surfaces to the front page. This presents an extremely targeted demographic for advertising, but be warned, Reddit can be a harsh and unforgiving place, so be sure your content is relevant!
Linkedin dresses up FaceBook with a suit and tie, focusing on professional networks and providing an excellent career-oriented resource for finding new jobs, employees, and expert advice. Use LinkedIn Pulse and Groups to discover content relative to your target audience.
Medium
Every day, thousands of people turn to Medium to publish their ideas and unique perspectives. Leaders, Artists, Thinkers, and ordinary citizens who have a story to tell. These posts range from geopolitical analyses to deeply personal essays. Medium sifts the best of these for you and delivers them directly onto your home page.
Medium stripped away the barriers-to-entry in a revolutionary way. There are no publishers, no editors, and no publication to reject your piece; it’s complete freedom.
It’s quickly becoming the best place to collect content relative to your topic or industry, and it’s a great place to find industry influencers.
