Chocolate is better when shared
What can brands learn from a seemingly simple store visit that turned into an engaging social media experience?
Chocolate strawberries and delicious milkshakes were all we had on our minds as my mom, Jackie Freeman, and I embarked on our journey to our local mall to visit the Godiva store together. The goal of our outing was simple: what engagement can I attain from my current social media audience by creating content about our Tuesday afternoon chocolate store indulgence? My plan was to utilize four of my personal accounts on different platforms, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, to gauge just how successful or unsuccessful I am with content creation.
1) I began with Twitter by announcing our arrival at the elegant chocolate destination.
Currently, I do not have a strong Twitter account, and I am not ashamed to admit it. I have slightly less than 200 followers, and my content generation is dominated by food posts to receive loyalty points for a local restaurant deals app, Stealz. Due to my normal inactivity with this platform, I only saw engagement by one of my loyal followers. This provided insight that my personal most effective method of social media content sharing is probably not Twitter.
Even though I did not have personal success with Twitter, luxury brands should utilize this method of engagement. It allows companies to build hype for new products or share current events and happenings about the brand, just as I announced my arrival update. It is a valuable skill if brands can successfully create intrigue for something they are doing or that has not quite happened yet.
2) To follow the initial Twitter announcement, I shared a video via Instagram to display what items we had selected as our afternoon treats. I used the Boomerang app to create the short video and then posted it to Instagram. You should follow me to see the fully-functional moving version :).
If I directly compare my Instagram content to Twitter, this platform performs significantly better for my personal audience. 379 users viewed my content, with 142 of them engaging by liking and/or commenting. With a following of 1,064 users, my engagement statistic for this post is slightly over 13%. If I were a brand, this is well above the acceptable 1% engagement mark to deem a piece of content successful. In addition to Instagram, I shared the post to my Facebook and Twitter platforms. This allows maximum possible exposure for this content piece. I believe this cross-referencing and sharing is okay for a brand to do, as long as they are also creating exclusive content for their Facebook and Twitter. They would not want to flood those channels with Instagram content only. These platforms need their own attention too.
Aligning with my previously noted Twitter weakness, I did not experience any direct engagement on that platform for my linked Instagram content. In spite of that, Facebook delivered 24 likes and 3 comments to my shared Instagram content. With 1,869 friends on Facebook, my engagement percentage is 1.44% for this Instagram-transferred content. This was lower than the engagement the content received on the original Instagram outlet, but at least it is still above the 1% mark, and my content was able to gain an expanded reach.
So far, Instagram seems like the best method for me to engage with my audience, but lets see if it holds onto that spot.
3) As I pointed out, each platform having their own exclusive content is imperative, so I generated content for Facebook next.
I snapped this picture of my mom after we had developed our Instagram content, but did not do anything with it right away. Instead, I held onto the photo and posted it slightly later in the day as a reflection on our earlier fun time together. This method of holding content for a later time can catch the attention of people in my network who were not online earlier in the day and could prompt them to see if I had shared other content previously about the experience that they had missed.
After posting this content and giving it time to generate reactions, I immediately noticed that the likes and comments were higher for this post in comparison to the Instagram content that used Facebook as its secondary platform. As you can see from the screenshot, this post produced 53 likes and 6 comments, resulting in 3.16% engagement, comfortably above the 1% mark.
The main takeaway from the analysis of my Facebook production is that original content to a platform tends to perform better than content borrowed from a different original source. It is still important to provide awareness for all of your channels by cross-referencing and sharing content, but this should never replace the known importance of each platform displaying their own differentiated identity.
4) I rounded out the day’s festivities by creating Photofy-enhanced Pinterest content.
Photofy is an image editing app based out of the Raleigh area. I took advantage of this app’s capabilities and added the GLM logo and the hashtag for my group’s semester project to one of my Godiva images to transform it into a Pinterest Pin. The entire image is displayed at the beginning of this post, but I have provided in this section’s photo the details that the Pin content carries with it. As you can see by the map shown below my strawberries picture in the Pin, Pinterest allowed me to attach a location to my Pin so that others can know exactly where this content was created and where they can go get the featured product for themselves.
The Pinterest content allowed me not only to add to the content I have begun to build for my #GodivaGreetings marketing campaign board, but it also serves as an easy marketing tool for the brand if this Pin were to get re-pinned to multiple users’ boards and become a viral dessert piece of content.
Even though creating a viral pin did not in fact happen for me, that would have been exciting and is very much possible for luxury brands to do who may have larger followings than myself. I am not an expert at this platform, but if content can be made that gets saved to one person’s collection of boards, and then their friend does the same, and that trend continues, that pin can end up being referenced for a very long time by a very large number of users. Pinterest users do not tend to weed out and delete pins from their boards very often, but instead the boards they have organized and built serve as capsules for ideas and inspirations they liked in the past and may want to be reminded of later. If a brand can shape that situation of timeless, continual reference, huge value and equity for that content exists.
How should I engage with my social media audience?
After reviewing my four personal platforms’ performances with my Godiva content, it seems as though Instagram is in fact my most successful channel to gain engagement from my following. Facebook was relatively strong as well, but I need major improvements with Twitter and Pinterest. I do not use either of those two weak channels very often, so that should become a priority if I am to brand myself as someone savvy with social media. I cannot tell future employers that I understand social media and what it takes to establish profitable engagement if I am not putting those words into practice on my own accounts.
Even though there is always room to improve, and I do have areas that need immediate attention, I feel that I have a strong general understanding of how to ensure my various platforms are cohesive and tell the same story. I had never tried delivering multiple forms of content across different channels about one specific event before, but I was able to do it and produce some significant engagement in the process. I think that this skill will be enhanced as the GLM program progresses. I believe that this will translate into a strength I could bring to a employer seeking social media expertise once I complete my education.
So…is creating engaging content easy?
The answer to this question is no. Just because we live in a society dominated by social media does not mean that everyone is good at it and all the content out there is meaningful and impactful. As content generation continues, brands have to learn how they can differentiate themselves and rise above the clutter and the noise. Just as I did on a small scale focused on one particular experience, brands must observe and learn where their engagement is the strongest and where it is the weakest and work to understand why. They also need to have confidence that they are communicating the same message across their social media accounts so that customers are not confused about what the brand image aims to stand for and mean. Only then can they receive the largest engagement returns for their content investment, hopefully leading to eventual positive consumer relationships and satisfied customers.
