As we reach our 7thanniversary at Hashtag Social Media Agency, we thought we would take a look at the top seven lessons we have learned from serving some of the best brands in the region. Over the years, we have been blessed to manage accounts from all different industries and geographic areas. From Dairy to Automotive, Banking to F&B, Retail to Real-Estate, as well as Governmental and Semi-Governmental entities. Each brand brought to light a powerful lesson in marketing that can help all businesses, big and small, become great.
Lesson 1: from the world’s largest vertical dairy company – Almarai:
Always Tell A Story
People don’t flock to social media to be sold to, they are interested in the stories and pictures of other people’s lives and even those of the brands they follow. It’s in our nature to want to connect to others on an emotional level. If you can master the art of storytelling for your business then you’ll have your customers hooked. A great story has a natural flow that pulls the reader in and captivates their attention to the end.
Lesson 2: from the world’s largest Quick Service Restaurant brand – Subway:
Use the Power of Emotions
As human beings we are constantly seeking to feel things, we are emotional beings at our very core. If you are able to spark an emotion with your social media content, not only will people connect with it, they will share it with their family and friends. Content that is humorous or happy gets shared most often. In fact, in a study done by the University of Pennsylvania, the top five emotions shared on social media were amusement, interest, surprise, happiness and delight.
Lesson 3: from Saudi’s top lubricant and automotive service brand – Petromin:
Deliver Useful & Educational Content
You want to always be providing value to your followers. If you aren’t making an impactful contribution, people will not follow you on social media. When you create highly useful or educational content it can help strengthen your position on the social media platforms algorithm. If people save or share your posts this tells the algorithm that people value your content and therefore it will get shown to more people. Invest in educational videos, articles, reports and infographics to help build your brand on social media.
Lesson 4: from the Region’s top Retail brands – MAX fashion, Center Point, Home Center:
Interact with Your Audience
While you are busy creating and posting great content, don’t forget about one of the most important aspects of social media, being social. Social media is designed to be a two way communication between your account and your followers. If you never personally engage with your followers you will quickly find yourself buried deep in the algorithm where none of your great content is getting shown. Engagement is measured primarily through likes and comments. Make sure that you are responding to comments on your posts as much as possible. People are surprised and delighted when brands reach out to them personally, it can make a great impact and turn followers into fans.
Lesson 5: from Region’s top Hypermarket brand – Danube supermarkets:
Humanize Your Brand
You might have noticed a theme by now, the more you can do to humanize your brand the faster your following will grow and the more loyal your customers will be to you. Connecting with your customers, telling your story and sharing emotional or educational content will ignite your brand on social media. Users have to feel like they are following a friend. You can humanize your brand by giving it a personality, it could be your personality or a unique personality created for your brand. Physically write down the personal attributes of your brand so that your voice is always clear in all of your content.
Lesson 6: from Region’s top Fitness brand – Fitness First:
The Power of User Generated Content
As we already mentioned, getting mentioned or having your content shared by a brand on social media can be fun and exciting for the consumers. This is a great way to turn consumers into brand advocates. While user generated content can be promoted on all social channels the mecca of user generated content is Instagram. Learn how to re-gram (share photos of others) correctly and search hashtags for mentions of your brand. Want to get a lot of user generated content right away? Host a giveaway where the entry is posting a photo of your product in use with a tag or hashtag. Sprout Social found that 70% of consumers will share a positive experiencewith brands on social media.
Lesson 7:from regions top Entertainment Authority – General Entertainment Authority:
Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment
On social media, showing a little bit of creativity can go a long way in making your account memorable. You can rely on key performance indicators like reach, shares, likes etc to tell you which content is performing the best. So don’t be afraid to change things up, try new concepts, try being humorous, play around with live video. Your audience will ultimately let you know what they like best.
Jihad Altoukhi