Community Management Archives

Strategies to Grow Your Instagram Audience

November 11, 2024

Growing a strong and loyal Instagram following is essential for any Instagram marketing agency or brand looking to boost its online presence. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for guaranteeing follower growth, but finding the best hacks for your brand will help you organically build your following effectively. Here is a look at the steps we recommend for tackling Instagram growth.

Focus on Organic Growth

There are plenty of websites available where you can buy followers on Instagram. However, you should focus on quality over quantity when it comes to your Instagram audience. Purchased, fake followers do nothing to boost your brand’s engagement; bot accounts cannot engage with your brand or convert to loyal customers. The Instagram algorithm weeds out low-quality accounts and fake engagement, hurting your brand visibility. Although it might take longer, growing your audience authentically ensures a meaningful connection from brand to consumer, boosting revenue and loyal customers.

Emphasize Consistency

Having a consistent brand voice and aesthetic ensures you create a memorable account. Use your brand’s colors and logos, and create a consistent theme to show your personality. By creating a cohesive style, Bright Age has helped Golden Girls and BigStub grow their Instagram audience from scratch each now boasting over 100,000 followers. As an Instagram marketing agency, staying updated with trends is essential to our strategy.

A consistent posting schedule helps you keep followers engaged and loyal. Regularly posted content keeps you at the top of your audience’s mind, reinforcing your brand’s identity. When followers can count on consistent posting and updates, they are more likely to return to your page.

BigStub

For BigStub, we emphasize event highlights and “top moments” from concerts showing what fans are experiencing as well as keeping them intrigued for future events. Using a mix of content types, including interactive stories, previews, and countdown posts from the beginning, helped us establish a recognizable brand, creating a sense of loyalty with our followers.

Golden Girls

For Golden Girls, Bright Age taps into nostalgia and fan-driven content. Memorable quotes, iconic scenes, and character trivia keep the content fresh and relatable to diehard fans on the platform. Applying new trends in our posting style and captions keeps us relevant and engaging for both new and returning fans.

Utilize Your Instagram Bio

Instagram allows up to 150 characters in your bio; optimizing your bio is essential to make every word count. It serves as your follower’s first glimpse into your brand’s identity, and adding the right keywords ensures your profile is discoverable by your target audience. Bios should be clear and creative, showing off personality, what your brand does, and how you can help them.

BigStub’s bio includes its company name, business description, and direct website link, making it simple for followers to find their brand and redirect you to an external page, allowing them to purchase tickets to highlighted events seamlessly.

Engage with Followers

It is no secret that engaging with followers is key to building brand loyalty. Engagement is a two-way street; followers are likelier to stay loyal when they feel valued. Responding to comments and direct messages shows followers that you care.

Monitor Analytics

Monitoring key analytics on Instagram is a simple way to understand what’s working. Instagram offers post insights where you can see metrics, including reach, demographics, impressions, and follows. Set specific goals to determine what metrics are best to track. If you’re testing out a series of hashtags on your page, consider focusing on new followers and engagement. If you are experimenting with new post-times, monitoring impressions is most important.

User-generated content is another key part of engagement. Encourage followers to create content and give them a reason to share. Asking followers to tag your brand in their content fosters an online community and generates organic content for your page.

Add Hashtags to Posts

Using the right hashtags helps expose your posts to a larger audience on Instagram. Hashtags add context to your post, making it easier to understand what your content is about and allowing Instagram to sort and deliver your content to more relevant audiences. For the best result, use three to five per post, focusing on industry-specific hashtags that are relevant to your audience and brand goals.

Building a loyal and engaged Instagram following with these strategies becomes an achievable goal. At Bright Age, we specialize as an Instagram marketing agency dedicated to helping brands like BigStub and Golden Girls grow on social media. Our tailored approach to engagement and trend-driven content ensures that your brand reaches new audiences and keeps followers returning for more. Ready to elevate your Instagram presence? Let Bright Age help you create meaningful connections and boost organic growth.

The Power of Social Media Sports Marketing

October 29, 2024

Social media has redefined how fans connect with their favorite teams and athletes. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X have become essential tools for sports organizations and brands, offering a sense of community while driving their revenue and staying authentic. By leveraging social media, sports marketing humanizes athletes and the brands they endorse, allowing direct fan engagement. This article will continue to explore how social media is reshaping the sports marketing landscape and dominating the space with innovative strategies.

Engagement and Targeted Campaigns

Social media allows sports marketers to tailor content that reaches specific audiences. Sports teams typically have multiple social media accounts across different channels, allowing them to create content for various fan behaviors, depending on the platform. This personalization drives engagement, ensuring fan interaction with content and fostering a deeper connection with teams and athletes.

Game highlights, exclusive interviews, ads, and promotions on social media platforms create a more immersive and meaningful experience for fans. By targeting specific audiences, such as location-based fans, with ticket promotions or merchandise, sports marketers can effectively turn team loyalty into revenue for their organization.

Importance of Being Active

Brands

Many of the most followed brands on Instagram are sports teams and organizations. Staying active and current on social media trends, including popular content, hashtags, and clips, is crucial for keeping your brand at the forefront of followers’ and new fans’ minds. Two of the most successful Instagram posts by BigStub, an online marketplace for concert, sports, and theater tickets, featured Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. By capitalizing on athletes’ talent like Ohtani and Judge, brands can drive traffic and encourage engagement. The beauty of social media is its adaptability; you can alter a campaign and ride the wave of trending content in real-time.

Sourced from BigStub

In the summer of 2023, one of baseball’s most notable players, Shohei Ohtani, smashed a foul ball, knocking out the LED lights on a Coors Light ad. The product left was the remnants of the classic silver Coors light can with a black box over the brand’s logo. The clip went viral across social media, and instead of seeing it as an embarrassment for the company, they turned it into an opportunity to create the “Lights Out” campaign. Within 48 hours, Coors launched a special edition can, selling out almost immediately, featuring a black square where the Pixels had gone out during the game. The organic nature of the ad and Coors’s ability to seek opportunity in viral content demonstrated the power of social media sports marketing and staying active in what fans are engaging with.

Athletes

Brands are not the only ones that benefit from social media sports marketing. Athletes utilize social media to promote themselves and build their personal brand, connecting with fans in and out of the season. Athletes now have a direct platform to interact with fans, craft their own content, and humanize themselves. This allows them to build a loyal fanbase and secure endorsement deals.

Olympic track star Noah Lyles has taken advantage of social media, using it as a platform to highlight his athletic journey, advocate for issues within his sport, and secure brand partnerships. His bold personality, outspoken nature, and bold fashion statements have contributed to his appeal as an influencer, even landing a leading role in the Netflix Sprint documentary. Lyles demonstrates the full scope of social media sports marketing by building an authentic and engaging presence on social media.

Revenue Opportunities

Social media’s reach allows connections between fans worldwide, expanding revenue potential. For example, while many might view basketball as an American-dominated sport, it boasts a huge fanbase in other countries such as the U.K., China, and Germany. Reaching these far-away audiences allows fans to stay updated with teams, regardless of distance. Social media allows teams to tap into previously untapped markets, creating connections beyond traditional sports marketing approaches.

Broadcast TV, sponsorships, and ticket sales currently hold the top spot for sports organization revenue. Social media provides an exciting opportunity to grow revenue on a different channel, seeing it as an extension of existing strategies. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X help organizations introduce new revenue streams, including paid sponsorships, merchandise sales, and branded content. Direct links to fans can drive instant purchases, offering an interactive experience and continued visibility.

Measuring Success

Compared to traditional marketing initiatives, social media marketing is a more affordable approach. In addition to cost-effectiveness, measuring the success and interaction of brands on social media is simple. Metrics such as impressions, conversion rates, follower growth, and sentiment give insight into the effectiveness of marketing strategies and opportunities for growth.

At Bright Age, we specialize in crafting curated campaigns that build engaging content, ensuring your brand stays relevant and impactful. Let us help you capitalize on social media sports marketing opportunities and make your social media a powerful asset.

The Importance of Measuring Social Media Sentiment

October 3, 2024

In today’s digital age, businesses use social media as a platform and crucial tool for understanding customer sentiment. Social media sentiment analysis, which involves gathering customer perceptions of a brand, product, or service online, is a metric that helps brands shape their online environment and compare themselves in the eyes of the consumer and the competition. Let’s investigate how measuring social media sentiment can significantly influence your brand’s perception.

Brand Messaging

Social media sentiment analysis provides immediate access to user interactions. This allows your brand to craft messages they are more likely to resonate with and alter strategy according to the content types consumers prefer. As a brand evolves and introduces new products, how your brand is perceived is bound to change. By analyzing these sentiments consistently, you can stay up to date to have a more effective campaign and more vital brand awareness.

Positive, Negative, and Neutral

Sentiment analysis should be at the forefront of every content strategy by a brand. Understanding how your audience feels towards you improves customer engagement and interaction. Social media sentiment dives into the emotions behind these online interactions. Customers turn to social media platforms as the first place to express these emotions through posts, comments, and likes. How your brand responds to these will make or break your brand.

Seeing a surge of praise on social media indicates that your brand is resonating well with your target audience. Acknowledging these positive comments with thanks can strengthen your customer relationship and show that you value their support and feedback. Some positive terms you can look for might include:

– Helpful
– Quality
– Love
– Thanks
– Amazing
– Consistent

Engaging with positive mentions fosters a stronger connection between your brand and audience, reinforcing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

On the other hand, an influx of negative comments and complaints alerts brands of problems with a product or service they should investigate immediately. Monitoring these sentiments is crucial for understanding audience needs and how your brand should alter its strategy. Actively engaging with the audience, especially with negative comments, can improve your brand’s reputation, showing the audience you care about their experience and are firmly committed to improving your services. Some negative terms to look out for might include:

– Upset
– Disappointed
– Mad
– Hate
– Angry

For example, Target recently responded to customer feedback on social media by adjusting their online shopping experience, showing they are listening and making changes based on customer concerns. This responsiveness demonstrates a commitment to improvement, turning potentially negative experiences into opportunities to build customer loyalty.

Social Media sentiment analysis helps you control your reputation. Discussions are constantly happening online; you can control and adjust the narrative better when you have a detailed sentiment analysis, ensuring you’re addressing it head-on.

How To Measure Brand Sentiment

Simply looking at social media mentions will not give you the richest look at consumers’ inside conversations regarding your brand’s presence. Understanding social media sentiment helps strengthen your brand, giving you a strategic advantage by identifying customer needs, enhancing products, and making more informed decisions.

Keyword Analysis: Tools like MonkeyLearn and Sprout Social can track specific words and phrases and determine whether they were used in a positive, negative, or neutral context. They analyze social media platforms such as X, Instagram, Yelp, and Google Reviews for a saturated coverage of your brand.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP is an artificial intelligence software, a resource used now more than ever for measuring analytics. It’s an excellent option for brands looking to analyze the tone of social media content to categorize it into different emotional responses. NLP can summarize information, answer questions, and even conduct conversations.
Surveys and Polls: Beyond examining engagement manually and monitoring specific trends, directly asking the audience for feedback through surveys or polls on social media can allow immediate feedback on your audience’s attitudes toward your brand, products, and content.

Measuring social media sentiment is essential for maintaining a positive brand image and deepening customer relationships. By actively monitoring and responding to customer feedback—whether positive or negative—your brand can adapt its strategies, improve products, and build stronger connections with its audience, ultimately leading to more long-term success. At Bright Age, we understand the power of social media sentiment in shaping brand perception. By leveraging our expertise in digital marketing, we help brands actively monitor and respond to customer sentiment in real time, ensuring your brand stays connected to its audience, enhances customer loyalty, and drives long-term success in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

The Importance of Social Media Customer Care

September 25, 2024

It’s no secret that engaging with customers through social media boosts brand visibility, but what about its role in customer service? Many companies provide customer care and support through social media in today’s digital age. Giving customers the option to reach out to you on social media includes customer experience, satisfaction, and real-time convenience. Let’s dive into why offering social media customer care is crucial for businesses today.

The Shift From Traditional to Social Media

Social media has redefined how brands handle customer service questions and complaints. More customers are turning to social media as their first resource for fast and easy responses from brands.

Social media offers immediate, nearly 24/7 interaction from brand to customer for quicker solutions and more satisfied clients. Instead of waiting in queues or listening to hold music, customers can quickly reach a brand through comments, direct messages, or tweets. Contact forms and emails feel impersonal as you don’t know when an actual person will get around to reading your request or where you fall in the line of complaints before you. Social media helps with this burden. Customer care on social media is faster than ever. Responding promptly to customers can boost loyalty with them directly and publicly show other customers who land on your page that you care about customer satisfaction.

Best Practices of Social Media Customer Care

One of the most critical aspects of social media customer care is authenticity. Customers want to feel like they’re interacting with a real person, not just an automated response. Staying consistent with your brand and its values is equally important. Social media allows the flexibility to engage with customers in various ways, but staying true to your brand’s tone ensures long-term loyalty.

Liquid Death Approach

Liquid Death is a canned water brand known for its edgy and bold social media strategy. When responding to customers on social media platforms, they avoid the traditional, polished tone. Instead, they are brutally honest, incorporating humor, sarcasm, and occasional cursing. Thai approach aligns with Liquid Death’s brand voice, making their customers feel unique and providing a more memorable experience.

In these examples, Liquid Death stays true to its brand’s identity. It resonates strongly with their target audience and reinforces authenticity. This approach isn’t for everyone but suits Liquid Death’s rebellious and honest tone.

Domino’s Pizza Approach

In contrast, Domino’s Pizza focuses on its core values of doing the right thing, putting people first, and creating inspired solutions. This is clearly shown in their customer care strategy on social media. Not only do they provide reference numbers to respond to complaints promptly, but they also provide the names of employees assisting customers. This ensures the customer feels seen and heard, knowing they are talking to a real person who wants to sort out issues that arise.

These two brands have different approaches to social media customer care, yet both stay true to their ethos. Domino’s couldn’t engage with customers in the same aggressive style as Liquid Death, just as Liquid Death would not be expected to take on Domino’s more corporate response style.

Benefits of Social Media Customer Care

Timeliness

Using social media for customer care allows brands to respond in real-time. Customers expect fast responses, especially on social media platforms. Choose accounts you are active on regularly to address inquiries and issues quickly. People feel seen and valued when companies are willing to respond publicly to them, valuing customer feedback.

Automation tools can help handle common questions or complaints, especially during hours outside the traditional work day. This being said, human interaction should still handle more complex issues. Providing a balance between the two is something a brand can consider in its customer care mix.

Personalization

Tailored responses to customers are essential to building a solid relationship. Generic, automated replies often push customers away and cause frustration due to a lack of personalization. A personalized response strategy makes customers feel valued, and the brand is attentive to addressing specific needs and concerns.

Brands should be prepared to offer support across multiple platforms. These can include Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Be familiar with your audience and demographics and which platforms they are the most active on.

Monitoring

Tracking messages, comments, and mentions is simple on social media platforms. Using specific tools to track customer interactions, brands can gain valuable insight into customer sentiment and issues that might reoccur. This monitoring allows brands to improve their strategies continuously.

Social media customer care is essential for brands wanting to engage with audiences and provide fast, personalized service. At Bright Age, we specialize in helping brands navigate this care, providing tailored strategies and creative solutions to ensure your business stays connected with its customers.

How to Personalize Social Media Marketing for Your Tailored Audience

July 25, 2024

Although customer service has traditionally been associated with in-person encounters, such as the checkout line or the tire shop, it has now moved to the digital realm. Brands must now excel in online customer service, emphasizing punctuality with responses within the hour and crafting unique replies for each consumer query.

personalized social media marketing - laptop

Social media provides many opportunities to personalize advertised content to consumers. The key is to tap into this in a way that appeals to a specific audience. Ultimately, consumers will gravitate towards brands that demonstrate genuine connection and care for their needs and preferences. Addressing their unique needs through personalized engagement and content is the first step in achieving a genuine connection to your audience.

Customers want to be heard. Most consumers agree that brands are most memorable when attentive and responding to customers. However, not just any response will cut it. Consumers appreciate any extra measures brands take to enhance their experience. To deliver a truly exceptional customer experience, dig deeper to understand your audience’s needs and preferences. Get your customer insights and data ducks in a row. Leave room for testing new ideas and iterating. These are crucial steps toward nurturing your brand’s competitive edge and crafting a seamless, cohesive journey that delights your audience at every touchpoint.

As revealed in Salesforce’s in-depth State of the Connected Consumer study, 73% of consumers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. Learning more about your target audience, such as what they like on social media, their interests, content preferences, who they follow, and what stage of the buying process they’re in, will all help create a personalized social media marketing strategy.

Starbucks is a leader in creating a personalized marketing strategy for its costumers. If someone continuously orders a caramel macchiato, there will be a personalized deal for them on their Starbucks app: “Order this drink 5 times by 7/1 and get your 6th one free.” To promote these personalized offers even further, Starbucks will share deals on their social channels and create targeted ad campaigns to entice repeat customers. This concept also has great delivery; users get notifications from their Starbucks app that mimic a text from a friend or a social media notification. Their Instagram is the same way: casual and conversational, giving it a personal feel.

personalized social media marketing - Starbacks

To reach younger generations, te use f relevant and trendy copywriting is extremely valuable. This doesn’t mean throwing in text acronyms like ‘LOL’ or ‘OMG.’ Leaning into specific and niche formats of trending jokes and bits can be used for personalized social media marketing. Liquid I.V. utilizes this popular formula often, one instagram post states, “We’re Liquid I.V. OF COURSE we’re going to make you pee every 30 minutes.” This sentence makes sense to all viewers, even if they do not get the joke. However, the post is ten times cleverer and more relevant to those who are “in the know” about this trend on TikTok. Regardless of the consumer’s knowledge, it still portrays a clear message of what their product does casually and humorously. However, for the younger viewers who get the joke, this post will leave them feeling more connected to the brand and more likely to think about it again the next time they see this format of a joke/meme on their feed.

Vital Protein targets a specific audience and age group quite literally. One Instagram post states, “If you’ve ever been personally victimized by another generation calling you out for wearing your ankle socks proudly, please raise your hand. Our millennial (and over) support group is officially open in the comments section below. #collagen #anklesocks #millennials #genz #millennial #genx.” This explicitly calls out a specific group of people, so they are guaranteed to relate and connect with the content and maybe even share it with a friend.

Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram offer powerful tools for businesses to tailor ads based on factors like user interests and online behavior. Many people, especially the younger generation, are inclined to scroll on social media between daily tasks. A magazine may not always be accessible, but social media on their phone is. As we know, Instagram is used by many folks in various places, such as waiting rooms, bus stops, or kitchens, waiting for coffee to finish brewing. This provides an ample amount of time to reach target audiences. By crafting content that speaks directly to your niche audience and delivering it straight to their content feeds, you can build experiences that resonate and stick with each user. Bright Age social media tailors elements such as visuals and copywriting to appeal to our audience. All text is intentional and personalized to connect to our audience and make a lasting impact.

While text is crucial, visual appeal is arguably just as important. Social media and digital content must appear as something people are inclined to click. Well-organized, concise, attention-grabbing, and aesthetically pleasing. Bright Age employs very organized, accessible designs on our website and social media to ensure that clients and potential clients quickly find their needs. “Our services” is listed, followed by each service we offer with a clever symbol and a concise description. You can increase engagement and audience retention by better understanding how to personalize your content to your viewers.

By tailoring content to your viewers’ interests and preferences and keeping their experience on your site easy and pleasurable, you’re more likely to capture and maintain their attention. It can be difficult to establish how to appeal to a niche target audience, but partnering with a specialized social media agency such as Bright Age can enhance your brand’s ability to create targeted, personalized marketing campaigns for your specific audience demographic.

How to Create a Unified Brand Voice Across Different Social Platforms

June 17, 2024

How To Create a Unified Brand Voice Across Different Social Platforms

Maintaining a consistent brand voice across social media platforms is essential for building a recognizable and trustworthy presence. It is this very uniformity that would help clearly communicate your brand’s values, personality, and message to the audience—no matter where they find you. Here are a few tips on making your brand voice consistent across different social platforms.

Understanding Your Brand

Before you can establish a consistent voice, you need a deep understanding of your brand. This involves defining your brand’s mission, values, and personality. Think of your brand as a person: What is your brand’s purpose? What problem does it solve? What principles guide your brand’s actions and decisions? Is your brand formal or casual? Friendly or authoritative? These elements will form the backbone of your brand voice and should be documented in a brand guide to ensure everyone in your organization is aligned.

Knowing Your Audience

Your brand voice should resonate with your target audience. Thoroughly research who your audience is, what they care about, and how they communicate. Consider their demographics: age, gender, location, occupation; and psychographics: interests, values, lifestyle, and online behavior. Consider their social media preferences. Knowing which platforms they use and how they use them will help you tailor your voice to meet their expectations and preferences, creating a more engaging and relatable presence.

Developing a Brand Voice Chart

A brand voice chart is a practical tool that outlines how your brand’s personality translates into communication. It should include your brand’s voice characteristics, describing your brand’s personality traits such as witty, compassionate, or professional. Additionally, explain how the tone might vary depending on the situation; for instance, it may be more formal in crisis communication and more relaxed in day-to-day interactions. Provide examples of language, phrases, and styles to use or avoid, ensuring clarity and consistency in communication.

Tailoring Content for Each Platform

While maintaining a consistent brand voice, it’s essential to adapt your content to the unique characteristics of each social platform.

Facebook allows for a mix of content types, so here your brand voice should be friendly and inviting. Posts to Facebook can be longer, and you can share articles, videos, and events. Your tone should be casual, and your post style should be community and conversation-focused. Effective storytelling will build a deeper connection with your audience.

Twitter, with its character limit, demands brevity and wit. Short updates, news, and quick responses are your game here. A sharp tone to the point using hashtags and trending topics will help you contribute meaningfully to broader conversations.

Instagram, being visual-centric, is ideal for storytelling through images and videos. Here, your brand voice should be aesthetically interesting and emotionally engaging, using photos, stories, and reels. An inspirational tone with visually descriptive language, set up with the help of emojis and hashtags, can increase engagement.

LinkedIn, as a professional network, requires a brand voice that reflects professionalism and expertise. Articles, industry insights, job postings, and company updates are suitable content types. Maintain a formal and authoritative tone, sharing thought leadership content and professional achievements.

TikTok thrives on creativity and trendiness. Your brand voice should be fun and authentic, and you can achieve this through the use of short-form videos, challenges, and trends. The general tone is playful and engaging, embracing trends and even inciting user-generated content—the recipe for TikTok success.

Training Your Team

Consistency requires that everyone involved in content creation and communication understands and can effectively use the brand voice. This starts with onboarding new employees, training them on your brand voice guidelines. Regular workshops can refresh and update the team on any changes, while feedback sessions can encourage team members to share best practices and insights.

Using Tools for Consistency

Leveraging tools can help maintain a consistent brand voice across platforms. Use content calendars for making plans regarding the content to be put up to make sure that it aligns with the strategy. Make use of social media management tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social to schedule and manage your posts across these platforms. Constantly reviewing analytics will help you know what works with your audience, so you can consider making necessary changes with your voice.

Monitoring and Adapting

A brand voice is not static. It evolves with your brand, audience, and the digital landscape. Regularly monitor your social media channels to ensure your voice remains consistent and relevant. Social listening ensures that you track conversations around your brand, providing you insights into public perception. Feedback from your audience will also reveal to you their taste and preferences. Be ready to tweak the voice to keep it fresh and relevant in the current trends and audience preferences.

Conclusion

Creating a unified brand voice across different social platforms is a dynamic and ongoing process. It requires an acute knowledge of your brand and your audience, specific content strategies, team training on consistency, and management tools. Following these steps, you will create a robust, identifiable, and engaging brand presence that resonates with your audience and stands out in the crowded digital space. The more consistent your brand voice is, the more trust you will gain, and the deeper your connection will be with the audience, eventually driving loyalty and growth.

How to Create a Social Story for Your Brand

March 18, 2024

When thinking about a brand that you love, what comes to mind? Are you thinking of a product or the actual brand itself? If you only thought of a product, there are strategies brands can use to transform that thinking of the product into the actual brand itself. This can be done through storytelling, an extremely powerful marketing tool that inspires and connects customers to your brand. For example, when one wears a sustainable brand, they feel like a friend of the planet and should embrace the outdoors. When brands create successful social stories, they make customers feel as if they are characters in their brand journey when they use their products and services. Brands can use a social story to create brand loyalty and increase engagement with their audiences.

What is Brand Storytelling and Why is it Important to Your Brand?

Brand storytelling is crucial in developing relationships and connections with your audiences. Creating a brand social story is the idea of crafting a narrative of your brand that will further the emotional connection between audiences and your brand. By having a brand social story, brands can showcase their values, goals, and shared experiences to form connections with their audiences. Through the use of narrative techniques and shared values, brands can create loyal and long-lasting relationships between customers and themselves.

There are numerous reasons as to why having a social story is beneficial to your brand. First of all, these stories contribute to your brand identity. Telling a social story about how your brand came to be, the setbacks you may have faced along the way, or your core values will show audiences how and why your brand came to be, thus giving them a sense of identity. It promotes understanding of what issues your brand is working to solve, and how you came to the brand’s purpose and mission. Overall having a brand story, showcases your brand’s roots and identity, and will create loyal customers, prompting business growth and higher customer engagement rates.

Using social stories also helps brands connect with customers in a range of ways. Stories can evoke emotional responses to brands, and allow for customers to connect on a deeper level. Social stories can promote relatability and allow customers to see themselves as part of the brand as they become characters as they go on their journey with the brand. Using brand stories is greatly beneficial in developing a closer connection with customers.

One more thing that is greatly beneficial from brand social stories is differentiating your brand from others. Stories offer the ability to show customers what makes your brand different and why they should choose you instead of another brand. This is a chance to show your audiences what makes your brand special and unique.

How to Create and Use Social Stories as a Part of Your Marketing Plan

When implementing a social story into your marketing plan, you should be aware of various factors before you start. The first one is to understand why your brand came to exist and the purpose it works to serve. It may seem obvious, but it is crucial to be aware and have a thorough understanding of your brand’s values, missions, and the stories that are to be told, as well as the purpose of the products. Additionally, you should be aware of the audience you are attempting to reach. Market research should be performed, and you should be sure of the platforms and methods you will use to successfully share your story.

When telling a social story, the factors you want to include are closely related to those of an actual story. These include the current state of things, characters, setting, conflict, and resolution. By using these narrative factors, you can tell an effective social story.

You create a character that the audience can relate to, and introduce a conflict that your product solves resulting in the resolution. By using these factors you can create a compelling story where at the heart of it you are incorporating the core values of your brand.

When implementing your social story into your brand’s social media marketing strategy there are various ways to do it. With various social media platforms, your content creation will vary. For example, you could create a short clip video and upload it to Instagram Reels or TikTok, or a longer format video for YouTube. It is important to use visual and thought-provoking elements when portraying your story, as well as know the audience you intend to reach and where they are.

The Value of Monitoring Current Strategies

It is always important to see how your current strategies are working, and how your audiences are receiving the storytelling content. You can look at what customers are saying about your products so you can see where there may need to be an improvement, the sentiment around your brand, and if you are being received positively or negatively. There is great value in seeing what your audiences are saying about your brand and what is and is not successful. Brands should be monitoring social analytics through listening tools to see how effective their storytelling is.

Social stories are a core social media marketing strategy. Through the use of a narrative format to display the purpose, products, and values of your brand, there is an extensive opportunity to form a closer and deeper emotional connection with your target audience. Bright Age can help you on your journey of forming social stories, whether it’s starting the brand from the beginning, developing strategies, or performing research to see if your methods are successful!

Why Competitor Analysis is Key for Social Marketing

March 13, 2024

Knowing where your business stands in comparison to your competitors is an essential part of any business strategy. Competitor analysis is an important aid for marketers to use, and there are several tools out there that can be utilized to do this.

What is Competitor Analysis

Competitor Analysis is a process that companies use to benchmark their performance against others in their industry. This is incredibly important for businesses because it helps them identify where their strengths and weaknesses are, and which areas they will need to improve on to increase their competitive advantage. It is a great aid to identify trends, understand the given market in an industry, and set goals for companies in their future.

Computer Analytics with intention of showing Competitor Analysis Example

Pricing and positioning strategies are some of the important things for businesses to consider when conducting a competitor analysis, but there are several other factors to note that are just as important. The social media presence and website content of another brand are just as necessary to analyze because they help improve SEO, online visibility, and content strategy against competition. Especially with the current market of our world today, ensuring that data is collected in these specific online spaces is crucial in order to conduct a proper analysis.

Why it’s Key for Marketers

To best cater to your customer’s wants, and needs, and increase overall customer satisfaction, a competitive analysis is essential for marketers. Marketing is all about ensuring that your company’s offerings stand out against other brands. The only way to truly do this is to see where your competition benchmarks and find innovative ways to stand out. By leveraging insights gained from this kind of analysis, companies will be able to identify future goal points and achieve them as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Marketers can also utilize this process when they are looking to enter new markets. As companies conduct market research on their industry, they may see opportunities for growth or improvement after seeing where their competitors have failed/ been successful. Whether these be opportunities within the company or possibilities for new market entry, a competitor analysis can open doors for new innovations that companies may have never otherwise known about. Brands can also capitalize on these opportunities to differentiate themselves further. If they are able to see firsthand how they stand against competitors, then they might be able to find new ways to differentiate against them. For instance, it is important for companies like BigStub to conduct this process against competitors in their industry like StubHub so that they can differentiate themselves and find ways to leverage against this similar company.

Stub Hub Social Media Example to show differentiation of competitors

BigStub Social Media Example to show differentiation of competitors

How to Conduct a Competitor Analysis

There are so many tools and platforms available that can help companies conduct this kind of analysis. SproutSocial is one platform that offers a template that can guide businesses through this process.

When beginning to conduct an analysis, the first thing to consider is what the overall goal is. You want to ensure that you have a key focus and understanding of the space you are working in so that you can adequately determine who your key competitors are, and then work forward from there. After identifying those key competitors, you can compare their business model and insights to your company, and assess where you stand when positioned next to them.

Following your analysis, it can be really beneficial to put all the insights into one organized space. There are several frameworks available that can help you identify what you learned through your analysis, and where you plan on moving from this point forward. Porter’s 5 Forces Framework, PESTLE, and SWOT analyses are all frameworks that can clearly define where your brand goes after conducting a competitor analysis.

Example of Comupter Analysis to aid in understanding of competitor analysis

When marketers are able to properly utilize this analysis, they will see how beneficial having these insights can be for the future of their company. It is so important to know what the environment around you looks like when deciding where you will go with your next marketing campaign, and one of the best ways to do this is through a competitor analysis. It will be the key to your company’s success!

The Different Social Softwares on the Market

February 20, 2024

Now that social media has become such an integral part of all of our lives, the development of Social Scheduling Programs has become essential for businesses looking for efficiency in the management of their social media platforms. Social media accounts like BigStub are always creating content days in advance, and social scheduling programs are what allow them to do so. Several of these programs exist out there, and we’re going to dissect a few and compare and contrast what separates them in the market today.

Most social softwares involve content planning through AI-powered features that provide insights for businesses on their content. With the current market research that exists today, (showing the most popular social media platforms) these softwares integrate several different platforms and put them onto a single dashboard allowing businesses to improve upon and further customize their content. While these sites have several commonalities, there are things that set them apart from one another as well.

Social media apps showing the common platforms used by social scheduling programs on the market.

Sprout Social

SproutSocial is a social media management tool that businesses can use to see analytics and reports across Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, Whatsapp, and YouTube. Using SproutSocial, you can schedule and publish content for any of these platforms directly from the site itself. SproutSocial also allows for review management and a centralized social media inbox where messages coming in from the number of platforms they integrate can all be viewed and replied to in the same place.

Social media analytics used by social scheduling programs

Something that separates SproutSocial from other scheduling platforms is its social listening tool, which helps businesses reach out to their target audiences in more effective ways. SproutSocial’s variety of platforms makes it a strong contender in the market of social scheduling programs.

Sprinklr

Sprinklr is another program that businesses can use to report analytics, create, and schedule content from a selection of social media platforms (X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest). Users reviewing Sprinklr agree that it is a very easy-to-use platform that quickly uploads things like the delivery of tweets from X. Reviewers also say that the customer service at Sprinklr is extremely responsive, which is important when dealing with any online program.

Sprinklr also offers a competitor analysis feature for reporting and analytics that allows companies to benchmark where they stand in relation to their competitors. A downside to Sprinklr is that there are certain content formats (like Instagram story videos, or polls) that cannot be posted using the program.

Monday

Monday is a project management program that participates in social scheduling as well. With the help of AI, Monday has powerful reporting and analytics integrating tools like Slack, Asana, Trella, Google Drive, Hubspot, Gmail, Zendesk, Jira, Dropbox, Google Calendar, and Excel. One of the things that separates Monday from other platforms is its price. It is pretty moderately priced in comparison to other programs. Monday excels in providing formats that help with organizational management for businesses where they can separate different projects within the same dash. They also provide pre-built templates making the usability of the program easy for its users to navigate.

Computer research used to show example of research on social scheduling programs.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social scheduling program that allows for scheduling messages, inbox monitoring, and managing posts. An advantage of Hootsuite is that it is one of the few programming sites that fully support X, previously known as Twitter. Similar to Sprinklr, Hootsuite also allows users to benchmark their statistics against their competitors. A good thing to know about Hootsuite is that it integrates with Proofpoint (protects brands, people, and data against cyber attacks), to flag compliance issues.

How to Use AI-Generated Messages without Losing Personalization

January 29, 2024

AI-Generated Content Creation

Artificial intelligence has grown exponentially, both privately and publicly, over the last couple of years. ChatGPT’s release to the public a little over a year ago has changed the game when it comes to AI-generated content, as it’s now accessible to anyone at any time. While artificial intelligence can aid in producing meaningful content, it is important for businesses to prioritize personalization in order to retain a level of human connection and continue producing high-quality content.

When it comes to adding value and ensuring cohesiveness within your brand, content creation is one of the most effective ways to engage audiences and build a community. This is because its intention is to find a way to resonate with target audiences in a way that feels personalized to them specifically.

AI-generated content has become an extremely popular tool for businesses to use as it provides a way to create any type of media quickly and at a relatively low cost. This is especially seen when considering the improvements made in the last couple of years that allow AI to go in and use past behaviors and audience preferences to create its content. There are platforms out there, like Sprout Social, that aim to provide insights and analytics to allow businesses to make informed decisions regarding their own content creation. Although it serves as an essential tool, it’s important for creators to remember that there are some missing elements in AI-generated content that only a human can provide.

Knowledgeable and reputable content creators are that way because they know how to add an extended element of trust and emotion to their content that doesn’t always come across when something is solely AI-generated content. It is imperative that content creators review any and all AI-generated content in order to avoid losing personalization that they would have otherwise had had they created the content themselves.

Why AI Can’t do it all Alone

Copywriting is another element that has been affected by AI since its existence. In order to have effective copywriting, the content written must be emotionally stimulating where the words written fit the style, purpose, and tone of voice of whatever it is you may be trying to convey.

Utilizing content that is AI-generated as a tool to enhance copywriting can be beneficial, but solely relying on it without any human review is potentially damaging. Relationships are the key to successful businesses, and the only way for businesses to create these relationships is to ensure that their audience feels that trust and emotion come across throughout all content, which is why AI can’t do it alone.

Building a Community Using AI to your Advantage

When the same message is sent out in large numbers where little personalization is necessary, AI can be used to speed up the process. That being said, diligence when it comes to monitoring and responding to different clients or accounts are important to increase personal relationships outside of content that was AI-generated.

Community management is a top priority for most businesses. While AI-generated content serves as a great aid, there are ways to add personalization here without AI that are essential to a business’s success. This is an example of the kind of responsiveness that shows a company values its customers and their questions.

It is imperative that businesses find a way to leverage AI-generated content in a way that’s beneficial to them, without losing the sense of personalization and creativity that comes from human review.