Grow And Maintain YOUR Social Media Brand?

A simple guide for growing and maintaining your brand on social media..

Social media is a major part of everyone’s daily life. Despite the shifting popularity and recent worries about the security of various platforms, business leaders use these platforms to create networks of followers for communicating their work and inspiring people around the world.

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Leaders can -- and should -- use these tools to raise awareness of their organizations, boost their personal brands and share important victories.

Over the years, I have personally grown a loyal and dedicated following on various social media channels -- one that I truly cherish, appreciate and value. Over the last 10 years, I have used social media to help advance and grow professional relationships that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in nonprofit revenue and in-kind services and have garnered tens of millions of impressions and views on content from our group, Beneath the Waves. And I've done it all without hiring a formal PR team.

I’ve also seen people, especially emerging leaders, use these tools improperly with disastrous personal and professional consequences. Thus, I was inspired to create a short guide to help leaders of organizations of all shapes and sizes grow their brands on social media.

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Focus On High Value

Share your victories, and celebrate them on social media. You and your team deserve it. However, be picky and use good judgment to share wins with the highest value.

Paring down what to post can be hard for aspiration doers and productive individuals who may have multiple high-value pieces to share each week. Major news stories, press and key outputs are items I would consider high value.

The majority of your posts should be high value since they communicate a sense of forward momentum and progress.

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You Are Not A God

Over-posting personal wins can come off as self-important and potentially aggravate people. Humble-bragging is real and driven only by personal ego. I've committed this crime in the past, and a family member actually called me out on it.

By sharing every story you are quoted or mentioned in, you are diluting your value and can come off as self-important. People can also see through disingenuous posts.

I can think of at least a few people in the conservation space who start almost every post with the tired and now meaningless, “I’m humbled and honored...” Don’t be that person.

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Diversity Always Wins

Diversify your content. Sharing social media posts is like running a restaurant. Some people will come for the same thing over and over again, so you need to be really good at serving and retaining them. But the key is to keep bringing in new customers (or followers). A great way to do that is with exciting new items and offerings, so mix it up.

However, there is value in specializing -- doing one thing really well and serving that up over and over (superfans will love it). But in my opinion, the most effective leaders are always looking for ways to innovate their platforms and brand vision. I believe that if you don't evolve and innovate, you become noise and will die a slow marketing death while the next person in line takes your place. I think this ethic should be applied to social media.

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Complaining Is Ugly

Complaining is a surefire way to lose support. Whereas airing your issues out to dry might feel good in the short-term and appease a small portion of your followers, talking smack about other groups or people really just looks bad.

Ask yourself, "If my greatest mentor or dream partner saw this, what would they think about me?" I have dealt with haters and detractors over the years but have always resisted the urge to complain about them. The greats don't complain, and neither should you. Resist your own ego, and take the high road. It will serve you well!

Share The Love

You are likely passionate and love what you do -- it's why you’ve gotten to where you are professionally. Treat social media as a way to communicate your passion and motivation to move forward and make the world a better place. In the end, this is what most people connect with, and it will help your social media presence reflect your own trajectory and drive to succeed.

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Final Thoughts

If done right, social media can be your biggest asset as a leader. Diverse, thoughtful and engaging content can lead to tangible quantitative outcomes, such as funding and partnerships, while adding numerous intangibles to your digital brand (awareness, always being on people's radar and new friendships).

Most weeks, I try to share one to two pieces of high-value content from my professional world early in the week and sprinkle one lighter, more lifestyle-type post toward the end of the week.

Guest Authored By Austin Gallagher. Austin is the CEO of Beneath the Waves, a leading environmental non-profit linking ocean conservation with brands and influencers. Follow Austin on Twitter.

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Does it work? Here are two ways to tell:

1) People recall what you've been up to when you see them at a cocktail party. This is proof that your strategy is connecting with people.

2) people you haven't spoken to in months or years come out of the social media shadows to reconnect with you and engage. In addition to expanding your social network, you never know what great things could come from interactions like these. In the end, you can run your social platforms however you like, but I think these points can truly help business leaders grow their brands.

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  Post Crafted By:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at GetMoreHere.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

YOUR Social Media Brand Stories?

4 tips on how to succeed with Stories..

Are you ready for the “storification” of social media? Here are some best practices from successful early adopters.

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Blame it on Snapchat. Back in 2013, the upstart social network debuted Stories-vertical, ephemeral slideshows made of a mix of pics and videos shot by users over the course of a day.

Snapchat's teen users loved the format, though the rest of the social media universe took little notice -- at least, not at first.

But then Stories were copied by Facebook and introduced to a much wider audience on Instagram in 2016. Facebook itself, as well as its messaging platforms WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, rolled out Stories in 2017.

Now, a multitude of indicators point to a surprising conclusion: Stories are quietly eating the social world, fundamentally changing how we share and consume content on social media. For companies that rely on social media to reach their customers, this presents brand new opportunities -- and some real challenges.

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Stories represent yet another platform requiring attention -- perhaps not welcome news for businesses already straining to manage content across multiple social channels.

And while the old-fashioned newsfeed, a holdover from the desktop era, is well suited to short bursts of text or single images, Stories demand a mix of more time-intensive video, pics, and graphics.

But it's difficult to ignore the power -- and potential ROI -- of the Stories format. According to the latest research, Stories are growing 15 times faster than newsfeeds. More than 1 billion users are already hooked on the format. In fact, Facebook's own chief product officer, Chris Cox, has pretty much hitched the company wagon to Stories, noting, "The Stories format is on a path to surpass feeds as the primary way people share things with their friends sometime next year."

In other words, embracing the Story format may no longer be an option for businesses, but a requirement. Indeed, it's estimated that four of five major brands have already gotten onboard. Getting it right, however, isn't easy.

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Millennials and gen-Zers have grown up saturated with digital marketing and "content." (Some 293,000 status updates are now posted on Facebook every minute.)

They've learned to tune out banner ads and can smell a sales pitch a mile away. Companies hoping to reach them with Stories need to provide true value: to entertain, inform, or educate, not just sell.

Far from a direct marketing or sales play, Stories are a branding opportunity, with little place for a heavy-handed call to action.

Here's a quick survey of some effective early Stories adopters, revealing key principles that can help companies looking to ride the next social wave.

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Invest In Creativity

Stories work best when they integrate video, text, images, and more. Though they might look "off the cuff," they often have higher production value and require greater technical expertise than a typical Tweet or Facebook post. As noted by TechCrunch's Josh Constine, "Advertisers must rethink their message not as a headline, body text, and link, but as a background, overlays, and a feeling that lingers even if viewers don't click through." Narrative and storytelling-those buzzwords of content marketing-are table stakes.

Juice brand Tropicana immediately recognized the potential of higher production-value Instagram Stories to boost awareness and sales among young adults. In an especially successful campaign, they combined mouthwatering pour shots of juice being mixed into festive drinks like Sangria. Hand-draw text and arrows offered mixing instructions, and users were invited to "Swipe Up" for the full recipe. The result: an 18-point lift in ad recall and measurable boost in purchase intent.

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Use The Multimedia Format To Show Products In Action

The traditional packshot-a sterile image of a product sealed tightly in its packaging-has little place in the realm of Stories. Successful brands are instead using the multimedia format to show how products fit into the context of customers' lives. Tapping into influencers-users with loyal followings of their own-to create and share product Stories enables companies to extend their reach and access an already bought-in audience.

Case in point: Skincare company Dr. Brandt has used Instagram Stories to boost its following from 30,000 at the end of 2016 to more than 80,000 today. Its Stories integrate professional images and videos of its cosmetics products, like the popular "mattifying hydrator," with before-and-after demonstrations and tutorials on how to apply the product. Shoppers can even swipe up when viewing a Story to initiate checkout. By enabling shopping functionality on their Instagram Stories, Dr. Brandt was able to achieve a 500% increase in direct sales.

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Balance Production Value With Authenticity

Users expect a certain degree of polish from brands, but too much editing can rob a Story of its authenticity (not to mention require an outlay of time and money hard to justify for content that often disappears). Finding this balance isn't necessarily easy, and even some of the world's leading media brands have had to experiment.

After tracking its Instagram performance, the Guardian made an interesting discovery: Highly scripted Stories were not providing the expected return on investment. In contrast, their more spontaneous, less polished Stories-like their "explainer" videos-performed much better. These low-fi Stories also feature young presenters and use more casual language (like emojis) that has resonated much better with their digital audience. On the strength of their Stories efforts, the Guardian grew their Instagram followers from 860,000 to 1 million in just four months.

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Let Users Take Center Stage

Effective Stories capitalize on a fundamental attribute of many millennial and gen-Z users: The desire to share their own pics and videos and literally see themselves on screen, rather than just watch others. Brands finding success with Stories have found ways to elicit high-quality, user-generated content from fans, then incorporate that into their own efforts, streamlining production while at the same time cashing in on users' "social capital" to enhance their own credibility.`

Coworking company WeWork has built its brand on the idea of community, and their "behind-the-scenes" Instagram Story content exemplifies that. Celebrating a book launch in London their Stories feel raw and real because they feature the actual experiences of customers using their work spaces. WeWork also allows members to host Story takeovers to show a day-in-the-life at their offices. The ephemeral nature of Story content allows them to play around with quick, insider peeks into the company, while the "Highlight" feature allows them to permanently display high-performing Stories.

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Though the format continues to evolve, Stories aren't going away.

The ability for users to "highlight" their Stories-and preserve them as long as they like-already hints at the evolution of the format into something more central and durable. Meanwhile, each passing month brings innovations that add versatility, from ever more sophisticated stickers and face filters to the integration of advanced AR functionality that lets users create their own interactive doodles. What's increasingly clear is that for a new wave of digital natives, Stories are largely synonymous with social media itself, while the newsfeed-once Facebook's defining innovation-may be receding in prominence.

Guest Authored By Ryan Holmes. Ryan is the CEO of Hootsuite, a social media management system with more than 10 million users. A college dropout, he started a paintball company and pizza restaurant before founding Invoke Media, the company that developed Hootsuite in 2009. Today, Holmes is an authority on the social business revolution, quoted in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and called upon to speak at TEDx and SXSW Interactive Conferences. Follow Ryan on X.

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Though the format continues to evolve, Stories aren't going away.

The ability for users to "highlight" their Stories-and preserve them as long as they like-already hints at the evolution of the format into something more central and durable..

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  Post Crafted By:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at GetMoreHere.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, CO. where I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

YOUR Social Media Troll Communications?

How to handle trolls in social media..

Conventional wisdom says that companies should respond to everyone on social media. When people take the time to compliment a company, they want to be acknowledged; when they have a complaint, they want empathy and a resolution; and when they have a question, they just want the answer.

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But some people who tag companies on Twitter or post on a company’s Facebook page aren’t looking for any of those things. Instead, they are just looking for attention. These odious beasts are often referred to as trolls.

Trolls are nasty creatures that cause sleepless nights for social media marketers and customer service agents alike. Trolls are typically in search of an audience through incessantly negative banter about a brand. This can often be confusing for social customer care agents because they are used to people having problems that they try to solve. But trolls don’t really want resolution; they want attention. Often their “complaint” is so amorphous that it isn’t solvable anyway, and sometimes it has nothing to do with the company (in which case it also qualifies as spam).

The best way to deal with a troll is to respectfully answer the first post by offering to help. It’s also a good idea to offer to take the discussion offline so the person can rant privately instead of publicly. But here’s the interesting part: Because trolls generally aren’t looking for resolution, they are often surprised that the brand has engaged them at all. Many times, this will cause them to leave and go pick on another company.

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If, however, the person remains persistent after a couple of back-and-forths, it’s okay to ignore and/or block the person from future communications.

According to marketing and customer service consultant Jay Baer, author of Hug Your Haters, companies should follow the “Rule of Reply Only Twice,” which implores customer service agents to “Never, ever, ever, ever, EVER respond to someone more than twice.”

In the case of trolls, this is a good rule to follow, as there is no benefit in continuing the dialogue.

Baer suggests that even with compliments, there is a quickly diminishing return in answering multiple back-and-forth messages. The tricky part comes when there is a real problem being addressed that may require more than two responses, and the customer seems willing to engage further. In that case, continuing the conversation until the customer is satisfied is appropriate.

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Trolls are also the exception to other social media etiquette questions, such as whether it is okay to delete customer posts on a company’s Facebook page and whether it’s okay to just ignore a post and not respond at all.

The answer in these cases is yes for trolls but generally no for any other post. This also goes for spam posts and any posts that are purely based on hate or filled with profanity.

Guest Authored By Dan Gingiss. Dan is a marketing and customer experience executive who has consistently focused on delighting customers. He is a keynote speaker, the author of “Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences On Social Media” and the co-host of the Experience This! Podcast. His career has spanned multiple disciplines including marketing, customer experience, social media, and customer service. He is currently Vice President of Marketing at Persado, an AI-powered marketing language startup. Previously, he held leadership roles at several major brands: McDonald’s, Humana, and Discover. Follow Dan on Twitter.

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"Remember that people with legitimate complaints about your business are not trolls, and should always be treated respectfully with the goal of finding a resolution to the customer’s specific issue and identifying and correcting the root cause of the problem within the company. -DanGingess

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  Post Crafted By:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Salt Lake City, UT. where I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)