Social Media Next Best Practices … 3 Examples to Study

This concept of changing people’s behavior is the basis of this section, and of social marketing as a whole. We will talk about what social marketing is, and why it can be of use to you in your organization for the next best practices.

Then, we’ll go into more depth on marketing, and discuss what is known as the “4 Ps”–the four elements around which all types of marketing, social or profit-oriented, are centered.

Finally, we’ll finish with an overview of the stages someone will go through if their effort is successful.

Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced.

-David Freemantle

It’s a lot of information, and much of it is more conceptual in nature than many other sections of the ToolBox. The next three sections of this chapter, then, will try to ground these ideas more thoroughly, so they can be used in your day-to-day work.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MARKETING?

So what, exactly, is social marketing? In Social Marketing Report, it’s defined as, “the application of commercial marketing techniques to social problems.” It means to take the same principles used in selling goods–such as shoes, television shows, or pizza–to convince people to change their behavior.

What does that mean? Well, instead of selling hamburgers, you’re selling a life without heart attacks. Instead of convincing teenagers to buy blue jeans, you’re convincing them to buy the advantages of postponing pregnancy.

Of course, if you are selling blue jeans, you’re still trying to influence behavior–you’re convincing people they need to wear your jeans–either for comfort, or for style, or value. So then, what is the difference between social marketing and commercial marketing?

It’s really summed up in one key point: commercial marketing tries to change people’s behavior for the benefit of the marketer; social marketing tries to change people’s behavior for the benefit of the consumer, or of society as a whole.

“I’m not a doctor,” runs the joke. “I just play one on T.V.” Television and other forms of mass media, it seems, are often highly adept at making complicated tasks look simple.

This is especially true when it comes to marketing. The thirty-second ad for toothpaste will seem incredibly simple, even a bit silly–yet we’ll find ourselves humming the jingle in the car on the way home. When we stop by the grocery store a week later, we might pick up that toothpaste, caught by its colorful box and placement on the shelves.

We’ve been grabbed by a successful marketing campaign. It might seem so simple, that we’re barely aware of it–but it really represents a huge amount of research, design, and testing done by the toothpaste corporation.

Social marketing is based on the same principles used to sell that tube of toothpaste. It means using commercial marketing techniques to try and improve social problems. A social marketing campaign might be used, for example, to try to reduce violence against women, or to increase the number of people who sign up as donors for the national bone marrow registry.

Managing a social marketing campaign might look fairly simple–like you’re just putting up more posters to raise awareness of the lead poisoning problem in your community, for example. In reality, however, it’s much more than that. Social marketing is no less than a shift in how you view and run your program or organization. It can be a very effective approach, but it’s one with many details to consider.

On the following few screens, we’ll try to make concrete how you can accomplish many of these details. We’ll start by touching briefly on the importance of social marketing and when might be a sensible time for your group to draw up a social marketing campaign.

Then, we’ll dive into the details of how to manage a social marketing program. We’ll include how to separate consumers into individual groups and how to find out what those groups want (and how you can give it to them). Then, we’ll discuss designing the message, choosing the medium, and finally, implementing and evaluating your work.

Social marketing is an approach with a lot of advantages. Perhaps the two most pointed benefits are:

It helps you reach your target audience. Social marketing makes you look at whom you want to influence, and how to sway these people most effectively. And, for this reason,

It works. If creative, thorough marketing has helped numerous companies make millions of dollars, there is no reason, that well-run social marketing campaigns can’t be even more effective, in changing people’s behavior. After all, the benefits of good health (or a clean environment, or an end to date rape) are surely more evident than the benefits of a pair of running shoes.

So when is the proper time to run a social marketing campaign?

It will depend quite a bit on your program or organization, of course, but generally speaking…

When you are trying to change the behavior of a large number of people. If the number of people who you are trying to reach is small enough that they can be spoken with individually, or in a group, the time is probably not ripe for social marketing. For example, if you are interested in asking students at Pleasant Valley High School to volunteer at the upcoming spring fair, you might speak to them at an assembly, or visit individual classrooms. The development of a social marketing plan is more than is necessary. If, however, you want to increase volunteerism among everyone who lives in Pleasant Valley, a social marketing plan might be just what’s called for.

When you are trying to change behavior over a long period of time. Social marketing plans tend to be for long-term projects, when you are trying to change people’s behavior permanently, or over a long period of time. Generally speaking, if you are asking people to perform a particular action once, efforts to convince them to do so wouldn’t use a social marketing campaign. This is a bit tricky because some of the same principles might be used, or such an action might be a part of a social marketing campaign.

For example, asking people to give blood once at their office wouldn’t be social marketing. However, a concerted effort by the blood bank to try to increase the number of people who donate blood regularly might use office blood drives as a part of the campaign. That effort as a whole might be a social marketing campaign, provided it used the marketing principles we have talked about.

When you have the resources necessary to manage a comprehensive effort. As we’ve seen in the previous two bullets, running a social marketing campaign is not a short-term idea. It’s more of a philosophy that will direct how you approach your work as a whole. Therefore, a social marketing campaign should only be undertaken when you’re ready to use the time and resources it will take to make that shift.

This doesn’t mean your organization or program has to have a lot of money to use a social marketing approach. Excellent social marketing can be done on a shoestring budget if people are excited and willing to put a lot of effort into making it work.

With a dizzying array of new mobile apps created every day, it can be hard to decide where to invest your digital marketing dollars. But certain platforms have become canonical social media marketing tools. Facebook, Twitter, and more recently Instagram and Pinterest are being seen as essential to the digital arm of any campaign.

But being a whiz on one platform doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll be a whiz on the next. A campaign that works on Facebook may not be fair as well on Twitter. It’s important to appreciate the nuance of each platform.

With that in mind, here are three beautifully executed social marketing campaigns.

Ford

Ford decided to market its C-Max hybrid with a cutting-edge campaign that integrated customer Instagram photos into a C-Max commercial. For those who have been sleeping under a rock for the last year, Instagram is a social photography app that lets users capture, modify and share compelling photos with their friends. The social and visual nature of the app makes it a prime target for marketers.

The core of the idea is to use Instagram to create one of the first collaborative stop motion animations. First, a 30-second animation was created and individual frames were stripped out of it to create 98 billboards that are going up all across the country.

Anyone can stand in front of one of these billboards, take a picture, and hashtag it #CMAX. A backend system was built to scrape Instagram for these pics and sequentially order them using image recognition software.

What you get is a collaborative animation that is constantly changing as new people upload their pictures. If you live in a big city, there might just be a board near you!

Check out the campaign here.

Nike

Nike has been reinventing consumer choice with NikeiD, a program that lets users design their own Nike sneakers.

Nike PHOTOiD goes one step further and socializes the whole process. Users are invented to submit Instagram photos from which Nike’s software will automatically design a sneaker based on the photo’s dominant colors. Users can then either purchase the sneaker or share their creations with friends.

Check out the campaign here.

Taco Bell

Every year, South By South West (commonly called SXSW) attracts tens of thousands of music fans to Austin, Texas. Taco Bell targeted this young audience by making them the focal point of its Feed the Beat“rockumentary.” Fans were encouraged to tweet with the hashtag #feedthebeat images and videos of a show. All the footage and images were compiled by a documentarian. The final project yielded 500,000 views.

See the campaign here.

These are just three examples of innovative social media campaigns. Have any of your own? Let us know in the comments

Examples of How to Implement Great Social Media Branding

Projecting a consistent brand image across social media is vital to the success of your business venture. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter are home to millions of users, and each of them provides a variety of tools and mechanisms for increasing brand awareness. Each is an effective platform to implement great social media branding.

It is up to you to use these tools to present your brand in a positive light, and acquire additional followers, customers, and brand advocates as a result.

This all sounds simple in theory, but in practice, there is a lot of nuances involved in managing a brand on social media.

Even massive brands such as McDonald’s and Uber have been known to make blunders on social media, and rebuilding consumer goodwill takes a lot of work.

If you’re still a novice social media in social media branding, the best thing you can do is to try and mimic what other successful brands are doing.

So in order to facilitate this, we have assembled a list of social media branding success stories which you can use as a model when coming up with your own ideas.

General Electric

If we examine General Electrics’ most recent social media stunt, we will find a good example of how companies can utilize the work they do for creating share-worthy content on topics such as science, engineering, and technology.

General Electric has teamed up with Sam Cossman, a filmmaker whose latest project involved descending into the mouth of the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua.

The whole ordeal was streamed live on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, and the diver was equipped with a whole range of sensors for collecting data about the volcano.

The takeaway: publishing relevant content on your social media profile is an excellent way to build brand authority online.

Domino’s

Domino’s Pizza is leading the pack when it comes to social media branding in the fast food industry. Domino’s has given its customers on social media the option to order items by tweeting, a novelty to be sure, but one that portrays Domino’s as an innovator when it comes to using modern technology.

Another recent addition to their social media branding portfolio is Dom The Pizza Bot, a chatbot that allows customers to order their favorite pizzas through a messenger app.

The Takeaway: experimenting with social media is not necessarily practical, but it will portray your brand as always willing to try new things, which is what quality consumers expect from a forward-looking brand.

Nike

Nike is a company that has always been at the forefront of branding, and their recent social media marketing campaigns are a great example of why this is the case.

Since Nike is already an acknowledged industry leader when it comes to the quality of their apparel, their branding efforts are focused more on the impact their products have on people’s lives.

Nike’s Instagram profile is always delivering content that involves people talking about their passion to succeed, which is line with their famous motto “Just do it”.

The Takeaway: to create a successful brand on social media, the tone of your content should match the values and ideas your brand represents.

Airbnb

If there is one company that deserves a mention on our list for its Instagram profile, it is Airbnb. Aside selfies, cat pictures, and food porn travel photography are one of the main things people use Instagram, making it a natural fit for Airbnb.

Airbnb regularly posts content that is in line with their philosophy which focuses on living, rather than visiting. This gives their posts an authentic quality that is hard to match by other players in the hospitality industry, such as hotel chains.

The Takeaway: your branding on social efforts on social media should highlight your commitment to a particular ideal.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has demonstrated its competence in social media branding by launching a YouTube channel called Coke TV. The channel features a variety of YouTube influencers, each of them with a sizeable following of their own.

This allows Coca-Cola to attract new followers without having to explicitly promote themselves on social media – they can simply hire people that will do the work for them.

The best part about this approach is that influencers don’t have to talk about Coca-Cola products to have people tune in to the channel.

The Takeaway: branding is not just about telling the world about your brand, it is also allowing others to speak in your stead, which can be even more effective.

Dove

In an age of ostentatious social media marketing, Dove’s commitment to meaningful narratives and social justice is portraying the company in a positive light.

Dove’s Self Esteem Project was created for the purpose of using social media to draw attention to prevailing social attitudes towards appearance, beauty, and identity. The latest campaign launched under this banner, dubbed #mybeautymysay, consists of screen captured comments which contain mean-spirited, sexist remarks about female athletes.

As the comments start to appear, the images will start to vanish, and those watching are then invited to take a stand on the issue.

The Takeaway: championing a cause through branding is one of the more direct ways to inspire loyalty in consumers.

L’Oreal

Branding is a means by which companies present themselves to consumers. Some brands choose to do this by talking about their products and services, others by creating content related to their industry niche.

Brands like L’Oreal take a slightly different approach – their branding efforts are focused on showing the day-to-day life at their company, in an effort to showcase the people behind the brand.

This kind of organizational transparency is crucial for building consumer trust, as well as employee recruitment and retention. This is accomplished by encouraging employees to use the #lifeatloreal hashtag when posting on social media.

The Takeaway: consumers are more likely to trust a brand that has a human face, so it is always advisable to provide one.

KLM

KLM is a brand with a keen understanding of what its customers want. For starters, they know that each of their customers has their own preferred communication channel, which means don’t like getting redirected to other ones in order to get what they want from the company.

As a result, KLM is spreading their branding efforts across all available channels, while maintaining a consistent visual design, in accordance with what logo and branding agencies have been recommending for ages.

The Takeaway: online branding is all about going where the people are, and by targeting multiple social networks, companies can be certain that they are reaching the widest possible audience.

The Guardian

The publisher is in a unique position when it comes to social media branding because their business model depends on distributing content on these networks. Among publishers, The Guardian stands out thanks to their commitment to branding through Twitter.

The Guardian has a separate Twitter account for each of its sections (from sports to weather, to film, etc.), which totals to more than 30 active accounts.

Each account has its own content calendar, and all of them are busy posting updates throughout the day, allowing readers to pick and choose the kind of news they want to follow.

The Takeaway: by using a social media platform to its full extent, brands can ensure their dominance in a particular niche on said platform.

The bottom line

There are many approaches to branding on social media, each with its own set of advantages and downsides. When deciding on which approach is right for your own brand, it would be wise to learn from the success of others and then try to adapt their strategies for your own purposes.

Angelina is a content creator with a background in digital marketing. She could also be tagged as someone who enjoys reading, vending machines and camping. She is positive and hard-working, but can also be very geeky.

Visual Marketing … 15 Remarkable Content Examples From Which to Learn

Are you focusing on the use of visual content within your social media posts? Want to know how visual marketing can help you stand out online? Sure you do … we all do.

Because here’s the reality. If you’re not creating visual content marketing inspiration that captures audience attention, your competition is.

Related post: Social Media Platforms … The Magic Every Content Marketer Needs

Graphics can tell your company story, boost awareness, and drive additional traffic to your product or service. So how can you create content that helps you better connect with your fans and followers?

Join me in this look at 15 brands. I find them worthy of repeat visits for visual marketing inspiration.

Nike

Nike understands marketing on Instagram as well as the mentality of their target audience, and they use this knowledge to showcase their brand effectively.

The brand loves to post inspirational hashtags and photos showing everyday moments related to sports. The focus is on speaking to everyone who has a dream and encouraging them to ”Just do it!”

Volkswagen

Volkswagen claims that all people and all things have a story to tell, and you see this evidenced in each of their Facebook posts.

Across their Page are visual stories about VW automobiles and their customers. Whether you want to learn about VW history, understand the heritage of the Beetle or find your next car, Facebook is the place to do it.

Each image is designed to further the culture and experience around the Volkswagen brand. Watch (and learn) as they highlight important milestones within the company by weaving a powerful story into each post.

Starbucks

Starbucks has a presence on multiple social media platforms, each one successfully expressing what the brand is all about.

Their use of visual marketing is bursting with personality and originality, and although Starbucks often uses posts to advertise products, it’s done creatively and subtly.

This is a lesson many companies have yet to learn: Sometimes less is more… especially when it comes to visual content.

Bud Light

Bud Light has an active and vibrant Facebook Page ripe with visual marketing.

From colorful graphics to native video, Bud Light has created an interactive Facebook community through visual media.

And they’re not afraid to let their fans join in on the fun. They consistently invite followers to submit personal photos.

Whether a day at the beach or an event Bud Light is promoting, audience participation gives the Page a unique “small town” feel.

Target

Target uses several boards on Pinterest to market their store and products. Although each board exemplifies a different marketing strategy, all of them use engaging and informative graphics.

Target doesn’t just post photos of their products like many other brands do. They combine images with text to create fun and shareable images.

visual marketing concepts — Visual marketing concepts.

Grammarly Cards

Grammarly is an online proofreading and correction service with an excellent visual marketing strategy.

Their Pinterest page is filled with funny and engaging content that people enjoy and frequently share.

The humor and wit are coupled with attractive pictures the Grammarly Cards audience cannot ignore.

Oreo

Oreo knows how to keep an audience happy and actively engaged.

The visuals the brand posts have it all — including wit, culture, and parodies. They take any popular event or entertainment update and work their cookie right into it.

This makes Oreo posts fun and shareable.

The time it takes Oreo to react to an unforeseen event is phenomenal. The brand’s fast response to the Superbowl (“You can still dunk in the dark”) won widespread recognition.

Home Depot

Home Depot knows their audience, and the brand effectively markets to them.

Their posts are made for homeowners and those who love creating something practical and good looking.

Their Instagram page is full practical, original and creative ideas.

Visual marketing … Disney

The Disney brand knows better than most how to make their content appealing.

They have a talent for turning their creations into great visuals that are both attractive and fun.

The content they post on their web page and other social channels are proof that design is just as important a factor as written copy.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola’s content marketing strategy is built on visual marketing. They provide their audience with fun, colorful and quirky visuals that are easy to like and share.

The company concentrates its efforts on interactive content to keep their audience engaged.

Coca-Cola also has uniquely designed animated gifs and plenty of brand memorabilia that reminds the audience whose page they’re on.

visual marketing examples — Visual marketing examples.

Aeropostale

Aeropostale knows its fashion-savvy audience and effectively caters to their tastes.

The brand posts simple, yet lovely, images featuring an ensemble of clothes and accessories that go together to create one distinct look.

Through this strategy, Aeropostale advertises its clothes (which are at the center of the composition) gives its audience ideas about what goes well with what and creates a definite brand look.

Whole Foods

Besides offering their customers healthy, organic foods, Whole Foods also provides followers with exceptional and informative visual graphics.

This is a brand that knows how to tell a story visually and make it appealing to all.

Although they have some product advertisements, most of their posts include great images combined with valuable advice.

Taco Bell

Taco Bell knows how to grab their audience’s attention and keep it.

The vibrant colors and artistic look of their graphics get their posts noticed.

Although some of the graphics they post on Instagram are advertising their products, most simply show off the product artistically and attractively.

GoPro

The very nature of the GoPro makes it the perfect brand for visual content marketing.

After all, no words are necessary to market their GoPro cameras – their photos say it all.

The quality of the photos and their extreme setting help these graphics get shared like wildfire.

Visual marketing … Honey Bunches of Oats

This cereal company has long figured out the secret of visual content marketing through social media.

All of their posts on Facebook are visual, and humor is their best weapon. Honey Bunches of Oats creates funny and memorable visuals that are easy to share.

Most of their graphics have the brand’s logo attached to it, so it continues to remind the users who are for the great photos and the witty humor (even if the graphic is taken out of context).

The bottom line

To be effective in this new era, we as marketers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.

We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.

There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement on brand marketing, independent of how well the business is doing. It seems these exciting brands are looking to take their success to a new level.

This is an excellent time to make a statement with their brand marketing. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?

Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

More reading on social media lessons from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Visual Marketing … 15 Remarkable Content Examples

Best Social Media Campaigns … How to Improve with These Tips

How Small Businesses Win Benefits of Social Media Marketing

7 Favorite Social Media Examples to Learn From

What the Heath Brothers Persuasive Techniques Teach Us

Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

What a Strong Brand Stands for; 10 Awesome Examples

Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced. Yes indeed, David Freemantle. At the heart of a strong brand is the promise they commit to delivering to their clients.

No matter how clever or memorable their brand marketing, if they fail to deliver on that promise, they fail. And those promises represent what the strong brand stands for. Feelings and emotion, as Freemantle states, are critical in the way customers are influenced.

Strong brand.

Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.

Failure to deliver on your promise or to be what you stand for is like a politician promising no new taxes. Mark my words. Those kinds of promises are a prescription for a marketing disaster.

Importance of branding

We like to quote from the book Funky Business Forever when we discuss brands or branding with our clients:

The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.

It is not easy being different, is it? But all the more important.

Here is a short video that will refresh a brand for you:

Beginning Graphic Design: Branding & Identity

The key to a good brand is being different. There are 4 critical things to remember about brands and branding:

Every business has a brand, whether explicitly defined or not. The important question to be answered is how good is the brand?

Brands deliver an emotional connection to a business’ products and services. Most purchase decisions have critical emotional components.

Your brand represents a collection of your customers’ perceptions of how they see you, how they feel about you, and what they say about you.

Your brand communicates every time it touches a customer. This makes you, as a marketer, responsible for this communication ‘moment of truth’.

Related: Here’s How to Make Your Brand Awesome

Most brands sell products or services. GM sells cars. Borders sells books. Real estate brokerages sell homes. Killer brands, however, satisfy a desire to get at the emotional heart of the matter. Let’s review 10 killer brands and what they stand for. This is the best way to appreciate the importance of branding and emotion.

JetBlue is a killer brand.

Strong brand … JetBlue

JetBlue’s brand success centers on the achievable – the simple things – they knew would make a difference for their guests. This set the stage for direct TV and XM radio, the provision of first-class seats to everyone, more legroom, great snacks and high-end service at lower end pricing.

No other airline others these value propositions. They are different and their brand stands out because of those differences.

Simple. Attainable. Targeted. They delivered.

Nike

Ask anyone who works in marketing what Nike stands for and you’re likely to hear the same three words: “authentic athletic performance.” Their goal to be associated with customers that desire to be high performance, high notch athletes, achievers, and winners.

Nike is the name of the winged Greek goddess of victory and the logo represents the spirit of this goddess. Wrapped in emotional appeal.

Ragu

Super convenience in an inconvenient world. Simple as that. But it must achieve a taste appeal, so Ragu has increased its product offering to give the customer more sauce taste options. Super convenience with grandmother’s good taste.

W Hotels

People don’t go there to sleep. They go there to feel glamorous. Style and sizzle remain in the forefront of what this brand stands for. A hotel brand leader in contemporary lifestyle personality.

Strong brand benefits … Zappos

They don’t sell shoes. They deliver that extra dose of love we all need from time to time. There is no secret here. Zappos became Zappos because of the fanatical customer support it offered. That is the company’s brand. As Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO puts it,

Back in 2003, we thought of ourselves as a shoe company that offered great service. Today, we really think of the Zappos brand as about great service, and we just happen to sell shoes.

Intel

Look inside to find the best processor technology. The trust mark symbolizing customer trust and faith they are receiving the best in technology. Technology that is life-changing.

Ritz Carlton

Ritz Carlton’s desire is to create guests for life. Stories of extraordinary service. Acts of kindness. Ritz Carlton focuses their attention on impeccable service standards to separate themselves from other Hotels. What Ritz Carlton has done so well is operationalize it so that culture and brand are one.

FedEx

Simply put, the FedEx brand is synonymous with “reliability.” Define your benefit to customers in the most straightforward terms possible. If your promise is reliability, then you need to offer reliability in everything you do — from your products and services to your website and communications.

Peace of mind. FedEx famously built its brand around a singular idea: by coming through when something “absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”

Starbucks

Starbucks brings us a space to enjoy the products they sell, rather than just a product. Some would say that it fills a psychological need that other companies have not had to do in quite the same way. The emotion is all about uplifting moments and daily ritual. Stimulating all our senses.

It’s all Disney.

Disney

Magical, fantasy entertainment. Be bringers of joy, to be affirmers of the good in each of us, to be — in subtle ways — teachers. To speak, as Walt once put it:

not to children but to the child in each of us.

Disney’s brand does this through great storytelling, by giving guests a few hours in another world where their cares can be momentarily put aside and by creating memories that will remain with them forever.

The bottom line

So is this what killer branding is all about for companies?

We think so. Not just business … make it personal for customers.

Making promises and keep them.

Some organizations work very hard to weasel in the promises they make. They imply great customer service or amazing results or spectacular quality but don’t deliver. No, they didn’t actually lie, but they came awfully close. The result: angry customers and negative word of mouth.

It’s very easy to overpromise. Tempting to shade the truth a little bit, deliver a little bit less to save a few bucks. Who will notice?

The customers notice. If you need to overpromise to make the sale, don’t bother. It’s not worth it.

The best way to generate killer branding is simple: over-deliver with what your brand stands for.

If digital media is ever going to become a profitable industry, it will have to learn how to build brands, not just produce direct responses. Ironically, to build the consumer brands of the future, today’s digital marketers will probably have to learn a lot from the ad giants of the past.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Remarkable Branding Design: Spanish Bank Example

Secrets to the Remarkable Innovative Lady Gaga Brand

Here’s How to Make Your Brand Awesome

Branding Lessons Learned from the Beatles Brand

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

This concept of changing people’s behavior is the basis of this section, and of social marketing as a whole. We will talk about what social marketing is, and why it can be of use to you in your organization for the next best practices.

Then, we’ll go into more depth on marketing, and discuss what is known as the “4 Ps”–the four elements around which all types of marketing, social or profit-oriented, are centered.

Finally, we’ll finish with an overview of the stages someone will go through if their effort is successful.

Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced.

-David Freemantle

It’s a lot of information, and much of it is more conceptual in nature than many other sections of the ToolBox. The next three sections of this chapter, then, will try to ground these ideas more thoroughly, so they can be used in your day-to-day work.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MARKETING?

What does that mean? Well, instead of selling hamburgers, you’re selling a life without heart attacks. Instead of convincing teenagers to buy blue jeans, you’re convincing them to buy the advantages of postponing pregnancy.

Of course, if you are selling blue jeans, you’re still trying to influence behavior–you’re convincing people they need to wear your jeans–either for comfort, or for style, or value. So then, what is the difference between social marketing and commercial marketing?

It’s really summed up in one key point: commercial marketing tries to change people’s behavior for the benefit of the marketer; social marketing tries to change people’s behavior for the benefit of the consumer, or of society as a whole.

“I’m not a doctor,” runs the joke. “I just play one on T.V.” Television and other forms of mass media, it seems, are often highly adept at making complicated tasks look simple.

We’ve been grabbed by a successful marketing campaign. It might seem so simple, that we’re barely aware of it–but it really represents a huge amount of research, design, and testing done by the toothpaste corporation.

On the following few screens, we’ll try to make concrete how you can accomplish many of these details. We’ll start by touching briefly on the importance of social marketing and when might be a sensible time for your group to draw up a social marketing campaign.

WHY SHOULD YOU USE A SOCIAL MARKETING APPROACH?

Social marketing is an approach with a lot of advantages. Perhaps the two most pointed benefits are:

It helps you reach your target audience. Social marketing makes you look at whom you want to influence, and how to sway these people most effectively. And, for this reason,

WHEN SHOULD YOU RUN A SOCIAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN?

So when is the proper time to run a social marketing campaign?

It will depend quite a bit on your program or organization, of course, but generally speaking…

This doesn’t mean your organization or program has to have a lot of money to use a social marketing approach. Excellent social marketing can be done on a shoestring budget if people are excited and willing to put a lot of effort into making it work.

But being a whiz on one platform doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll be a whiz on the next. A campaign that works on Facebook may not be fair as well on Twitter. It’s important to appreciate the nuance of each platform.

With that in mind, here are three beautifully executed social marketing campaigns.

Ford

The core of the idea is to use Instagram to create one of the first collaborative stop motion animations. First, a 30-second animation was created and individual frames were stripped out of it to create 98 billboards that are going up all across the country.

Anyone can stand in front of one of these billboards, take a picture, and hashtag it #CMAX. A backend system was built to scrape Instagram for these pics and sequentially order them using image recognition software.

What you get is a collaborative animation that is constantly changing as new people upload their pictures. If you live in a big city, there might just be a board near you!

Check out the campaign here.

Nike

Nike has been reinventing consumer choice with NikeiD, a program that lets users design their own Nike sneakers.

Check out the campaign here.

Taco Bell

See the campaign here.

These are just three examples of innovative social media campaigns. Have any of your own? Let us know in the comments

It is up to you to use these tools to present your brand in a positive light, and acquire additional followers, customers, and brand advocates as a result.

This all sounds simple in theory, but in practice, there is a lot of nuances involved in managing a brand on social media.

Even massive brands such as McDonald’s and Uber have been known to make blunders on social media, and rebuilding consumer goodwill takes a lot of work.

If you’re still a novice social media in social media branding, the best thing you can do is to try and mimic what other successful brands are doing.

So in order to facilitate this, we have assembled a list of social media branding success stories which you can use as a model when coming up with your own ideas.

General Electric

If we examine General Electrics’ most recent social media stunt, we will find a good example of how companies can utilize the work they do for creating share-worthy content on topics such as science, engineering, and technology.

General Electric has teamed up with Sam Cossman, a filmmaker whose latest project involved descending into the mouth of the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua.

The whole ordeal was streamed live on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, and the diver was equipped with a whole range of sensors for collecting data about the volcano.

The takeaway: publishing relevant content on your social media profile is an excellent way to build brand authority online.

Domino’s

Another recent addition to their social media branding portfolio is Dom The Pizza Bot, a chatbot that allows customers to order their favorite pizzas through a messenger app.

The Takeaway: experimenting with social media is not necessarily practical, but it will portray your brand as always willing to try new things, which is what quality consumers expect from a forward-looking brand.

Nike

Nike is a company that has always been at the forefront of branding, and their recent social media marketing campaigns are a great example of why this is the case.

Since Nike is already an acknowledged industry leader when it comes to the quality of their apparel, their branding efforts are focused more on the impact their products have on people’s lives.

Nike’s Instagram profile is always delivering content that involves people talking about their passion to succeed, which is line with their famous motto “Just do it”.

The Takeaway: to create a successful brand on social media, the tone of your content should match the values and ideas your brand represents.

Airbnb

If there is one company that deserves a mention on our list for its Instagram profile, it is Airbnb. Aside selfies, cat pictures, and food porn travel photography are one of the main things people use Instagram, making it a natural fit for Airbnb.

Airbnb regularly posts content that is in line with their philosophy which focuses on living, rather than visiting. This gives their posts an authentic quality that is hard to match by other players in the hospitality industry, such as hotel chains.

The Takeaway: your branding on social efforts on social media should highlight your commitment to a particular ideal.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has demonstrated its competence in social media branding by launching a YouTube channel called Coke TV. The channel features a variety of YouTube influencers, each of them with a sizeable following of their own.

This allows Coca-Cola to attract new followers without having to explicitly promote themselves on social media – they can simply hire people that will do the work for them.

The best part about this approach is that influencers don’t have to talk about Coca-Cola products to have people tune in to the channel.

The Takeaway: branding is not just about telling the world about your brand, it is also allowing others to speak in your stead, which can be even more effective.

Dove

In an age of ostentatious social media marketing, Dove’s commitment to meaningful narratives and social justice is portraying the company in a positive light.

As the comments start to appear, the images will start to vanish, and those watching are then invited to take a stand on the issue.

The Takeaway: championing a cause through branding is one of the more direct ways to inspire loyalty in consumers.

L’Oreal

Branding is a means by which companies present themselves to consumers. Some brands choose to do this by talking about their products and services, others by creating content related to their industry niche.

Brands like L’Oreal take a slightly different approach – their branding efforts are focused on showing the day-to-day life at their company, in an effort to showcase the people behind the brand.

This kind of organizational transparency is crucial for building consumer trust, as well as employee recruitment and retention. This is accomplished by encouraging employees to use the #lifeatloreal hashtag when posting on social media.

The Takeaway: consumers are more likely to trust a brand that has a human face, so it is always advisable to provide one.

KLM

KLM is a brand with a keen understanding of what its customers want. For starters, they know that each of their customers has their own preferred communication channel, which means don’t like getting redirected to other ones in order to get what they want from the company.

As a result, KLM is spreading their branding efforts across all available channels, while maintaining a consistent visual design, in accordance with what logo and branding agencies have been recommending for ages.

The Takeaway: online branding is all about going where the people are, and by targeting multiple social networks, companies can be certain that they are reaching the widest possible audience.

The Guardian

The publisher is in a unique position when it comes to social media branding because their business model depends on distributing content on these networks. Among publishers, The Guardian stands out thanks to their commitment to branding through Twitter.

The Guardian has a separate Twitter account for each of its sections (from sports to weather, to film, etc.), which totals to more than 30 active accounts.

Each account has its own content calendar, and all of them are busy posting updates throughout the day, allowing readers to pick and choose the kind of news they want to follow.

The Takeaway: by using a social media platform to its full extent, brands can ensure their dominance in a particular niche on said platform.

The bottom line

There are many approaches to branding on social media, each with its own set of advantages and downsides. When deciding on which approach is right for your own brand, it would be wise to learn from the success of others and then try to adapt their strategies for your own purposes.