Eli Morey
No one can deny that social media has come a long way in the past 10 years. Not long ago, platforms like Facebook and YouTube were best known as places to share funny cat videos with friends. Recently, however, they have become powerful tools for marketing, branding, and public outreach. In fact, a strong social media marketing strategy is practically essential for any business or organization looking to succeed.
With so many companies out there looking for ways to grab social media users’ attention, it will take creativity and a bit of unorthodox thinking to make yours stand out. Here are a few unconventional ideas to help take your social media presence to the next level.
Get Weird!
Grabbing the attention of your audience and, just as importantly, holding onto it, are crucial elements of marketing. No one wants to sit and watch or read an ad that bores them with mundane, cliché appeals. One answer to this problem is to purposefully make your advertising bizarre. This strategy may seem counterintuitive, but evidence suggests that over-the-top, all-out weirdness—when done right—is more likely to captivate audiences than scare them off.
The e-commerce giant Wish is a perfect example of this approach in action. Wish has achieved internet fame by barraging audiences with mystifying ads featuring outlandish products from plastic pigeon-holding devices, to pants printed with Nick Cage’s face, to… well… worms. Just worms. You may be surprised to learn that Wish is one of the biggest names in e-commerce today, behind only Amazon and Alibaba in terms of number of sales, with a total revenue of $1.9 billion in 2018.
Of course, a strategy like this should be undertaken in a thoughtful and deliberate way. Weirdness for its own sake is not always a good thing. However, it is certainly a way to set yourself apart from less daring competitors and potentially garner a great deal of attention.
Tap into Trends
Staying relevant in the advertising world is just as much about adaptability and attentiveness as it is about creativity. Online trends change quickly and staying up-to-date on what piques the interest of social media users is one of the most important things you can do as a marketer.
For example, generating or posting humorous content such as memes can be a powerful way to connect and relate to your audience. On the other hand, this strategy can backfire if you fail to keep in touch with what is making people laugh right now. Employing a dead meme format or a stale vine from 5 years ago could possibly alienate users who see your content as dated or repetitive.
Use Less to Get More
Many businesses make the mistake of attempting to generate massive amounts of content without focusing on how that content translates into a productive outcome for the company.
That does not simply mean that they are concentrating too little on the quality of their content—although this is often a negative consequence of being hyper-focused on quantity. Perhaps even more importantly, these businesses are ignoring the promotion and distribution aspect of marketing—that is, making sure that their content is showing up in the right places and provoking the right kind of response.
Thus, a strong focus on generating a moderate amount of high-quality, well-marketed content is usually preferable to merely inundating your social media pages with whatever you can manage to put out. Which brings us to our final point…
Be Responsive
Responding to and interacting with audiences is not necessarily unconventional, but it is certainly something that most businesses could do more of. Some businesses and organizations set themselves apart by communicating frequently and effectively with other social media users.
For example, if someone comments on a video you post, take the opportunity to respond to the comment and let the user know that you are listening and appreciate their input. Encourage your audience to share your content. In short, show them that instead of a cold and unresponsive machine, your business is a living network of people who are willing to reach out and listen. Maybe you will even make some friends while you’re at it!
Final Thoughts
Social media marketing is an essential part of the modern marketing strategy. While there are many different ways to go about it, the most important aspect to remember is to stick to your brand image and have fun.
