Social media offers a huge opportunity for you to establish your brand and gain exposure for your company. It can be used as a customer service portal, a sales generator, as a direct representation of your audience, and as an opportunity to generate some real conversations around your brand. If the countless ways you can use social media to your benefit are overwhelming, try emulating these savvy brands who are dominating the digital sphere:
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Denny’s
Denny’s goal with its social channels is “to make people love us and make them hungry.” They do this through a quirky, almost-childish social presence. Follow Denny’s on Twitter, and you’ll see comments and mockery around pop-culture by tweeting disgruntled celebrities and offering them free grand slams. It relays its in-your-face content strategy back to its brand and continuously wins at social by inadvertently promoting its products through moves like instigating an argument with Parks and Recreation on Twitter about the better breakfast food — pancakes or waffles?
“One of the things we try and do in our diners is feed people what they want when they want it. It’s why we are open 24 hours and why we have such a large selection of customizable menu items,” explains Kevin Purcer, Senior VP of Digital Strategy at Erwin Penland and leader of Denny’s social team. Denny’s tries to maintain this same feel on its social media channels — an always-available environment where people can engage and have fun.
LifeLock
Lifelock, the identity theft protection company, may be better known for shielding your debit card numbers and monitoring your credit score. But, it’s also incredible at customer service on social media. The company posts resourceful information that helps out its audience, and it uses social media as a customer service channel. On each different social platform, it makes sure to monitor all the places customers are talking about its product, and responds whenever necessary. This creates a sense of comfortability and security with its customers, which is precisely what it sells. The way the LifeLock brand resonates digitally
Eat24
Eat24 is a food delivery service with a huge voice. It began as a small start-up, and through ground breaking moves like a public breakup letter to Facebook, its reached 150 million dollars in sales. The 24 in Eat24 stands for the fact that it’s reachable 24/7. “We have 24-hour customer service, so say a tweet comes in at four o’clock in the morning and it’s something above the level of customer service. They will call and wake up someone on the marketing team who will help on the response,” says Eat24 co-founder and CEO Nadav Sharon. The company’s always-engaging strategy means retweeting. Its strategy depends on having a strong voice and using smart automation, says Inc.
GoPro
GoPro has an incredible product, and its marketing strategy across the web is to allow the product to speak for itself in all of its advertising. The company allows fans to submit videos and choose videos of the day to feature, and even turn the most incredible into commercials. To host these, it has a GoPro channel featured on its website. Its user-generated advertising strategy not only promotes the epic capabilities of the product, it is also 100 percent in-tune with all the various audiences that GoPro has. By featuring videos of firefighters saving kittens, right next to a clip of a man rock-climbing into a volcano, the company is able to use shock-value and awe-factor to win over an enormous fan base.
Cranium
It seems a board game might have limited options of content to put on its social media channels, but Cranium has made its methods fun, unique and engaging. The company posts trivia questions, polls and games. Drop in for a spontaneous Blankout puzzle or log on during your break at work to try to figure out the anagram — or Zelpuz, a term coined by the board game. Cranium’s active Facebook page shows us that there is ample content to be found to promote your brand without just shamelessly plugging customers to purchase it. By engaging potential customers in some of the challenges that arise while playing the game, it can gain rapport with current and future customers.
Social media is an important part of business and customer service strategy. Keep it up to date, engaging and accessible.
