A how-to guide on planning for spontaneous social marketing.
Something rather curious has happened since the inception of social media. Suddenly every brand now had a mainline into their customer’s entertainment feeds. While it’s easy to produce a well-crafted video or text ad, the ability to market in real-time is brand new in the marketing world. It’s still being tested and tinkered with to find the best method to engage with customers in real-time while still remaining relevant.
The question becomes, how does a brand create a well-crafted but still relevant ad in real-time? This question has been floating around Khoros for quite some time. Previously, brands planned “spontaneous” posts for significant cultural events. Think of making a Star Wars-themed post for “May the 4th” or posting something slightly spooky around the Halloween season. On the flip side, brands could make “spontaneous” posts with smaller events. This example is seen through clothing brands on Instagram or Facebook. They would make simple post templates about overstock sales or new product releases. This way, the clothing brand will always have a “spontaneous” ad to post whenever the timing is just right. To the customer, they’re only going to see a new “random” post that keeps them engaged with your brand and, generally speaking, influences them to make more purchases.
This worked amazingly well a few years ago when Facebook and Instagram were the main game in town. This tactic will still work, but with the introduction of TikTok, this strategy is slowly losing its potency.
If you’re unfamiliar with the various brand strategies that Khoros offers with TikTok, check out these resources!
- Don’t Make Ads for TikTok: Make Outstanding Content
- TikTok Analytics The Next Frontier In Digital Engagement
- [Podcast] Your Brand on TikTok: Learning to be Authentically Vulnerable
Now how exactly TikTok will change digital customer engagement is currently being studied. Still, it is more than fair to say that it is the crux of today’s social marketing paradox. TikTok has now allowed brands to utilize this paradox of planned spontaneity truly.
TikTok is known for its unique, causal, and sometimes downright weird content. Brands can leverage this by making random videos that play on viral trends, songs, or themes. If done correctly, a brand could make an entire catalog of content for TikTok, Instagram, or whatever their chosen channel is.
It’s important to note that certain challenges come almost instantly. TikTok can indeed be casual. However, other platforms will still need a higher production level to make it engaging. The next challenge is knowing what kind of content will connect with your customers. You’ll have to make something engaging with your customers that’s relevant without seeming like you’re trying too hard. The last challenge is housing all of this spontaneous content in a centralized, secure, and reliable place.
This is where brands could use Khoros Marketing to help solve social marketing and the paradox of planned spontaneity. With Khoros Marketing, you expand your current use case to more than publishing in-app and dynamite analytics.
Two challenges of both creating and housing a wide variety of content are solved in one solution. Khoros Marketing’s API can secure house any type of content, from pictures and videos to tweets and any other kind of social media post.
Most social media platforms indeed have a “draft” area or other means of publishing unhoused content. This is more than enough for the causal non-brand user to store ideas. For brands, this could spell disaster for several reasons.
Firstly, there’s no full visibility from everyone in your social marketing team. This slows down publishing time and makes your “real-time” marketing less than so. Second, if a team member leaves the team and takes the main password or access with them, your content library is now up a creek without a paddle. Lastly, suppose a new event or random social happening is going on, and your team needs a post out yesterday with a simple native draft library. In that case, you’ll have to message your social media manager and hope that they respond quickly, have an idea ready, and content can pass it up for approval before the moment is gone.
This system of communication and governance is all well and good, but before you get into the weeds of this system, you’ll need to listen to your customers as they talk about your brand on your social platforms. Comments, threads, and mentions are the name of the game here.
Now you could assign one of the front-line staff members to manually read and watch every single comment or video or mention your brand receives. This is, without a doubt, horrifically inefficient and, in all honestly, quite impossible.
This is where Talkwalker and Khoros step in. Talkwalker is the cutting edge in social listening. In short, it crawls through your social feeds and pulls every single comment and mention your customers make about your brand. With Talkwalker and Khoros, your real-time marketing can be as “real-time” as possible.
To learn more about the Khoros / Talkwalker partnership, click here!
The social ecosystem is constantly changing and evolving. How brands will interact with social media in the future will forever change, and real-time marketing will continue to morph in ways not yet known. It’s Khoros’ mission to stay on the cutting edge of social marketing so you can make customers for life.
Further your knowledge of the extended capabilities of Khoros Marketing by visiting the links below.
