“If you like it, tell your friends” translates into “If you like it, tweet about it” in the age of social media. Word of mouth marketing for brand awareness is all about creating compelling and engaging content that people will want to share with others. A successful strategy for increasing brand awareness often combines different platforms on which to share your content and release it into the world. It is easy, relatively cost free to market your brand through different platforms, but done in the wrong way and it will never work. Planning and strategy are the keys to raising brand awareness.
Constant Updates Don’t Raise Awareness
Spamming is the absolute worst thing you can do. It is easy to think that the more content you post the more likely you will interest someone, but in fact constantly updating is a big turn off for users. It is therefore a huge waste of your time to be on social media and actually driving interest away.
Think quality, not quantity and you will begin to build awareness around a brand that people will want to engage with on social media platforms and share your content with your friends.
However, don’t make the mistake of posting too little. People enjoy fresh content, even if it’s something small. If you don’t update regularly then people will stop checking your site. This is why a content strategy is important, so you know what to post and when. This also means you can do it beforehand and have it automatically post for you if you’re away.
Striking a balance is of the upmost importance.
Variety is the Spice of Life
If all your updates are promoting you, your products, events or services then the people who receive your updates will become bored and go elsewhere. Raising brand awareness is doing just that- raising awareness of your brand and not necessarily what your brand sells. Let your reputation and your brand identity sell your products. Take Innocent Drinks on Facebook as an example. Most of their posts are in line with their overall personality as a business. They use casual humour about nature, animals, fruit and veg, and bad jokes that they find amusing as posts for their Facebook page. They do occasionally post about their products, but it by no means dominates their page.
Even content that seems completely irrelevant can have a positive effect on your brand awareness. Social media and content marketing company Red Rocket Media, for instance, promoted their ‘best office dog’ competition through their Facebook and Twitter pages. Over the two months of the competition, the reach of their Facebook increased by 4,495 per cent. This demonstrates how even seemingly irrelevant, but engaging and compelling content can increase awareness of the brand behind it.
Going Viral
A viral marketing plan takes a lot of planning and an inspired idea. A video is the type of content most likely to go viral, as it is eye-catching and easy to engage with. If we think that the video is funny, fascinating, or weird then we are more likely to share it instantly with our friends on social media platforms. A viral video is the ultimate in word of mouth marketing.
A video that has gone viral is often short, simple and entertaining. If it’s for a brand or a business, it’s never obvious or advertisorial.
Google considers video to be more engaging and ranks it higher than blogs or articles so it will gain more exposure. However, you can’t rely on Google to do the work for you. If you want to make the video go viral, then there are a few things that you can do to help it along. Make sure that the thumbnail image is intriguing and your title will spark interest. You should share your video with your network on all your social media platforms, and ask them to share it. Make sure you share it with the right people too, such as bloggers, writers and sites with millions of visitors. If it’s successful, then people will share it without any obligation to you, thus promoting your business by pure and simple word of mouth.
Content is King
Word of mouth marketing starts with social media and if you do it right it will expand and expand. The things that you post need to be consistent with your brand’s identity but varied enough to retain interest. You also need to make sure that you strike a balance between posting too much and not enough. Above all, the content needs to be engaging. As the saying goes, content is king.
Ama Revie writes about SEO for the Web Marketing Group
