Knock, knock, Trump, is that you?
Admit it, the first person who went through your mind when you read the topic of this blog post was old “Mac” Donald Trump. Well, it only makes sense that this blog is published on the day when the United States of America celebrates its 241st Independence Day. Just to give a bit of background, when Donald Trump was looking for the official campaign slogan, a few phrases popped into his head, phrases such as “We Will Make America Great”, “Make America Great”, but none of those had that ‘thing’. Finally, it hit him: “Make America Great Again.” Five days later, being the businessman/salesperson that he is, he signed an application with the U.S Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use “Make America Great Again” for political action committee services. This was much to the criticism of his political peers and former first lady of the US, who was also in the running to become the next US president, Hillary Clinton. She said, “I don’t think we have to make America great. I think we have to make America greater!” which was an important statement by Hillary and pretty much cements the foundation of what this blog post will be about – how not to just make social media “great”, but to make it “greater.” How do we make sure that is what we achieve? Read on…
Let’s start by defining the word “great”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “great” means of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above average. Which is one of the reasons, I believe, social media is there, to make things “great”, to connect us to lost family, lost friends, meet new people, interact with brands and ultimately shape the way we think about the world through how other people think about it.
There are a lot of negatives (or not so cool moments) happening in the world on a daily basis that sometimes cloud the positives that truly exist, like recently in South Africa, the storm that wreaked havoc in Cape Town. People died and hundreds were displaced. Now, what’s awesome about Facebook is that it understands that social media is an integral part of today’s society, it unites society and that is what social media should aim to do. In this above scenario, it activated the “Safety Check” feature in different areas in Cape Town where users could “mark” themselves as being “safe”, thus alerting their friends on the social media platform. This further proves that the ‘social’ part of social media should not be ignored. It is what makes social media, social media, as we know it today.
(Image source: UnEarthedComics.com)
Here are 5 ways brands can restore the “greatness” of social media:
- Make It Social – If fans of your brand have no idea whether there is anyone is on the other side listening and communicating with them, you will lose the ‘humanness’ about your brand. They will turn to brands where they feel they are being listened to.
- Spend More Time Crafting Your Content – There’s a thin line between great content —that is content that will receive the engagement and traction that you want from your audience—and weak content, Spend a bit more time crafting content that you know for sure will yield those desired results.
- What’s The Value? – Taking the above point into consideration and to help you plan better, before posting any of the well-crafted content you have come up with, stop and ask yourself “what value is in the content that I am giving to my audience?”
- Keep a Consistent Voice – You are likely to have interactions with people on your social media platforms, therefore it is important that each interaction feels like it’s from the same organisation. Keep your personality and tone the same. There is nothing more annoying than a brand that has multiple community managers using different tones to interact with their audience.
- Lastly, Keep it Simple – Simple content means simple engagement. People tend to react better to posts that are uncluttered and not too text heavy. People have incredibly short attention spans, apparently shorter than that of goldfish.
With that said … Go out into the universe and be great! http://gph.is/1Sah0gJ
