Still fearful of social? October is a spooktactular time to fight the social fright 👻

🎃 With Halloween lurking in the shadows, we thought it was the perfect time of year to exorcise your social media fears. 

Back in August our Europe MD, Linn Frost spoke with BBC World Business Report “The truth is that many brands are missing out on realising the power of social media through the fear of getting it wrong. Maybe the legal team thinks it’s too risky. Or the team is worried about the backlash if they get it wrong. Or perhaps it just all seems too ever changing and time-consuming.”

So this October, we are casting a spell to ‘fight the social fright’ and encourage all marketeers to harness the power of social media at all levels of the marketing cauldron/funnel. Across the month, we will be sharing some fang-tastic hints and tips that our teams use everyday, so keep your eye of newt peeled for more treats than tricks. 🧙‍♀️

To start, let’s have a look at brands (outside of our own work of course) that have recently done social ‘pumpkin-smashingly’ well and why:

 

Top social media ghouls tailor their content to each platform

Jazzy Garms is an independent ethical fashion business based in Bristol, UK. It showcases its hand-made rave-wear items on TikTok, where it has more than 135,000 followers and regularly gets more than 1,000 views on videos.

 

It also runs a very popular Instagram page, where it posts unique content (rather than copying content from its TikTok account).

Brand takeaway: Ask yourself if you have the capacity to provide an engaging experience on every social platform you want to be on. It may be better to start with one fang-tastic account and expand when you have more creative capacity.

 

Social rockstars let their personality shine in the (moon)light

A great way to make a splash on social is by taking a bit of a risk. Doing something that, while very on track for the brand’s personality and reputation, are a bit cheeky, or edgy. 

Brands like Ryanair excel at this.  

It posted this TikTok video (click on image) telling people to swipe right for a discount code. It was viewed 10 million times, and the comments are full of annoyance, good humour and teasing.

It’s a risk – and it doesn’t work for everyone – but it’s the kind of thing that fits perfectly with Ryanair’s brand personality.

Brand takeaway: if you want to do well on social, embrace your brand’s personality and tone of voice. Having a social media team that knows the brand’s values and has the authority to post in accordance with them helps set the brand apart. 

 

Trick and treat your fans to understand them

Using social media gives brands a great way to go more in-depth with their social listening. Interacting with followers every day helps brands truly understand what it is that their followers want and why they want it.

Waterstones is a great example of this. The bookseller has great social media presences on a variety of platforms. On TikTok, for example, we can really see how well the brand understands people who love books.

 

Last year, Waterstones said that TikTok has been hugely beneficial for book sales, so you can see why the brand continues to get creative on the platform and participate in the #BookTok community.

Brand takeaway: you can learn a lot about your followers by talking to them on social media. Social platforms can give brands fantastic insight into what makes people excited about the brand and potential products. By cultivating a friendly, entertaining and engaging presence, brands can make it fun for people to get involved.