Brand Integrity – Lava Surf

Utilizing Social Media In 2020

Posted on June 22, 2020June 23, 2020 by Kate Smith

The year 2020 has proven itself to be a roller coaster ride for both individuals and businesses. All across the country, people are continuing to hunker down and prepare for an uncertain future. Finances are being funneled towards basic necessities. Many families are seeking out new ways to stay emotionally close to loved ones while staying physically distanced.

Even as businesses begin opening their doors again, traveling and social functions aren’t viewed with the same level of enchantment or allure as they have held in the past. Consumer spending has dropped in record numbers over the course of the year while time spent consuming social media has increased by 21% worldwide.

While the future remains uncertain, you can be sure that social media will have a key place when it comes to maintaining relationships with your consumers. But if the world is changing then so should your strategy. Here are a few things for you to keep in mind as you’re managing your social media during these turbulent times.

Take Time to Innovate and Adapt

Unexpected shifts in culture and economy mean that brands that don’t learn to adapt may be forced to close their doors. Some popular examples of this are Blockbuster and Tower Records. Both companies struggled to adapt to the digital boom that came with advances in internet use. Their sales waned until these once beloved brands were ultimately driven to extinction.

So what has shifted in today’s world? For starters, customer experience has taken on a whole new meaning as many organizations cannot interact with their audience in the same ways. This is why utilizing social media is key right now. Whatever the future holds, we know that providing customers with the opportunity to interact with your brand from the safety of their own home is ideal for the time being.

Ask yourself the following questions when considering whether or not your organization needs to do some pivoting:

What primary needs can you meet for your audience?
Can you pivot in a way that allows you to help people meet their needs?
What can your organization offer people right now that nobody else is offering?
What does your brand need to do to survive all the cultural shifts the year has brought us?

During the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, the outdoor gear brand known as Cotopaxi realized they would have to adapt quickly in order to make it through the remainder of the year. Sales began to dwindle as individuals ceased spending money on anything that wasn’t essential, including outdoor recreational gear.

To survive the rapidly changing climate of retail, Cotopaxi partnered with Uncharted Supply, a brand that specializes in the sale of emergency kits and supplies. Cotopaxi was able to provide Uncharted Supply with the staff and space they needed to meet the increasing demand for emergency preparedness supplies.

Cotopaxi took advantage of an opportunity to help a fellow business and provide the community with an on-brand product they were seeking. Meanwhile, they were providing work opportunities for their employees in a time when employment was growing scarce.

Revisit Your Social Media Calendar

Hopefully, you have already taken some time to look through your social media calendar and make appropriate edits. But it’s clear now that minor changes to your strategy will not be enough with the final quarter of the year approaching swiftly.

There is a good chance you will need to adjust the goals you have set for your organization in order for them to still be attainable. One way to get started with the readjustment process is to ask yourself a series of questions that will point you towards appropriate goals. Some of the questions may include:

What would you like to achieve during the final quarter of the year?
How do you see your brand engaging with the public in 2021?
Does your once relevant and carefully planned out content seem tone-deaf?
Should you shelf a few of your content pieces for the rest of the month or possibly the rest of the year?
How can you demonstrate empathy and awareness?

Make an effort to create content that is more about people than your logo and focuses on helping others. You’ve probably heard the phrase “we’re all in this together” around a thousand times over the last few months and that’s because it’s true.

You most likely won’t need to change all of your creative and headlines to be about current events. But you will want to take some time to review and revise your content before publishing it to ensure that it’s sensitive to the world today and what people are going through.

Because many consumers are understandably directing their funds towards ensuring their basic needs are met, now may be a good time to focus on brand awareness campaigns despite the temptation to push out a lot of sale-heavy content.

Don’t forget to dig deep and post with purpose. Make sure your bios on your social channels are appropriately updated and your imagery matches any adjustments you have made to your copy.

Find Positive Ways to Connect

The world has experienced a collective traumatic experience that has affected the livelihood, mental health, and overall wellness of many people. By mid-April, 64% of individuals surveyed reported that they were feeling anxious, depressed, or both. During times like these, individuals are not interested in being pandered to and even less interested in dealing with “salesy” posts on social media. This is an important time for strengthening relationships with your online community.

After making drastic changes to the way they live and work, many individuals are facing a chasm between their daily life and things that once brought them a sense of certainty and levity. There are ways for you to provide this for your audience while remaining in tune with current events.

Adidas provided their followers with uplifting content through their #HomeTeam campaign. The campaign included images and videos of athletes and the Adidas team finding positive ways to adapt to spending more time in their homes.

This was a multitiered way for Adidas to share uplifting, behind-the-scenes content, while reminding their followers that we are in fact, all in this together.

Remember that people want to interact with other people, not bots or even brands. Brands that attempt to join in on trending conversations inauthentically come off as opportunistic. Make sure that your communication with your followers is honest and lines up with your brand values

For this reason, it may also benefit your brand to seek out influencers that mirror your values and can help you connect with new audiences. With more people scrolling through social media apps than ever before, this is an important time to widen the scope of your target audience.

However, you choose to adapt your brand to these unprecedented times, remember to stay active, and communicate with your audience. This is not the time to go dark on your social accounts. Be sure to stay connected and stay safe.

Reclaim Your Social Media in 2019!

Posted on December 20, 2018December 21, 2018 by Kate Smith

Did you know that only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s Resolutions? Resolutions can be a great way to kickstart a new project or make changes to an existing one. The key to becoming part of the 8% is to make sure your goal is clearly defined and manageable. Look back on your social media goals from last year. How did you do? Whether you feel like 2018 was a great year for your social media or you feel that your efforts were lacking, the new year is a great time to reassess your strategy!

Here are 4 ways to start your year strong in the social media department.

Outline Your Social Media Marketing Goals

The rest of your social media strategy will come together a lot quicker if you have clearly established your goals for the new year. So what’s most important to you? Brand awareness? Lead generation? A great way to build your strategy is to start with your main goal and then structure your smaller marketing goals around it. Let’s imagine that your big goal for the year is to increase your sales through social media. Part of accomplishing this goal could be setting up a social listening and engagement strategy that is structured around driving focus towards your company’s product.

Reevaluate your Audience

If your followers aren’t engaging with you, it can mean a few different things. One reason could be that you’re not publishing content that they find relevant. Another is that you’re not targeting the right people with that content. Taking some time to reevaluate your target audience will help remedy both these problems.

What kind of audience are you trying to target? If you’re not sure, think about the product or service you’re selling. Who does it serve best? What drives individuals to purchase it? You’ll want to take into account factors like the age, gender, careers, and hobbies of your audience members.

A great way to evaluate your current audience is to review the analytics on your social media pages. Most social media sites provide you with data about who is interacting with your business page. You might be surprised to find that your online following doesn’t line up with the group you thought you were targeting. Maybe you’ll notice that you have a larger teenage audience than you thought or that your brand currently appeals more to women.

Choose Relevant Social Platforms

Your social media goals don’t have to be overwhelming! But they will start to feel like it if you’re investing your energy into platforms that aren’t helping you. The set of goals that you established will help you decide which platforms are most valuable to your company.

The platform you use should be a tool that aids you in reaching your end goal. You wouldn’t use a screwdriver to pound a nail into a wall because it doesn’t make sense. It would take more time, more energy, and you wouldn’t end up with a high-quality result. So do a little research to make sure you’re not spending excess time on a platform that simply does not work for you. You will discover a lot about the best uses for different platforms. For example, 95% of Instagram users are under 35, so if you’re targeting a younger audience, Instagram might be a good place to establish your presence.

Try and choose 2-3 platforms to create a strong presence on. If you’re wondering which platforms are going to work best for the needs of your company I’ve written up a separate blog post to help you decide which social media platforms are best for you.

Create an Engagement Strategy

This is a big one. When planning out your social strategy you probably think a lot about customer engagement. You think about how people are responding to your posts and how they choose to interact with you. But how much thought do you put into the way your brand is engaging with your audience?

By now you know that social media is about having conversations with your followers. You also probably wouldn’t define a conversation as somebody simply leaving a comment on your page. A real conversation starts with your audience when you put in the effort to talk to them. People like to feel heard and customers like responsive brands. Most people expect brands to respond to their online queries within 24 hours or less. A recent study even showed that 44% of millennials expect a response within an hour. It will definitely benefit you to start using a moderation platform so you don’t miss any messages or comments.

With everything becoming more automated in 2019, beat out your competition by giving your brand a human voice and interacting with others. Some of the most popular brands on social media such as Taco Bell or Netflix are successful because they stick to an authentic tone while communicating online.

So there it is! Four ways strengthen your social media for the new year! These tips should give a solid foundation for implementing your social media resolutions. Let’s give it our all this year and be part of that 8% that achieves their goals!

Local Social Media & Brand Integrity

Posted on November 20, 2017November 20, 2017 by Kate Smith

As a franchisor, one of your biggest concerns is brand integrity. If you’re a growing company with just a few locations, you may lack the resources needed to hire additional employees to monitor your online messaging and brand strategy. If you’re a larger company with hundreds of locations and multiple Facebook pages, you may find it difficult to make sure each franchisee is putting out content reflective of your brand voice. In either case, the answer can be found in understanding today’s on-demand economy and the importance of technology in your approach.

The Need

Advertising has always been about staying ahead of the game. While traditional advertising serves an important purpose, it is largely insufficient on its own. Over the past 25 years we’ve seen a transition in advertising from traditional to digital to social media. And recently we’ve seen yet another fundamental shift toward mobile and local content.

This is simply a consequence of the on-demand economy in which we now live. Consumers are less and less persuaded by the push/pull strategies of the past. They require quality, locally curated content and a relationship-centric approach.

A brand that posts local content is a brand that shows it cares about the communities in which it operates and a brand that people are more likely to engage with. Pages with truly local content can expect to see exponentially higher reach and engagement that will ultimately translate to increased brand loyalty.

The Challenge

Franchises present a unique challenge when it comes to local social management. How do you balance a local social campaign with an overall brand strategy?

Brand Strategy + Messaging + Consistency x Local Franchisees = Chaos

In approaching this challenge, it is important to note that franchisee concerns are very different from those of the franchisor. While corporate players may be focused on brand image, distribution, and PR, franchisees may be more concerned about staying connected to their community, getting enough people through the door, or simply having enough time to dedicate to online engagement.

All of these concerns are important to consider in determining your social media strategy. Here are three approaches to consider.

The Options

1. Top Down Approach

What it looks like: Corporate publishes the majority of posts uniformly across branded pages and reviews are managed from a centralized point. Some localized posts are allowed with approval from the corporate team. This is the most common approach among franchises because it tends to be the easiest to implement.

Advantages: Corporate control and consistency of messaging.

Disadvantages: Less online engagement and less community connection.

Tech Needs: Social tools that can mass-distribute posts, restrict permissions, and centralize social reviews and responses.

2. Bottom Up Approach

What it looks like: Corporate yields the majority of control to the franchisees to distribute localized content and respond to online reviews. Some corporate posts are distributed on the local level. This approach requires training franchisees to use different social media platforms and create engaging content.

Advantages: Truly local content and genuine community engagement.

Disadvantages: Less control of brand messaging, unreliable or inexperienced franchisees, and no guaranteed posting.

Tech Needs: None or a social platform that limits rights and requires content approvals.

3. Integrated Approach

What it looks like: Corporate controls messaging from the top through approvals and permissions. Reliable and competent franchisees can be given more flexibility, while others can receive corporate curated messaging. This approach requires a social management platform and training, but allows for corporate oversight and franchisee opt-out.

Advantages: Move at your own pace, retain corporate control of messaging, lower risk, and still get localized engagement.

Disadvantages: More planning and training.

Tech Needs: Franchise social media software that allows content approvals, roles and permissions, and localization capabilities.

The Solution

An integrated approach is the best solution. It helps retain brand integrity while also allowing local franchisees to be involved and engaged with their communities online. For this approach you will need to leverage a social media management platform that allows you to assign roles and permissions, grant content approvals, localize and post to multiple pages at once, and centralize reviews from all the top social media and review sites.

Lava Surf allows you to implement this integrated approach with ease. Though it will require some extra training, it will allow your brand to move at its own pace. If you’re nervous about diving into local social right away, you can take your time and implement your strategy in phases. We recommend a Crawl, Walk, Run strategy:

Crawl: corporate control
Walk: test the waters by allowing specific, trusted franchisees to have more freedom
Run: train and roll out brand-wide

To find out more about how you can implement this integrated strategy with your business, feel free to contact us here.

Tag: Brand Integrity

How about a solid case study?