Skip to the content 
Ever noticed how the same brands seem to pop up over and over again on our social media news feeds? It’s not a coincidence, believe me. The reason they are so prominent is partly down to budget. When you see the list below you’ll notice that they are indeed all pretty big brands and companies, but they are also using another tool in addition to massive bank balances. That tool is awesome social media content.
One of the first things I ever learned about social media was to be entertaining, informative, sociable and educational when sourcing or creating content. The examples below will just go to show you that these rules still apply!
Brand 1: Licor Beirão
Platform – YouTube, then viral via social media
Tactic – Newsjacking to the extreme
During one of England’s last friendly games before the Euro 2016 championship began, they played Portugal and Bruno Alves delivered what can only be described as a flying kick to the cranium of England striker Harry Kane. It was a bad tackle, and everyone was shocked, but the game went on and everyone kind of forgot about it. That is, everyone apart from the marketing team over at Licor Beirão, who happened to notice that their billboard was displayed at exactly the same time as the kick was delivered. I won’t spoil what they did next incase you haven’t seen it already, just watch the below video:
What can we learn?
Well, it just goes to show that if you capitalise on even the strangest and seemingly bad situations you can turn it to your advantage when using social media. Of course, the video above went completely viral in a matter of minutes and at the time of writing has had countless views on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and more as well as being picked up by multiple news outlets and circulated….you guessed it – for free. This pretty much comes down to a clever case of newsjacking, which we’ve talked about at MoreNiche quite a lot. The lesson to be learned here is to keep your eyes open for anything that you can piggyback on and take advantage of (even if it at first seems bad).
Brand 2 – GoPro
Platform – Facebook & Twitter
Tactic – Letting your users create content for you
What can we say about GoPro that you probably don’t already know? They make tough, waterproof and durable cameras for traveling, sports and extreme adventures and they are pretty lively across multiple social media channels. I’m sure you’re already putting two and two together with what makes their social presence so great. Not only is there awesome competitions, videos and photography from GoPro themselves, but they have a wealth of content that is generated by users of their products, who can’t wait to share their adventures, mishaps and travels. And the great thing is, it’s super visual!
GoPro users are really keen to share the exciting and interesting situations they get into on their holidays, expeditions and sporting endeavors, so their Facebook and Twitter feeds soon fill up with eye catching, sharable content. Check it out for yourself here.
What can we learn?
You don’t always have to do all the hard work! Being social, reaching out for stories, photographs, progress pictures, and testimonials are fantastic ways to fill your social feeds with exciting, personalised and credible content. The best part is you don’t have to make the content yourself!
Another thing to learn is that visual is EVERYTHING when it comes to catching someone’s eye. If you’re scrolling down through a packed news or Twitter feed, your eye isn’t caught by hashtags or an amusing pun. The first thing everyone sees is the image or thumbnail. So get practicing with that camera.
Brand 3 – Airbnb
Platform – Facebook & Twitter
Tactic – Amazing Prizes, Giveaways and competitions
Airbnb has recently won awards for their overall Social Media presence on Instagram. But their Facebook page is also a goldmine for ideas and inspiration. Boasting well over 3 million likes and an awesome reputation for customer service responses on the page, they are really making waves here. (They’ve also recently implemented with a whole new styling to their profiles in support of Pride all over the world.)
Anyway, back to competitions. Take a look at the examples below of some of their latest efforts. They do regular giveaways for short breaks and holidays and accompany them with photography of idyllic locations. This truly is the essence of the ideal social media competition:
- Amazing visual? Check.
- Amazing prize? Check.
- Relevant to the audience? Check.
- Great ad scent on landing page? Check.
- Capturing email and data as entry? Check.
What can we learn?
Competitions – when done right, are an amazing way to boost your social reach, especially when the prize is hefty and relevant to the intended audience. They are also a great way to gain email addresses from your audience as part of competition entry. You can then go on to market to these people regardless of who won the competition and you know they are interested in what you were giving away. You can even hit them with an email letting them know that that unfortunately, they didn’t win the competition this time, but here are some great offers on the products related to the prize.
I know not everyone can give a holiday away on a weekly basis, but don’t panic. Instead of doing a weekly or monthly competition giving away smaller prizes, save up resources and make a bumper competition in order to make the prize more worthwhile, you may find that your social reach is boosted just that much more and you should capture some great personal information that you can use in separate campaigns as well!
Brand 4 – Ben & Jerry’s
Platform – Instagram
Tactic – Looking (and being) delicious
Who doesn’t love ice cream? No one, that’s who – and Ben & Jerry’s Instagram account is a testament to that fact. Granted they are one of the biggest ice cream companies in the world but it doesn’t take away from the fact that they put a lot of time and effort into their Instagram feed.
There’s no secret to what they are doing or how they are doing it. They are capitalising on the photographic nature of delicious looking desserts and our love for food! They aren’t even constantly spamming feeds like other brands tend to, they’re often posting no more than three times a week.
Instagram has gained somewhat of a reputation for being the place to post food pictures and the guys over at Ben & Jerry’s know that. With only 1,356 posts they’ve gained 650k followers (at the time of writing this article) that means they’ve gained (on average) over 479 followers per post! Now tell me you wouldn’t want brand exposure like that on your Instagram account?
Now it’s time for ice cream pictures!
What can we learn?
People love food on Instagram. So give them what they want! As a MoreNiche affiliate I know you might be thinking, so what, we don’t sell ice cream, we sell health and beauty products? Well, I’d suggest you think laterally. There are a huge amount of food/nutrition posts you could make surrounding the health, fitness, weight loss and bodybuilding niches. Just think about all the healthy and low calories meals you could make for a campaign surrounding the MoreNiche weight loss offers.
Brand 5 – LEGO
Platform – YouTube
Tactic – Catering to different audience members in one place
LEGO are doing something on YouTube that a lot of other brand’s social channels don’t. Catering to a wide variety of it’s audience and recognising the fact that they might not all want the same type of content. What rewards are they getting for doing this? So far they’ve gotten a total of 2,817,717,217 views to show for it and a huge 1,588,222 subscribers. Now that is a serious social media following. And that’s just their YouTube. They are also wielding a hefty 11.5 million likes on Facebook and approaching 1 million followers over a variety of Twitter handles.
Don’t get me wrong, LEGO is an absolutely huge brand with many facets to their business model, from video games, to movies, theme parks to building sets and clothing for all ages. There’s not much that LEGO haven’t done in terms of branching out. You’d think this would create somewhat of a social media nightmare, not knowing which way to go, trying to cover all bases or just focusing on the real money makers of their business model. Well you’d be wrong. Because they are segmenting their content in such a great way on YouTube that is is pleasing everyone. They are effectively making their own television schedule separated into specific interests for each facet of their business.
LEGO have recognised an issue that was based in organization. They didn’t just throw all their content onto their channel and just let the user sift through it until they find what they want. No, no, no! They break it down into niches. They could have had a channel for each of their sub genres, but that would create a lot of unnecessary work.
The channel is currently shaping up like this:
- Themes
- Video Games
- The Build Zone
- Lego Brand
- Club TV Shows
- Designer Videos
- Product Animations
- LEGO Announcements
- TV
Not only do they have the setup above but they are also perfectionists when it comes to making and defining playlists. Take a look at these well thought out and well thumbnailed playlists.
What can we learn?
Not all your subscribers, likers or fans are engaging with you for the same reason, so it’s very important to try and remember that not everyone wants the same sort of content all the time. It’s one thing to provide what you THINK people want but an entirely different ball game to actually provide it. Take a look at competitors, bigger brands within the niche, and see what they are doing better than you and see how they are using their content to appeal to a wide variety of people.
What else do we learn? Never waste an opportunity. Not only are Lego aware that a lot of visitors come to their YouTube channel to watch video content about their shows or products. But they are also aware that is potentially free traffic for promoting other products. They have a HUGE CTA directing traffic to download their video player app so they can watch their content on the go!
That’s it for now. We’ll take another look at which brands are lighting up the social media world around Christmas time!