Social Media Secrets for Jumping Out in a Jammed World

Getting attention in today's jammed world is a challenge. What if your brand could jump out in all the clutter? Would it make a difference? In this article we uncover 4 social media secrets for your brand to get the attention it deserves.

Branding - What It Is

Forbes contributor Jeremy McLaughlin stated that he thinks the word BRAND is one of the words in our business vocabulary that is most widely used but "unevenly understood". We agree with that. So first we'd like to set up a level playing field of what we mean by brand.

Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, claims that a brand is a synonym of culture. As you apply the idea of building your culture (brand) you can think of your organization in terms of your reputation, how you are seen by your customers, employees, and the market. The tips below are the some of the steps needed to build a brand (culture) that jumps out in our jammed world.

It all starts with your culture and it's promise. What we call the "brand promise."

4 Social Media Secrets for your Brand to Jump Out in a Jammed World

1. Know your audience and what they care about

A basic rule of social media marketing is that your start any branding, positioning, or marketing project with a single question. Who specifically is our audience? Do we know our customers, donors, volunteers? When thinking about how well you know your audience, it is not the idea of having data from their generic demographic snapshot, although that data will help. Think about the individual who loves your brand already. Why did your organization strike a passion in their choice? How did they make the decision to engage with your brand? Would they do it again, why? If not, why not? What are their hobbies and interests? These types of questions will help you better understand who your ideal audience is and what makes them tick. You will need a tick (heartbeat) before you can jump out.

The most effective and quickest way to jump out, is to match your audiences’ needs and wants with what your organization offers. We think that many organizations are good at explaining the [WHAT] and [HOW] but lack greatly in the WHY. Clearly communicating the "why" is what will engage people who care about your why. Let's explore this just a bit.

In today's world of what's and how's people don't generally care too much about how you do what you do. They are looking for the why they should choose your brand over everyone else out there. The best way to communicate your why is by knowing your audience. Here is the SMURKE example:

SMURKE mission statement: to help small businesses and nonprofit organizations thrive by delivering a social media management solution that allows users to plan, collaborate, and publish content that drives engagement and audience growth.

Our why is clear. To help small businesses and nonprofits THRIVE. Once the "why" is clear the technical, functional, and emotional benefits jump out.

2. Find the technical, functional, and emotional benefits of what you do

Once you understand your "why", you can begin to thing about the benefits you offer your audience. You might consider defining these benefits in terms of technical, functional, and emotional benefits your audience might find.

Technical benefits

The best way to show what a technical benefit looks like is with an example of how we do it at SMURKE. First; however, we don't want you thinking this is a sales pitch. It's just a real life example. Fair?

Our technology at SMURKE benefits our audience by saving them time on their social media marketing efforts. The technology allows better management of a content strategy, automated engagement, and increased positive results (most cases increased sales, donations, or volunteer hours).

At SMURKE we claim the technical benefit of our solution is to manage planning, collaboration, and publishing of social media content in a single place.

Functional benefits

With the technical benefits of your brand defined, it’s time to look at the functional benefits you can offer your audience. Functional benefits are what the audience gets when they buy your product or service or (in the case of any nonprofits) donate and volunteer with your cause.

Functional benefits focus on things like how a brand improves your life, helps you stay connected to others or helps you to make forward progress. 

At SMURKE a functional benefit is not having to hit manually publish content when you want to share content with your audience on social media. Another example that SMURKE delivers are tools to curate content in the system from your favorite RSS feeds, instert images from an integrated image database, and connect gifs without ever leaving the comfort of SMURKE.

Or in the case of a bigger home: a big, spacious home will offer the functional benefit of space for your whole family and rooms for each of your 8 children. 

Emotional benefits

Emotional benefits are really what makes one brand stand out from another. This is why culture is part of your brand promise mentioned above. As a marketing software company we are emotionally connected to Apple here at SMURKE. Emotional benefits are how your brand makes someone feel when they interact with your organization or its content.

 Let's explore.

One emotional benefit of Apple, for example, is "everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently." As users of Apple products through and through at SMURKE, we emotionally connect to being DIFFERENT. So we always buy Apple.

And at SMURKE we claim the emotional benefit of our product and services is assurance that your content will be posted to your organization's social media platforms at exactly the right time every time. 

As you go through your audience research process, look out for emotion-based words your audience uses to describe your organization and/or the problem you’re solving.

3. Craft a clear and simple message

Taste the Feeling, Just Do It, Think Different, I’m Lovin’ It, Eat Fresh, Come Hungry Leave Happy… These are all examples of strong brand taglines. In just a few words, you probably knew exactly which businesses it relates to. If not, check it out: Coke, Nike, Apple, McDonalds, Subway, IHOP - how many did you get right? 100%?

And that’s the power of being able to boil your message down to something clear and simple.

Narrowing your whole business down to one sentence, or even just a couple of words can be very tough. It was for us. SMURKE - Social Media Management Made Simple.

4. Live up to your brand promise

To be successful, and for consumers to trust your organization, you must live up to your brand promise. While we don't all have the resources of Coke, Apple or Nike, or the access to famous folks for that matter, it still serves of a great example of how to share your brand promise with every interaction. Let's take a look at a slightly different example.

One of our customers is a small boutique bed and breakfast in a small but famous quaint town of Sun Valley Idaho. They live their culture on their sleeves and as the result their brand promise of delivering a special guest experience is every where. These are a few things they did to make that happen:

• Get employees excited about the guests

Once you know (really know) your guests, you can work with your staff to get them excited about the guests who are coming to stay at the bed and breakfast. Have you ever thought about what makes a great guest experience? How about service in which you don’t have to ask for? Service that just happens. By helping employees understand your guest and what they like to do, where they are coming from, why they are coming to the area, etc., you empower them with information to further expose your brand as a positive experience. Your employees are the vehicle which transports your brand throughout the the bed and breakfast, guest experience, and local community. Empower them and then take care of them. Running a boutique bed and breakfast isn’t the same as running a large national chain. Cater to your employees like you want them to cater to your guests. Hire smart, not cheap employees and stand out.

• Clearly define why their Boutique Bed & Breakfast is different

When it comes to lodging, in most cases, guests have an abundance of choices. The list is even smaller when a guest is looking for a boutique or independently owned bed and breakfast. Standing out as a unique brand is important because you’ve got to offer enough of a value and/or an experience that someone would want to pay a little more for. When it comes to your uniqueness, location is only one of the unique benefits Another might be a horse drawn tour the area’s historical sites with no added charge and so on. Define how your boutique bed and breakfast is difference and then be different.

• Create consistency with every internal and external human to human touchpoint

Brand identify is much more than a logo, it’s colors, and visual aspects. While those are critical of a clear and consistent message, a great brand identity without correct positioning and messaging doesn’t work well. Create consistency in both the look of your brand identity (logo) as well as the experience guests have with your bed and breakfast.

Mike Brown the CEO of Death Wish coffee understood this concept. He didn’t want to build just another coffee shop. While the story is much better coming from Mike, the essence is that his customers wanted the strongest coffee ever made. Not the smoothest, best tasting, but the strongest. The brand Death Wish came about because the owner listened to his customers. His customers wanted the energy to work a second job. They wanted the ability to work themselves to death figuratively. The Death Wish name, logo, and slogan tell this story. It is consistent, and the coffee is consistently the strongest in the market. The experience isn’t the focus, but how well it gets the job of creating energy done is. It delivers energy to work oneself to death by delivering the world’s strongest coffee.

As I mentioned right at the start of this post, your brand is the identity of your business and how it makes people feel. So every single touchpoint where someone can interact with your organization should represent what you want your brand promise to be, and how you want people to feel. 

OUR BRAND PROMISE

SMURKE mission statement: to help small businesses and nonprofit organizations thrive by delivering a social media management solution that allows users to plan, collaborate, and publish content that drives engagement and audience growth.