Social Media Content Plan Practices that Brands Should AVOID
Timing is everything with social media. You don’t need to look very far to find brands that suffered from significant social media fails. Think about that time that AT&T relied on 9/11 to promote its cell phones… ouch.
Social media is a powerful platform in marketing. In fact, studies show that utilizing social media platforms for brand advertising can actually help businesses increase their sales by up to 55%. In some cases, this equates to billions of dollars in revenue.
Unfortunately, this power is also a double-edged sword for several companies, and in some scenarios, a brand is only as good as the social media content plan. Sometimes, it is just better for brand marketing to step away from the keyboard and avoid posting anything at all.
This might represent prudent practices to alleviate the potential for a social debacle as much as maintaining an already established social media follower base. For this reason, our expert marketing staff from GOA-TECH wants to outline some content that remains better to avoid.
Have Some Heart (and Some Social Tact). Don’t Be Deaf to Tragedy.
Social media has expanded so much in outreach and popularity that Twitter represents one of the first places people go when news breaks. Despite this content remaining mixed in with sports and video gaming news, as well as celebrity gossip, when the updates begin to appear, the social consciousness often shifts.
When thinking about what not to do, let’s look at Spirit Airlines employing their social media content plan utilizing the celebrity nude photo leak to advertise lower airfare. In spite of the company saying they “meant no offense”, intentions a solid content marketing strategy doesn’t make.
You’re Not THAT Funny
Everyone likes to think that they’re the funny ones in the room. However, it is essential to think about humor with subjectivity. As more and more brands start personifying themselves on social media, we see “humor” fails with increased frequency, and fervor.
One of the worst offenders we’ve seen regarding this type of content on social media is from IHOP outlining that their pancakes are “Flat, but with GREAT personality.” Although this may come across as funny for some, most simply thought it was a bit sexist and misogynistic.
Avoid Tacking on to Trending Topics
This doesn’t mean avoiding what remains trending altogether. Understanding what followers continue to discuss on social media can represent an ideal way to stimulate interest in a social media content plan. Nevertheless, shamelessly hijacking trending topics to attain some more time in follower feeds is translucently brazen, and can substantially backfire.
When DiGiorno Frozen Pizza made light of the domestic violence-oriented hashtag #whyistayed to advertise their products, this was a drastic misstep jumping in on a trending conversation about a very serious topic. Adequately, social media followers responded with significant backlash in turn.
Develop an Ironclad Social Media Content Plan with GOA-TECH
In any industry involving human intervention, we will observe social media mess-ups. In today’s connected world, followers and readers will remain quick to call brands to account for their inappropriate content initiatives.
Although the company can always take down the post, sometimes the damage is already done. It remains essential not to try to fix it and apologize sincerely for their error. Nevertheless, the best possible solution is minimizing and mitigating these issues in the first place.
The best possible foundation in social media marketing is establishing and implementing a bulletproof social media content plan. To learn more about how our comprehensive advertising, marketing, and web design firm from GOA-TECH can help you expand your brand on social media, direct your attention to the content featured on our blog, and contact our dedicated staff today!
