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Real People, Real Results: Why authenticity trumps AI on TikTok, Instagram, and beyond
The holiday season is fast approaching, and unlike previous years - 2020 has thrown us for a loop. One of the largest being that this year (and the holidays) are flying up on us at the pace of a high-speed crawl. Because of this, brands and influencers alike are gearing up to begin their holiday social media campaign and planning strategy earlier than in previous years. Last year, Deloitte projected that the holiday season would rake in over $1.1 trillion in sales. While this year may look a little different in terms of revenue projections, the fact that customers are taking to the internet by storm to do their holiday shopping means that as a brand, you need to create a social media campaign that stops a thumb from scrolling in its tracks.
But with all the noise surrounding the holiday season, how can your brand break through?
In this article, we’re covering all things holiday - from holiday campaign how-tos, best practices and more, this is your complete guide for holiday social media.
Read on for more.
Social media holiday campaigns aren’t the new kid in school. They’ve been around the block a few times, bringing with them some tried and tested best practices and methods to success. We already know that the holiday season is packed full of ads and new releases - and with consumers in the mood to shop, it makes it even more lucrative.
But, keeping in mind that this year might look a little different for most holiday shoppers (and knowing this can affect your seasonal marketing strategy), here’s a few tips to get a jump on your social media holiday campaign strategy this year.
This year, the fight for parking spaces and space in the queue during a last minute shopping dash will be fewer as more people move their holiday shopping online to protect themselves and their families. Because of this, many people won’t be able to make those last minute shopping trips. Shipping times and potential delays due to high volumes of orders have consumers starting their holiday shopping earlier than normal this year.
That goes for brands and influencers.
With holiday content creation beginning earlier, both brands and influencers creating visual assets for them are able to plan their cadence, deliver content on time and create an editorial calendar that matches their goals for this season and allows for the creation of a structured content delivery system.
In order for influencer content to be effective, you first need to make sure that their style aligns with your brand and that their content will resonate with your audience. The first step in choosing the right influencer to work with is, you guessed it, research them! Start with IDing your target audience. Who and why are you targeting them?
The answer to this question can help drive your influencer marketing strategy. Different audience segments may relate to one influencer more than another. Their influence could potentially be even more effective if an audience segment is exposed to a certain influencer more frequently, like through a long term partnership.
This is where the value of influencer content really shows. As your brand community becomes exposed to a particular influencer during a long term campaign, your community becomes their community too.
This combined community will have an established trust for both your brand and the influencer(s) you’ve chosen to partner with. Building on this relationship can allow your partnership to produce some incredible visual assets that drive campaign success. Especially when your partnerships are authentic and a good fit for both the influencer and your brand.
Who doesn’t love a little holiday competition? Get your brand community engaged by creating a giveaway, best-photo-wins or other holiday inspired event on your social media page. Invite people to participate by creating an image or a video with your product, have them use a branded hashtag and re-share the content on your brand’s channel.
When your community feels like you appreciate them and are engaging back with them, their support for you grows. They’ll tell their family and friends, and it can grow your reach. Plus, you’ll have a huge stream of user-generated content (UGC) that you now have access to for little to no cost.
Content marketing - especially visual content marketing - is about utilizing all of your content assets on as many of your platforms as possible. And it’s not just limited to social media. One visual content piece (such as an image or video) can go much further than ever before. It can be repurposed to suit each platform for which you have a presence.
Perhaps a video could be teased on the new Instagram reel feature, fully shown in your grid post and highlighted on your stories to bring attention back to it. An image could first feature on your blog, make its way to your social media platforms and be re-shared in an email blast.
Any way you choose to share your creative assets, they’ve got a longer lifespan when you incorporate them into a multi-faceted visual content marketing strategy.
Pro tip: when you work with Cohley, you get to keep all of your assets. This means that you can use them on all of your brand touch-points; from emails and your website, to all of your social media platforms - we ensure that you get the most out of your money and visual assets that are best suited to your brand.
We get it - the holidays are busy, and with all of the hustle and bustle can come a lot of stress. True for you, true for influencers and content creators, too. Both sides are trying to create as much content during this peak season as possible - and with a huge workload on both plates, something could go wrong, whether intentional or completely out of left field. This is where it’s helpful to both sides for a campaign manager to be available, should something come up.
A campaign management strategy can prove incredibly useful during seasons like these, when stress and commotion can run high. If you don’t have the capacity to take it on in-house, platforms like Cohley offer a fully-managed campaign strategy to help you through. You can kick back, relax and be assured that you will be delivered beautiful assets that are on-budget and on-brand, every time.
Analytics are an incredibly valuable tool within your belt. Not only can they help you understand your target audience, but also, how you can market to them. You can track influencer and in-house content campaigns, see what’s working or switch directions if you need to.
Staying in-tune with your analytics and understanding how your consumers are reacting to your content output can help your brand remain agile in a competitive market and stay clued in to key trends within your industry. This can help maximize cost savings for your brand, but also the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
Consumers now more than ever are turning to friends, family, and the internet for recommendations for their purchases. It’s not just in the months leading up to the holiday season, it’s for everyday items. While the influence of peers has always been strong, more and more people are turning to non-celebrity influencers and bloggers when it comes to product recommendations.
These influencers and bloggers are your regular, everyday people. They struggle with balancing budgets, the effects of the pandemic and juggling the holidays just like we all do. It makes them a relatable source - someone that people can look up to - when they give budget friendly advice about what products to buy or where to shop.
Going into the holiday season - influencers, both micro-influencers and those with large audiences alike, become increasingly important and the benefits of including them in your holiday content strategy are many. Because they take on the role of a relatable figure that one looks to for advice, they have the ability to bring humanity and a ‘real-ness’ to brands that is sorely needed during the holiday season. Especially this one, as people are still figuring out ways to best be in touch with their loved ones amidst a global pandemic.
Have you ever heard the saying, “put a face to the brand”? More often than not, when a brand has a ‘face’, someone that it’s customers can relate to, they will be better able to build a trusting relationship between themselves and their consumer.
Authenticity is a big player here.
When you’re looking for an influencer to add to your content marketing strategy, you want to make sure that they are authentic about the content that they post - that they genuinely like and will use a product or service, rather than just create a post for a quick paycheck.
Doing your due diligence and finding the influencer(s) that are not only the perfect fit for your brand, but are also people that your consumers trust, is increasingly prevalent in busy shopping times like the holiday season. If consumers trust your brand, and the face you put to it, the odds of them returning to you during peak spending periods, or when they have an influx of extra income, much higher.
Initially, one of the main appeals of partnering with different influencers and content creators is that your brand awareness can increase as their audience becomes exposed to you through their content. Brand awareness is typically considered to be the top of the marketing funnel - and often, it’s scroll-stopping visual assets within an influencer’s content that piques a consumer’s interest in whichever brand may be featured.
Brand awareness is such a powerful metric, that roughly 65% of marketers judge a campaign or influencer partnership based on the awareness it drives. Over time, awareness can be driven through long-term influencer partnerships. In fact, that tends to be much more powerful than a series of one-off posts.
Have you ever had a product that you’ve been so excited to tell a friend or family member about? This excitement almost caused a buzz, and you just couldn’t wait to give all of the details about why you liked said product or brand?
This is similar to the effect that some influencers have on their (or a brand’s) following. They’re able to take the conversation offsite, onto their own social media platforms or perhaps even to a brand’s email list. It elevates the presence of a brand - especially when the partnership between brand and influencer is authentic and true to their tone of voice and messaging.
Having a consistent influencer as a partner can mean that your brand could receive more authentic reviews, and that your audience could become more highly engaged with your chosen influencer - liking, commenting on and sharing their content, almost as an extension of your content marketing strategy.
It could even open up the door to user-generated content creation - not just assets that you’ve created from your influencer partnership.
Influencers are really stepping up their game when it comes to content creation. Whether it’s images, video or other creative assets - a lot of work goes into the planning and creation of each piece of content. This is for a variety of reasons. Firstly, many simply love to do so - and have a beautifully curated social media presence as a result. Others want to stand out in the social media sphere, because it’s a very busy space - especially now. Lastly, influencers want to stand out to brands that they could potentially partner with down the line, and they know that their content needs to be top-notch.
Whether you decide to work with an influencer platform like Cohley or not, content creators and influencers alike are able to provide brands with beautiful visual assets that can be used on any platform that a brand could want.
These assets can then be injected into your content marketing strategy to use now or later on down the line. The possibilities of evergreen content, holiday or otherwise, are vast!
We strive to change the way that brands think about their content strategy, especially when it comes to marketing your brand during the holiday season. Whether you need help building brand awareness, looking at ways in which you can expand your content marketing strategy or grow your business through influencer partnerships, we’re here to help you.
With Cohley, you can take the next step towards on-brand, on-budget visual assets that can be repurposed during this holiday season, as well as those to come. Happy Holidays!
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