Delightfully on Brand 🔭✨
Social Media but stay on your brand ish 🤌
If you read Delightfully Unhinged (part 1) you know that content is strategy in action. The content you put out should be so unique it would look weird as someone else’s content.
Not that you have to make weird content–but it should feel so much like your brand that even if it’s a trend everyone has done (perhaps Pedro Pascal eating a sandwich) people just know “that’s from [your brand here]!” because they just feel it. 🤌
“They just feel it”? That’s all well and good but what the f^k does that do for me???
Let’s talk more about how to choose and create the best content for your brand’s social media: 👉
BRAND = CONTENT +/- TRENDS
This formula from our Delightfully Unhinged article still stands. Every trend is not for every brand BUT every brand can find a trend if they want to. Emphasis on “if they want to” because well, trends aren’t for every brand. Some brands are delightfully unhinged and others are crazily put together–but they stay on their brand (not just ON brand) and don’t let other brand’s content deter or distract them from their original goal: representing their brand exclusively.
How to choose the “right trend”
Use your brand pillars to help you choose the trend. If it doesn’t relate to at least one of your brand pillars–it doesn’t make sense for your brand. Having pillars for your brand helps have a foundation, and good foundations create ease, and ease creates—well ease in using the brand!
You may choose new colors, or even update your logo–but the brand’s feeling will stay the same. Nike doesn’t carry their very first things, and they probably even have different goals than when they started, but one thing hasn’t changed: the feeling.
There’s that pesky “feelings” word again–but a brand is more than the colors, the logo and the photo stylings: a brand is built on how it makes people feel.
People come back to and strive for luxury brands because they feel luxurious, they go to Bulk Warehouses because they have a goal of saving money, people choose Mac or Windows based on a personal preference of what they think is easier. Price is a factor, but when given the choice people will choose what they think is easier and stick with what they know.
Every brand has different goals but what customers remember is the feeling they had when they interacted with your brand. The feeling of owning luxury, the feeling of saving money on what they need, the feeling of ease when working. These things aren’t necessarily tangible but they’re felt every single time someone uses your brand or product, and they’re the feelings people associate with your brand.
Just like there’s a difference between house and home, there’s a difference between branding and brand loyalty.
How to foster “brand loyalty”
Much like a cheeseboard or a virtual closet, social media is unique for every person and every brand. Social media is a way for people to get to know brands in a way that brands haven’t had in the past. Brands and customers are able to converse, interact and sometimes even meet the brand—which fosters feelings of loyalty and not only loyalty but the urge to share their brand with friends.
How to create the “best content”
“Best” is relative, just like any other scenario. What’s viral for one brand won’t go viral for every brand. That’s because authenticity is not just being “true to the brand” 🙄 it’s creating content only your brand can create. While the quality of the content is important it’s the feeling behind the content that really says “This is from that brand I love” and makes the brand experience memorable, recommended, and successful long-term. Creating only content you can create means using your product or service and highlighting your differentiators in a way that sticks with the viewers (aka potential customers).
We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again (and again): 🔑 Your BRAND is the key to CONTENT*,** not the other way around* 🔑
The trends can come and go, but your brand should still be part of the content—not only in words and visuals, but in feeling. Find your brand’s feeling = sustain your brand. Once you find your brand’s feeling, that can translate to every aspect of social media from chatting with customers in messages or comments to posting content that goes viral.