A Look At How Established Brands Create A Social Media Presence

In today’s digital era, having  a solid digital presence is essential for any business to survive. Thought social media was just for individuals? You could be missing a trick. With 90% of Millennials, 76% of Generation X and 48% of Baby Boomers now using some form of social media, it’s by far one of the best ways for you to promote your business to a mass audience.

While it may now be easier to get your brand in front of 45% of the population, a regular social media presence doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is listening. Being able to drill down to the right audience on social media is an essential part of being successful. On the other hand, if you don’t use the platform in the right way, you could have a PR nightmare on your hands.

Having a tactical social media strategy in place is the best way to ensure you’re getting the most out of social media for your business, and there’s no better way to learn than from companies that have already been successful.

Let’s take a look at what strategies seem to be working and which brands are doing it right.

1. PlayStation

According to statistics, PlayStation is one of the most followed brands on the planet with over 18.7 million followers on Twitter. Between 2014 and 2019, PlayStation deployed a social media strategy that saw a 376% rise in the amount of followers they had on the platform.

From a first glance at PlayStation’s twitter, you should be able to see how successfully they use visuals on the platform. Tweets with images are 34% more likely to get retweeted and PlayStation have this down to a T. PlayStation’s use of in-game screenshots, gameplay footage and live streaming events make it some of the most engaging content on Twitter in which it’s highly attractive to look at and easy to digest.

In a recent campaign, PlayStation’s use of the hashtag #StayatHome saw more than 10 million people interact with their content to download free copies of their most popular games. By jumping on a trending topic on Twitter, PlayStation were able to capture impressions from a wider audience base and ultimately convert them into customers.

What can we learn from PlayStation?

• Use imager and video content in your social posts to capture a higher engagement rate.
• Utilise trending topics by adding relevant hashtags to get your content seen on a larger stage.

2. DraftKings

With over 316,000 followers on Twitter, DraftKings are another brand that have perfected using social media to shed a positive light on their brand. There are two main strengths that stand out when looking at how DraftKings use social media. Firstly, their use of live video footage of sports events to talk about the latest bets is some of the most highly engaged with content on their channel. DraftKings know that their main audience are sports fans, but they have been able to use the platform to draw attention to their online casino in the USA, through tagging the account in their bio and regularly retweeting their content. By using targeted and relevant content to engage their audience. This brand has been able to capture the right audience attention, open a two-way dialogue between their brand and customers, and encourage positive promotion of their brand.

The second way that DraftKings are successful with their online social media presence is through their use of humor to appear to the emotions of their followers. Having successfully identified exactly who their target audience is and what type of content is most likely to appeal to them, DraftKings have been using memes and gifs to keep their content amusing and lighthearted.

What can we learn from DraftKings?

• It’s essential to identify who your target audience is on social media and craft content specifically for this persona, and no one else.
• The use of popular humor to lighten up content and keep users engaged is a great way to empathize and connect with your target audience.

Chipotle

Having been founded in 1993 in Denver, Colorado, Chipotle isn’t the youngest of brands. Yet their smart use of social media has enabled them to reconnect with younger generations and increase digital sales by 88% in Q3 2019. So how exactly are they doing it?

Chipotle have been using the younger social media platform TikTok to appeal to a younger audience. By jumping on the back of trends like #GuacDance and #Chipotleflipthelid, the brand have created a huge amount of engagement and appealed to a target market they probably wouldn’t otherwise reach.

By changing their strategy to a digital first one, Chipotle have managed to shift the focus of their brand and give it a much-needed refresh, so much so that they experienced a revenue growth of 14.6%.

What can we learn from Chipotle?

• Brands can reinvent their presence and appeal to a whole new generation of people, just by switching up their marketing focus and content strategy on social media.
• Content doesn’t always have to be serious and commercially focused. The use of trends and humour will make your brand far more popular that simply using a sales push approach.

Overall, there’s no doubt that the use of social media can have significant benefits to a brand. Looking at some of the most successful organizations out there so far, we can see that by identifying your target audience and tapping into what type of content appeals to them, brands can really accelerate their growth. From increased digital sales to a larger online presence, there really is no question that every company should be on social media.