Startup Guides > 3 Winning Social Marketing Strategies From Top Brands

Do you follow any business or product brands on social media? Are you glad you do? If that's the case, they are probably doing at least one of three things to get your attention:

• Connecting with one of your passions and/or interests.
• Entertaining you with their engaging personality.
• Providing interesting and/or important information to you.

If you're a small business owner, you may want to consider which of these three strategies you're following. You might also consider following one of the strategies exclusively. However, it's fine to try each. These approaches are interchangeable, and a brand cannot only switch back and forth between them, but also use two or three at the same time. The most important thing is for a brand to stay true to their culture, identify what they are best at, what they can offer customers the most of, and focus on that. That will be their strongest hand to play.


The three strategies - passion, personality and knowledge - are outlined below:

1. Passion Brands

No matter how much you like it, it's hard to get worked up about an energy drink. But that drink may be just a part of the experience that you associate with that brand. For example, for some, Red Bull conjures up images of action sports. This is no accident, since the brand has worked hard at tying the brand to images of young people risking their lives on extreme outdoor activities.

Another consistent brand is Nike. Though the brand's social media communications highlight both professional and amateur athletes, the underlying point is the same: celebrating athletic achievement.

2. Personality Brands

Not every brand can connect itself to a pastime the way that Nike could. What do you do, for instance, if you're Oreo cookies? Oreo is not associated with much besides milk and maybe binge-eating. Instead, they've infused the brand's social media activity with personality, including playful moments and lots of emojis.

3. Knowledge Brands

Knowledge brands want to tell you about all the stuff that they're doing in the real world. A good example of such a brand is IBM, which produces a plethora of content about all the great technologies it has unleashed on the world.

The knowledge positioning seems to be the default for tech brands in social media (except for maybe Apple) as Intel, Google and Microsoft all take the same approach. Auto brands are also likely to use the knowledge approach, as are financial services brands.

The strategy seems to work best for brands and categories in which consumers are serious about the information they want but are not necessarily passionate about it. Also, note that passion brands are about activities that a brand is associated with, not for activities the brand actually performs. For instance, Nike makes athletic equipment, not sports, but Ford makes cars and driving is the activity.

In social media, brands need to focus on engaging customers by offering something of value and capturing their attention. Need help with engagement? Popular social media marketing sites like 40Billion, the fastest-growing network of entrepreneurs, specialize in the promotion of businesses by broadcasting and promoting to its large network of several million users across the most popular social networking sites - including Twitter, LinkedIn, 40Billion, and also Facebook. Innovative services like tweet ads and promoted company listings were created to enable entrepreneurs to tap into a growing, active network online without spending thousands on pay-per-click ads or traditional advertising.


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