#nanonthetown: 5 Other Ways Companies Use Humor In Their Favor

With more than a few John Lewis spoof ads now doing the rounds, Christmas advertising is proof that whilst some companies opt for gut-wrenching tearjerkers, others prefer the lighter side.

Whether it is through social media, TV advertising or corporate videos, there are more ways than ever for companies to show consumers their sense of humour. While this can often backfire, it can also be an extremely effective marketing tool as a way for businesses to both show their personality and set themselves apart from the competition.

Here are five other ways businesses have managed to leverage laughter in their favour.

Crisis Management

In August 2014 the Greggs bakery chain went through a PR nightmare as an offensive spoof logo began to appear when their company name was searched in Google. After the company was alerted to the issue it took to Twitter to attempt some damage control (and reputation management).

Hey @GoogleUK, fix it and they're yours!!! #FixGreggs pic.twitter.com/d5Ub7qtrLG

— Greggs (@GreggsOfficial) August 19, 2014

 While the mix-up was embarrassing the company was universally applauded for its humorous reaction. These included tweets such as the one below, sent to the Twitter account for Google UK while the search engine attempted to fix the problem.

Sorry @GreggstheBakers, we're on it. Throw in a sausage roll and we'll get it done ASAP. #fixgreggs pic.twitter.com/THXuMubrQq

— Google UK (@GoogleUK) August 19, 2014

 Customer Relations

A tweet by catalogue retailer Argos suddenly went viral in March 2014 after the company responded in kind to a tweet from a dissatisfied customer. While TV adverts necessarily are required to have a wide appeal, social media gives many businesses the opportunity to interact with their customers on an individual basis.

@BadManBugti Safe badman, we gettin sum more PS4 tings in wivin da next week y'get me. Soz bout da attitude, probz avin a bad day yo.  LD

— Argos Helpers (@ArgosHelpers) March 8, 2014

@BadManBugti Safe badman, we gettin sum more PS4 tings in wivin da next week y'get me. Soz bout da attitude, probz avin a bad day yo.  LD

— Argos Helpers (@ArgosHelpers) March 8, 2014

 Addressing customer issues individually is a customer service ideal that most businesses strive for, but it can often be difficult to maintain long term. Social media helps companies quickly and spontaneously connect with their customers at a personal level and in an informal forum.

Businesses have the opportunity to answer customer questions sincerely, allowing not only the personality of the brand but the personalities of individual employees to shine through.

Attracting New Employees

Recent studies have shown that younger candidates in particular are ‘not looking to fill a slot in a faceless company’, and nothing shows potential new employees the personality of a particular organisation than their online presence.

In addition to its own social platform Twitter also has an active presence on YouTube, and produces frequent videos on charity drives and sport events, as well as explainer videos describing new features and services.

The video below formed part of a 2012 campaign to encourage applications for vacant positions at the company, while also providing a humorous look at some of the most common mistakes made in corporate recruitment videos.

A vibrant brand personality does not have to stop with public image, a light-hearted approach can be effective at all levels of business.

A Way To “Go Viral”

One of the most famous US advertising campaigns in recent history is arguably the Budweiser commercial, first aired in 1999, which popularised the phrase “wassup”.

This advert set a precedent for popular quotable and shareable content and was followed in later years by brands such as Old Spice, which came to prominence with its “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign. The cleverly imagined advert was not only memorable but subverted the uniformity of most fragrance advertising.

Establishing a Brand Identity

Irn Bru, the famously bright orange Scottish soda, has earned a reputation for producing quirky and humorous TV adverts. The tongue-in-cheek and often slightly risque adverts have become something of a cultural fixture, with one in particular becoming a highly-anticipated part of the Christmas season.

While many of its attempts at humour have been controversial, the company continues to push the envelope in both its video adverts and marketing campaigns. One recently produced advert has been banned from appearing on television before 9pm in the UK. The company produced Irn Bru bottles with “typical” Scottish names, parodying a preceding Coca-Cola campaign.

These strategies relied on word of mouth to work as an advertising tool to bolster sales and brand awareness. Companies such as Irn Bru have realised the value of a creating content with proven potential to go viral, namely humorous content that provokes discussion and controversy.

Social media platforms have changed the way that we understand word of mouth as a marketing tool. What was once microcosmic and local now has global reach, and an international audience that appreciate companies willing to show their lighter side.

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Social Never Sleeps: 4 Social Media Marketing Holiday Tips

 Oh, the holidays! Jingles, festivities, gift-giving, and….social media surfing. Yes, you heard it right. Social media buzz continues, if not increases, during the holidays. Consumers may be spending time on last-minute holiday party touches and finishing off gift-wrapping marathons, but what happens in between all this holiday activity? Newsfeed scrolling galore.

Eyeballs are eagerly consuming social media during those awkward family parties or while sitting next to the fire sipping eggnog. For that reason, you’ll want to hold off pausing your social media strategy during this time of the year and instead, keep the posts rolling for maximum engagement. And since most brick and mortar businesses take a holiday break, customers will turn to social timely responses.

 Keep in mind these key social media marketing factors when maintaining business communications during the holiday season:

Brand personality:

Your brand’s personality and voice should remain consistent, even during the holidays but that doesn’t mean your business can’t make festive tweaks. Company party? Show off some holiday prep photos or post a short behind-the-scenes video of employee celebrations and gift exchanges. If you get help with your social media, make sure your team has a grasp of your brand’s persona. This will help when dealing with difficult customer interactions.

Important information:

Post information that is relevant to your customers such as, holiday hours, giveaways, discounts, and events. It’s most likely your audience will visit your social media pages for quick access to information, especially for industries such as restaurant, retail, and e-commerce, so make sure all those details are up-to-date.

Engagement posts:

Entertain your audience with unique holiday posts. Create a holiday hashtag related to your area of businesses and encourage customers to converse with you about their holiday traditions. Pictures and videos are a great way to grab attention and easy to re-post. And the gift-giving season wouldn’t be complete without a giveaway, so post an original contest that showcases your best products, as well as thanks to your fans.

Timely responses:

Quick, accurate responses will put you at the forefront of social media. If your customers fail to reach you through your website, chances are social media will be their next stop. You don’t want to waste your customers’ valuable time, so answer their inquiries as soon as possible. The same goes for comments received on posts, reviews, wall posts, etc.; make sure to respond and spread the holiday cheer!

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Social Media Tips: Target Local Search This Holiday Season

Christmas is nearly here, and with it the busiest shopping season of the year. Social media is a great way for businesses to get involved in the conversation, and leveraging different platforms to reach potential customers while they are online and searching for the perfect gift.

For local retail businesses in particular the holidays are a fantastic opportunity to increase sales, and if you have a consumer base in a specific geo-location a well-orchestrated social media strategy can help you strike gold. Here are a few simple social media marketing tips for your Xmas marketing plan:

1.       Identify your target market – Understanding your local market and customer is the first step to building an effective marketing strategy. According to a study*, 79% of people searching online look for local information, while 69% of searches are influenced by a geo-targeted location.  This makes it all the more important to know:

·         The buying pattern of your customers and the most sought after deals in your local market offered by competitors.

·         The most effective platforms - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, or You Tube - for your specific target audience. For instance, if your business sells products or provides services directly to consumers (B2C) your best platforms may be Twitter, Instagram or Facebook; while if you are dealing with businesses (B2B) then you will most likely have more success on YouTube or LinkedIn. Focusing your time or money on a platform that is not popular among your customers will fail to deliver the desired results.

·         The most common social media behaviours prevalent in your local users. Conduct research on the activities of your target customer base on various digital platforms to understand the trending topics and discussions of your customers, using Google Analytics and tools such as Facebook Insights.

2.       Set up your Facebook/Twitter page as a Local Business - The best way to optimise your Facebook or Twitter page for a local audience is to set it up as a Local Business.  

a.       On Facebook, you can select the category of your page (go to Admin Panel > Manage > Edit Page > Basic Information> and then select the relevant category and sub-category for your business). Once your Facebook page is set up as a local business, add your details including street address, phone number and trading hours.

b.       On Twitter, include your current location in the Twitter information as well as a local keyword phrase in your Twitter bio.

c.       You can also include current location in your Google+ profile in the Places Lived section.

3. Connect with Local Audience – Once your social media pages are optimised as local business, connect with the local audience by:

a.       Inviting your friends and customers to follow you, becoming fan of other local business pages, and sending status updates only to people in specific locations (by changing the dropdown for your status update from Public to targeted by location) on Facebook

b.       Finding local people on Twitter via Twitter lists and directories, and using the Twitter Advanced Search to monitor conversations of users near a particular place (which can be specified by name or zip code)

c.       Joining local networking groups on LinkedIn

d.     Having a publicly visible Google+ account (via Profile ‘Edit’ button), using the Google+ internal search to find local Google+ users that might be interested in your business, and connecting with them by adding them to circles.

4.       Run festive campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram - Add a cohesive festive message across all your digital channels, to let your audience know that you are ready for Christmas. Decide the most effective language to be used for your targeted local market, and choose the tone and style of the messaging accordingly. You can:

·         Decorate your social media pages with colourful themes, or add a festive flavour to your website to show that you’re prepared for the holiday season.

·         Go beyond your product or business, and participate in the festive mood by posting Christmas greetings, sharing Christmas food and drinks recipes, or discussing local events with your followers or fans.

·         You can encourage your community to tag themselves at your business for extra brownie points. You can also create your own hashtag (#) on Twitter, so that all your followers can come together and participate in the conversation.

5.       Track conversations - When people are looking to buy something they often search social media for information and reviews. It’s always a good idea to track what your potential customers are discussing. If anyone talks about something relevant to your product, you can participate in the conversation and let them know about your business.  You can track conversations either manually or via tools like HootSuite or PinReach that analyse, measure, display, and create reports about the ongoing conversations on different platforms.

6.       Include special promotions and offers - Create special offers on your Twitter and Facebook pages that attract and encourage people to register, enrol, or purchase instantly. You can also share a special coupon code or sale with them to ensure repeat visitors to your page. You can create an advertisement or a sponsored story with your website URL through the Facebook Ads or even use promotional or marketing apps available.

7.       Engage people - Get people talking about their Christmas tips and gifts, and their holiday habits and activities on your pages.  Initiate and participate in discussions where you can add to the conversation. You can talk about your products and services, invite them over to your store, or even share special offers or discounts.

8.       Add a Tweet button to your website - Enable buttons on your content and product pages, so that people can share or tweet directly from your website.

9.       Use Pinterest to initiate discussions around shopping ideas – Leverage Pinterest as people rely on it to look for ideas on everything from creative cookie recipes to Christmas gifts. If you have an active audience, host a pin-to-win campaign on Pinterest.

10.   Send personal holiday greetings to loyal customers – Send personalised season greetings to your loyal customers. You could create an Instagram video and post it to Facebook, or send out direct messages to your followers on Twitter.

11.   Corporate Social Responsibility – Think about a charity or cause that you would like to support, and offer to donate a percentage of your season sales. Announce the percentage that you plan to donate on your social media platforms, track the total donation amount, and keep your customers informed about how it’s going.

12.   Monitor your campaign – Keep an eye on your campaign pages with a stringent monitoring schedule. You wouldn’t want to miss out on an important opportunity or conversation during this time of year.

13.  Analyse your Results - To ensure that local marketing strategies are getting the desired results, check outGoogle Analytics’ Audience Demographics data or Facebook Insights to see demographic information of people liking or sharing your content.

With most people using at least one social media platform, these tips will improve brand recognition and visibility amongst customers, help with repeat exposure of your business, grow your potential audience base, increase in-store customers, improve traffic to your website, and add a distinct competitive edge to your business.

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How to Spread Holiday Cheer on Social Media

Who has time for social media over the holidays?! Businesses are so busy during the holiday season that social media is often overlooked. Customers, however, check social media all throughout the holidays to find exclusive deals, enter contests, share stories and view photos and videos.

By this time, most of your holiday marketing campaigns should be planned out and activated. But there’s still time to schedule social media posts for this month. Use your social media pages to drive sales and increase engagement over the holidays. If you want to make the most of your time so you can focus on holiday sales, automate your social media posting so your pages are updated without you having to spend time manually posting.

1. Run a holiday giving campaign.

The holidays are a great time to show your support for your local community. Pledge to donate a portion of your holiday revenue to a local nonprofit organization. Update your social media pages frequently to show your progress toward reaching your holiday giving goal. Getting involved with your community shows your customers that they are choosing a business with a strong sense of corporate citizenship and a commitment to important issues. These posts are likely to receive a lot of comments, likes, retweets and shares.

2. Increase excitement with a fun holiday contest.

Social media is a great place for running contests. And the holiday season is the ideal time for giving awesome gifts and making dreams come true. Social media contests are most effective when they get people personally involved. For a chance to win, ask people to share their most embarrassing holiday story, a prized holiday recipe or their favorite holiday photo from their childhood. As for the prize, a holiday shopping spree or all-inclusive holiday vacation is sure to build interest.

3. Boost sales with daily holiday promotions.

At this time of year, you can earn a lot of extra revenue through add-on sales. Even if customers have already purchased their big holiday gifts, they will be looking for additional gifts and stocking stuffers right up until Christmas Eve. Also, gift buying procrastinators like me will appreciate last-minute promotions. Offer a daily deal exclusive to social media so people have a reason to visit your social media pages often. Provide a discount coupon, a special sale on items you are trying to move or a daily “Buy this item and get this item free!” promotion. This strategy helps you drive sales throughout the entire holiday season.

4. Feature customer stories to create a more personal connection.

Customers love to see real life stories from other people just like them. This type of content is unique and engaging, and it shows that you are a business with a strong focus on personal interaction. Keep stories short and simple, and include a picture of the customer if you have their permission. Stories such as “the holiday gift that meant the most to me,” “my biggest holiday decorating mishap” or “my funniest holiday memory” are interesting and will gain lots of interaction on social media. Provide an incentive for customers to share their stories, such as a personalized holiday coupon or a free mystery gift.

5. Show customers how to create homemade holiday gifts using items from your store.

This is one great way to push more sales and get customers involved. Everyone likes to get creative, and handmade gifts are often the ones recipients cherish the most. Provide detailed instructions on how to bake a special holiday treat, make your own holiday cards, create a unique toy or craft a personalized ornament. Give people an idea of approximately how long it takes to make the item and list everything they will need to complete the project, using things from your store.

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THE TOP TENS

Ten ways to get your social media platforms into the holiday spirit.

Christmas trees and ornaments are already bringing festive cheer to the malls, Starbucks’ red coffee cups are everywhere and Black Friday is here.

IS YOUR COMPANY TAKING  ADVantage of the opportunity to market your products and services during the time of year when consumers typically spend the most? Are your company’s social media channels decked out to share in the season’s spirit? If your answers are ‘no,’ don’t worry – it’s not too late to join the festivities and produce unique and engaging content to drive traffic to your social media channels anD WEBSITE. 
Here are 10 simple tips to get your social media platforms into the holiday spirit:

1. Deck your halls. Before you begin sharing seasonal content, incorporate holiday-themed images into your profile pictures and backgrounds to show your business is ready for the festivities. This will signal that holiday posts, images and videos can be expected over the next few weeks.

2. Share some tips. You can share general advice, but if your business can fill a specific niche, offer up unique tips. For example, you can highlight your restaurant’s holiday menus by providing a recipe, a short video clip or photo series of how to elevate stuffing and brussel sprouts.

3. Seasonal hashtags. Be sure to include holiday-trending hashtags to be part of the larger conversation. You can also create and include a unique company-related hashtag that could be utilized by others such as #CompanyNameXmas,#CompanyNameHolidays, or #CompanyNameGifts.

4. Design a competition. Set up a holiday-themed competition on your platforms as a way to engage your audiences and share more seasonal content. For example, encourage followers to post their best themed photo, video, or meme, which will add to the content your company is already producing. Increase participation by offering an incentive such as a promotion or a prize for the winner(s). If it were a competition seeking the most likes or shares, that would encourage participants to share your social media profiles.

5. Holiday traition discussions. Similar to a competition, initiate discussions and posts about people’s favourite holiday traditions as a way to create dialogue between your company and potential customers. This could include such topics as “favourite childhood holiday memory,” “best way to cook a turkey,” “gift ideas for the person who has everything” and “most overplayed holiday song”.

6. Daily prize or promotion. A free daily prize or promo giveaway will entice people to check out (and potentially share) your social media profiles. For example, you could randomly select a winner from new likes, shares or retweets (RTs)  for each of the 12 days of Christmas or do a countdown to New Year’s to stretch out the contest.

7. Employee features. Your employees may have deep networks on multiple platforms. Add a more personal touch by featuring your employees in your content, and they will likely share with their networks something in which they are featured. Have them share their tips, pictures or reasons why they love the holidays. This offers people a peek inside your company and makes it a little easier for people to relate to your business as being made up of people as opposed to a faceless brand.

8. Virtual tour. Stores will be decked out in the most festive holiday decorations. And often employees decorate their office space as part of the holidays. Share these images on your social media channels to develop a connection with potential customers. Challenge your audiences or even other businesses to share how they have added to the holiday cheer at work.

9. Social media ads. Since you have incorporated holiday themes in your social media content, apply the same approach to the ads you may utilize on these platforms. This way, you can highlight a holiday special or promotion and attract individuals to your website or physical business.

10. Remember your audience. You may be operating a number of social media platforms. If you’re not doing it already, remember to tailor your content by platform to reflect the audience and demographics on those channels. While a potential post with a link and several hashtags may work on Twitter, it may be more effective as an infographic on LinkedIn or as copy and a picture on Facebook. While you can repurpose content, it’s much more effective if you don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year to raise awareness for your company’s brand and to inject some creative and lighthearted content into marketing campaigns.

Jennifer Osborne is a digital marketing expert. She is the president of Search Engine People Inc. (SEP), Canada’s largest digital marketing firm, which has been on the PROFIT 100 ranking of Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies for the past five consecutive years and named one of PROFIT Magazine’s 50 Fastest Growing Companies in the Greater Toronto Area. Jennifer has been named as one of Canada’s top women entrepreneurs.

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