Receiving authentic praise from customers is the path to brand awareness and sales. Promoting word of mouth on Social Media depends on highly shareable content that stimulates followers.
The power of word of mouth on social media
Since 2015, social media content sharing has decreased considerably, partly due to the increased competition from similar content, but also due to algorithm changes: content published by social media accounts that a user follows has seen its visibility reduced in the followers feed. This is related with the frantic pace at which new content is produced per minute; 21,600 new Instagram posts, 277,000 tweets and 2,460,000 Facebook posts to be exact.
How can brands become improve engagement and brand awareness, so their content might appear more frequently on timeline and in recommendations, enhancing shares in the process?
Although a large part of a company's marketing strategy involves some form of content creation on social media, reaching users might also require an another, often overlooked approach: online word-to-mouth by customer’s who were curious and satisfied with a certain product or service.
Word-to-mouth marketing is particularly important, given that 92% of users choose to consume a brand due to recommendations from friends. Also, ROI-focused brand managers might be tempted to experiment, given its returns being twice that of paid advertising.
One thing’s clear: becoming the center of social media chatter requires some differentiating elements that draws consumer's attention, among hundreds of similar publications that they see daily on their feed.
Discover how to encourage users to press the "share" button, by providing them five universal emotions with the content your business creates: curiosity, amazement, interest, admiration and uncertainty.
1. Know when the best time is to post
To get around situations like the social media algorithm, first, understand which the best schedule is to publish B2C content, preventing content from being placed in the feed of very few followers.
Start by analyzing which time slots work, according to the company's time zone. Controlling market competitors is also beneficial to understand when they post, to also avoid those hours. From there it is a matter of testing engagement and shares that a published content has and to understand which type of content has performs the best (e.g. image, GIF, infographics, and video).
Overall statistics are as follows:
Saturday and Sunday are the best days for interaction with posts
Publications in business accounts work best at lunchtime (between 12 pm and 2 pm) and after working hours (7 pm to 10 pm)
Between 3pm and 4pm are the worst times, but it is always better to test.
Short Tweets are more shared by followers
The best time is from 1 pm to 3 pm
The best time is from 1 pm to 5 pm
Peak hours are at 3 pm, preferably on Wednesdays
2. Ask Questions
Any user likes inspiring, fun or highly emotional content. Betting on content in the form of questions, whether puzzles, riddles, quizzes, encourages their sharing by those who follow the business page. For example, a quiz has an average lead capture rate of 31.6%, with the best quizzes created in the last 5 years having universally 1.5 million shares.
3. Use Relevant Influencers
Influencers are currently considered, for 89% of marketers, as essential channels of communication. And their influence is real. A word-of-mouth strategy increases exponentially among users if a brand's content is linked with an influencer/blogger.
Also, 23% of daily Facebook users have already made an online purchase based on a recommendation made by an influencer / blogger. That number rises to 34% on Instagram.
4. Giveaways, UCG or Promo Codes
Creating giveaways, exclusive promotional codes or advertising interactive contests using UGC (user-generated content) are other effective strategies to increase brand’s social media sharing.
Social media contests can be created based on the company's notoriety, as well as their availability to invest. These metrics are the key for the contest structure.
A giveaway and promo codes can be associated with new products or services for the brand. The unique and special appeal of these offers increases if it is something that has not been launched yet or if users feel always exclusive for having access to something that is not on the market for sale yet. The main idea behind this strategy is to ask followers to share brand's post with a specific hashtag, as well as tag friends. This will boost social media sharing, thereby increasing the number of leads.
Associating UGC (user-generated content) in these contests is also a way for brands to have new content that they can share on their pages. Brands can ask their followers to share a branded content post in their personal accounts, associated with an experience, product or service related to the brand, and tag their business partner on it.
In this challenge, brands can offer a simple feature of the most creative posts, or giveaway a product or service for free.
Social media sharing strategy works best for established companies, with a stable network of followers. Why? Here it will be the user who will have to take the initiative to create UGC (user-generated content), so it usually works better with more well-known brands, which simply want to boost sharing rate in some periods (e.g. Black Friday, Christmas, Women’s Day).
A general example is Airbnb account, with 4 million followers, that feeds its page with UGC (user-generated content).