This blog post on social media influence was written by AI – learn more about AI blogging for your business.
Social media is rightly a huge part of any business plan, and it works in a lot of different ways.
Businesses often use Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms for customer service. You can message companies like Bank of America, Starbucks, and Spotify on Twitter and talk to them just like you walked into their office.
Hell, you can even talk directly to Twitter executive staff through Twitter Spaces. I spoke with their research team on one of my accounts. They are all PhDs looking at the psychology of these platforms, like Reggie Murphy, PhD.
And if you don’t know how intimate of an experience Twitter Spaces is yet, you should check it out,
In this particular case, I’m able to help influence the company. But because I don’t pay for Twitter, I’m not their customer – I’m just free market research and products and views for Twitter, Quora and the rest.
Consider it digital slavery if you want, but I see it as revolutionary. And it’s fascinating to note how much thought really goes into changing as much as an emoticon or adding a downvote.
Bank of America goes another route, unleashing its chatbot Erica across all platforms.
The big thing BofA does is keep its branding consistent in an omnichannel approach. Whether you’re using email, its mobile app, website, any social platform, or calling, they want you to have the same consistent experience you would get walking into a branch.
Now customer service is just one aspect – there’s also influencing customers to engage in other ways. Social media campaigns are run to get different types of engagement for your business.
Maybe you want customers to leave a review somewhere. You can launch a new product or make a sale – there are endless campaign strategies that can be executed in the business backend of any of these platforms.
Once you build your branded following on social media, you become an influencer like anyone else. At 1k, 10k, 50k, 100k, 500k, 1M, etc, you reach a new milestone of microinfluencer, influencers, and eventually celebrity.
This provides businesses other opportunities, and many entrepreneurs pivoted their business because of this.
REI found a great way to increase business on all ends with its Instagram account.
The company features photos from the community. This saves them the money of hiring professional photographers, models, etc. while giving people exposure to its audience of 2.4m followers.
In this case, the brand is harvesting free work in sort of a reverse sponsorship. It’s brilliant if you think about it and much more efficient than traditional ads.
But most businesses don’t have 1 million followers, and nobody starts there. If you want to build up, you have to use traditional influencer marketing.
Or you can just hope for a miracle, like Ocean Spray got from Nathan Apodaca last year with his viral TikTok video.https://www.eater.com/2020/10/8/21507511/ocean-spray-gives-new-truck-to-skateboard-fleetwood-mac-tiktok-star-nathan-apodaca
The man basically created a free commercial for the company, and they bought him a truck and a few crates of their juice in return. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OtzVKUCZE5w
You can buy the type of exposure this guy gave that juice company, but it’s not cheap. A Super Bowl ad in 2021 was $5.6 million to reach just under 100 million viewers for 30 seconds.
That’s just for the placement – the production costs go up from there. https://www.statista.com/statistics/217134/total-advertisement-revenue-of-super-bowls/
Meanwhile, Ocean Spray paid the guy maybe $50k in products on the backend. They did it because they saw sales spike as peopled rushed to get Ocean Spray juice and replicate the viral video like any other TikTok challenge.
It’s the most beneficial branding I’ve seen since the Tide Pod challenge.
No matter how many laundry brands exist, from here until the day you die, you’ll remember Tide Pods. That’s an effective influence on how likely you are you buy Tide Pods or even Tide detergent for the rest of your life.
It’s not always just about the immediate sale; true Influence is long-lasting. That’s why McDonald’s sells Happy Meals and markets to kids.
I know McDonald’s is bad for me as an adult, but I do crave a Big Mac every few years. It’s because we rarely ate out when I was a kid. My parents had a tight budget, so we mostly ate home cooked meals.
Great for my overall health, but because we rarely ate McDonald’s, times we did were a treat. Sometimes it was after a little league game or even something school related.
Either way, I would get a toy with my food while watching cartoons and playing in a jungle gym. It was more of an experience than a meal, and it does stick with you through the years.
That’s the reason it’s important to keep a consistent brand voice across all channels. You’re influencing people in a lot of short- and long-term ways. And it’s a two-direction conversational dialog, not just a monologue.
Brands Influence customers and customers Influence brands on social media. Every platform is just another place to do the same thing you always do when you do it right.
Branding Fame and Celebrity
Fame isn’t necessarily hard to manage. People do it successfully all the time. Look at Betty White – she’s been famous for as long as any of us have been alive.
White was nominated for her first Emmy in 1951, and she’s going to be 100 years old in January.
Meanwhile, Dolly Parton celebrated 50 years at the Grand Ol Opry back in 2019.
If these women can handle fame for that long, it must be humanly possible. It’s just a different way of living and one that comes with a lot of work and responsibility.
When you’re famous, you have to deal with a lot of people’s opinions. It’s impossible to please all the people all the time, and being universally beloved isn’t easy.
Elon Musk tries and has a hard time balancing the needs of his fans, employees and investors with his own personal needs. Now he’s dating a famous singer who can somewhat understand his esoteric personality.
But fame does open a lot of doors, and many people will tell you that it’s better to have social followers than dollars.
For example, when the pandemic hit, a lot of people were depending on income from live gigs they couldn’t get anymore. Musicians, comedians, actors, and other hard working entertainers would be overlooked for the latest dog trending on TikTok.
That changed the way they get gigs, so many of them are grinding social media for followers in order to get live performance gigs.
So, basically internet stars are the new rock stats and celebrities. You get a lot of cool stuff working with celebrities. I sleep in a bed that has a Samsung tablet for each side.
But with great power comes great responsibility, so be careful what you wish for…