The Ron Burgundy Approach to Social Media

Editor's Notes

1. Your brand’s purpose should drive your social media efforts - “You must tell a story worth telling to be a brand worth sharing.” Simon Mainwaring, CEO of We First. Unfortunately, far too many companies focus on the telling rather than the story.
2. When it comes to telling a compelling brand story, nothing is more compelling than letting your audience to the telling. So, how do you get your audience talking? Build compelling stuff - teams, products, services, and content!
3. However your company is making noise, your social media strategy should be to simply amplify the sound! Of course, this can be both good and bad!
4. Most news “breaks” through social media and if the social media amplification is loud enough, radio, TV, and print will follow (e.g. the US Airways crash into the Hudson River where Twitter was 15 minutes faster than the traditional media outlets) . Over the last several years every news platform is on a plateau or a decline, except for the web.
5. Avalaunch Media consistently finds that compelling content can be generated using these three strategies – 1. Newsjacking. 2. Creating “better” educational resources. 3. Joining and enhancing compelling causes (hitch a ride with a whale).
6. Newsjacking exemplified. Highjacking the iPhone 5 announcement.
7. Avalaunch Media created this infographic which visually broke down the anticipated costs of “upgrading” to the iPhone 5 to answer the question.
8. Check out the avalaunch of social shares and big publisher mentions.
9. Educational resource exemplified. In early 2012, everyone wanted to capitalize on new opportunities with Pinterest.
10. So Janet asked us to create a visual resource with instructions on every tip possible for optimizing an image for Pinterest.
11. Another avalaunch.
12. Dogs or cats? An age old question. We figured the best way to really see which animal had the most fans would be to join up with an organization that had the right audience. Who better than the Humane Society? (“Hitching a ride with a whale” exemplified).
13. So we created two social media explainers and pit them against each other in a social media bark off of epic purrportions and asked people to vote for their favorite. I’ll show you some of the results in a few minutes.
14. Is great content enough? Sometimes, yes, but we always prefer to have a strategy for pushing the content. 1. Outreach to influencers. 2. Teaming up with organization with a lot of raving fans. 3. Creatively piggy backing off something of genuine public interest and then inviting the press to document it all.
15. Promotion strategy 1 – find and leverage influencers who can give the content a push start. GroupHigh, HARO, and Buzzfeed Finder are a few of our most used tools. GroupHigh lets you search over 15 million of the most active blogs in the world and their content and then filter by dozens of metrics to zero in on the blogs that have the “influence” ability you value most. With free and paid options, HARO allows media members looking for experts and sources for a story to connect with would-be-experts-and-sources to tell their stories, promote their brands, and sell their products and services. To make your pitch more likely to succeed describe how you believe the author’s audience will respond to your content (i.e. how and why they will SHARE it).
16. Case study – A Modern Boutique is a Utah based company which launched in July of 2013. They started advertising exclusively through Instagram by telling friends and followers to follow them there (10,000 followers in 6 weeks). During their first month on Instagram they did $5000 in revenue by producing product collages with lifestyle shots. In other words, showing women how they would wear the product and with what. They have also pioneered text overlays in pictures with pricing information and discounts in/on pictures (coupon codes). They recommend using a keyword rich description of the image. People can buy through instagram by leaving a comment with a desire to purchase and a paypal email. Modern Boutique then invoices them through Paypal and will ship the next day. Best times to post? Early morning, early evening, and late night posts work best to connect with women. Post something on Instagram within 2-3 minutes they have orders.
17. Promotion Strategy 2 – Team up with an All-Star or Three. i.e. Find big organizations and companies that you can join forces with to achieve a common objective (charity, scholarship, etc.)
18. Case Study – Paws vs. Claws. Avalaunch Media joined with The Humane Society of the United States and NEADS (Dogs for Deaf and Disabled Americans).
19. The Paws vs. Claws social media contest was featured in the HSUS Pet of the Week Newsletter (more than 200,000 followers) and via their Twitter feed (more than 200,000 followers).
20. Promotion strategy 3 – Piggyback on something of genuine public interest.
21. Case Study – The Social Network party.
22. Remember earlier when I said that “today traditional media follows”? This social media event made a lot of waves with the press.
23. The key to marrying your brand’s story with effective social media is to 1) imagine sharing your brand’s story in a way that people will want to talk about, 2) now do everything in your power to give them something worth talking about (well-done visually, engaging writing, personal, etc.), 3) find ways to amplify your sounds (i.e. social media and the promotion strategies we just discussed), and 4) make it easy to do (social media optimized).
24. Stay Classy Pubcon.