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For many industries, there are established, themed days of the year, days of the week, or particular months that a company can relate messages and products to. For wireless folks, there’s Wireless Wednesday on Twitter where tweeters add the #WirelessWednesday to their tweets and jump on the wireless technology and tips train. For networkers, there’s IPv6 day each year on June 6th, a day network professionals and tech journalists devote to examining the latest developments in the IPv6 transition, resulting in a one-day surge in IPv6 articles, social media posts, and even infographics.
Think it’s “tacky” to jump on bandwagon days? Think again. These days are big opportunities for companies to get noticed by the right influencers and potential customers. Jumping on a theme bandwagon increases the chance a company will come up in searches by people looking for content about the day’s theme, boost site traffic from an increase of interest in strategically labeled links, and position a company as a valuable, current, dynamic participant in an industry topic. Plus, since many top publications schedule editorial opportunities around themed days, participating in them can be a clever way to get a company in front of a targeted journalist, especially if a new, creative angle is pitched.
But what if your company doesn’t have a popular industry trend day/week/month? You’re not alone – and you’re ripe to create your own. Recently we had a client with an active social campaign, vocal end-user community, and plenty of collateral for social media, but no established industry-wide day that we could capitalize on and create buzz around. So, we made our own. On the same day every week, we post themed content with a custom hash tag across all social sites. It’s been a huge success: Each week’s post consistently garners the most engagement of any post for the week, we see the highest click-thru and retweets with these posts, our followers have come to expect these posts every week, and with enough time behind this theme, users will start creating their own posts with our customer hash tag. Essentially, we created our own trend. And it’s working.
Here’s some important things to keep in mind if your company works to create its own custom trend:
1. Find the right theme for your niche. Have you noticed that posts on particular topics get more engagement and positive response than others? This may be the right theme for your niche. Niche themes should be broad enough that an entry level customer in the industry would be familiar with whatever term you use, but narrow enough that your key customer base would feel it really speaks to them. Your theme should make followers feel like insiders.
2. Consistency. If you are going to create a themed day, week or month, you must follow through. In order for your theme to become a normalized part of the social media world, you must work to put it in front of your followers’ eyes at the same time every week as expected. There can be no skipping of posting or the theme will lose steam.
3. If you want your customers to join the theme, ask them. The ultimate sign of a successful, from the ground up trend is when industry influencers and customers start proactively using your theme. The best way to get them to do that is simply to ask them! One way to do this is to ask questions on social media sites and ask followers to respond using your theme hash tag. This will spread word of the hash tag to all of their followers.
4. Get your influencers on your side. If you have a list of industry influencers that your company has a good relationship with, ask them to participate. Host a themed Twitter chat with all of your key influencers and ask them to use the theme’s hash tag in all of their tweets. Another idea is to retweet key trade publications’ news that applies to your theme and add your themed hash tag to the tweet.
With a little strategy, consistent work, and a relevant theme, you can lead your industry’s social community. And with enough success, you can sit back and watch others build the buzz for you.
