Many digital marketers still struggle to find the way to use their social media power to push its company’s brand image. Most still engage in the practice of just automating scheduled social media posts which ultimately leads to generic content and thus, less engagement with consumers. Although at times, this is necessary, it definitely is a bad idea to be used as regular practice.

However, a great way to utilizing social media power is by making real-time posts when a memorable event just took place. Many of the most well-known examples include Oreo’s “dunk-in-the-dark” tweet as a reference to the 2013 Super Bowl lights out. A more recent case is KitKat’s tweet on a reference to the emerging iPhone 6 Plus bending issue under the hashtag #bendgate. KitKat made a smart play by posting a fun take on the trend through its tweet: “We don’t break, we #break.” This instantly got the public attention of those who were following this issue and gave KitKat 28,500 retweets and 13,549 favorites at that time.

Thus, the power of capitalizing on current trends does pay off well for companies who are alert to them and can be used as a way to effectively brand yourself by showing a more ‘human’ and personal connection with its followers. It helps to show that the company was in the moment as they could not have made these smart references without being alert to ongoing trends at the time it was happening, which means that timing is key and there’s no way to automated that except by being at the right time with your followers.

Source 1: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/06/how-automating-your-social-media-content-can-hurt-your-brand/

Source 2: http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/kitkat-has-best-response-so-far-apples-bendgate-scandal-160352