In August 2012 Wildfire examined how super brands create fan growth. For this, it analyzed 10,000 social marketing campaigns that ran on Facebook. Its conclusion: attract brand “sharers”. They increase awareness: For each sharer, 14 additional people will learn about the campaign. On average, they bring in 1.3 new engagers, and they triple the page engagement.

However how does one attract these advocates?

(1) Run multiple applications. Offer various ways to engage with your brand. This increases time spent on the page and return activity. On Facebook, only the first 12 tabs
are visible, so use this space to create multiple interactions. (2) Instruct users on how to engage, should they like, share or comment? (3) images! (4) Make it seasonally relevant. Increase brand relevance by creating interactions around a current theme or event. (5) Engage social communities across various platforms.

Brand example: Coca Cola, the biggest Facebook brand. It indeed leverages all the above mentioned techniques. Aside from its multiple application, Coca Cola posts several images. Let me show to successful news feed pictures:

This posts is a ‘seasonal’ post, created on a event that is relevant to ‘Cola’s happiness’ mission. It thereby clearly instructs people to comment on who they will high-five.

Again a seasonal post, celebrating ‘Photo Month’. Although this is posted on facebook, it is leveraged across platforms, as it invites people to share (user generated content) a picture on twitter. It thereby clearly communicates what users should do.

Why are some brands mores successful on YouTube than others? This brings up the question: Why would someone pass a video on? Because the video is funny, amazing, remarkable, fascinating or controversial.

Practical insides: Create a short video (2 minutes or less), with a clear description.  Link the video to your site and social media channels.

Insides in how to make your video go viral:

(1) Tell a great story:  The story should matter more than the product. (2) Catch attention: Capture user attention within the first 5 seconds. (3) Make it emotional: Keep audiences interested by making them laugh, smile or cry. (4) Share with your key influencers: Make sure the right people are watching your video. (5) Create attention the first 24 hours: YouTube algorithm monitors during the first day the amount of interaction. Only when its high, the video will be promoted to its country’s YouTube chart, which dramatically increases the video’s chance of going viral. (6) Look at the number of shares. Stops looking at the view chart and concentrate on the number of shares, as these create awareness.

Brand Example: Red Bull is the YouTube hero. Its videos make you experience the world “like you’ve never seen it before”, focusing on adventure and extreme sports.

In October 2012 Red Bull released a YouTube video where Felix Baumgartner jumped from a balloon 24 miles above the Earth, breaking the record for speed of sound. It pulled the most live-stream viewers for any event.  The video is telling an emotional story, which immediately grabs one’s attention.

Red Bull’s YouTube channel has over 850,000 subscribers that come back for fresh content posted daily by the staff at Red Bull. A lot of brands can learn from Red Bull’s youtube strategy.

Customers or future employees that are interested in your brand and firm will look for you on LinkedIn. They will look at your experience, relationships: who has endorsed you, who have worked with you and what people have said about you.

How to use LinkedIn to strengthen your brand:

1. Choose a customer-focused message. Post 4 updates that purely benefit your followers for every update that promotes your company. What is Good content? A link in a post doubles engagement, images result in 98% higher comment rate and youtube movies result in a 75% higher share rate.

2. Engage all your employees. Let them all frame their experiences in a way that further reinforces the company’s brand.

3. Only connect with relevant contacts. Limit your contact list to people whose presence reinforces your core message.

4. Update frequent.  Update brand-significant events. It has been showed if you post 20 times per week you reach 60% of your audience.

5. Monitor. Use the Company Page Analytics tab to detect what is driving reach and engagement.

6. Engage in LinkedIn Groups. Find groups that are talking about things that matter to your business. Join them, contribute, be a member, care and provide advice.

Let me show you too how companies can become innovative through LinkedIn.  Microsoft launched an app, Nametag Analyzer, that analyzes a member’s LinkedIn profile to provide a unique nametag to show what one’s professional identity should be. I went out to test Microsofts new innovation for you; this is how it looks like:

Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo-sharing website. Users create and manage image collections based on a certain theme. Launched in 2010, the company is currently the fastest growing social network with 1.36 million visitors per day, and a users-base of 12 million users.

Who are you reaching with Pinterest? Young (44.7% of users aged 18-34) females (68.2%)

How to be successful on pinterest?

(1)Focus on lifestyles. Not on products. Portrait your character on your board! Share your history & mission. Align your brand with customers’ lives. (2). Link accounts. Link your Pinterest account to your company’s social media channels. (3). Reward top pinners. Follow your top users. Ask for questions while tagging your top users “Who can pin this?”(4). Make content Pinnable & use relevant keywords. Add the “Pin It” button on content on your website & social media channels. (5). Provide ideas for product usage. Think of recipes & creation. (6). Show behind the scenes. Show your back-office, factory & your top employees.

Sony Electronics success on Pinterest:

Sony Electronics is a major success on Pinterest with almost 40,000 followers. They use fun content, and created a mix of lifestyle and fun pages interspersed with commercial product pages. Sony Electronics also created a contest for their employees to create a board of their own and describe what Sony means to them. An example of a creative strategy on Pinterest is the board “I can haz gadgets?” where people upload pictures of their pets with their Sony Electronics device.

KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines, is one of the most famous airline of the Netherlands. In my opinion they are one of the strongest airlines in terms of marketing. They applied the reach-depth-engage lifecycle in their online marketing. Let’s first look at this life cycle:

(1) Reach. Make customers discover your. How? Expose them to your brand! How? Via online reach channels (like banner ads and online word of mouth) and offline reach channels (like TV, print, and radio). (2) Depth. Let customers explore/buy your brand. Give depth and detail! Where do you stand for? Why can they trust you? Use your own website, blogs and owned communities! (3) Engage.  Engage them after purchase trough social media!

How did KLM use this frame work correctly?

1.Reach. They create word-on-month through for example guerrilla marketing (see video).Thereby KLM launched the KLM surprise campaign. This entailed that users that would post via foursquare or twitter #KLMSurprise, could receive a gift from KLM. Both campaigns created a lot of buzz around KLM.

2. Depth. Already in 2006 KLM created a community for Dutch business people that travelled often to china, Club China. On this site users could map when they would be in china and where, and share tips with each other. After this success KLM started club Africa.

3. Engage. KLM launched a campaign called “LifeReply” which put focus on the 24/7 service KLM was offering on their social media channels.  “We want to give personal service, no standard answers, no robots, but a tailored answer for every one that askes a question”.