As we all know, it is imperative for brands to be active on social media if they want their organization to be successful. That’s far easier said than done because there are several people who believe, “Oh I have a Facebook account, I could run social media.” This couldn’t be more false. Sure you may know how to be alright at using social media from a personal standpoint to promote yourself, but do you know how to promote your brand to your target audience?
This is where most organizations tend to fail. They either try to act too professional and stick straight to their line of business, which can be a bad look if they are trying to attract millennials, or they could try to be too goofy on social and hence making themselves unprofessional and an organization that can’t be taken seriously. It’s a big risk and it’s a very fine line, but the organizations that are able to find that common ground are the ones that tend to succeed.
What’s also important to note is the market that the organization is in or the voice that has already been previously established. For example, Wendy’s is known for having one of the snarlier twitter feeds out there and it works for them because this is something that they established early on and it also suits their target market. However, if a company like The Cheesecake Factory tried to randomly send out tweets in Wendy’s style, they would likely fail and end up losing business. Not only has The Cheesecake Factory established a different voice, but that’s also a different demographic that you are trying to reach.
The same can be said in the sports industry. Some teams try to be humorous/fun with a large portion of their posts while others tend to be a little more reserved and it works for some of them as well. The Sacramento Kings are a great example of establishing a tone early and running with it. Despite the team’s struggles on the court, the Kings continually have some of the highest engagement numbers in the NBA in terms of social media because they speak with their audience instead of to their audience which is a big factor.
Here at the Rapids we try to have half of our posts be fun and half be more news style. These aren’t exact numbers, but it’s a rough guess and gives us an idea of when we want to try to be edgy and when we should be reserved. One of our greatest successes came in 2016 when we were stuck in a rain delay against NYCFC. We were losing the match and weren’t playing well so our fans had tuned out. Instead of waiting for the time to pass, we decided to try something fun and we were able to have a tic-tac-toe game with NYCFC on our Twitter timelines and it ended up being our most successful string of tweets in Rapids history (link can be found here: https://twitter.com/ColoradoRapids/status/759479070904029185). This is something that we’re proud of especially since we ended losing the actual match by a score of 5-1. It shows that even though a team is struggling on the pitch/court/field, you can still have a successful social media team. Just be relatable. However, this isn’t something that we would suggest for every post you do, these types of posts have to be planned strategically.
The thematic tone of social media accounts is something that is not considered enough. Any individual tweet may be able to hold up, but contextually it may be out of character with the following the account has built. I personally chose to unfollow a media member that covers lacrosse, as his tweets outside the sport were not something I enjoyed reading, because they felt out of character to how I knew him.