"Hello" From a Marketing Standpoint

The winged eyeliner queen sold 2.43 million copies of her newest CD "25" last week and shattered a world record. Yes, I'm talking about the vocal angel, Adele. Her smokey vocals and hard-hitting, emotion-filled songs have taken the world by storm forcing all of humanity to break out their tissues. However, it's not just humanity that wants a piece of Adele's buzz, commercial brands are throwing its tissues into the ring as well.

Since Adele's renewed fame, brands like Coca-Cola have used its Twitter account to combine branding with popular culture (see the tweet here). SHIFT Communication's blog titled, "What Brands Can Learn About Social Media from #Adele25" has given amazing insight into the do's and do not's of  piggybacking your brand onto pop. culture.


The blog post is a definite read for those social media managers for businesses across the globe, but I will highlight two key points I thought were really important.

Point 1: Do

One "do" that was listed when using popular culture of viral topics was to make sure the trending topic you're siting is relevant to your organization. If the topic doesn't fit with your business, or if you can't create a correlation from the topic to your product then don't push it out on social. You do not want to post an irrelevant tweet or post and your followers scratch their heads, or worse, criticize you for trying to hard.

Point 2: Do not

Do NOT forget your hashtags on Twitter. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how often someone's creativity goes to waste because they forgot a hashtag. Hashtags include you in the conversation; it is your gateway to becoming viral yourself.

This blog post was a great overview of tips for anyone's social to potentially be included in a trending topic. Again, I highly encourage you to read the full article at SHIFT Communications blog here.

Social Media Policies and Why They are Important

You buy a car. You love your new car, but suddenly something breaks on it. What do you do? Well depending on the damage, you could grab the manual manufacturers put in your glove compartment. That manual gives pages and pages of how your car works and why. You put your tire back on, fix your headlight, change the oil or fix whatever else was broken on the car. Afterward you reflect back on the handy-dandy manual and how you don't know what you would've done without it. 

Like cars, social media has manuals too. They are called social media policies. Social media policies are becoming increasingly important because every business now has a social media platform (or should). When these platforms are ineffective or causing trouble, the organization should look back to its social media policy. 

A social media policy consists of an introduction summarizing what the policy contains. The introduction usually explains the organization's culture, mission and values, as well as how the social channels tie into them. Next, a social media policy should address the responsibility of the online spokesperson(s). Online spokespeople should be appointed in an organization as the voice of the social channels. These people should be trained as to what each channel does, as well as the purpose of the channel in the organization. Responsibilities of an online spokesperson could include the values the organization looks for in the spokesperson, and outlining any state or federal laws that the spokesperson needs to follow online. 

Then, a social media policy should address the rules and guidelines of all other social media users within the organization. The employees of an organization are always representing it and this holds true online especially. Many organizations have gone under scrutiny because of the sensitive information employees post online, or the calloused or inappropriate opinions employees comment or share. These comments and posts are not always about the organization, but the character of an organization's work force is always under scrutiny online where consumers can see. Finally, most policies have a conclusion that sum up the points of the policy and why its important again. 

The content an organization puts into a social media policy should act as a manual when confronted with online etiquette issues or questionable posts on the organizations social media platforms. As an organization, you will find the upkeep of your social media policy will help you make decisions, as well as defend your social media decisions, if the policy is done well. 

To find example social media policies, you can simply Google "social media policy templates."

Get Your Social Media Organized for the New Year

2016 is quickly approaching. The New Year always brings commitments to getting organized, why not do the same for your organization's social media accounts? Social media calendars are a great way to do just that.

Social media calendars are calendars that explain your future social media campaigns and include the content and visuals you hope to post. Calendars can be time consuming, however, if you block out some time during one day at the office at the beginning of the month, you'll find it will help you in the long run.

To create a social media calendar you can Google "social media calendar templates," there are Microsoft Word templates on the 2013 version or you can get a plain date calendar from Wal-Mart. Most headings of the calendar are: date, time, content, visuals and responsibility.

Social media content calendars can be as in-depth as you'd like. Some social media administrators prefer to block out a month of content at a time while others prefer to create three, six, even a year in advance. Usually, these months will include the chosen "theme" for the social media platform, the topic to post, visuals and who is responsible for the post each day.

Organization is important in almost every endeavor, it's time to include an organization's social media accounts to the list. You're stress levels will thank you for it the first time you don't have to think about what you're going to post on your organization's Facebook five minutes from now.