Based on my experience working in marketing I can tell that social media has become an affordable and essential way to promoting your business, and engaging your social media audience significantly increases your chances to close a sale. How many cases of good engagement have you seen lately? Are you in search of a good method to build your followers and make them stay with you? If so, you should read what happened with Wendy’s lately.
What seemed a simple request for a supply of one year’s Wendy’s chicken nuggets from a 16-year-old from Nevada (USA) has now become the most retweeted tweet of all time. With more than 3.6 million retweets, the post surpassed Ellen’s famous Oscar selfie. 2 weeks ago, as Twitter made the announcement in a blog post. The company has granted Carter Wilkerson gift cards for a year’s worth of the nuggets requested even though he did not reach the number that Wendy’s requested on the challenge.
Source: Twitter blog
Wendy’s, one of the world’s largest fast food restaurant chains in the world has shown us that is a brand with attitude; in fact, there is a lot to learn from the company has given the brand a very instinctive brand personality. Wendy’s social media style so unique that small businesses can learn from their overall strategy and apply those lessons to their own social media accounts. The fast food chain has everything that takes to be a successful brand for using the 4 keys mentioned in my previous post: authenticity, relevancy, consistency, and commitment.
What exactly is social media engagement?
Social media engagement simply means getting your followers to react on any of your social media posts by clicking, liking, commenting, tagging someone, pinning, or sharing. All of them can be measured and analyzed (monitoring), detailed data of your posts will be of a good use for feedback; at the end of the day, what matters here is to increase your conversion rates.
Social media, indispensable more than ever
I have read some articles about this tweet record, some of them mentioned “how lucky” Carter was, yet I must say it’s not only the fact that he took a chance and wrote the first tweet but also the way the company engages with its followers. Social media not only provides your brand with an opportunity to resolve issues or to get a new sale but to drive engagement itself, even if it takes just a words written with a keyboard it can have a historic result.
Many businesses make a bigger mistake: they over-think their social media posts. Social media is about opinion, engagement (of course) but most importantly timeless. If you want to stand out from the rest, this is a good lesson for your company.
Wendy’s doesn’t follow any of the “rules” of brand social media strategy and engagement, and define their voice as a provocative but appealing, which gives it room to interact with others in a confident way so long as it’s also sassy.
Social media affords brands an opportunity to step outside the traditional dynamic between consumer and business. By using social media to encourage a conversation—as silly as it may seem—your brand has an opportunity to engage an audience in a unique way and change the narrative about your organization.
What could be the benefits of a good engagement? It can take your brand all the way to customer loyalty and more referrals for your business. Just remember to follow the marketing strategy and core values of your company, which are linked to the company overall strategy.
For each of social media platforms you use to promote your business, it is crucial not only looking for promoting by engaging your audience, you must remember to reply back to your followers and that if there’s a problem, the quicker you can reply, the less stirring can take place. This also will make them appreciate your reactiveness, people want things as instant as possible, that’s why the go to social media for customer service now.
Conclusion
As mentioned above, Wendy’s have created and maintained a distinct voice that relies heavily on authenticity, and are now known for their exceptional responses, both customer service and otherwise, and this is something that any small business or personal brand can use because as we are seeing, it works. The success of Carter Wilkerson demonstrates that social media can be an incredibly powerful player in the interactions between brand and consumer. Perhaps, a new social media standard has been set. Are you interested in using this approach to promote your company? If so, you need to craft it and make it different from the rest. I’d suggest taking the time to develop your unique brand voice and don’t be afraid to take risks along the way.
