Every business person wants their business to generate more income and grow beyond the teething stage.
They exploit every opportunity that lean towards this end and make the best of gains out of them.
Savvy business people do more. They go the extra mile to ensure things happen, including spending on marketing using social media. And adequately maintaining a successful social media account for a business comes with some handsome budgeting, but leveraging trends for your social media marketing efforts can get your business an organic viralty that can compete with its paid counterparts.
The good news is, the Nigerian society and its political arena presents on the steady, tons of trends that can be leveraged by businesses to drive massive social media awareness for their brands and save social media marketing costs.
An example is the story of the snake that swallowed 36 million naira which many businesses latched on to create conversations around their brands.
Here’s how you too can do same.
#1. Understand your audience
We know that you already know your target audience, but when a trend surfaces and you wish to jump on it, there’s the need to remind yourself of those basics again.
Ask yourself, who’s my audience? Will this flow with them? How are they going to perceive this? Before you proceed.
#2. Be hyper sure it’s a trend
Trends are ongoing conversations and opinions about an issue of massive common interest. Not every noise is qualified to be a brand.
You need to be able to decipher which conversation deserves the trend crown before integrating them into your brand conversation.
The easiest way to do this is to pay attention to the trend section on Twitter, and check out for real time conversations on Twitter surrounding the identified trend.
#3. Play by audience location
Consider the location of your audience before jumping on trends.
The trend should match with your audience location. This is because trends in countries foreign to your audience will only generate snubs and no engagements. Engagement is needed to be able to drive awareness using trends.
#4. Twist narrative to suit your brand offer
When you notice a trend that suits your brand and fits in with your audience, the next thing to do is to create and weave a message that is in tandem with your brand’s offer around the trend before sharing them with your audience.
#5. Be creative, make it fun
One basic truth about marketing on social media is this, the audience wants to be either educated or entertained.
For this reason, any message with a touch of fun easily gels with online audience and sparks them into engaging with them.
So, make it fun.
#6. Scrutinize for offensiveness
Even when they have checked out on all the other criteria, social media content meant to leverage a trend for brand awareness still needs to be cross-checked for offensiveness.
Share the post with a friend or colleague who shares similarities with your target audience how they feel about the content before you post.
#7. Share with appropriate hashtags
This caps it all.
When you’re done with every other thing, share your post with industry hashtags that match with the topic of the content you wish to share. Then post.
Bonus
Of all the other social media platforms, trends go more viral on twitter. Consider using Twitter for posts weaved around trends.
Posting on the social media when your audience is offline may limit the performance of your post, so note when your audience is online and make your post to meet them at the point of their visit to your social media handle.