Just like content needs a strategy, a social media marketing plan is important to making gains in the social world. This week, we’re going to look at what sets certain brands’ social apart in order to help spark ideas to take your own social media to the next level.

Social Media Marketing Plan: Your Chance To Shine

Google “social media marketing plan” and you’ll get a ton of great resources. Lists of social best practices and the most cringeworthy uses of social by companies possible. But even doing everything right and nothing wrong isn’t going to set you apart. You have to do something different, and that something different has to work. Today we’ll look at brands who are doing things differently and reaping the benefits.

Let’s Get Physical… and Personal

From the great outdoors to snail mail — these two brands know what they’re doing.

GoPro

GoPro is known for creating tough, lightweight cameras. Daredevil types love to attach them to helmets and handlebars or pop them on a selfie stick when leaping from planes. Instead of slickly produced content of people in gorgeous adventure gear on hikes, though, GoPro has leaned toward user-generated content. This social media marketing plan is brilliant. Just check out this video:

Take Away from GoPro

Here’s what strategies we can learn from GoPro.

• If your product is adored and people have great user-generated content, share it.
• Have a sense of humor.
• Anything with animals wins.

Mr. Robot

Live-tweeting, real-time engagement of Twitter users during an event, is nothing new. The television show Mr. Robot has made live-tweeting into a beloved part of the show. Cryptic tweets, inside looks and more are in store for fans. Some lucky fans get a gif made for them or artwork with their Twitter handle. The fan favorite part of their social media marketing plan? Particularly interesting fan tweets are sometimes followed up with a DM asking for the person’s address and then they get a package with show-related goodies in the mail. This works especially well for a show that focuses on social media and the Internet in general.

Embrace a Niche

Arby’s And Geek Culture

There’s a fear of alienating potential customers but sometimes a company takes a risk. Arby’s has embraced geek culture as part of their social media marketing plan and it is working out. The key is authenticity. Rather than pretending to know about something that’s hot, Arby’s team members realized that they had similar interests and started incorporating these into their posts. What happened next is what is generally referred to as breaking the internet.

Arby’s takes its meats seriously but lets its hair down when it comes to social media and it works. Commenters regularly praise the social media team. Arby’s is also smart to balance some more obscure geek culture references with things in the popular realm so that everyone can enjoy some of the posts. Even if you’ve never watched Game of Thrones you know that throne in the image above.

Take Away from Arby’s

Some important lessons from Arby’s include:

• It’s okay to lean toward a niche if it is authentic and you mix in more mainstream references.
• Notice the comments? Arby’s responds to commenters. Engagement is vital!

Smart Is Cool Again

It may have been popular to pick on the smart kids in school but Merriam-Webster’s Twitter has gained notice and followers since a famed clapback* and a snarky tweet about President Trump’s gaffe involving the difference between “president” and “precedent”.

Word nerds and trivia hounds love Twitter so having a little fun with smart jokes is a good way to attract people to your brand.

As April, and our series on social media, comes to a close we hope you’ll take time to focus on how you can increase your presence online by incorporating our advice from the month. Ready to get an expert opinion? Contact Digital Firefly Marketing for a free social media evaluation.

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*Follow the link; we just couldn’t repeat the language!