Since the dawn of civilization, humans have been social animals. What first manifested as a basic shared language has since evolved into subcultures on a multitude of social media platforms. The human impulse to know and be known has driven social media into the awe-inspiring network it is today.
When the first social media site was launched in 1997, it was nowhere near the expansive behemoth we know it to be. Six Degrees, credited as the first social media platform, was meant as a way of direct electronic communication. It wasn’t until we started getting to the 2000s that sites began to fill out their own separate niches.
In 2002, LinkedIn came into existence to fulfill a professional niche with a purpose of connecting users with businesses and potential employers. LinkedIn is still the seventh most popular social media site among adults in the USA.
In the decades since, social media has evolved into a source of entertainment and news, a new form of marketing and a retail platform. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok rose in popularity and have stayed there since their conception. TikTok is even the most downloaded app in the US.
The creation of mobile phones has only added to the popularity of social media. In fact, 90% of the US population actively uses social media as of 2023 according to Pew Research. In case you aren’t someone who likes percentages, that’s 302.35 million social media users.
Brands, universities, sports teams and just about everyone else in between are using social media as a creative outlet to tell consumers what their organization is about.
Social media has changed the game in every way possible. No one could have predicted the way social media has evolved since its creation, nor will we be able to predict how it will continue to evolve.
Video marketing is a trend that must be taken advantage of. The third ranked social commerce platform is the app TikTok, which reached one billion users only four years after its creation – for reference, it took Facebook twice that amount of time to reach that many followers, and Facebook is the top social commerce platform.
But social media can be intimidating, especially when there are already so many brands that get thousands of likes on every video. Here are five video ideas to boost engagement.
#1: Tutorial videos
Short, helpful tutorials are an effective way to release educational content about your product. TikTok has video length options up to 10 minutes in length if you want to give a more in-depth tutorial but remember that most users’ attention spans don’t last that long.
Use tutorials to highlight your product in a non-judgmental way for users who didn’t know how to use it and add in tools and tricks that users may not have known about.
Get creative with your tutorials as well! Don’t be afraid to get silly with your video – you want it to stand out against the rest!
EZ Home, a TikTok influencer who posts DIY and tool reviews, has many videos like this one giving tutorials on how to fix sinks, locks, lights and more.
#2: Partner with influencers and content creators
There are thousands of influencers across social media platforms that want to pair with brands just like yours. Reach out first and ask if an influencer would be interested in receiving a free product to display in one of their videos. You can repost those videos on your own channels.
RIDGID Tools partnered with the influencer Plumbing Sk8er on TikTok and was featured in his recent video when they sent him a new SeeSnake Mini Pro Camera
#3: Show your product being used
Show off your product! Grab viewers’ interest and make it irresistible to them. Find fun and creative ways to show off your product to entice people to buy it. Two popular ways that brands are doing this are by creating videos of them testing their products in comparison to competitors and sharing before-and-after videos.
RRBuildings, a construction influencer, posts videos on TikTok for his 1.7 million followers. Many of his videos, such as this one, show him using a product and demonstrating how it helps make his job as easy as possible.
#4: Participate in trends and challenges
Pay attention to what is trending across platforms and find a way to jump on it. Brands that participate in trends that regular accounts are doing come across as relatable and have a better chance of resonating with their audience.
A popular trend across all forms of social media are compilation videos of satisfying actions. One account on YouTube, Technical Mamaji, posts videos of construction workers doing their job in satisfying ways, amassing 16,000 views.
#5: Share educational content
Use your platform to teach your audience about something related to your brand or products. You can make your educational content humorous still and, while you shouldn’t strictly stick to educational videos, they are a clever way to vary your videos to increase engagement.
See this video by She’s a Tiny Plumber on TikTok. She uses the duet feature to react to a leak repair, and she explains each step in a comprehensible way while keeping it light and humorous.
Feeling inspired yet? Start making your own video content to get the most out of your brand!
In marketing, there’s a lot of different forms of marketing as it keeps evolving. However, traditional marketing is not going away.
The following is a guest post from our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research. They like to say they “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post.
The reputation you have with your customers is critical.
That should not come as new news to anyone running a business. How your customers perceive your products and services has a direct impact on future sales and it directly affects prospects consideration. The online community can be both a huge boost as well as a land-mine. Anyone with access to the internet, so basically everyone, can impact how you are perceived. So, what to do?
If you have read any of our articles, there is often one common theme in there, have a plan. It’s better to proactively manage your reputation than to let the social media world run it for you and be in a reactionary mode, especially if there are negative comments.
Assess where you are now
Start with an assessment of where you are today by taking a fresh look at your social media accounts. Understand where your customers are and that’s where you want to be. Depending on the size of your company and the resources you have, you may not need to be everywhere. For example, in our company, and given our target audience, we don’t need to be on TikTok. Then take the time to read the comments and the level of engagement your audience has with your posts. Get a good sense of what people are generally saying and how much is positive, negative, or just neutral.
Engage and boost
This is where the heavier lifting comes into play. It’s increasingly important to engage with your target audience online and this applies to B2B as much as it does in B2C companies. Are you posting regularly? How often you need to varies by the type of company and the channel. For some it might be a few times per week and for others at least once every two weeks. Your marketing team or agency can help determine the proper cadence.
Stay on top of the questions or comments
Try to respond to customer questions within 24 hours if possible. If someone states something incorrectly, it is appropriate to provide the correct answer. If someone says something negative, don’t react until you can assess the validity of the statement and provide a professional response. And given that anyone can say anything, not all comments necessitate a response. Ensure you have a trusted person responsible to answer questions with clear guidelines to help them understand when to escalate or bring in specific expertise.
Content matters
Finally, review what you are posting. Don’t always make it a sales push, but look to educate, inform, and at times, entertain – just be sure to keep it in your brand voice. Be sensitive to the medium you are using. With LinkedIn for example, keep it primarily business oriented. It’s fine to let your personal or company brand personality come through, but it’s probably best to avoid touchy societal topics
Take the time to assess where you are, continuously engage with your target audience and never stop generating content that matters to your target audience. Your brand reputation is critical to maintain, and as Warren Buffet once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
I think we can all agree that influencers are good at… well, influencing. Sometimes it’s like I can’t go more than two days without buying something that a stranger on the internet told me I just couldn’t live without. But is the Goliath of influencer marketing about to meet its David?
Meet “de-influencing.” – the anti-thesis of influencer marketing in which a content creator tells their followers what not to buy or what “life hacks” not to try. As of this blog post, there have been over 700 million videos tagged with #deinfluencing on TikTok. This new trend of debunking trends has more to it than meets the eye, however.
Here is one example of de-influencing in action. This TikTok content creator posts multiple videos where he does a voiceover on top of a compilation of “life hacks” and explains why you shouldn’t do them. This is just one type of de-influencing, where the content creator tells you flat out not to fall into something just because it is trendy.
Another way of de-influencing that is becoming more popular is alternative influencing, or “don’t buy that trendy product that you’ve seen a thousand times, buy this less trendy product that will actually help you.”
So, why is de-influencing becoming popular? One reason might be because consumers are moving further and further away from the mass consumerism that has been creeping its way into our culture since the pandemic, when the only thing left to do with your day was online shop.
Another reason behind de-influencing is because content creators want to be as transparent with their followers as possible. Transparency and reputation are on the front of content creators’ minds. Can you really believe someone who is getting paid to support a brand who may not have your best interests in mind? Consumers are beginning to question the authenticity of influencers’ suggestions – are they truly helpful products, or is this influencer just trying to make a buck?
So, what does this mean for you and your company? First, it means that you will have to choose your influencers wisely. If you wish to do an influencer program, make sure you choose one that will accurately review your product and not one known to post de-influencing videos.
Make sure you are also being as transparent as possible with your product. If viewers appreciate honesty with influencers, they will also appreciate it with brands. Accurately promote what your product can do and how it will help, and this will ensure that your product will not get a negative review for not being worth it.
On the flip-side, it also means you have an opportunity to get your product out there if you believe it is a more efficient alternative to more trendy products. One benefit to de-influencing is that it can appeal to more niche audiences and help push your products towards an audience that would otherwise never know it existed.
De-influencing can be an opportunity for your brand, but only if you let it. How will your company join the trend of anti-trends?
My internship at Sonnhalter has been such a big opportunity for me. Not only have I gained experience in my chosen field, but I also got to hold a wrench that was nearly as big as me, so I guess it’s up to you which is more important.
One of the first things I was given to work on here was a press release on something I knew absolutely nothing about. It was definitely a challenge and far from the fake scenarios I used to write press releases for in my Intro to PR class, but I liked knowing that what I wrote was going to reach people and be used.
My favorite part of the internship has been writing blog posts, like this one. I enjoyed researching any given topic and putting it into my own words, as well as inputting my own personality into the blog posts. Writing these blog posts has also given me the opportunity to gain experience more about a variety of topics, such as the connection between toilet plungers and CPR.
I got the chance to experiment with graphics and creating videos, something that I didn’t have much experience with beforehand. I was even able to contribute a donation location to the annual tool drive, something I am particularly proud of.
Even though I am going to miss most of the Tool Drive since I move back to my college house at the beginning of August, I really liked knowing that I was working towards helping people in need. I enjoyed seeing things that I created go towards a greater goal of partnering with Habitat for Humanity.
With the experience and knowledge that I have gained from this internship, I feel confident in my capabilities going forward and I know that I will only learn more with every opportunity I get. I know that wherever I end up, I will have Sonnhalter to thank for starting me on my path.
