How Five Big Brands Use Social Media Strategies For Small Businesses

1. Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines is known to use platforms in social media like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and more to reach their customers. The Southwest uses social customer care centers for customers to voice opinions and concerns about baggage, prices and more.

You can apply a social customer care center strategy to your small business by, adding a customer service tab to your social media page. This will allow customers to reach you 24/7, also they can help each other out also. But make sure you have a few people available in your small business to work just on the social media comments.

You can also use the latest software, specially built to be able to manage the scheduling of social media messages but also to automate responses and centralise your messaging. One such platform is SproutSocial, which our agency has used to manage our growing client base for over 5 years now and hold the SproutPartner Platinum status.

2. CA Technologies, Brand Advocacy

CA Technologies uses their own employees to help boost their brand. CA Technologies created a social media internet educational training course called SocialU. This allows for the company to teach the employees the importance of being in the social media part of CA Technologies.

When you are one of the worlds largest independent software companies, you know social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are on your side. Below are six very important steps you must take for this strategy to work.

• Workplace culture must be the priority.
• Employees must be educated about the best social media practices.
• Employee advocacy effects should be measured by tracking the right metrics.
• Create an employee advocacy mission.
• Appoint employee advocacy leaders.
• Create social media guidelines and communicate them to all participants.

3. Purina

If you work hard at promoting your small business and keeping it up you can feel just as important as the big brands. Sometimes the bigger brands may seem to have the better of smaller ones, but that’s not true. Even a big brand like Purina can found it difficulty, to present a more confident personal level of business compared to smaller brands.

This is why Purina created campaign called “always on”. Always on uses social media platforms like Twitter to highlight animal lovers. This group of followers included Purina employees and fans. The fans and employees were able to express their feelings and concerns for the animals up keeping.

How you can apply an authentic brand voice?

• Keep true to your brand.

Does your brand like to use GIF’s or slangs? If not then you should not change that now. Think this over for a minute, does your brand really need social media?

• Don’t have an ego.

Making fun of your brand is one thing, but being rude to another brand makes you look small. This can lower the value of your company and brand. You don’t want that to happen. At all times be self-aware of how you come across about the brand. Keeping these steps in mind and your company will always be looked at as reliable

• Don’t hide anything from the public.

Have you heard someone making untrue statements about your company? Then put it out in true colour for the customers to see the truth. Don’t just sit back and hide. Let the people see how truthful your brand is. Even the financial problems can be showed. They might just help in a boost of sale. “Being open” is a sure way for you to gain people’s trust and loyalty”.

4. Coca-Cola, Social video

In 2015 Coca-Cola used a worldwide social video campaign to promote personal appearance. Coca-Cola used YouTube to host the video. The video showed different physical people of the breaking of fast also known as Dark Ramadan Iftar, to be filmed during the experience. When the lights were out, participants conversed, spoke, and questions were answered. Once the lights was on again Coca-Cola had an outstanding way to end the video, they used a slogan saying “Labels belong on, and not on people”.

Applying this strategy to your small business is easy.

A filming crew can be costly and time consuming. Why not use a home video camera or your mobile phone. You can film a video outside in the day or night to show off your brand. Keep in mind these three easy to follow steps.

• Through using your company name, a clear description of service and products, and tags you can highlight your content more.
• YouTube Analytics, allows you to see where more efforts are needed and can save you time in future, you even see your resources.
• Make use of YouTube Ads

5. The New Yorker

With having to come up with new and existing content for your audience to love, you will face a difficult time on social media. This is where user-generated content can help. By using social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+ and more. The newspaper has really out done themselves. They are always looking for ways to impress their followers. This is why they came up with using voices on their social channels. It allows you to hear the articles that’s posted.

Applying this strategy?

User-generated content is a cost-effective way for developing content for your social media channel. This means it’s very affordable for even a small business. The following tips are a must have for the user-generated content to work.

• Tell customers to use natural lighting when taking photos, the flash can causes light spots on the product.
• If your product is of food or something to drink, use the products in a recipe and write a review.
• Repost photos posted by your customers.
• Let the customers show how they use your product(s).
• Organise different contests or competitions.

These are just five social media strategies to apply to your small business. You can find more online by searching social media strategy ideas for a small business. Social media will be an even more power way of advertising as technology continues to grow.