In 2010, multimedia entertainment site Mashable launched Social Media Day as a way to “recognize and celebrate social media’s impact on global communication.” To celebrate, we looked back through our social media accounts to appreciate just how important this medium is for our business.
Beyond the hashtags and emojis and gifs, social media is a powerful tool for marketers like us to increase engagement, awareness, and conversions while putting our creativity to work. During the past year, our team has worked hard to grow our presence and engage our followers with beautiful content. Below are some of Orange Element’s favorite social media moments, lessons we learned along the way, and tips you can use for your own social media strategy.
Post 1: #HowLive Design Conference
Designer Kendall spent a week in Chicago at the How Live Design Conference. She brought back design goodies for our team to enjoy—a perfect opportunity to share the many magazines, postcards, and flyers that filled her desk. We also used the caption as a chance to tease the blog post she was writing about her experiences at the conference. This colorful scatter of swag caught the attention of many followers, even the How Design Events account.
What you can do: Instagram is a visual platform, so content should make users stop scrolling to look at what you post while still appearing native within the platform (not an advertising eyesore). Tag vendors, clients, or contributors in your post capture their attention and extend your reach—posts tagged with another user have a 56% higher engagement rate.
Post 2: Employee #AnniversOE posts
It’s always important to recognize employees so we implemented a fun way to celebrate our team’s work anniversary. With a unique photo treatment and hashtag, we kicked off our #AnniversOE campaign and noted each employee’s hire date in our content calendar.
What you can do: Followers love to see the people behind the work and employees want to be recognized (69% of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were better appreciated). You can start an office appreciation campaign to ignite conversations, engagement, and excitement around your company’s culture.
Post 3: #WednesdayWisdom Posts
There are some weeks where our content calendar may be light. In these instances, we rely on common social media trends and hashtags like #WednesdayWisdom to fill our account with relevant, creative posts. This is our opportunity to join popular social conversations while showing off our unique design style and content that support OE’s mission.
What you can do: Aggregate quotes from inspirational leaders and innovators for future Wednesday Wisdoms (or other social trends like #MotivationMonday or #ThrowbackThursday). This curation process upfront provides a library of ready-to-post images for those low-traffic weeks or when your design team is busy and can’t develop content for your company’s account.
Post 4: Twitter Poll
We’d love to hear your feedback! What kind of OE content do you hope to see more of this year?
— Orange Element (@orange_element) January 25, 2017
As an effort to engage our audience and have a fresh start in 2017, we polled our followers on Twitter to determine what kind of content they’d like to see more of this year. Their answers helped us realize that many people want to see more visuals and content from clients (that’s part of the reason we started developing our Customer Spotlight series—sign up for our newsletter to read the next client interview).
What you can do: People love being asked their opinions and engaging with brands who care about what they have to say. Start a quiz or poll of your own to learn more about your customers and what they want from your brand. To get even more input, promote your poll with a small budget and get thousands of more impressions and many more participants.
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Post 5: Monument City Brewing Co. & The Dieline
What we did: International design website The Dieline featured our can designs for Monument City on their blog. To share this accomplishment, we promoted The Dieline’s link across our accounts and boosted it on Facebook to reach a wider audience. For only $50, we reached 2,175 people and had 545 engagements.
What you can do: Do you have an exciting announcement or new product? Sharing a press release or blog article is a great way to spread the news and increase website traffic. Tag those involved with your success, like we did with Monument and The Dieline. After all, social media is about sharing great content and promoting important relationships along the way.
