Social media marketing is changing rapidly. The conflict over political ads on social media, especially on Facebook, has spilled over into many broad topics and brands are often caught in the crossfire as platform admins attempt to address content issues.
Brand safety on social media is a topic with wide ranging scope, but there are three areas where we typically see brands lose their footing on social media.
- Being unprepared for user engagement
- Lack of awareness regarding where your ads are showing
- Not connecting with the audience in a relevant way
In this three-part series we’ll discuss each in more depth.
Preparing for engagement
As a company or organization, when you decided to go on social media, you presumably wanted to talk to your audience. But did you prepare for them to talk back? This is the difference between being a traditional advertising brand, and one that can operate effectively on social media. It seems simple, but a number of brands are still surprised at how users engage them online.
Not anticipating that the conversation on social media will mirror what’s happening with the rest of the company is a fatal error. Any customer service issue, product issue, employee issue or common misunderstanding can and will show up on social media. Safe brands are honest with themselves about what those topics are and prepare for them in advance of posting on social media. While there will always be things you can’t anticipate – you should certainly be prepared for things you can predict.
So what can you do to be prepared for engagement?
- Anticipate what people may say to you by consulting FAQs and customer service guidelines
- Create prepared responses to things you foresee coming up on social media
- Understand your audience enough to know how they may react to different prompts
These will get you well on your way to preparing for engagement with your audience on social media.
To get more in-depth information about brand safety on social media, check out our webinar from earlier this year.