Why varied content related to your brand’s community helps your brand’s social media conversation

One of the keys to successful social marketing is to be an active participant in the community where your fans are also actively participating. If you stick to the traditional model of only spouting talking points to your consumers, they’ll realize they’re being marketed to and I feel they’ll generally tune you out. Consumers are savvy folks, and they know when they’re being bullshitted, I think. It’s important to relate to them without sounding like you’re broadcasting a canned message.

For example, Flying Dog Brewery is part of the larger Craft Beer community, and today marks the day in 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. By letting our fans know about this day, and subtly asking them about drinking our beer, we were able to get folks actively talking about our beer. This conversation hopefully will compel consumers to take that extra step by picking up a 6er of Flying Dog beer the next time they’re at a liquor store, or at a bar that serves Flying Dog.

In addition to this conversation on Facebook, the same content in the form of a tweet was retweeted out by a bunch of folks, even on a Saturday, which is traditionally a pretty slow social marketing day.

The total marketing time for this social media conversation starter was about 3 minutes. The other key is to repeat this 10 times a week, by seeing what your followers are talking about, determining how you can be a relevant part of the conversation, and being a part of your community.