‘Take a cue from your favourite stars to upgrade your marketing strategy’ –

When it comes to social media strategy, celebrities are tough to beat; of course, they have the advantage of massive fan followings to start with, but their strategies go way beyond popularity.

They know how to be in the public eye across platforms and they know what their followers want and expect from them. But practically speaking, how do they keep their social media current and thriving on a daily basis?

Change it up

If you’ve read any of the basic social media ‘how-tos’ out there, you may know that your company should have a presence across social media platforms from Facebook to Snapchat. But if you want to operate like celebs do, you will also need to vary your messages on each platform. Your followers will be much more interested in following you on multiple social media sites if they are able to get different updates and information from each of them.

Make friends

Celebrities go out of their way to turn followers into friends. Because they know that without engagement from their end, followers are just followers. Keep your followers interested and loyal by replying to their comments, giving them shout outs, and posting questions to facilitate a discussion.

Limit the promotions

Many celebrity accounts you come across will have some sort of product placement. But what you’ll notice is that they’re often few and far between, and usually sandwiched between snapshots from their daily lives. If your company’s social media presence is all sales all the time, your followers will quickly tune out. You will not only lose your audience, but you will also deter new users from following you if your pages are plastered with company advertisements.

Before you begin posting, develop a comprehensive social media marketing strategy that puts a cap on the number of promotional posts you deliver each month.

Influence change

You may have noticed that celebrities are keen to use their influence for good, particularly when it comes to social justice and politics. Though promoting such topics may not be appropriate for your company (for example, non-profits often cannot advocate for politicians), you can still use your popularity to influence some positive change, such as through getting behind a cause like the ‘ice bucket challenge’ for ALS.

Use good judgment

Every once in a while, a story will pop up on the trending feeds, highlighting a celebrity who has recently made some poor choices on social media. If they’re lucky, such articles will be quickly buried in the news cycle, but often these stories are dragged out and eventually conclude with an apology from the celeb. But apologies aren’t always enough to undo the damage on your image, so be sure to think before you make a post that might be offensive.

Hire well

As you’d expect, celebrities have busy schedules. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense that they’d spend much of their time maintaining their accounts. Instead, many celebs have opted to hire social media managers to take the reins and make sure their social media presence is curated and engaging.

You can also learn a lot from celebrity accounts by following them personally, which will allow you to keep up with trends in content and general practice. But while it may be easier to follow from your company account, it is actually in your best interest to keep such things to your personal account unless it would make sense for your company to follow lots of people in the entertainment industry. Learn by example, but remember to keep an eye on your social media presence, too.

Source: http://www.4hoteliers.com/features/article/9941