That’s why Denny’s is unlike any other social media account I’ve ever encountered. They don’t actually promote any of their food on a regular basis. In fact, it’s a rare occurrence. They’ll throw in some tweets about… foodstuffs. Food that’s on their menu – sometimes.
Bottom line: it’s unpredictable. When I first came upon this social media presence a year ago, I had no idea how or why their marketing team had chosen this approach. That confusion was short-lived. Because a year later, I still think about Denny’s tweets and share them with my friends.
really hoping Lucille is just gonna crack some eggs tonight
This sort of social media posting is like a free-association experiment. I’ve no doubt in my mind that whoever runs their social media was around for the birth of You’re the Man Now, Dog and 4chan.
My people.
What Denny’s Does Right: Niche Content Audience-ing
That being said, Denny’s is clearly targeting Millennials and Gen X’ers. I’m still not sure which one of these I belong to; though for the sake of my ego I’ll go with Gen X. We were around for the birth of memes, both creating them and sharing them. Moot was a household name for us (I had the odd honor of working with him professionally many years later in Manhattan — touche!), and may or may not have (almost) failed out of college because of late night raids in World of Warcraft.
Denny’s knows this demographic. They know quirky memes and they embrace the randomness that certain niches of the internet also embrace, even desperately fall in love with. Who needs proper grammar and punctuation? Not Denny’s.
They win because they make your brain associate good feelings with their product. Let’s call it the Meme Sensation. It’s that instant gratification that you feel when you find a great meme. It makes you chuckle, makes you hit the little Retweet arrow, or copypaste it into your Facebook Messenger group chat.
In Denny’s case, their social media makes you want to join their business’ culture, not necessarily hook you in with their food. You’re investing in the brand, which in Denny’s’ case, is a weird world of puns and run on sentences. It’s how we (my generation, the just-turning-thirty-year-olds) talk when we’re really excited about something. You know, caps lock is cruise control for cool. So when you RT that weird tweet about eggs or how scared of Negan we all are, you associate it with Denny’s. It’s a brand new world of marketing, akin to getting jingles stuck in your mind – only this time, it’s something entirely different.
Denny’s embraces the randomness that certain niches of the internet embrace, even fall in love with. Who needs proper grammar and punctuation? Not Denny’s. And yet, it’s still highly unique and marketable.
What Denny’s Needs To Work On
Pet peeve alert! Despite how quotable Denny’s is, the fact is they don’t seem to engage with their customers. I talked about my great interaction with @PenguinRandomHouse in an earlier blog.
Interaction like this would only further cement their fans’ loyalty. We are all attention-starved on social media, after all.
For instance, Denny’s passed up a perfect opportunity to get involved in some great, free marketing. Widely popular webseries @GameGrumps (SHOUTOUT TO MY OLD FRIEND @egoraptor) engaged in exactly the kind of random quirky banter with a bunch of food chains’ social media, and Denny’s missed the mark and never replied:
hey @DennysDiner are you guys doing anything tonight? we’re free to hang but don’t tell @Applebees or @Chilis, they might get jealous
This thread is absolute gold, by the way. I highly recommend checking it out.
Conclusion
Honestly? I don’t know if I’ll ever go out of my way to go to a Denny’s while I’m at home. But if I’m outside of NYC and need American comfort food, their tweets will definitely come to mind. They’re tapping into an unconscious need to laugh at random stuff that your parents wouldn’t even begin to understand. The stuff you find yourself remembering and laughing about on the toilet at 3am.
The difference? It’s connected to a company. And it’s 3am. Guess who’s open at 3am?
Krystal is a Social Media Expert at Express Writers. REALITY CHECK! It’s 2016.
If you have a pulse, you’ll know that door-to-door salesmen aren’t around anymore. We’ve all become proverbial Biff Lomans, haven’t we?
And yet, once we follow our dreams and get our businesses up and running… we realize that the old way of doing things is dead. Whenever I see company reps standing on street corners trying to pitch their newest subscription-based products, I wonder what the turnaround is for that.
Don’t they know?
This is the age of social media! It’s faster and more effective to get your message out with RTs and shares than leaving some poor young man dressed in an apron on the street, hawking down college students. (If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. But I digress.)
I’m online. You’re online. Our dads and cousins and people we knew in elementary school are online, consuming products and services and letting their social circles know about awesome experiences they’ve had with company X, Y, and Z.
It’s the age of social advertising, where your customers are your greatest marketing tool. If you have great, shareable content, and know an effective way of pushing it out, the rest of the work is pretty much done for you.
Of course, if it were as simple as that, I wouldn’t need to write this blog post guide for you. Social media is more than just the sum of its parts — you need to know how to manipulate those parts to your advantage.
That means understanding how each social media platform comes into play when you’re trying to reach a specific audience, whether it means changing your tone for that platform or adding/omitting a platform, depending on who you’re trying to reach.
Think about who uses social media in your life. If you’re a social media professional, chances are you use social media in your personal life.
What do people always say? Oh yeah, some complaint about their mom seeing a post they made on Facebook. And do you know why? Moms are on Facebook! (and dads, too.)
From personal experience, my mom got as far as setting up a Twitter account and stopped there. I’m all about using intuition when it comes to social media advertising, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a frame of understanding about each of the top three social media platforms.
Social Advertising Basics 101: How to Get Business Traction, Succeed & Win on Social Media
Let’s start by looking at how to use my three favorite (and the top hottest) platforms to work with as a social media manager: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Organic, real-people-friendly tips here only!
1. How To Succeed On Twitter
It’s true: Twitter is the cool kids’ table
In my private social media presence, Twitter definitely feels like the cool kids’ playground table. Indeed, the majority of Twitter users are from urban areas.
It’s where I hang out with celebs, complain to airlines about my 4 hour delay, and lose my geek mind over social media presences like Arby’s as they make nerdy video game references that touch my very heart and soul.
@penguinrandom this reminds me of RPing in AOL chatrooms in the old days.
Awesome to see the humans behind the big businesses. (They’re nerds just like me)
Twitter is instant gratification, and instant reach
With the instantaneous nature of gratification and reach in mind, as a marketer, you want to keep some of these same perks in mind when you’re trying to use Twitter to your advantage.
Use Twitter to connect to your industry in a fast and productive way; it’s also an easy way to learn who follows who in what ever niche community you and your business belongs to. Or, you could be playful and engage over businesses and customers in friendly banter. I see it all the time from very well known businesses (especially in the book industry — I’m looking at you and your book banter, Penguin Random House!)
Twitter facilitates fast-paced conversations
But doesn’t Facebook provide the same sort of interaction, you ask? On the contrary! Twitter is like having a conversation, whereas Facebook can sometimes seem more like forum posting. People refer back to Facebook statuses for information and conversation, whereas Twitter is much more fast-paced.
Want to be hot on Twitter? Build your own chat
With Twitter, you can even start your own hashtag chats easily amongst those in the industry, whether it is other companies or customers/fans (or future customers!). Chances are, the followers of the people engaging in your chat are going to take note of those hashtag remarks and may poke their heads into the conversation to see what’s going on. Bam! A new follower of your brand is born.
Join a few chats (we have a list of 25 on Social Media Examiner, and our own #ContentWritingChat hosted by @ExpWriters)—and then consider being a cool brand that starts their own! Want some inspiration? Check out Applebee’s or Corner Bakery Café and see what they’re doing on Twitter—it’s genius.
2. How to Succeed on Facebook
A TOLKIEN AND A HALF-LIFE REFERENCE IN ONE POST? *joyous hair pulling*
Be about them, not you
Facebook is a different audience and a different culture of communication than Twitter. While Facebook’s user base is largely adults, the volume of user total as a whole is staggering. You want to make use of all of those users out there and be a responsible Facebook poster. That means posting conversationally.
Remember — you want to get your information out there, but you don’t want to sound like a commercial spam bot.
You want to have a conversation with your audience in a singular space, and that’s your status for the day.
Engagement isn’t as high as other platforms
For the most part, businesses don’t respond to comments on their Facebook unless someone has a question or a complaint. It’s a space for customers to engage each other, but I don’t see the same level of interaction with brands on Facebook like I do on Twitter.
3. How to Succeed on Instagram
u ok Tony?
The newest member of the Social Marketing Band, Instagram is a great way to reach out to your customers if you’ve got great product to show off.
Good visuals go far
Since Instagram is a visual medium, keeping your wording to a minimum on your images is key. Surely, your company name and the name of the product can go on there, but don’t write an essay on your image and expect it to resonate with people. Show off that sexy Mustang concept car! Entice with photo edits of your cupcakes!
Don’t forget filters
What ever it is you’re selling, show it off to the world with an appropriate filter. Black and white can make things look timeless and classy, but if you’ve got something to show off that’s colorful, it stands to reason that you’ll want a filter that’ll bring those colors out without blinding your audience. It’s also a great way to draw attention to a blog post or an event.
Hashtags are key
And don’t forget your hashtags. Instagram helps you figure out which hashtags will actually be helpful to you by telling you how many posts are tagged with the hashtag that you’re trying to use. That’ll help you clean up your post and not have ten hashtags that are worthless on your Instagram. 30 is the max you can add, and anywhere from 15-20 is a sweet spot. PostPlanner has an awesome list of 25 best hashtags here.
No One Likes Ads: Staying Grassroots Could Mean A Bigger Win
Folks, you can do anything with money. Even boost your online presence. All of these platforms have ad service that you can buy into to increase your exposure.
My dead-honest opinion of that is in this day and age, no one likes ads.
Doesn’t matter if it’s your mom or a millennial. As soon as people see that *sponsored* footnote on your post, alarms go off.
That’s not to say that using ad services can’t help you reach a community that you think you’re just not getting exposed to, but I firmly believe in the grassroots approach to social advertising.
That’s creating great content, using your platforms smartly, and engaging with the online community. After all, you can’t put the “social” in “social advertising” without being a bit of a social butterfly.
Remember — you’re not on social media JUST to post about yourself.
What’s going on in your neighborhood? Your city? Your industry? Keep people engaged and thankful for your presence by bringing them into YOUR world. For this reason, I think Twitter is my favorite platform. It allows for the greatest possibility of expanding customer loyalty through social advertising and communication.
While I definitely love Facebook because of its exceptional reachability and the ability to format longer posts, I’ve fallen in love with more businesses through Twitter, both as a user and as a professional.
Don’t be afraid to check out the accounts you love and try to emulate their style — if you can pull it off, and if it makes sense for your business. If you’re selling product to an older age bracket, you might not want to reference Caturday or Sephiroth in your social media posts. Always keep your demographic in mind.
And don’t forget, as always… use images when you can! Instagram is obvious when it comes to this rule, but as far as Twitter and Facebook goes, a catchy image will make your status pop off of someone’s timeline and into their eyeballs. I’m sure there’s a more eloquent way of putting that, but I do enjoy getting right to the point.
Conclusion: Don’t Overdo Your Hashtags
Listen, I’ve had a bit of an awakening when it comes to hashtags. I really don’t like them. I think they’re vital on platforms like Instagram, but Twitter’s and Facebook’s algorithms have changed in such a way that they capture key words without actually needing hashtags. I think having more than one or two hashtags ends up looking pretty tacky and outdated these days. But that’s just me. What do you think? I’d love your feedback on this one! Let me know in the comments.
For creatively ingenious social media copy and posting, request our social media experts (ask for our amazing Krystal!) in the Content Shop.
As a social media account manager, I have a lot of tools at my disposal.
I organize all of my social media posts for Express Writers in Excel, which makes it easy to categorize and date all of my posts (not to mention, archive them. This is important to a packrat like me).
Google is my best friend (who can’t say that?) when it comes to research.
I even have a notebook that I take notes in for client work, whether it’s jotting down ideas for social media posts or thumbnails for graphics.
Graphics.
That brings me to my next point.
Social media isn’t simply words on a timeline, though it’s what I do best. The internet is a sensory, tactile place, and sometimes words just aren’t enough to grab your reader’s eye off the page of their quickly-scrolling dashboard.
Canva & a Non-Designer’s Perspective: Why It’s the Best Visual Tool for A Social Media Account Manager
If your business is having a special event, a sale, or perhaps there’s something new in stock, how do you grab your followers’ attention?
A quirky pun or a one-liner, definitely. But it’s still just words on a page.
First and foremost, I’ll come clean. I’ll admit it: I really suck at Photoshop. I majored in art in high school, did a year stunt at an art college, but only did fine art. At times I would use Photoshop to draw or do some very minor color correcting, but overall, I hated it. I sucked at it. It was never intuitive for me, and I’m impatient when it comes to ui/ux, especially when it comes to the creative process. I need to get it out of my head and onto paper/a computer ASAP or else it just feels… cluttered. You know what I mean, right? (…Right?)
So when it came to professional gigs where I HAD to produce some sort of graphic with my copy, Photoshop (don’t even get me started on Illustrator) had me scrambling to produce something eye-catching that didn’t take me 4 online tutorials and 5 hours of putzing around the application to complete.
That’s where Canva comes in.
How to Create Images (Pre-Sized for the Right Platforms) On Canva
Admittedly, I had never really heard of Canva until I started working for Express Writers. I’d heard some of my designer friends talking about it and figured it was something else that would be way over my head, but now I would have to use it. Canva was EW’s choice app for making images for their clients’ social media.
When I signed up for Canva (which involved my favorite 4-letter word: FREE), I knew right away that I was in a good place.
Check it out! There’s presets for sizing your different social media images. No more Googling “PLEASE GOOGLE WHAT SIZE IS PERFECT FOR INSTAGRAM?!” or keeping a list next to your computer.
Let’s say I want to make an Instagram post for my client. I just click INSTAGRAM POST (self-explanatory, right?) and…
BAM – there it is, in all its 1080px x 1080px glory.
Now you can see its defaulted to the LAYOUTS category, which kicks butt. Canva has a ton of free presets for eye-catching graphics that will draw the eye of your customers.
You can even tweak the presets to include your own personal touch, whether it’s adding your own stock imagery to the background or tweaking the font.
Canva has a ton of preloaded fonts at your disposal, from the stuffy kind to the rustic kind. Fonts can be rustic, right?
Want to really start from scratch? Head on down to the ELEMENTS tab. You can build your own image with grids and frames if you have an idea that the presets just won’t fulfill.
From there, add text, lines, images, and shapes. There’s even an option to append all of Canva’s free images that you simply drag and drop into your creation.
But not to worry – that UPLOAD tag is just for you to do just that with your images.
Can’t find an image that would work for your creation?
The search bar is great for looking through Canva’s entire catalogue, which includes some paid content. PAID is definitely not my favorite four letter word, but the images are only $1 each.
And the best part? Canva has filters for your images. Yes, you Instagram junkie – you can make your images more dynamic without the pressure of knowing how to use layers in Photoshop with Canva.
Drop saturation, up contrast, even use preset filters like “Retro” and “Epic” (I use this one often) to get the mood you want out of an image.
Here’s something quick that I put together for a client. The social media post itself was about their customer service reviews, with a link to the testimonials section of their site. Now, that text by itself might not get you to stop scrolling and click that link. But the image, with its warm colors and engaging text, as well as an active model in the stock photo, might draw your attention. It’s all about finding ways to attract attention to your client’s brand in a natural way.
Here’s my Canva homepage.
You can see some of the images I’ve created here and how diverse they are. I’ve managed to capture the mood of each client without spending a ton of time trying to create the perfect image.
I can do a Canva image in ten minutes and devote the rest of my time to doing more research for the client, or brainstorming more copy for their social media.
Conclusion
IF YOU REALLY NEED A STARTING POINT, I highly recommend these tutorials: https://designschool.canva.com/tutorials/
They’ll give you some great tips for using Canva (though it really is very user-friendly) and greatly touches upon one of the most important things to remember about creating images:
KEEP IT SIMPLE!
If you load your image with too much text, shapes, lines, and frames, it’s a turn-off for the customer’s brain. The simpler an image is the more professional it looks. It shows that you’ve put real thought into building your image instead of throwing elements onto the canvas willy-nilly.
Got any tips of your own? Please feel free to let me know in the comments!
For awesome social media management, including custom image creation & original social media posts, head on over to our social media services in the Content Shop! Want Krystal on your projects? Let us know in the input forms!
Ever wanted to learn how to become a social media manager, or what it’s like being one?
Krystal, one of our talented client social media managers, is guest blogging today with her thoughts on the subject. Plus, she’s sharing a look at her day, writing and creating social posts for our client base. Enjoy!
I grew up on the Internet.
No, seriously.
If you knew me up until college, you knew me as the shy, quiet, artsy anime/video games nerd that had some good ideas, but wasn’t very effective in communicating them. That is, unless we were friends online.
Text role play, fanfic writing, and managing online communities was how I got out of my shell and found my writer’s voice.
It was a way to communicate that didn’t always flow as freely in person. I learned how to manage folks on MMOs and do customer service via email.
These types of things were done for leisure, naturally.
I was always a reader and a lover of fiction, but when I started working for an indie bookstore, I was reading ten books a month and bridging the gap between having an online personality and communicating with bookstore patrons in person.
Now how, might you ask, did this culminate in becoming a social media manager?
How to Become a Social Media Manager: Krystal’s Starting Roots
Reading and writing have always been my pillars. I used to do more Fine Arts (I even had a brief stint in art school), but I found that I couldn’t communicate with my paintings and photos as deeply as I could with words. This became apparent to me as I started becoming engaged in online communities such as LiveJournal and managing big raids in World of Warcraft and really excelled at connecting with users and empathizing with them.
You learn how to communicate with people in a whole new way, using persuasive and subtle language to create a sense of a virtual community. No matter what online platform I’m on, that’s what I strive to do – create a community, whether it’s with fellow nerds or customers I’m trying to reach out to.
It’s like calling a hotline and having to speak to a computer. That’s bad social media. Good social media is connecting with the user on the other end. Great social media is getting them to laugh at the screen and look forward to your tweets or status updates. You want to feel like the person on the other side of the screen is your confidante, ready to answer your questions and guide you in the right direction, whether it’s helping you figure out why your flight was delayed or which ice cream is the hot flavor of the month.
Being a Good Social Media Manager is All About Great Research and Writing
Of course, there’s more to social media than just being a solid communicator. You have to love research. Having a degree in Applied Psychology, I’m used to spending hours, days, even weeks doing research on one topic.
My biggest hurdle when I first started writing copy for social media professionally was getting used to writing copy for topics that I knew nothing about, or –let’s face it—topics I couldn’t care less about.
A Day in the Life: Writing for Typical Subjects Can be Fun!
But the beauty of loving research and writing is that, in general, you most likely love to learn. This was an unexpected perk when I joined up with the great folks at Express Writers.
I was getting clients that were connected to products like luxury vehicles, RVs, beds, and real estate litigation. I happen to own a bed, but otherwise I don’t know anything about any of those. I was pleasantly surprised by how fun it was to research the kind of content that their customers wanted to see, Googling all sorts of articles and such to get people excited about RV safety. Who knew!
As long as you check your sources and make sure they’re legit, you can find some awesome content out there. I keep a word document of all the websites I’ve found to be useful depending on the subject, just so I can revisit the ones I know will give me great content if I need to.
Tip: Be Conversational in Your Writing Style
Then, I get the information out there as if I’m having a conversation with someone. Even if a client wants the tone of the copy to be professional, I try to give it my own personal spin so that every tweet feels like a greeting, a first impression between strangers. I can talk a lot about keywords and SEO, which are all essential in the most fundamental ways, but once you’ve drawn in your customers with the right algorithm, you need to keep them hooked with your personality. This is of course true with actual face-to-face interactions, but when information is flying at users on their Timelines or Dashboards.
This is what I love about being a social media manager. It’s the ultimate social experiment of the human condition, only way more fun and interactive than anything you’d read in a textbook!
4 Tips to Share on How to Become a Social Media Manager That’s Worth Their Salt
TL;DR, right?
Well, I’ve zeroed in on some tips that I think you’ll find useful if you’re thinking of getting involved in the professional social media world:
1. Keep Reading
Seriously. Whether its articles online, novels, or even episodic video games – keep yourself immersed in some form of literature, whether it’s Dostoevsky, Murakami , or That-Indie-Graphic-Novel-That-You-Wish-Other-People-Read,-Too. It makes you a better, savvier writer overall and keeps your noodle engaged with language. Draw on the voices in literature to help you cultivate your own. It’s important to do, even if you only have 140 characters to show it.
The same goes for writing. If you get an itch to write a little story, poem, or blog, scratch it.
2. Stay Connected to Social Media
This is related to my last point, and it may sound pretty obvious, but it deserves special mention: stay involved.
Read your timelines, study how your favorite companies stay relevant on a daily basis and how they connect with their customers.
Really listen to their tones and how they come across.
Sometimes I even say posts out loud to see if they sound natural. You can really learn how much tone makes a difference when it comes to what kind of impact one has online.
3. Remember Your Audience: They’re Just Like You
I hate stuffy sounding social media. You know what I’m talking about. It sounds like the kinds of emails your boss writes when they’re trying to sound engaging – the ones that make you roll your eyes.
If you’ve been in the position where you’ve read a social media post that’s trying to be engaging and it makes you roll your eyes, then you know that that writer hasn’t found their inner voice.
This goes for professionally-geared social media accounts, too, not just the fun ones. Your posts should sound like a conversation – a virtual handshake to your followers – not a thesis statement.
4. Emojis Are Fine and All, But…
Use them smartly and sparingly.
Same goes for hashtags.
This is 2016 – you really don’t need twelve hashtags and thirty emojis in your tweet unless you’re a spam bot.
Need great social media content? Can’t keep up with the demanding schedule that social media needs for the highest exposure results? We can help! Check out our Social Media Management packages – to have Krystal on your social media, just request her in the order form!
Download your Free copy of 12 Days of Christmas Infographic (Original Short)
