Whether you're a suit-wearing corporate company or the local bakery, you can establish your brand as an authority in your industry and in your community using social media. There is a fine line between being another active brand on social media as opposed to being an authority. There are many components that are factored into creating a perfect recipe for success - we've listed a few key elements your brand can do to establish an authoritative online presence:
1. Who Are Your Consumers?
Whole foods has a killer standing within the food and health industry because of their incredible knowledge of who their consumer is. They know their customers' culture, workout routines, concerns, interest, passions and goals. Reaching that ground where you know who your customer is on an emotional level will give you a huge upper hand in establishing authority. Social media gives you the power to get familiar with your fanbase.
Whole foods realizes that causes like being environmentally-friendly are a huge passion of their consumers. In this post, they found a way to honor a fan and create traction on their page.
2. Quality of Your Network
Surround yourself with the best. That means your competition, your influential consumers, and people who fit your demographic. We use the Twitter networking tool, Brandchirp, to reach many followers at a time who fit the target demographic of our clients. Crowdsourcing is another huge way to network. Crowdsource by using Twitter's "Advanced Search" to locate brands, users and relevant conversations happening within your industry. This is an excellent way to see how people feel about a product, to measure overall sentiment about an industry or brand, and to jump into the conversation - further establishing yourself as the authority and expert. You can view more on network building here:
3. Quality Control
Just like you wouldn't cut corners with the quality of your product, you can't slack off on your social media either! Create an editorial calendar to ensure you're touching on all aspects of your brand and maintain consistency, but never at the expense of quality. Don't post to post, fans can smell inauthenticity from miles away. Learn more about quality content here.
4. Unique Campaigns
To be an authority you have to distinguish yourself from your competition and stand out to your consumers. Social media was once a major way for brands to stick out in itself, but now that more and more brands are catching on, the pressure to utilize dynamic and creative social media approaches is growing.
For lifestyle brand, POE, we created the campaign, #NameHer, to incentivize users to share the name of the woman who has most shaped their life for a chance to have a signature shoe named after her. This touches consumers on an emotional level, establishes a unique voice, and makes it a place of community - further establishing POE's authority among users.
Leveraging social media to become an authority in your industry makes a full circle back to your fans. If you've taken these steps above, you've created credibility, trust, and value for your consumers. That is the name of the game when striving to be the authority.