Have you ever followed an influencer on social media then realized your posts look strangely like theirs? It happens to a lot of people who lose their creativity and uniqueness with their brand. What could possibly help you stand out?
Stratezine is here to help! You can differentiate yourself on social media by focusing on your audience, being aware of trends, strategizing content for different platforms, finding your voice, and looking for inspiration in other brands. If you do this, you will be a successful brand and create a social media presence that is powerful.
Get to Know Your Audience
Research
The first step to differentiating yourself on social media is getting to know your audience.Your audience is your greatest asset. Those that view your content are the ones that will share, comment, and boost your overall reach and following.
By monitoring reader comments and engagements, witnessing external social habits, and conducting surveys, you gain the opportunity to know your audience and their interests. If most of your audience’s comments come from certain types of posts or content, you will get a better idea of what they are looking for and what you can create that will resonate with them.
Appearance
Your social media display essentially defines your space on the internet and the character you portray. The goal is to be interesting long term, so it is necessary to create an appearance that will do so. This portrayal should be eye-catching and amusing to the specific audience you target and the other visitors that will view your page. If your audience does not find your presence appealing or of long-term interest, your views and overall interaction on your page will decrease. Above all, as times and trends change, your social media appearance needs to follow.
Find a Niche
Platform niche directly relates to appearance and your target audience’s interests. For example,a niche could follow the lines of outdoor adventure, where you, the influencer or brand, cover the essentials of backpacking and mountaineering. Another niche could be fashion blogging, focusing on creating elegant outfits using items purchased from the thrift store. Your niche should be specific and should target a specific audience. The broader your subject, the more challenging it will be to have specific creative content that will appeal effectively to the targeted audience. You want to stand out on social media, so find a niche. Once your niche is found, your brand presence and purpose will be clear and strong. Your message and visuals will go hand in hand. Your creativity should be personal, eye-catching, and easy to improve or evolve as trends change.
Follow What’s Trending then Make it Yours
Have a Cohesive and Attractive Feed
A cohesive color palette is a quality of a winning profile. When scrolling through, the types of Instagram profiles that appear professional and grab attention are the ones that have utilized a theme. It is good to follow the trend but not too closely. Create a unique brand, but be in the “know” of what people are enjoying.
For example, there is a current trend on Instagram to use a more warm, neutral tone for all of your photos. These tones are popular and successful because they are pleasing to the eye. When followers come to your page, or people in general, they are given a sense of the brand and its credibility when every photo has the same feel and tone to it. This keeps people staying on your page for a longer period of time instead of leaving your page within seconds.
Video Content:
Video content is extremely popular in the social media world right now and is only growing more popular by the day. Successful videos range from short videos, like TikTok or stories, to long videos, like YouTube or Live Streams. “According to a Cisco study, by 2022, 82% of all online content will be video content,” continuing “Social Media Trends for 2021 and Beyond”. So, if you are not already creating video content for your social media channels, now is the time to include them into your content strategy.
To begin your journey into the world of video content, it may be best to start somewhere small at first and work your way up. You can start by introducing yourself to stories and TikTok. You can even add your videos, which you create, to your social media feed. To make your videos stand out and be different from all the rest, try incorporating something in the video that is specific to you. This can be something that most people don’t know about you or have something most people are not familiar with or heard or seen before.
For example, if you are really passionate about food and finding restaurants that are delicious, make a video of how you go about doing that. Go through all the steps that you take in order to find these spots. Make sure that your videos are designed to inspire your followers, not only to understand, but to take action.
User-generated Content:
For user-generated content, Instagram is the main platform. It is any content, be it text, videos,images, reviews, etc., that is created by people, rather than being created by brands. By sharing and creating posts that feature your brand, you can introduce your own products to your audience in a natural, noninvasive way. You can even share that content with your own audience and boost your credibility in the process. You should care about user-generated content to encourage authenticity, build trust, and motivate purchasing decisions. To promote authenticity, “Consumers are 2.4 times more likely to view user-generated content as authentic compared to content created by brands,” said Christina Newberry, author of “A Marketer’s Guide to Using User-Generated Content on Social Media”. They should know exactly what they are getting before placing their order. People trust people they know, so if you connect with your audience and give honest recommendations, they will begin to trust you and your brand’s community. All of these benefits lead up to dive purchasing decisions. “Nearly 80 percent of people say UGC has a high impact on their purchasing decisions,” said Christina Newberry, author of “A Marketer’s Guide to Using User-Generated Content on Social Media”.
For example, @CaraLoren on Instagram, has a shop that she created herself. This shop consists of clothing, athletic wear/products, shoes, accessories, etc. Cara Loren is the one who promotes her own brand, and she has made it unique to her by creating her own style and logo. She is constantly posting on her page and because of this, has gained a following and has people purchasing her products daily.
Learning to Strategize for Different Social Media Platforms
Visual Content vs Context
Many tend to put an emphasis on the visual content, rather than the context, or “story,” they produce. They spend time and energy making sure they have enough visuals to post for the next few days, weeks, or coming months. In order to be different on social media, put more of an emphasis on making sure your audience has enough meaningful context to engage with and care about. This isn’t to say the visual material itself isn’t important, on the contrary, they are a team. It is solely indicating the value lies within the storytelling.
For example, someone who is interested in health and fitness might follow many accounts related to this subject on Instagram. If your organization is one of those accounts, chances are your visual content is competing with the others for the follower’s attention. So how will you attract said follower’s attention?
Eye catching visuals? Of course, make it attractive enough to make the follower want to stop and have a look. However, will it be enough to give your follower a reason to stay and read your context above all other related pieces? According to SimilarWeb and Forbes, the average time a follower spends viewing a post is less than 10 seconds.Therefore, how will you uniquely tell your story enough to make the follower want to stay?
The Power of Storytelling
When we say social media, we tend to group all platforms together and treat them similarly. We imagine our target audience and upload the same post to all platforms. When, in reality, our Facebook audience is very different from our Instagram audience. Users tend to go to Facebook for entertainment, while Instagram users go for visuals. Yet, here is where we find many people posting the same post with the same captions to all of their social media platforms. The issue with this is, what may work for one platform, may not necessarily work for others.
Your social media is more attractive when you have different things going on. When your platforms all start to look the same, this tends to result in one platform being more dominant than the others. This usually can be seen when one has a significantly higher following than the rest. Does this mean having to think of over 5 different topics to share for each platform? No, the same topic can be used on each, however, it is the way we tell the story that should be distinct and that will help you be different on social media. Think about each individual platform and put yourself in your follower’s shoes.
- What is their mindset?
- What might they be looking for?
- What have they liked in the past?
Then, take that and create a tailored story for them. This helps not only keep the follower’s attention for more than a couple of seconds, but it gives them a reason to start following you across all platforms, and interacting with you on more than one of them or wanting to read more.
Treat Platforms Differently
Now let’s talk about what makes each platform in itself uniquely different? There are many things that make each platform unique, such as:
● Demographics
● Post Arrangements (Grid, Feed, etc.)
● Caption purpose and lengths
● Tone of voice
You will also notice that each offers unique features that appeal to their users. For example, although Facebook and Twitter have now developed their own version of “stories,” Instagram still dominates in this category. While this concept of stories originated from Snapchat and Instagram, therefore, more users tie it back to those specific apps and are more prone to post a story to Instagram rather than Facebook or Twitter. Do your research and use every unique feature and function from each platform to tailor to your benefit.
Redbull is a great example of what this can look like when implemented. In some of their latest posts on Facebook you can find their latest Redbull advertisements, sport-related advertisements, and merchandise along with photos and videos. If you head on over to their Instagram, you will find related content but the photos, videos, and captions are different. Being different on social media will help you succeed across all your social platforms.
Why Should People Read Your Content?
There is so much content out there on the web. Out of it all, what is going to make your content interesting enough to read? For one, you’ll want to be qualified on what you’re posting. When we go online looking for articles, we are trying to find ones that we believe are valid sources. This doesn’t mean you have to have a degree in certain fields. It means if you decide to use a topic, make sure you know your subject and have given it more than just a quick thought.
Make It Personal
Tell your story. Oftentimes, content that talks about personal experiences builds a connection with your audience. Writing content about things that have happened to you intrigues people to want to read it more. Personal stories bring out different emotions for readers. Depending on what your story is, it can inspire, bring hope, give advice, and do so much more for your audience. Whether your pages are influencer or brand types, any sort of genuine personality behind posts help give the brand more of a presence.
Interactive Content
A way to attract people is to get them involved in your content. One way of doing this is by encouraging your audience to share your content. This can help build your audience because it will get viewers involved.
Write Like You Talk
The main purpose of attracting an audience is that you want them to read what you have to offer. So don’t try to make it seem like they’re reading a boring article. Write your content how you would say it in person. This is a lot more entertaining for the reader, and they’ll be more likely to read your post.
Compare and Contrast Your Company
What separates your company from the competitors in your market? How do you make a difference in the way you promote your product or service? One of the biggest takeaways is that companies are doing all around the world is grabbing bits and pieces of each of their competitors’ and other sources’ marketing tactics, applying what works well to their own company.
Now this may seem wrong or even cheating in a way, but there isn’t a better way to see what your competitors are doing than to watch and understand why their strategy works the way it does. Seeing how they become successful as a result of their strategy can be a road map to follow. Look for the little details that companies use to separate themselves from the competition, be it a color scheme, a common type of post, social media branding, community involvement, interactive media, etc. The list can go on and on. Here is an example of a company learning things they like from another company, and putting their own spin on it: TikTok – TikTok began to take over the social media world with their 15 to 60 second video clips, drawing people in to trends and interesting videos of all kinds to keep their audience engagedAs TikTok began to rise in the ranks of popularity,Instagram caught on and created a new segment called “Instagram Reels”. Changing to fit their audience and their everyday user, to answer the same need on Instagram.
But how does this allow you as a company to stand out and be different, when you’re taking ideas from other brands and twisting them to make your own? The key is to understand your brand and what it stands for, and what you can do to separate yourself from your competitors. When you understand your brand and the direction that you are wanting to take with your brand, you can add little details and ideas from your competitors. You can move in the direction you want to take to make sure that your engagement continues to grow along with your user and viewer usage while learning and evolving.
In conclusion, being unique and identifiable on social media will boost your overall presence and increase your following. By paying attention to your audience, niche, trends, content, voice, and fellow competitors, you will see success and have a clear brand purpose. Standing out is the way to a solid social media presence and succeeding online.
Image References:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/313140980339469389/
Pexels
https://parkerarrowpresets.com/blogs/blog/instagram-story-highlight-cover-icons
https://blog.hootsuite.com/cross-platform-campaign/
https://www.i-scoop.eu/using-storytelling-strengthen-brand/
https://www.leaddoubler.com/7-tips-to-get-started-with-interactive-content/
https://www.lifehack.org/329898/12-reasons-why-you-should-blend-moth-storytelling-your-life
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