Social media requires a dedicated, creative drive to deliver effective, engaging and entertaining content. Some social media platforms have it – some do not.
The mark of a dynamic thought leader, innovative company or true social media influencer is the quality and frequency of social shares. It’s all about content – that simple and, at the same time, complex. Social media is about social promotion, community engagement and effective messaging that rolls elements of public relations, media relations, brand publishing, content marketing and community empowerment into one massively opportunistic communications campaign.
Doing social media content right is not easy. It takes strategy, planning, creativity, commitment diligence – and consistency. Below are 7 awesome social media content greats to emulate – and why each is a true social superstar.
Richard Branson
Richard Branson is an English business super gazillionaire best known for founding Virgin Group, which is made up of more than 400 companies. He started his first business at age 16. He created innovative approaches for the mail-order record business. He is at home on the Forbes list of billionaires and he’s one of the richest men in the United Kingdom. The man is even promising commercial space flight.
He is also a top social media influencer. Branson blogs on everything from social issues, to his travel observations to the diverse philosophies and actions that motivate him as a corporate leader. Branson blogs regularly, sharing not only his entrepreneurial spirit, but also his personality. He generates entertaining content – at times even thought provoking. His Twitter and Facebook platforms are likewise, robust with fresh, engaging content.
Branson is one CEO that knows how to work the matrix of social media. He is a LinkedIn Influencer. He tweets – a lot. His content is fueled with purpose – encouraging his followers to share his healthy updates. He’s a content beast.
Panasonic
Panasonic has a great social engagement campaign, Cut Out The Darkness. The company’s motivation to launch the campaign last year was admirable. For those living off the grid in remote locations throughout the world, Panasonic is providing solar LED lanterns and rechargeable batteries for storing solar energy to charge small mobile devices.
The lanterns are designed to provide 360 degrees of illumination, enabling users to light an entire room. They’ve created a social engagement platform that leverages video, imagery, testimonials, personal stories and tied it all together with a fun way for people to create their own unique lantern designs – and share all via social media and a dynamic, responsive website.
Panasonic collaborated with celebrated artists from around the world to feature inspirational lantern designs. By taking an altruistic concept and inviting the world to share it by providing strong, visual content and opportunities for people to actually engage with the concept by designing their own lantern patterns online, Panasonic turned a social media campaign into an inspirational platform of hope. The result: A true community engagement powerhouse and a social media beacon.
Pizza Hut
Who doesn’t love pizza? One visit to Pizza Hut’s Twitter page is all it takes to get hungry. With humor and fun images, Pizza Hut’s timely updates are delivered hot and just in time. The company isn’t afraid to get a little campy and isn’t too high and mighty to poke fun at itself.
With a clever layering of hashtags and a healthy topping of ‘scenes from a pizza box‘ this is one social media campaign with personality and vibrancy. Plus, with more than 940K Twitter followers, not to mention a Facebook page with over 15 million likes, Pizza Hut is doing something right. So who’s hungry?
Starbucks
How many different ways can you feature images of coffee? Starbucks tackles that question constantly. With regular updates and brilliant imagery, Starbucks entices all to embrace the diversity of its beverages, baked goods and tasty specialties. If you didn’t want an iced coffee before you checked out Starbucks on Twitter, you will in no time.
Similar to Pizza Hut, Starbucks leverages hashtags, consistently engaging content, seasonal anecdotes, customer incentives and more to create not only a page devoted to building social ambassadors, but a platform for the global celebration of coffee. With a sprinkle of the right amount of humor, timeliness and relevancy, tweets are shared by the millions following the coffee great’s videos, observations and shares on Twitter. With great visuals adorning its Facebook too, Starbucks is a great example of the power of imagery in social sharing today.
American Diabetes Association
The American Diabetes Association is leading the fight to #StopDiabetes and its deadly consequences, and fighting for all those affected by diabetes. With a consistent, clear message developed and executed across multiple platforms – Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram – the American Diabetes Association does what all leading enterprises should do on its social platforms.
Inspire. Educate. Entertain. Motivate.
Seeing social media as not only a mechanism for sharing breaking news and healthy strategies, but also as a conduit for community engagement and storytelling, the American Diabetes Association demonstrates an acuity for creating content ideal for its target audience – and the masses. The result: A comprehensive communications pipeline designed to inform, uplift, comfort and even create change.
PewDiePie
He is the King of YouTube. Felix Kjellberg, better known by his online alias, PewDiePie, is an extremely likeable Swedish guy who loves to comment on video games and more on YouTube. PewDiePie specializes in Let’s Play videos of the horror and action video game genres – as well as commentaries to his fans whom he calls his Bros.
With a gift for generating video content and a creative approach to making video montages, PewDiePie has built a YouTube empire which has spread to social media – with over three million Twitter followers and 3.9 million Facebook Likes. On Google+ he has more than 750,000 followers and over 343 million views thanks to his hysterically entertaining approach.
What makes PewDiePie a great social influencer? He produces original content consistently, knows what he audience wants to see and applies a cross-platform social media approach to sharing his content. If you don’t adore him for his gaming humor, you have to admire him for his ability to leverage social media to build his brand of Bros.
Intuit
Just about everyone knows Intuit is QuickBooks. Intuit creates business and financial management solutions that simplify the business of life for small businesses, consumers and accounting professionals. Its flagship products and services include QuickBooks, Quicken and TurboTax, which make it easier to manage small businesses and payroll processing, personal finance, and tax preparation and filing.
Why is Intuit a great social influencer? Intuit blogs like a beast. Intuit maintains robust blogs – Intuit Small Business Blog, Intuit’s The Fast Track, Intuit Accountants News Central, plus the Intuit Partner Platform Blog and more. Intuit leverages content to build community engagement and keep social shares flowing. Intuit carries its content drive to @Intuit on Twitter, with regular tweets to its over 55,000 followers. For a company that’s all about numbers, Intuit knows how to work the words – making it a content-rich social great.
Image: Panasonic, Pizza Hut Photo via Shutterstock, Branson Photo via Shutterstock, Panasonic Photo via Shutterstock, Starbucks Photo via Shutterstock, PewDiePie, Intuit
Speaking of Richard Branson, I’d add that Mark Cuban is also pretty good in this department.
Robert: I agree with you. Mark Cuban is good at creating good content.
Marie Alonso: Coming from Sweden, it is interesting to see that you have included PewDiePie. I hadn’t heard about Felix Kjellberg until a friend and BNI member told me about the YouTube star and how her son was an active member of this commenting gaming community.
Mark
I’ll second the fantastic content from The Fast Track. Easily digestible nuggets of goodness every day!
I really like Richard Branson. I like his down-to-earth’ness and his quirkiness. Over 400 companies is an amaaazing amount! I have no idea why I’m not actually following him anywhere online. Just one of those things, but I’ll be rectifying that.