Teen Social Media Trends that Can Be Applied to Small Business – #2
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Share Content
Facebook and the like are so popular among teens and the younger set because they allow kids to document their experiences and share content, something we learned from College Humor Co-founder Ricky Van Veen at Mashable’s Social Media Summit. What he means by documenting experiences is as simple as a status update or a link shared on ones wall: In the online realm, we are defined by what we share, and by hitching your wagon to a certain kind of content, you’re reaching a specific audience. For example, Van Veen and College Humor recently made a partnership with SoBe to create branded videos, thereby publicizing the drink as well as creating kick-ass new vids for the website’s fans to pass around.
According to Rick Burnes, who leads the content production team at HubSpot, a marketing software firm that produces the Inbound Marketing Blog and Inbound Marketing University, “The most important thing is content. What I mean by content is just creating interesting, useful information on all sorts of media about things your business is interested in. Blogging is the easiest format. You can created content on your site, and then share it on Facebook. You can also create photos and videos and share those on Facebook.”
When it comes to content, you can either create your own or get your fans in on the game. Sammy Davis, a young Internet entrepreneur who runs her own vintage business — Sammy David Vintage — creates content in the form of a blog, as well as her own branded online TV series. Davis was no stranger to social media when she struck on her own to launch her business — she quit her job producing Esquire magazine’s website to follow her dream, which began with selling clothing at local flea markets and progressed to owning her own showroom. Much of this business was grown through her blog and website, on which she educates her customers about how she and others shop and wear vintage clothing. Davis’s business is more than simply an online shop — it’s an online tutorial/experience.
User-generated content is also great for reaching a wider web of people. True Lemon has grown its Facebook Page from 1,034 fans to 7,000 in three months by asking fans to interact and share content — for example, they launched a game on Marilyn Monroe’s birthday in which they asked fans to submit pictures of themselves with Monroe-esque moles. By submitting such pictures and appearing on the site, fans feel a connection to the brand.
In line with the practice of submitting pictures comes tagging. The practice of linking people to pics — which has spread to Twitter recently with the addition of tagging to TwitPic — allows a brand to spread virally around the web. For example, Bridget Smith, marketing director and manager of the Tattoo Factory in Chicago, plans to tag customers’ tattoos in Facebook galleries (a lot of parlors have online portfolios on Facebook displaying the artists’ work, but few actually tag the customers behind the tats).
She even plans to do real-time updates by taking photos of the tattooing process with her iPhone and uploading them to Facebook and Twitter. This is a great way to spread the word about businesses that often rely on recommendations — like tattoo shops and bridal stores. When you tag a customer in a pic, that photo appears in his newsfeed, and is then seen by his friends, who will be more likely to check a business out once they see their friend’s virtual seal of approval.