Social media platforms have become a necessity with the current pandemic and its popularity has spiked even higher because people are staying at home more often than usual. Particularly, the “new kid on the block” – TikTok is garnering the most attention among social media users, based on our recent observations.
Most of the time, when it comes to communicating a message to an audience, brands will rely on campaigns. In our industry, brands approach us for KOLs that would talk about their brands to their target audience. Although these digital campaigns are in fact necessary for brand awareness, it does not instantly grant brand loyalty, and it does not give you a relationship with your audience.
Other than creating brand awareness via social media campaigns through the various mediums (such as engaging KOLs) that we have, brands should often leverage on the power of social media to connect with their consumers as well by creating different kinds of consumer engagement activations online (or offline, if the situation allows).
Customer Engagement is important for brands, because this can further enhance the brand’s image and value, ultimately forming connections between the brand & their consumers.
One good example of a brand and its consumer engagement would be GSC Cinemas. As observed on their social media platforms, they tend to reply to comments from their followers with a sense of humour in them (or sometimes, “scolding” them in a funny way) – and this garnered a lot of attention from other consumers to tune in to their posts!
With Chinese New Year around the corner, looking at the current situation, it will be a new experience for some people as they spend this festivity at home, instead of travelling back to their hometown. Besides, most of us will be spending time celebrating online since it is a no-no to visit our friends and families this time around. #juststayathome. As depressing as it sounds, this is actually a great opportunity for brands to leverage on the current trends (taking the celebrations online) and engage their consumers by creating interesting activations / contents to connect with them. A brand’s presence on all the trendy social media platforms (such as TikTok & Instagram) is one of a great way to ride on the trend and entertain their consumers. For instance, if you’ve been active on TikTok, you would have come across MyDin’s TikTok contents (if you haven’t, I would recommend you check them out!). They roped in their management team to be part of their TikTok contents, curating viral contents and inserting promotions in the most entertaining way – which attracted many users to share them on various social media platforms! This simple act of replying to comments have pushed GSC Cinemas & Mydin’s branding immensely and not to mention – for free!
Looking at the two examples of brands adapting their unique style on consumer engagements, this shows that it works well as an attraction for your consumers to interact with the brand via different social media channels, and by doing so, it can portray the “human” side of the brand. As marketers/advertisers, it is important to know that the connection with people is vital for a brand because it allows genuine interactions between the brand, and its consumers.
