How the Top Brands in Social Media Use Passion Points to Drive Engagement

In looking at the best building brands in social media, the top five have one offline element in common: they are “passion brands.” Meaning, their audience has strong, emotional, personal ties to the topics they post about, or have very brand-loyal customers.

But it goes further than having a passionate customer base. These brands understand their customers – what makes them tick, what they share and talk about, what motivates them, their behaviors online and how they differ across channels. And then they eloquently share content that taps into those passions. Doing so turns followers into a legion of engaged advocates.

Learning Passion Points

For Benjamin Moore, Cambria and Behr, their audience is likely to fawn over interior design, DIY projects and pretty spaces. Al three brands do a wonderful job of feeding into audience aspirations with eye candy that inspires new ideas and projects (and thus, purchases).

    

 

For Milwaukee Tool and DeWalt, it’s about the work, love of work and getting the job done.

 

Milwaukee Tools’ visuals and social voice especially celebrate the lifestyle and mindsets of their audience.

              

 

For example, in one of their regular Instagram content series, they feature followers’ tool collections because they likely know their audience has quite a few. As a result, more people share their collections (advocating for the brand to their own network of followers) hoping to be featured on the brand’s account.

              

 

And here they demonstrate more customer understanding in a well-timed sweepstakes announcement for plumbers, a large subset of their audience. An appropriate image with text overlay, both the subject matter and visuals immediately grab attention of plumbers, letting them know this one’s just for them. Well done, Milwaukee Tools!

 

Healthy content mix

Tapping into shared passions involves variety. Every single top five brand has a robust and healthy content mix. Their channels are not broken records. They use different formats and topics, all aligned to an overarching brand narrative, to keep it fresh and exciting for the audience. Their content series is not extended over too long a period of time; they keep it coming at a regular cadence and higher frequency than most other marketing mediums require.

So, let’s take a look at the formats that make up the content mix.

There’s video.

 

Carousel, Photo and Link posts on Facebook.

              

 

Contests.

      

 

User generated content (more coming on that later), tossed in with integrations from larger brand campaigns.

 

 

Social-exclusive information.

 

Pin-ready collages and graphics.

 

You’ll notice, too, that the content is just right for social media. They aren’t using repurposed ads, images with too much text, or videos that are too long to keep users’ attention. Content is formatted for the channel on which it appears and designed to reach users in the different mindsets and behaviors they have across channels.

 Keeping Your Audience Front & Center

Once you have a clear understanding of your audience, what they care about, their behaviors on each channel, their passions and nuances, apply that knowledge to your social media content strategy. If you need help with this, we’re ready to help.