Getting your brand noticed in the increasingly crowded digital landscape is becoming more and more difficult. But as consumer behaviors and expectations change along with evolving social media platforms, there lies brand opportunity. It’s always been easier to insert your brand into an existing conversation than it’s been to start a new one from scratch. The idea of meeting your audience where they are instead of trying to make them come to you is not a new concept, but brands are taking a new approach to break through the noise and reach their audiences.
The power of comments
Comments. Brands are commenting on trending content, particularly on TikTok, in order to take advantage of the waves of eyeballs engaging with that content. Sometimes, it’s strategically aligned with their audience and the content their audience is drawn to, such as Peloton commenting on a video of a dog running the NYC Marathon. Sometimes, brands go rogue for shock value, like the NFL commenting on a Love Island star, Leah Kateb’s, TikTok. And sometimes, brands take a more lukewarm approach, showing up simply to show up. This approach often results in multiple brands showing up in the comments of the same viral video. For example, during Halloween, multiple brands commented under a video of a DIY Twister costume. While brands such as Pinterest had a relation to the post, other unrelated brands, such as Instacart and Charmin, also added their own clever commentary on the costume in the comments.
Encouraging engagement through community management
Community management is always something that has drawn consumers to brands. When a brand engages with your content, it makes the author feel like a part of the brand ecosystem, like they have a relationship with the brand. It’s the low-hanging fruit to convert a fan into an advocate. But until recently, community management for brands has been predominantly reactive. Scrolling through the brand’s tagged mentions on each platform and reciprocating with some kind of engagement (a like here, a comment there) has been the go-to way of keeping your brand in conversation…any conversation.
But, proactive community management is the shift we’re seeing today. Brands usually aren’t tagged in the content they’re engaging with, but they’re riding the coattails of popular creators who have hundreds or thousands of people in their comment section having conversations. The name of the game is to get your comment seen, and to get your comment seen, others need to “like” it to get it bumped further up where there are more eyeballs. To get your comment liked, brands are using humor, Gen Z slang, and pop culture references.
Many hands make light work
The best way to find this trending content? Be online. Like, really online. There aren’t many shortcuts to finding content that is skyrocketing in popularity, especially if the content doesn’t have any of your brand’s keywords or queries that you’ve set up to alert you within your social listening tool. You may not have time to scroll through TikTok all day, but the term “many hands make light work” applies here. Ask others to help you keep an eye out for content with big engagement numbers as they scroll on their couches on nights or weekends. These folks can be those you work with closely, those on your social media team, or even just people in your office who have their finger on the pulse (recruit all the Gen Zers you can). This helps to ensure that your trendspotting team represents a variety of interests and algorithms so you aren’t operating from a siloed echo chamber in identifying worthy content.
Find a central place to collect these opportunities so you can quickly and efficiently make the strategic judgment call of what and where makes the most sense for your brand to engage. By briefing your trendspotting team beforehand on clearly established and client-approved brand guardrails, you’ll all be better equipped to weed out the opportunities that may not align with your brand. You’ll save time by setting those quality vs. quantity expectations up front, enabling you to make these engagement decisions at the rapid speed of social. Remember, there are no right answers here. As long as you’re staying true to your brand and its values, go ahead and insert your brand where it may (or may not) belong.
