Summer is traditionally considered the slowest season of the year for business. Clients are away on holiday, sales are down, recruitment drives often cease, and meetings dry up. But Facebook insights tell a different story. Engagement among its users actually increases during the warmer months, with 28m pieces of content produced every day. That’s a 14% growth from May to September.
There are common themes – holidays are the most commonly discussed, with 237m interactions, which include photo and video uploads, status posts and check ins. But weddings, barbeques, and sporting events are popular drivers of online chatter too.
Getting involved with trending themes during the summer provides a valuable opportunity to boost a small business’s brand awareness. Amrit Singh, founder of TeaChest is planning a campaign on Instagram to tie in with the Rio Games. “We’ve selected five teas that match the colours of the Olympic rings,” he says. “Each week, we have a post planned to provide education around the tea and where it’s from. We’ll be tying it into the countries competing too.”
It’s an important time for TeaChest, which has recently pivoted its proposition to offer curated boxes of tea, rather than allowing customers to handpick their selection from 60 available varieties. Singh says that social media has been key to keeping customers informed about the changes, along with the online blog. The business has campaigns planned throughout the year – particularly for Halloween, Christmas and New Year – but he says that it is the events during the summer that are notoriously engaging.
“Sports events are particularly time sensitive, so you know that at that moment, you have a very focused, dedicated audience. People are following hashtags or certain accounts. What we have to do is make sure that what we post is in line with our brand itself.
“We’re not looking to just flood a particular channel with content that isn’t relevant so it can be seen, we want to make sure we actually target the right market, and give people what they’re looking for, but with more of a TeaChest angle to it.”
The hot weather recently provided such an opportunity, and TeaChest took advantage of the trending #hottestday and #heatwave hashtags to promote their range of iced teas.
Making content relevant, not just opportunistic
Finding that fit – which means making sure that both your brand and the activities underpinning your event-based campaign have a direct relevance to your customer base – is essential to creating a buzz, rather than a backlash, says Simon Allman, creative director at Absolute Media.
There are well known advertising campaigns that have fallen flat, he points out, because people instantly see through – and mercilessly scoff at – the strain behind the concept. “Look at Quorn and Mo Farah,” he says. “If you put Quorn and Mo Farah into social media you’ll see a lot of negativity – no-one believes that he eats loads of Quorn or that you’d perform on Quorn.” By contrast, Allman suggests, using Usain Bolt to promote Virgin Media’s superfast broadband “was inspired” because it instantly made sense.
Bruce Casalis, managing director of Bruce’s Doggy Day Care doesn’t have the budget to get Farah or Bolt involved, but he doesn’t need to. He has 550 dogs that play at his two day-care centres every week, and is using these happy canine customers to boost public engagement, via a #SummerOfSelfies social media campaign.
“We have access to lots of cute images, and pictures of dogs are hugely popular,” Casalis says. “We’re lucky to have a service that is so engaging online. We even have customers that have Instagram or Facebook profiles for their dogs and they’ll check them in when the dog arrives in the morning, or mention us in a photo on Facebook in the evenings saying ‘shattered after daycare’.”
The business started seven years ago and has a number of vans (or “doggy buses”) to pick up customers in the morning and drop them off at the end of the day. Word about the service spreads, Casalis says, primarily through word of mouth (or dogs recognising each other in the park on walks with their owners), and vet referrals.
While the summer months aren’t exactly quiet, there is a big surge in business in September, with many families buying puppies over the summer then looking for daycare when the kids go back to school. This summer’s campaign has been planned to boost the public’s engagement, rather than make an immediate sale.
“Clearly every aspect of our marketing is trying to drive more business. But if I’m honest, that was more about increasing engagement and brand awareness. We want people to know about us. If someone does see a selfie and they then go onto the website, or follow the page, or share a picture, that is the objective.”
Social media consultant, Julia Bramble says selling doesn’t necessarily always have to be the goal on social media: “I think more and more these days, we need to be thinking about building a community, about giving value and giving people a reason to want and come back and engage with us.
“If you’re putting out something that’s entertaining or asking them a question, or somehow hooking into a conversation they might have already had with their family or friends, then they’re quite likely to think ‘that brand or business is quite interesting’.”
Rules of engagement
Utilising trending topics will often mean that content is crafted with little time to spare, as trending keywords change. Bramble says events such as themed days – such as the recent World Dance Day and World Emoji Day, for example – can be a good opportunity for a small business to be involved.
“For the right business, you can jump on there and produce some really engaging content, and it doesn’t have to be super sophisticated. Something raw and natural is actually probably going to sit better with people … There is plenty out there that will fit if you’ve done a little bit of research and you can be flexible.”
Whatever trending topic you choose to get involved with, make sure you have a contingency plan if events are unexpected. Posts revolving around the recent Euro 2016 tournament for example, may not have been well received if sent after England was knocked out of the competition.
Bramble adds: “Flexibility is the key here ... By all means, [use the scheduling tool], but you have to go back in and make sure you haven’t got a completely irrelevant post go out. It can be quite offensive if you get the wrong tone or don’t reflect the public mood … particularly when it’s bad news.
“The more you can get to know about the people that you want to attract and want to interact with, the better. The more you can know about who they are, what goes on in their daily lives, what keeps them going, what their dreams are. The more you can hook that into the way you talk and the material you share, the more attractive your content and your brand is going to be online.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Facebook sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network Connected for Success hub.
