With the advent of the internet, web 2.0 and more specifically social media, getting people to talk about your company can have more impact than ever before! Conversations are no longer private and can be seen by millions of people across the globe. That is why the quest to get trending is ever so popular and is sought after in most marketing campaigns. Plus the more people talk about your brand, the easier you are to find of these social media channels as well as google. Getting people to actually talk about your brand however can actually be really tricky with there being no fool proof way to actually do it. There are ways to influence it however by doing certain things that are attention grabbing and conversation worthy, some of which we discuss below.
Publicity stunts
People love a little surprise which is why publicity stunts usually do so well. They are planned events by companies that are done for the soul purpose of gaining publicity and the attention of the public. Usually done in public areas, they can be anything from a performance of a song, a hunt to find various items hidden around the city or setting up a statue in a public area that is related to what you sell. If you are doing it publically there needs to be a photographic or filmable aspect to it in order for people to talk about it online. They can be done more privately today because of the ability of recording and posting online. Sponsor and record someone doing an outlandish stunt to get people talking about them and you.
Announce partnership with other brand
Working together with another company is something that people love to talk about as it is quite an uncommon thing to see. Companies usually work on things by themselves and don’t work together with another brand because it can be inefficient to work with people who don’t live in the same area, you have to deal with all the legal issues that come with it and profits would have to be split fairly. However when a collaboration is done correctly it can do absolute wonders for both businesses. It creates a positive vibe between both companies and this positive feeling is boosted even further when two competitors work together. It shows that not everything isn’t about competition and being better than each other but working together to do something great like what McDonalds and Burger King did when they collaborated to create the McWhopper.
Hand out interesting merchandise
Get people talking about your brand by giving out some interesting merchandise to a large chunk of your audience. They will feel much appreciated by your brand for receiving a gift for free and will likely want to boast about that fact online for their family, friends and followers to see. You can even incentivise them to post on social media by printing your hashtag on the product to try and get you trending. What you brand is up to your choice but there are two kinds of products that would be the most effective; useful or unique. You could do something useful which will get them posting bragging about how they got something like that for free or use something unique like some printed fidget spinners to get people talking about the unusualness of it.
Challenges
Giving people a challenge is a great way to get people to talk about your brand or the cause you support as people will film themselves doing the challenge and post it online. A very popular example of this is the Ice Bucket Challenge that dared people to pour a bucket of icy water over their head to raise money for ALS research. Challenging customers to do something easy but fun like this is a great way to get people talking about your brand as saying your challenge is like you saying “I bet you can’t do it” in their subconscious. They will want to prove that they can by doing it and joining in with the whole promotion. Challenge people to do something with your product to hopefully increase sales at the same time and you can say that they should nominate others to do the challenge after they do it to get it to spread further.