Steal These 3 Social Marketing Tricks From Top Brands

Steal These 3 Social Marketing Tricks From Top Brands

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Do you follow a brand in social media? Are you glad you did? If that's the case, they are either doing one of three things:

Connecting with one of your passions and/or interests.

Entertaining you with their engaging personality.

Providing interesting and/or important information to you.

If you're a small business owner, you may want to consider which of the three strategies you're following. You might also mull following one of the strategies exclusively. However, it's fine to dabble in each. "These approaches are interchangeable, and a brand can not only switch back and forth between them, but also use two or three at the same time," says Caitlin Francke, SVP, and Director of Social Strategy at Publicis Kaplan Thaler. "The most important thing is for a brand to stay true to their DNA, identify what they are best at, what they can offer the consumers the most of, and focus on that. That will be their strongest play."

The three strategies — passion, personality and transparency — are outlined below.

1. Passion Brands

No matter how much you like it, it's hard to get worked up about an energy drink. But that drink may be just a part of the optimum experience that you associate with that brand. For example, for some, Red Bull conjures up images of action sports. This is no accident, since the brand has worked hard at tying the brand to images of young people risking their lives on extreme outdoor activities. The cover photo on the brand's Facebook Page, for instance, shows a guy on a snowboard.

Another consistent brand is Nike. Though the brand's social media communication highlights both professional and amateur athletes, the underlying point is the same: celebrating athletic achievement. Adidas' feed is also consistent and differentiated from Nike in its international focus.

Finally, a good example of a passion brand in another category is Whole Foods, whose social media stream consists almost entirely of recipes so fans can indulge their love of cooking and epicureanism.

2. Personality Brands

Not every brand can connect itself to a pastime the way that Nike could. What do you do, for instance, if you're Oreo? Oreo's not associated with much besides milk and perhaps binge-eating. But Oreo and interactive agency 360i aren't interested in connecting Oreo to a particular passion. Instead, they've infused the brand's social media activity with personality. Oreo's 31 million-strong Facebook feed shows the familiar Oreo looking slightly different in the name of a visual pun. The daily updates are sort of a variation on Absolut's long-running ad campaign that featured the bottle against unusual backdrops for the same witty purpose.

Another personality brand is Skittles, which has racked up 24 million followers on Facebook with whimsical, stream-of-consciousness status updates like "The frenemy of my frenemy is my enefriend" and "Beavers are excellent at making pancakes, omelettes and anything that needs a spatula."

3. Transparent Brands

Transparent brands want to tell you about all the stuff that they're doing in the real world. A good example of such a brand is IBM, which hosts some

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