For brands to engage online, they need to be able to create content to share with consumers that will connect them to the brand. In other words, the more human and relatable the content, typically makes it easier for consumers to form trust with a brand and then more likely to interact with it. Brands also simply need to make content that is entertaining and interesting that will make the audience want to engage with it. Otherwise, it’s really easy for people to scroll by and not think twice about it.
Brands can utilize social networking communities for branding and promotion because they communities can share and engage with the brands content in an instant. If your content goes viral, it can be spread instantly to millions of people. The potential audience can be huge, and if the campaign is successful, it can really help the brand. The ability of social networking communities to promote a campaign so effectively is really worthwhile, if it works. But first, the brand has to be able to have the audience engage because otherwise they’ll just be sending out the message and no one will be responding.
At my internship last semester, I worked a lot with influencer marketing. Basically, what I did was find influencers to promote songs that were coming out from artists on the record label. Usually, the influencers would post an Instagram story or post with the song playing in the background. Generally, the influencers would make their own content for the post and we would provide the song and links. A lot of them would just post generic videos, where you could tell they just wanted to get it done rather than create some quality content. However, for one campaign, I remember one influencer, in particular, made a whole video for the song with effects and all, and that story had the most engagement out of all the posts from the whole campaign.
I think that experience was a true testament to how important engaging content is in a campaign. It’s a lot easier to get people to engage when the content is entertaining and interesting, rather than boring content because you feel like you just have to post something.
Here’s a link to the Instagram post from the campaign I worked on. (You have to be logged on to see it.)
Kayla's Social Media Marketing Blog 
It is very important for marketers to connect with communities on a deep level. Human and relatable content is one of the main things to learn when studying social communities. You make some great points about how content has to be interesting and entertaining and how it has to push an audience to send the message about a specific brand. Thank you for sharing!
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Hi Kayla. The experience that you had at your internship sounds like it is a great example of networking. I also think a lot of the time I am more interested in content that tells a story or shares an important message. This seems like something the company you worked for was doing, and I think that this is quite smart of them.
I also agree that trust is key and an important thing to promote when using social networks. No one wants to buy from a shady brand.
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Hi Kayla
It is very interesting to read about your experience using influencers to help market a product in the social media space. I think there is both a positive and a negative aspect of influencers which we need be aware of. Some are doing it because they really are loyal to the brand while others are doing it for either free stuff and money, so is it really authentic?
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