If you have not yet managed to obtain great reputation, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd in your business field or with your brand in social media. There is one important secret here: if you want the audience to treat you right, then you have to spoil them a little bit first. For earning trust and building relationships, your business will need a voice that speaks directly to the audience.
Many big brands and names exemplify the engaging power of social media. In fact, when we use the word engagement in the field of online marketing, social media, we are talking about content-related activity or reaction. Taylor Swift is a huge music phenomenon worldwide and can be considered a social media genius that online marketers can learn a lot from. Taylor Swift’s online marketing strategy is designed and calculated to the smallest details, yet raw and lifelike – from preparing the audience for her new album to engaging with fans online.
With 84 million followers on Twitter and 122 million followers on Instagram, you may wonder what you can learn from someone who is already more popular than anybody else. While Taylor Swift’s fans support whatever the singer does, she has gained even greater respect for her highly interactive communication on social media.
Taylor Swift’s social media engagement strategy goes beyond responding to comments. You can learn many tactical and spontaneous tricks by analyzing Swift’s strategy. Here are some of the key social media engagement strategies which you might use in your own business as well – thanks to Ms Swift and her online marketing team.
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1 Treat your loyal followers well
Before releasing her 1989 music album, Swift went online to find her most loyal fans and invited them to a series of secret meetings. Not only were these fans the first who could listen to the album but they also got a chance to really interact and take pictures with their idol.
In another online marketing campaign called Swiftmas, she surprised another group of loyal fans with personalized gifts. All of this was recorded with a camera and then posted on YouTube – the video, of course, got millions of views.
What can you learn from Taylor Swift in this example? Pay close attention to your loyal readers, customers, and reward them for their trust and commitment. You can even do business with other websites that your followers are interested in to reward readers, followers with different prizes after a competition. While this means promoting other businesses for free, it can also have a positive impact on your brand.
There is a high likelihood that they will mention your business in return. This gesture also shows that you value your readers who will become more committed to your brand as a result. They will help promote your business, happily advertise your brand, your services or your blog on social media.
2 Check your social media accounts several times a day
Checking your business or blog’s social media profile once or twice and then staying away from the internet for the rest of the day will not be enough. You need to actively research your audience, respond to comments and messages, and make sure your visitors return. It’s part of Taylor Swift’s online marketing and social media marketing strategy to get her fans to the most personal level through social media profiles. As you have seen previously, she even meets them in person.
This drives Taylor Swift’s fan base to have ongoing conversations with her online, creating hashtags, memes, photos, videos, and more. By engaging in these conversations, she has built an entire online community. These interactions on the social media platform have greatly contributed to her brand’s positive image.
If you want people to know you or rate and show interest in your products, you first need to show interest in them. Strive to build a more positive reputation on social media.
3 Humanize your blog
One of the best things about Taylor Swift’s social media presence is that the whole experience is like your are really talking to Taylor Swift. Of course, she has a team to help her behind the scenes in developing her online marketing strategy and social media interface, but the final product is a truly personal experience with the singer.
You can do the same with your own online marketing strategy if you feel that your readers are staying away. Maybe they want to communicate with a real person rather than a soulless blog.
If you want your readers to feel comfortable on your site and not alienated, respond to your comments in a timely, thoughtful way, and your readers are more likely to share your content.
4 Make every experience special
Taylor Swift kept her audience triggered during the tour of her 1989 album with a mysterious special guest. She welcomed music legends to the stage, including Steven Tyler, Mick Jagger or Jennifer Lopez. With this strategy, she made sure the fans had a more enjoyable experience, and the gesture was greatly appreciated by her fans and followers. By featuring various ‘mysterious’ guests each time, she made each of her concerts unique to her fans.
You should do the same for your readers when implementing your own online marketing strategy, making sure your readers, visitors interact with your blog.
In addition to providing exceptional content, you should also be able to customize each post according to your readers’ needs. Flood them with positive content and lead them to new and exciting things. You can do this through the details.
5 Contact influencers
Also on the tour of her 1989 album, Taylor Swift ‘campaigned’ with famous personalities like Serena Williams, Kobe Bryant and Ellen Degeneres. This further increased Swift’s power and reputation and allowed her to reach the already established fan base of these celebrities as well.
In any case, it can be useful to partner with well-known bloggers and brands, known as influencers, who share the same values as you and your business. Partnering with the right brands strengthens the image you want to portray while broadening your audience.
6 If your brand gets involved in a controversial situation, quickly change the topic
When a video (posted by Kim Kardashian) revealed that Taylor Swift probably lied about giving consent to Kanye West to mention her name in a song, the former country singer received hostile comments and #RIPTaylorSwift hashtags from the public. The hashtag combined with snake emojis soon flooded the comment section of her Twitter and Instagram profile.
The next day the tabloids were flooded with pictures of her and Tom Hiddleston spending time together on Rhode Island Beach. People were surprised by the news, and the social media conversations quickly shifted to whether the relationship was real or merely PR. Regardless of the truth, the marketing strategy worked and from that time on people paid attention to their public walks photographed by the paparazzi.
What’s the lesson from this? If you create a blog post that is expected to trigger negative comments from your readers, you still need to make efforts to write non-attack responses. If you can keep the conversation going in a positive tone, you can get a lot of new readers.
As part of a thoughtful online marketing strategy, a strange, contradictory message can drive a lot of traffic to your website – but you need to be prepared to deal with negative comments and thank to anyone for their contribution, may it be positive or negative.
When you write a blog and post content that is likely to bring in a lot of negative comments, you might want to pre-write an article or make a video that has positive reviews, maybe even with influencers. This will improve the negative waves generated by the first article .
7 Protect your online reputation no matter what
In 2015, Taylor Swift purchased domains that contained adult content with her name in those domains. Taylor Swift knows what she represents: a sweet girl with whom many young people can identify. It is her duty to preserve this image. As a result, she needs to prevent any possible scandals.
If Taylor Swift can think ahead regarding potential reputation nightmares, then you can do it as well. As a blogger, an entrepreneur, it is very important that you know that reputation management is part of your online marketing strategy.
8 Never leave a void in social media
If social media users have decided to follow your blog or business page, they did it because they like the content you are writing. Therefore, you must make efforts to stay active on all the different platforms. To keep your audience engaged, you need to post on social media channels at least five times a week.
How does Taylor use social media? With the release of her album Reputation, Taylor Swift has retracted from publishing personal photos and tweets. Instead, she shared promotional messages and snapshots and videos of her performances. Now, fans knew that they can expect new content every day. On several occasions when the singer missed these posts, many of her fans turned to social media to express their dissatisfaction. This is a perfect example of how important it is to stick to a consistent schedule for social media posts.
9 Create evergreen content that never goes out of style
Taylor Swift’s first big song, “Tim McGraw,” may have been released in 2006 but it’s still on the radio. The song is evergreen, which allows it to be popular for more than a decade after its release.
The term “evergreen” refers to content that is always relevant to the interests of the readers and therefore less likely to become obsolete. The point is to write interesting content that search engines can easily find in the years to come. Search engines crawl millions of websites to find the best answer to a user’s query. If the engine determines that your content is valuable and optimized for certain search terms, it will rank higher in the search results.
While creating time-sensitive content can attract readers’ attention in the short term, evergreen content can improve your business’s visibility in the long term, both on social media and search engines. Try to create both evergreen and time-sensitive content on your site. A fine content balance ensures that your blog or website never goes out of style.
10 Don’t be afraid to make any changes
Making changes to your brand is not an easy task. If you consistently post on the social media channels, everything is scheduled, and you have a well-defined portfolio of content, you might be tempted to get stuck in a secure routine. However, if you refuse to innovate your content, the audience will simply get bored. Keeping social media followers’ attention requires a constantly evolving online marketing strategy.
When Taylor Swift decided to introduce changes, she always made radical transformations. For example, she deleted all social media platforms and began scattering mysterious tips about the upcoming release of her album. The internet went completely crazy and has begun to produce a lot of theories about what this sudden break with social media could mean. When she finally announced her upcoming album, the audience and followers were already very hungry for the information crumbs about it and were eager to receive the news.
Of course, the changes do not need to be as dramatic since very few brands and businesses could really profit from such a stunt. It really requires tens of millions of followers. But Taylor Swift’s successful transformation from country music to pop songs shows that upgrading our own brand from time to time can bring tremendous results. With a few small changes, you can do great things. Challenge yourself and sometimes create content that is outside of your comfort zone – it may be a pleasant surprise for readers and visitors, and for you of course.
Final Thoughts
Taylor Swift has become a very polarizing figure, you either like her or hate her. However, we cannot deny the fact that she is a highly knowledgeable businesswoman who knows how to attract the audience by listening to her fans’ needs and minimizing damage through a thought out and well designed online marketing strategy.
The above examples may be worth considering when developing your online marketing / social media marketing strategy.
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Sources:
https://www.business2community.com/marketing/5-marketing-tips-we-can-learn-from-taylor-swift-02094035
https://medium.com/@chrisming/lessons-from-the-taylor-swift-marketing-machine-9c7808c487ba