Reactive content on social media has become common practice for many social media and community managers, but there are still some organizations who shy away from it. But why? Reactive content has several benefits to any organization, B2B or B2C.
When discussing reactive content with clients, the top three reasons I give for the practice are:
Helps brands stay relevant
If a brands’ social channels are only posting about the brand and what’s going on within the brand, their outlook will be narrow. It’ll also be extremely boring for their followers and for a platform like Twitter, the brand won’t have enough content to keep up.
Reactive content helps a brand stay relevant by showing awareness of the wider industry. For us, at Ledger Bennett, that awareness must be all levels of the marketing industry as well as being aware of what’s happening in the industries our clients operate in.
Connect with new customers
Being reactive to trending topics, conversations, news stories or national events can get new people engaging and following your brands social media. Using the trending topics function on Twitter, an RSS Feed like Feedly or even social listening can help you understand what your wider audience is talking about. You can then join in the conversations by posting relevant content or by joining in with conversations individuals and brands are already having by commenting on their posts, sharing or retweeting them.
Showcase creativity/agility
Reactive content can give your brand the opportunity to show just how creative it is and how quickly it can get to work. As an industry, many of our activities are planned and always have been. When something crops up, conversation or event, you have to act there and then to create social posts, a blog, and imagery.
“With great power comes great responsibility”, the words Uncle Ben gave Peter Parker and the words I’m giving you. Be careful when joining conversations or piggybacking off of trends. If you don’t fully understand a conversation or even a hashtag being used, it could go horribly wrong. Just ask the guys at DiGiorno Pizza who jumped on to #WhyIStayed without looking into the hashtag or the celebrities that posted about a bomb attack.