In my previous blog series on building connections on social media, I shared the importance of having a brand voice on social media and how your brand can find its own authentic one. Today let’s talk about how to consistently create original content on social media that connects well with the audience. This is the part IV and final post of the blog series.

Brands are often clueless on how to consistently create original content on social media. Most of the time they only talk about themselves, which gets really boring. Recently I have been constantly keeping a lookout on Oreo’s Facebook and Twitter posts. I’m amazed by how Oreo can consistently come up with original, creative, and emotional contents that connect well with the audience. While it may take a professional social media team to consistently produce such contents, there are several lessons we can learn from Oreo on how to create original content to engage with the audience.

Post contents that are relevant

Oreo often generates content based on things that are current and relevant. In journalist term, it’s called news values or newsworthiness. Basically it means how much attention a news story is given by the media based on the perceived attention given by the audience. So if a news story is presumed to receive a lot of attention and interest from the audience, it would tend to appear more frequently in that period of time. For example, the recent birth of Prince William and Duchess Kate’s son was a huge event that attracted the world’s attention because this child might one day be the future king of England. This was a very significant event and thus had a very high news values.

Creating content with news values

Understanding news values is important when generating content because one of the ways brands can engage with their followers is by creating content that would be relevant and of interest to them. The higher news value the content has, the more likely will it be of interest to them. Whenever high profile events or conversations that have gathered a lot of attention occur, Oreo would join in and participate as well by sharing relevant contents that reinforce the brand. For example, when the news of the royal baby’s gender broke, Oreo immediately posted an image of a milk bottle with an Oreo cookie featuring the tagline “Long Live the Creme”.

What determine newsworthiness?

There are 8 factors that determine the newsworthiness:

1. Timeliness - The more recent the event, the higher news value it has
2. Prominence - Events or occurrences that feature well-known or high profile personnel.
3. Proximity - Closeness of the occurrence geographically to the audience or in terms of the assumed values, interest and expectations of the news audience.
4. Impact/Significance - The significance, important, or  consequence of an event or trend. Any situation or event that can affect a substantial number of people is significant, and thus the greater the newsworthiness.
5. Unusualness - Anything out of the ordinary attracts press interest and public attention.
6. Human Interest - People like to read about other people.
7. Conflict - Controversy, public outrage, bitter disagreement, and open clashes over fundamental issues are usually newsworthy.
8. Currency - More value is attributed to stories about issues or topics that are of public concern than issues or topics that people care less about.

 

Making use of your brand voice

Another thing Oreo has been doing very well is that it successfully uses its brand voice when it creates content on social media. While it still takes a lot of creativity and imagination to come up with contents that is relevant to your brand and of interest to your audience like what Oreo has done, you may start by making use of your brand voice. Below are some examples of how Oreo comes up with contents of high news value to its audience using its brand voice:

During the Super Bowl in February, the power outage left half the stadium blacked out and delayed the game for about half an hour. Oreo tweeted a “blackout” ad that correspond with the current situation and got almost 16,000 retweets.

NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover landing grabbed headlines on 5 August 2012, when more than 3 million people tuned into a livestream and watched the machine’s final approach and touchdown on the red planet. Oreo joined in the hype with a creative image of its cookie.

Since the release of the American science fiction disaster film movie 2012, there had been a widespread and unnecessary fear of doomsday on December 21, 2012. Some people worries about a Maya prophesy of the end of the world, others fear a variety of astronomical threats such as collision with a rogue planet. Oreo took this opportunity to come up with a humorous and cheeky post.

One great social media marketing strategy of Oreo is the way they connect with their audience using emotions. In the above example you can see how they are connecting themselves to their fan Lisa T. born in the same year Oreo was introduced.

Shortly after the news came out that the International Olympic Committee voted to bring the 2020 Summer Games to Tokyo, Oreo came up with a witty tweet of its own while remaining true to its brand voice.

What should you do next?

1. Make a calendar of all the upcoming events that has news values (to your audience) and plan posts around it in your editorial calendar.
2. Make use of your brand voice to create original and creative content. If you still don’t have a brand voice, learn how to find your authentic brand voice.
3. Track the outcome and review to see which types of contents are more appealing to your audience.

How do you usually generate content? Do you have a better method of doing it? Let us know if you need more help creating original content on social media in the comments below.