In today’s digital landscape, engaging a target audience through social media content has become increasingly challenging for brands. After all, social content is more than just likes and views – if it doesn’t forge a genuine connection, it brings nothing to a brand’s name. Plus, about one in three consumers turn to social media first when learning about a brand, so your content strategy has to be eye-catching and compelling enough to get them to stay.
To approach this matter, brands can apply design thinking – a user-centred approach to research and problem-solving – to their social content creation. I believe that by understanding the target audience, brands can create effective social content that resonates, engages, and compels action – bridging the gap between your audience’s desires and needs and how you can fulfil them.
User-Centred Research and Insights
Design thinking emphasises understanding the needs and preferences of the target audience. To gain deeper knowledge of an audience, brands can conduct research, surveys, and interviews that shed light on their audience’s interests, pain points, fears, and aspirations. Armed with this knowledge, you can tailor your social media content creation to meet their specific needs and desires.
A great example of this is Airbnb’s “Live Anywhere on Airbnb” campaign, which offered twelve participants the opportunity to experience the digital nomad lifestyle for one year and received over 314,000 applicants. To get the campaign right, Airbnb conducted extensive research to identify the challenges faced by this audience and created content that showcased unique listings suited for long-term stays.
By adopting a user-centred approach, the Airbnb team successfully customised their social content to speak to a specific audience segment. Additionally, the team put the insights to further use by making changes to their app that helped to improve the customer experience of remote workers and people looking for long-term stays. This demonstrates the power of design thinking in creating not just engaging content but also a holistic brand experience that caters to its users beyond that initial glimpse on social media.
Iterative Content Development and Testing
Design thinking encourages an iterative approach to problem-solving by building, refining, and improving a project until the end result is satisfactory. Brands can apply this concept to social content creation by continuously testing and refining their content ideas and even experimenting with new content formats. By releasing smaller pieces of content, analysing performance, and gathering feedback, brands can make data-driven improvements to optimise their social media content strategy over time.
For instance, Coca-Cola’s iconic “Share a Coke” campaign began in Australia in 2011. Using iterative content development, the brand initially created personalised bottles that featured the most popular Australian names. The bottles appeared in fridges across the country, allowing consumers to discover this themselves.
Then, Coca-Cola encouraged people to meet and share photos and stories on social media using the hashtag #ShareACoke.
After seeing success, they extended this initiative by allowing consumers to participate in selecting the upcoming set of names to be launched. The brand also established kiosks to enable people to instantly print their names on a Coca-Cola bottle and launched a website where customers could enter their names and have them included in forthcoming local orders.
This resulted in invaluable insights that enabled them to successfully extend this initiative to multiple countries while building up organic buzz on social media. By the time the initial campaign gained traction on media platforms worldwide, consumers were wondering when they would get a chance to see their name on a Coca-Cola bottle.
More importantly, this campaign encouraged existing audiences to consume the drink by inviting them to “Share a Coke” with someone they know, thus boosting sales and improving brand presence. I believe part of the reason that this was a huge success is because of the simple mechanics, which made it easy for a broad range of people to participate. Everyone loves a little personalisation when it comes to brand experience!
This iterative approach transformed a simple idea into a global phenomenon. The “Share a Coke” campaign not only boosted Coca-Cola’s sales but also deepened brand engagement by encouraging social sharing and fostering a sense of community.
Collaborative Content Creation
Lastly, design thinking promotes collaboration and diverse perspectives. Brands can involve various stakeholders – marketing, sales, customer service, and even the audience – in the content creation process. By leveraging different skill sets and perspectives, brands can generate innovative and inclusive content ideas that truly resonate with consumers.
One excellent example of collaborative content creation is LEGO’s “Rebuild the World” campaign, which engaged both children and adults in the content creation process to show that play is essential for the happiness of the family. The brand invited fans to submit their creative LEGO builds, and the selected creations were showcased in LEGO’s social media content and advertisements. This empowered their audience to become co-creators of the brand narrative, organically amplifying the campaign’s reach and impact as builders strove to showcase their best work.
This collaborative approach not only generated engaging content, but strengthened the bond between LEGO and its community, extending the core brand message across different platforms. It’s a testament to how brands can tap into the collective creativity of their audience to build a more authentic and relatable brand narrative.
Remember, the key to success in social media lies in understanding your audience and delivering value at every touchpoint. By applying design thinking principles to social content creation, brands can create content that is more user-centric, iterative, and collaborative, leading to higher engagement and a stronger connection with their audience.
Need help with social content creation? Reach out to [email protected] and find out how our creative social media content services in Singapore can help elevate your brand narrative.