How To Social Media Piggy Ride: Leverage Existing Social Media Conversations

Gone Viral.

It is no secret that social media is now an inescapably important aspect of online marketing. Businesses all of over the world are constantly thinking of ways to interact with customers, and utilize content marketing as a way to nurture leads into sales. However, as marketers we are often ridden with the challenge of having to create compelling, interesting content that reach the right target audience at the right time. Without thousands or even millions of social media marketing dollars, leveraging other social media trends is a smart and cost effective way to reach more of your target audience. Finding ways to benefit from existing social media conversations is what I refer to as “Social Media Piggy Riding”.

What is Social Media Piggy Riding?

Social media piggy riding is the act of using existing social media trends either advertised or unadvertised to your advantage provided it’s in context with your brand, product or service. Social Media piggy riding is achieved through social listening and monitoring.

What are The Advantages of Social Media Piggy Riding?

The main advantage of social piggy riding just like a real piggy ride is to give you a boost up. With social media piggy riding you don’t have to spend a lot to get a piece of the action. You can craft campaign ideas based on existing trends instead of trying to build one yourself. Trust me, the creative in me keeps screaming; “No! Let’s think of something new.” If you have that creative drive you can come at this from the angle of creating an innovative spin to an existing idea. For instance, a very popular trend on Twitter is the #FollowFriday trend often shortened to #FF, instead of just tweeting the name of your valued followers to help them gain more followers you could come with a campaign that let’s them win a prize. So you as an example,  you could use the existing #FollowFriday trend to create a social piggy ride campaign called #FollowFriday #RetweetGiveaway. With this campaign your followers mentioned in your post could retweet and if they add another person in the tweet, your follower and their added follower could win a price. The giveaway could be a random drawing choosing just one person or could be won by a number of people. So instead of just helping your followers gain more exposure using the #FollowFriday trend, you could increase your own followers and brand awareness while adding a fun twist.

How Do You Get Started With Social Media Piggy Riding?

Getting started with social media piggy riding is easy; you firstly have to select the social outlets you want to use. Determine the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you will use to measure your performance and then start your research.  When researching here are few tips to remember:

  1. Keep it broad: We all love to talk about our product or service but chances are that your brand name or message may not be trending organically. Unless of course, you are a celebrity and you just released a secret album like Beyoncé did. When searching for trends that are frequently used or advertised, think of terms that pertain to your industry, your customer interests, and the problems your business solves.  For example, a sporting goods shop may search for trends related to active lifestyles and create a campaign centered around that. The campaign may or may not need to mention a specific product or service to be effective. Remember it’s more about joining an existing conversation and to do so effectively you have to pay attention to the topic at hand. Stay relevant! Interject yourself in a way that continues the conversation.
  2. Have an End Goal In Mind: With social media piggy riding because you are leveraging existing trends, it is important to know what you are trying to achieve at the end of the day. Is it to get more brand exposure, get more followers or likes? Or both? Whatever your goals are your strategy should reflect those goals. 
  3. Have a Conversion Strategy In Place:  After determining what your goals are, you should have a campaign conversion strategy. With social media piggy riding keep your conversation relevant to what your target audience is already saying, you don’t want your message to sound like a sales pitch. With that said, it is still important to continue the conversation in a way that funnels sales conversions or lead generation. Potential customers who may have followed/liked your company due to your take on a conversation on a problem that your business solves for instance, can be sent to a blog posts on your website that have more information. Closing the deal is an important aspect of executing a successful social media campaign.

According to Time Tech Magazine, the price for promoting a Twitter trend is around a whopping $120,000. But all methods and strategies that tell you how to get more retweets on twitter don’t necessarily cost a lot. While we will all like to be able to spend that amount of money just to get noticed, it is not a realistic or feasible expectation for many businesses. With social media piggy riding you have a few tricks up your sleeve to help you play with the “big dogs” and remain competitive. How are you leveraging existing social media trends/campaigns/conversations? Share in the comments below.

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Written by Hellen Oti

Hey there, I'm Hellen Oti, a Human Brand Strategist and the Founder of Brisque. I enjoy helping businesses stand out by showcasing their unfair advantage with relatable marketing strategies. At Brisque, we are on a mission to make every company human regardless of how 'boring' or technical your industry or product might be. We help you increase growth with relatable, easy-to-understand marketing strategies that help you connect better and transform your company into a brand that humans love. When I’m not at work, I enjoy hiking, reading, traveling, fictional and non-fictional writing. I am also an experimental chef whose experiments sometimes go terribly wrong. My motto for these experiments: “eat if you dare!”

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