Coming up with a killer campaign name, hashtag or brand name can take take some serious brain churning. It’s often difficult to know where to begin. What will stick in your audience’s mind? What kind of content will appeal to them best? Well, the skills required to make an impression are not necessarily exclusive. All you need do is look at well constructed product launches – which in the tech industry happens all the time!
Apple knows how to do product announcements; when the Cupertino tech giant talks about its products, the world listens. We’ve all seen the keynotes they ooze style and make the geek in each of us giddy. What you probably didn’t realise when watching was that you were actually viewing a masterclass in branding, one that you can easily apply to your own business. So, with the next Apple keynote due in a couple of weeks, let’s take a look at what an Apple keynote can teach us about branding for social media.
Style
If you’re like me, when you think of an Apple keynote you still picture Steve Jobs standing before you. The black turtle neck and blue jean combo were as iconic as the C major chord heard when powering up the machines he designed. It was a major part of Steve’s identity, ensuring you knew who he was before he even said a word.
Lesson:
Make sure your social has a unique identity. Your corporate or personal branding should always feature on your profiles and stay on message at all times.
Words for impact
“One more thing”: three little words that have become synonymous with Apple’s keynotes. Jobs had a way with words – everything he told you was considered and deliberate.
Lesson:
Knowing the right words to engage and excite your community is truly important when defining your brand. It’s not always easy to know what to say immediately, but getting it wrong is worse than holding fire until the right words come to you. Always take a moment to consider what you’re saying.
Build Anticipation
Apple builds a fanfare around its product launches, one that begins months before the event itself. It’s debatable if the leaked pictures, the “misplaced iPhones” and rumoured tech specs come from Apple themselves, but one things the tech giant does well is let enough information come to light to leave fans itching for more.
Lesson:
If you have an event, launch or campaign ahead of you, tease your fans with snippets of content in the run up to the reveal. This could be pictures of the event coming together, preview videos, Q+A’s, anything! Keep your community involved with your projects by providing enough information whilst still leaving an air of anticipation until the full announcement.
The Experience
It’s hard to say that watching an Apple keynote is not an experience. The music at the beginning of the event, the dimming of the lights, the iconic white background ads. Apple do a sublime job of making presentation a complete sensual experience with a barrage of different media.
Lesson:
Your Social should be an experience, and the best experiences engage us in many ways. Mix up your types of post, be it text, video, pictures or audio. People respond differently to different stimuli and tire of experiencing one exclusively. Keep everyone involved by sparking their interest with different types of content.
