Social media is a competitive landscape that requires levels of nuance and creativity to succeed. This is especially true for the brands in the hemp industry. Even though Canada and a growing number of U.S. states have embraced hemp, brands still face tight restrictions when marketing on social media platforms. Facebook and Google have flat out banned paid advertising for any hemp or cannabis products.
How to Make Your Hemp Brand Stand Out on Social Media
However, hemp brands can still promote their product within social media platforms by gaining media via their own channels. Your hemp brand can still build a presence on social media – you just have to focus on an earned approach rather than paid. Let’s walk through ways to accomplish this.
Identify and Connect with Your Audience
Identifying the needs of your target audience is a crucial component of succeeding in business. But before you can take that step, you need to first find your audience. Who are they? Is your brand keying on millennials, middle-aged, or older? Is your brand specifically looking at men or women or both? Are you selling to consumers or businesses? You need to determine who your customers are so you can find out how to market your products to them in a way that is engaging and relevant. Then you can develop your strategy for connecting with them and finding the most effective ways of reaching your audience.
When you’re thinking through your strategy for forming a connection with your audience, ask yourself questions, like what does your brand do well? What forms does your product take? What are you emphasizing to buyers that will make them want to choose you over competitors? Answering these questions will help you better understand how to not only gain your audience’s attention, but it will also help you form lasting relationships with them.
Grow Your Style and Establish Your Uniqueness
Your brand is unique. You know this; you just need to make sure your audience does, too. Build content that embodies the spirit of your brand and contains the qualities that make it special. Think about the benefits your product provides to your audience, understand your niche, and design your content to match your brand. This will give audiences a better understanding of who you are, what you stand for, and what you can offer to them.
Create Compelling Copy
You know the game, “good cop, bad cop?” Well, there is no game called, “good copy, bad copy” because bad copy has no place in the social media writing game. Bad copy will compromise your brand image and even confuse and turn away followers. To have any chance of succeeding in social media marketing, you absolutely must create copy that entertains, informs, and stays true to your brand.
Writing good copy requires stellar writing skills – that’s obvious. But it also requires extensive research to build a knowledge base, passion, dedication, and empathy. Fortunately, these skills can all be attained if you are willing to work for them. Creating compelling copy to accompany images or videos on social media to attract followers and grows your audience is entirely possible. But you shouldn’t do it because you can, you should do it because you MUST.
Choose Imagery that Wows
Humans are visual creatures. The phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is about as cliché as it gets, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Given that, it should come as no surprise that people want to interact with imagery online just as much as they do in their offline world (yes, there’s still an offline world, for now).
To give your audience what they want, you must produce consistently eye-catching imagery that showcases your product and differentiates you from competitors. This will ensure that your audience is actively absorbing the content and engaging with your brand rather than merely catching a glimpse of it as they scroll through their feeds. Social media posts that include images produce 650% higher engagement than text-only posts. As essential as stellar copy is, it needs to be accompanied by images. Our graphic design team is always ready to help with this.
70-20-10 Rule
Not to be confused with the 70-20-10 rule of leadership, or the one on learning, the 70-20-10 rule of social media serves as a valuable guide to content posters, especially those who are unsure or short on time. The gist of the rule is:
– 70% of your social media activity should add value to your company and build brand recognition. The most successful of these posts are fun. Content can range from industry information to local news to amusing displays of your brand personality to asking your followers for feedback via polls and surveys.
– 20% of your content should be sharing other posts that you think will interest your audience.
– 10% of your posts should be promotional, such as endorsements of your latest products, events, and discount offers.
Again, this rule is meant to merely provide a guide, so don’t fixate on exact percentages. This is just a helpful way to inform your content strategy.
Utilize Influencers
Influencers on social media can be a great resource for brands in the hemp industry because you have an organic way to get your products out in the social media world without having to use Facebook or Instagram Advertising (which is currently unavailable for hemp products).
Find influencers (individuals with a large number of followers on social media) who would be willing to support your brand. This may involve paying them or sending them free products to try and getting publicity from the influencer in return.
Whether they post a series of photos with your products or mention it on their Stories, this is a beneficial way for thousands of people to see your products and brand who wouldn’t have seen them before!
*Remember, not all influencers will want to promote your product or may want WAY too much money and that’s okay! Focus on finding an influencer who is genuinely interested in what your brand has to offer and it should work out from there.
Advertising
As we mentioned, Facebook and Google do not allow any hemp brands to advertise on social media. The good news is that your brand can still thrive on social media without paying for ads. By following all the above information, you can organically grow your marketing power and earn a large following for each piece of content you produce.
Standing out on social media is a tall order for brands in the hemp industry. Luckily, you can always ask for help. Bonnegran will work with you on developing a social media strategy and can even manage your accounts for you, so you can relax. Reach out to us today.
