How Taco Bell Won Social Media

With the advent of social media as a marketing tool, there have been a lot of wins and losses from various companies. Never has a gaffe been able to become so public so quickly. Never before have companies been able to develop such clear personalities. Among those companies who are doing it right, a few stand out above the rest. One of those companies is Taco Bell. That’s right, Taco Bell!

Taco Bell’s Social Media Approach

Nick Tran, the head of social media, claims that they use a three-pronged approach.

“You can break down the type of content we share into three categories: The first is anything Taco Bell creates internally. The other type of content we share is whatever we co-create. This is when we collaborate with influencers and give them the tools to create their own content. The last is content curation, which is basically us amplifying interesting content from our social community,” Tran said.

Essentially, Taco Bell is behaving like a person and creating a personality. One of the most popular tweets of all time was a response that they sent to Old Spice via Twitter. Old spice accused them of not using fire in their fire sauce. They accused Old Spice of not using old spices in their deodorant.

Not only that, but they frequently engage their users and provide them with opportunities to promote their brand in a fun way. Their “breakfast phone” promotion had Taco Bell calling and interacting with customers and having them perform special tasks.

Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously

Even for more traditional companies, social media needs to be a fun endeavor. Using humor, even more elegant humor, is one of the best ways to grab interest and get people engaged. Humanizing your brand is the number one best way that you can improve your social media presence, no matter who you are.

Challenge yourself this week to try a new approach. Engage your user in conversation, make some jokes, and use your business page in a more personal way. You might be surprised at the results.

photo credit: Joe Shlabotnik via photopin cc

Consistent Content Always Wins The Day

Content is king, blah blah blah. In the marketing world, pithy concepts and trite phrases can make their way around like wild-fire. Sure, content marketing is what everyone is doing. But what can you do to make your efforts stand out from “everyone”? As it turns out, that answer is pretty simple. Pick a niche, write some interesting, and do it again. And again. And again. Frequent, consistent content is one of the top indicators of good search rankings. 

One Case Study On Consistency

Search Engine Journal recently published a case study in which the author set out to prove that you could build a site from scratch, and get at least 100 unique views a day within just a few months. He signed up to teach a university class, and then asked the students to start a new domain and write quality, frequent, consistent content. They set up Google Analytics, and tracked the results. As you can see, they were pretty impressive. These kids did basic WordPress hosting, no keyword research, no long-form articles, and no social signals. They just picked a topic they were passionate about, and wrote articles that they would want to read. 

Just think what you could accomplish if you combined those efforts with high level web-development, SEO, PPC campaigns, social media, etc. 

Consistency Isn’t Hard To Achieve

As the case study author suggested, consistency isn’t really a lofty goal. As he said, “Go back to that website you want to beat and look back over a few months in their archives. Add up the number of posts and calculate how often their site is updated. Once a day? Twice a week? More? Less? Doesn’t matter. Once you determine how often your competitor updates his/her site, update yours more often.” And then stick with it over the long term. There are no quick fixes. Your competitor isn’t likely to let up, so neither can you. 

A little work and a little commitment can have you outpacing your competition in short order. Have you been putting consistent content to work for your brand? 

photo credit: Sean MacEntee via photopin cc