Animals have a proven, positive effect on humans.
Many studies have found that animals can reduce loneliness, increase feelings of social support and boost your mood. So, it’s no wonder why people interact with content that spotlight our four-legged friends. In fact, one study by NewsWhip found that brands saw up to 295% more comments on posts that featured pets (average brand saw an 89% increase in comments).
Build your brand and drive engagement, with pets.
You may be asking yourself, “how can posting pictures of animals help my business?”
We believe pets on social media can directly (and positively) impact your business in two major ways.
- Build your brand affinity
- Drive engagement
Build your brand. Drive engagement.
Social media for business, at its core, is a tool to build and grow your brand. So, what should you post about? Yes, your business, your products, your culture, blah blah blah… but you should also be posting content that the masses WANT to see. Because believe it or not, people don’t get on social media to be sold to, let alone to learn more about your business.
So, how can you leverage this animal content strategy without seeming off-brand? Here’s how we consulted our largest client, US Bank.
Are you paying attention? This is the part where we give away FREE social media strategy insights.
When one of our biggest clients, U.S. Bank, started receiving significant engagement bumps with animal-feature content, we had to dive in.
Using our AI technology, CompetiSmart, we discovered that many companies in the financial & banking industry were getting creative with their social media content. (Which makes total sense. Finance and banking aren’t exactly sexy topics for social.) A trend that our AI tech picked up on was that posting about dogs, cats and kids out-performed the average post… by a lot. So, we looked at a contest U.S. Bank ran where users submit pictures of their dogs.
What happened with “The Dogs of US Bank”?
Well, it kind of broke the engagement bank. The contest drove engagement rates 63.2% higher than the average US Bank post. What’s more, it associated US Bank with something fun and popular—a love for dogs.
Here’s a little bit of free social media consulting: no, you shouldn’t just fill your feed with content that doesn’t relate to your business but think about the things that your audience cares about and how you can leverage that to engage with them.
Pro Tip: To avoid crickets, have your employees kick off the contest by posting first. Not only will you get more engagement, but your employees may feel more connect to your company culture. It also helps if you give an item or gift card away as a prize.
Nichefire can help boost your social media engagement
Our AI technology is the simple, smart, effective way to increase the performance of your social media content. Discover which posts spark the most engagement with customers. Tap into powerful, real-time analytics to see how your content is performing compared to your competitors.
Our expertise goes far beyond building a great tool. We provide monthly consulting reports that break down your social performance across all social platforms and offer suggestions based on data to improve metrics like your engagement rate and follower count. Schedule your free trial and demo today.