Lego is a storied brand.
You probably played with Legos as a child, and now, your children probably play with them. If not, you at least knew people who did and know people who have them now.
Over the years, Lego has grown from offering much more than simple building blocks. It has created video games and even a popular feature movie. And numerous, high-profile competitions have taken place to show the amazing things that people can build with Legos.
Besides having a great product, part of Lego’s success is that it has employed smart marketingcampaigns over the years. In recent years, that has also meant creating very successful social marketing campaigns.
Here are a few things you can learn about how to build your social brand from a company that has done it so well:
Get More from Video
Lego does more than create funny little videos on YouTube.
You won’t see what looks like short commercials or amateur video shot by fans on the Lego YouTube channel. Instead, you’ll find professionally produced videos that look more like mini music videos or movies.
Even if you don’t have the budget to create what looks like a Hollywood-produced video, you need to put as many resources as you can into creating your videos. The better the quality, the better your videos will perform.
But that’s not all the toy maker does.
It also creates a wide variety of videos, including different series. It produces videos in dozens of languages so that it can reach more customers.
Of course, its videos are also smart and funny, which contributes to their ability to go viral.
Finally, it produces a wildly popular series of videos with its Lego designers show off their unique creations. For example, you can find videos of people creating Big Ben or even the Eiffel Tower. The videos are not only interesting to watch, but they show you what’s possible with the products.
Lego’s video marketing strategy is worth an entire e-book on its own, but these are some important points to start looking at.
If you can do even a fraction of what Lego is doing with their videos, you will build your authority, create user engagement, and build a strong online brand.
Be a Twitter Pro
When you get millions of followers like Lego has, you can’t create a Twitter strategy that appeals to them all. So you do what Lego does: Create segmented lists to target with specific campaigns.
To do this, Lego actually creates different Twitter handles for its users to follow. For example, it has a handle for the Lego movie, one for each of its video games, one for design ideas and so on.
By segmenting your account in the same way, you can be sure that you are providing only the information that your users want. You will keep more of your followers, and those followers will feel more engaged.
Of course, Lego also takes its approach to video to its tweets, producing high-quality images and video and offering timely, funny and interesting content.
For example, Lego creates photos and video to anticipate big events. It had a picture ready to go congratulating Leonardo DiCaprio for his first Oscar win, complete with a little Lego Oscar and a Lego bear in the background. It does the same thing for holidays and annual events, such as marathons and the Olympics.
You can’t anticipate all trends, but you can be on top of these and make sure you have something fun and topical to say to be part of the conversation.
Encourage User-Generated Content
User engagement is key to building your social brand, and one of the best ways to get more engagement is to encourage user-generated content.
Lego does this by encouraging users to share their creations. They can actually share their ideas for new Lego play sets on the Lego website. If they get 10,000 votes, they go into the running to have their set actually produced for sale.
Users conduct all their own promotion, which helps Lego get more exposure without having to do any more work or spend any more money.
Lego also gets the benefit of a new product idea complete with market research and ready demand.
How can you do the same thing for your products or services?
Even if you don’t want to produce a user-generated idea, you can offer other incentives, like free products of services for those who share pictures, videos and other content of themselves with your product.
You can’t think of social media as some fun but frivolous extension of your marketing. It is a serious way to market your products, and if you use it right, you can dramatically increase your brand exposure, build your authority, increase your sales, and create devoted fans.
This article first appeared in www.codefuel.com
