Use Agile Marketing to Bring More Visibility to Your Brand

As the latest news, information, and entertainment are constantly being shared in real-time on social media brands may be missing the boat when it comes to being prepared for the latest marketing trends online.
Agile marketing is becoming more important as a way to be ready for that next viral campaign. Social media managers and teams need to be quick to respond, otherwise the timing of community engagement will not line up.
A report by CMG Partners covered on Forbes describes the strategy as driving “long-term marketing strategies with short-term, customer-focused iterative projects that improve responsiveness and relevance. It allows for faster creative, more testing, smarter improvements and better results.” Currently a little over half of all marketers engage themselves in agile marketing according to the report.
Starbucks is one brand that continuously drives engagement by posting around timely events or news like in this example on Instagram from the tragedy in Paris, which brought together a sense of community:

How can your brand or business stay one step ahead of the latest trends and news? Here are several ways you and/or your team can plan your campaigns and increase engagement on social media:

• Be flexible for changes ahead – While it is good to lay out a content marketing strategy ahead of time leave space open for the latest hashtags and viral campaigns. Nothing should be set in stone, and instead view your niche in the big scheme of things according to the conversations that are flowing. Keep this in mind as you schedule your posts and tweets as well, especially when an important event suddenly pops up. An automatic tweet during this time could show that your brand is not relevant online.

• Create a short-term content schedule – As you conduct your target market research and plan ahead consider publishing on a tighter time table in order to include the most popular topics or trends. This will ensure that your are providing the most valuable and relevant information that your community will want to read.

• Take a journalistic approach – Each day use services such as Feedly, Quora, Topsy, and Google News to receive updates in your market. This could be blog posts, the latest tweets on Twitter, questions from your community, a news event, and content ideas from your competitors. Your business can’t predict everything that will become a trend, but using these tools will help you stay informed and able to pinpoint most valuable information.

• Be quick to respond – Creating a successful agile marketing opportunity means being ready for whatever happens next online, and daily attention and activity along with social media monitoring is vital to this process. This can be a delicate strategy, and your business will want to be respectful of how your tweets or posts are being portrayed. If you launch a campaign too soon, this could invoke a negative or slight response. Here’s an example from Louder online from a badly timed response by Urban Outfitters to a natural disaster:

Agile marketing can work well for a brand or business who has the right research and collaboration in place to be ready and flexible for changes ahead online. As you move through the process evaluate which campaigns performed well and why making necessary adjustments for the next event.
The early bird get the worm as the the saying goes, and those who are ready to take advantage of hashtag trends and the latest news events will be able to reach the most fans and followers for greater visibility.