The Marie Kondo Effect on Your Brand’s Social Media Presence

Posted on Mar 28, 2019 by Imaginal Marketing  | Categories: Social Media, brand, Imaginal marketing group

“Does this spark joy?” is probably a question you’ve heard lately, because it’s 2019 and the current cultural trend of the moment is Marie Kondo-ing your life. This means assessing your closet, kitchen, cabinets, drawers, cars, etc., and throwing out (or donating) the items that don’t spark joy. The end goal? Transform your life by tidying your spaces. And if you’ve ever cleaned out your closet, you know that this is actually pretty life changing.

And since social media imitates life, we’ve started to notice that the trend of tidying your space has extended to people’s online spaces, too. Simply put, people are cleaning up their social media, which looks like deleting content and unfollowing accounts and brands that no longer spark joy for them for various reasons. This might sound like bad news for brands, but we think it is ultimately a good thing. Yes, you read that right.

 

 

 

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A post shared by Marie Kondo (@mariekondo) on Jan 1, 2019 at 6:30am PST

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOUR BRAND?

So, the real question is: How does people cleaning up their social media impact your brand’s presence on the platforms? There’s good news and there’s bad news here.

The bad news: You might notice that you are losing followers. We know (trust us—we really, really know) that this can be very frustrating. After all, you’re doing everything right, following all the tips and putting a lot of resources into your branding, so how could you possibly be losing followers?

Source: Pexels

There’s no way to tell exactly why people might be unfollowing your brand, but the good news is that losing followers doesn’t necessarily mean that your social media presence is losing impact.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

The ultimate goal of your social media presence is to get people interested and buying from your business, so we have always advocated for quality over quantity when it comes to followers. This means we would rather have 200 quality followers who live in your area, are active on social media and are likely to come into your business than 12,000 followers who live thousands of miles away and are never going to be your guest. So kissing some followers who moved across the country three years ago goodbye could actually be a good thing.

KEEP DOING WHAT WORKS

Instead of worrying about losing followers, we recommend focusing your energy on attracting the type of followers you do want—ones that are engaged, local and interested in your offerings. Your content will spark joy for them on social media if it inspires and helps them. Inspirational quotes, how-to videos and new must-have products that solve problems your guests have are all great places to start, and from there the sky is the limit—have fun, be authentic, and come from a place of joy and you will attract the followers you want.

 

 

 

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A post shared by KonMari (@konmari.co) on Aug 6, 2018 at 8:01am PDT

And ultimately, even if people who are in your area and target demographic unfollow your brand after binging some Marie Kondo on Netflix, there’s still no reason to panic, because there are ways your brand can get its message out to people who don’t follow you:

• Boosting posts and advertising—With strategic boosting of posts, people on social media who live in your area and are potential guests can still see your content, even if they don’t follow your page.
• Smart hashtag strategy—Someone who decides not to follow any brands might still go looking for colorists or balayage specialists in their city or neighborhood. This is why we advocate strategic hashtag use that will make your content visible to them, like #DenverBalayage or #DenverColorist. This makes your photos and page discoverable to anyone who is searching these hashtags.
• Geotagging on Instagram photos and Stories—Another way to make your content discoverable to non-followers is to add location tags to everything you post on Instagram. This way, anyone checking out what’s going on in your city or neighborhood will see your content.

KEEP CALM AND FOLLOW THE DATA

As always, we recommend following the data. Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest all have analytics available to business pages that give you insight into what type of content is working best, so paying attention to that will help you decide whether you should change it up or keep steady.

Editor's note:

As always, if you have questions, we’re here to help—drop us a line at (985) 792-0991 and let’s talk about how social media can spark joy for your brand.