Have you ever tried to shine a light on your CEO in your digital content and been underwhelmed by the response? You're far from alone. Unless you have an outsized visionary like Elon Musk or Bill Gates heading your organization, you'll be a bit hard-pressed to make people pay attention. There's a disconnect there: As an employee of an organization, you're used to thinking of your chief executive as the star of the show, but that doesn't mean they have the kind of star quality that makes for engaging content.
Let's face it, people have more in common with your average employee or average customer. So why not make them the stars of your digital content? Brooks Thomas, social business advisor at Southwest Airlines, is an expert at this. He shared his content strategy, driven by the Southwest philosophy that "every seat has a story," with PR News' Digital PR & Marketing Conference in Miami on June 6.
Brooks shared the following cases:
- Reecie, a veteran of the Marine Corps, is a customer service agent at Reagan National Airport. When she learned that a customer lost her bag containing her shoes that she needed for a race, Reecie drove several hours in the rain on her day off to make sure the shoes arrived in time. Southwest reunited this pair in a touching video that struck a chord with the audience.
- Marty, a flight attendant, has a comedic twist on the safety guidelines spiel that is a hit with passengers. The video of it went viral and (by popular demand) culminated in Marty meeting Ellen. Southwest later made her the star of a commercial.
- Hudson, a 5-year-old, was watching planes at Albuquerque Sunport with his grandfather. He waved wildly at one particular Boeing 737, and Southwest Captain Michael Hickey took the time to throw on the brakes, open the window and wave back. This small gesture made Hudson's day, and based on the Facebook post Hudson's mother made, the Southwest team was able to identify the pilot and have him meet his young fan.
In each case, Southwest found an organic, real, unplanned story that they knew people would care about and helped amplify it so it could be seen and appreciated. The takeaways here:
- Utilize employee strengths. Don't try to make somebody something they aren't; find out what people are doing right and celebrate it.
- Empower people to do the right thing. If it were forbidden for Captain Hickey to deviate at all from procedure to wave to a child, his story never would have happened.
- Train everyone on your PR team for a digital world. Making sure you have a robust training curriculum helps people produce the types of content you want (and your customers want).
- Convert social sensations into marketing campaigns. Why would you want to hire an actor if you could tap someone like Marty, whom customers are proven to like? Look beyond social to newsletters, retail storefront, all of it. Take your best real estate and figure out where you can use some of your digital content.
- Brand journalism: turn your work force into a functioning newsroom. It's up to you to dig into the details, contact the people behind the stories you hear and make it into a real story that people care about.
Follow Brooks: @brooksethomas
Follow Ian: @ianwright0101