By Victoria Stoklasa, CEO

Value...it's the key element that people are looking for from companies they follow. Social media allows companies to provide value to their clients and customers in ways that they might not have expected. One of our favorite ways is to create a tutorial on a topic your company has mastered.

What is something your customers need to know how to do in order to make life easier? Providing a tutorial on that topic can establish that your company is an expert in the field and create a level of trust. Fitness professional can create a tutorial on certain exercises; business solutions companies can explain how to navigate outsourcing.

How do you want to present this tutorial? There are multiple approaches, depending on what is appropriate for what your company does:

• Blog post
• Video
• Infographic
• Image macro
• Webinar

You can even spread the information across multiple formats. (See our previous blog post "How to Use Blog Posts Again and Again" to learn more.)

Tap into your experts to create the tutorial...not just experts in the topic, but experts in how to create content, such as your best writers or videographers. Once the tutorial has been created, share it across all your social media platforms. In fact, share it multiple times in the week or month to give plenty of opportunities for folks to view it. (Just don't let it be the only post you make for several days at a time...it becomes spammy.)

​Has your company created a tutorial? What was your experience? Leave a comment and let us know!

By Hilary Montgomery, Research Associate

National Coffee day! National Bike to Work Day! National First Love Day!

What do these holidays have in common? They are part of the new age of celebrating everything. Oh, and that you probably didn’t use them to connect with your customers in September using them.

It seems these days that nearly every day there is a new holiday on social media. But have you considered how to use that to build your brand? Your customers are already interacting with the holidays. The sillier the holiday the better.

National Coffee day was about coffee (obviously) but was used to market everything from Disney to Star Trek.  You could have reminded you customers about how much they love coffee AND you.

National Bike to Work Day was used to encourage people to bike to work but marketing used it for everything from biking to wine and suits. You could have used it too.

National First Love Day was used to remember first loves or in some cases first famous crushes. (My favorite was Phil from the Future.) This was just a fun holiday that you could have used to remind your customers about your business.

When using these holidays to target your customers be sure to tailor it to them and to post early in the day. Think outside of the box to get your customers interested. Don’t worry if tying the holiday into your product seems difficult at first. Practice a few and it’ll get easier.

Don’t make the same mistake this week...

• Use October 4 to celebrate National Taco Day and remind your customers that you love tacos as much as they do.
• October 11 to celebrate National Sausage Pizza Day as an excuse to order pizza and show your customers that pizza is for everyone.
• October 13 is The Navy’s Birthday, use it to remind your customers that you love the navy.

To get a full list of holidays go to http://nationaldaycalendar.com