CREATING EARNED SOCIAL MEDIA IN MYANMAR

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Of the many ways in which a company can get their message across, creating earned social media holds quite a few advantages. While there is a bit of strategy involved, the payoff can be exponential. Earned Social Media is also organic, which makes it easier to gain the audience’s trust. That’s why it’s important to take a look at what earned social media is and how it can be applied to a marketing campaign in Myanmar.

What is Earned Social Media?

For those unfamiliar, think of earned social media as word of mouth marketing. Content is created that, for its usefulness or entertainment value, gets shared without paid support from the company that created it. It could be a video that goes viral on Facebook. Or a product everyone shares photos of on Instagram. Unlike paid social media, earned social media pulls off the unthinkable: it gets consumers to market the product for them.

Of course, Earned Social Media is more than a lucky break for a company. Like any marketing campaign, it takes a solid strategy to accomplish its goal. You can never be sure what will and won’t lead to virility without adequate research and insight into what kind of content will generate a buzz on social media.

Earned Social Media in Myanmar

With the rise of internet penetration into the country, Myanmar is creating more user generated content than ever before. As of June 2017, Facebook still dominates the online landscape of Myanmar, making up 97% of the social media pool. Twitter and Pinterest lag far behind at a mere 1% of the pool each. According to one website, Instagram users in Myanmar were only estimated to be around 350k.

For a company looking to break into the Myanmar market, this is great news for an ESM campaign. To reach the most people online, companies can sharpen their focus on a single social media platform. In order to do this, however, we need to look at what Earned Social Media is and how it can be generated.

Creating Earned Social Media

Earned social media can be generated in several ways. One method is to reach a popular influencer. Influencers can include local artists, athletes, entertainers, and anyone with a wide influence on social media. Influencers can also be institutions such as online publications like Myanmore and travel blogs. If your product wins an award or is featured in a glowing review or year end list, it has also gained Earned Social Media.

Another method that’s proven effective is user generated content. In working with Heineken, we created a Facebook contest in which we asked users what they would do if they had the UEFA trophy in Yangon. The contest was a success and led to a barrage of comments and shares.

Some campaigns don’t even need a prize incentive. Coca Cola strategically launched their Share a Coke campaign with various names printed on their bottles. It led to a lot of people sharing pictures of themselves with Coca Cola bottles with their names on it. Or tagging friends whose names appeared on the bottles they had purchased. It was a hit.

While social media is still relatively young in Myanmar, its users are just as savvy as anyone else online. Paid social media may not leave the kind of impact that will push your brand above the competition. An Earned Social Media Campaign in Myanmar could potentially gain a lot of traction in a country so eager to share their experiences with one another.