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Marketing Your Custom Mascot On Social Media
- February 11, 2016
- By Admin : Hogtown Mascots
- Views : 997 views
A custom mascot serves as a personable and iconic face that brands your company, team, or organization. Successfully running a social media campaign relies on a similar sort of branding, so combining a custom mascot with Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites can produce amazing results if you follow the steps of developing an online persona, connecting with the community, embracing competition, and treating social media as one overarching tool.
Develop a Personality
Throughout the life of your mascot, several different people may don the role of your unique character. This is as true for a mascot in a costume as it is for a mascot’s presence in the online world. Before you set up a social media campaign using your mascot, it is essential that you establish a persona or personality baseline that can be used to govern posts and messages that may be written by dozens of different people throughout the course of a single day.
Once you have the character in place, you need to decide how the mascot would interact with an online community. Let’s use an example mascot named Zippy, the Fitness-Focused Ferret. His personality is bright, energetic, and always ready to push people towards exercise – whether that be on their own or at the gym he represents!
Connect with the Community
The main benefit of social media is the ease with which you can connect to the people in your community. Use tags, links, and other topic indicators that relate to your area to create cross-traffic with your mascot. Fans will have a chance to connect with your custom mascot via your social media posts. Zippy the Ferret might discuss local sporting events, parks and other recreational areas that are the best places to enjoy a sunny day, or nearby restaurants that serve great food to fuel you after a vigorous run.
You can also generate traffic by having the mascot talk with community members who have large social media followings. A reply or mention of the comment is as good as an advertisement to everyone on their contact list. Zippy regularly congratulates and encourages everyone on his contact list for working towards their fitness goals, gaining friends and letting people know that his gym is a welcoming environment for people who are in shape or want to get there.
Embracing the Competitive Spirit
Being competitive does not necessarily mean being mean-spirited or spiteful. This is especially true for custom mascots associated with sports teams, as a little bit of banter can get the fans on both sides riled up and ready to attend the next game – a benefit for both groups of players.
Zippy might develop a back-and-forth with a custom mascot from a competing gym across town. A short video of Zippy – in full costume, of course – completing a 40-yard dash with a clock on display can be an open challenge to the other mascot.
Linking Social Media Platforms
Ultimately, you have no control over which social media platforms your customers and associates use, but it helps to combine your efforts across multiple platforms based on their particular uses. Zippy uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a lesser-known social media service that is used in his hometown. In addition to the normal social chatter, he posts workout guides and other long-form media on Facebook, pictures and videos on his Instagram, and the latest info on deals and events at his gym on all four. Your custom mascot can follow the same pattern, creating a social media blitz that is cohesive, effective, and relatively inexpensive.
For more great mascot marketing tips, stay tuned to the Hogtown Mascots blog!