The 4th of July is replete with positive sentiment for brands to take part in. But many miss out – or end up barking up the wrong tree, as they follow the crowd with those same ol’ “Happy 4th!” posts that are largely ignored. Here’s how to create online fireworks for your brand, with a handful of ideas brands may have missed this Independence Day, and will want to consider next year!
Creating Meaningful July 4th Brand Messaging
When setting out on your well-planned sentiment search, you’ll need an overarching view of the conversations happening around it. Exploring popular hashtags is a solid place to start:
Not every hashtag will be relevant to your purposes, but there’s lots to choose from when you understand how to follow the data.
How do you do that?
Filters to Fine Tune Results
There are many avenues to explore, but assuming you wanted a quick snapshot to inform your thinking, you could filter data based on key terms, to jump in feet first and start swimming! Here, we used 4th of July, #July4th and Independence Day to capture the info above, as we wanted an overview of trending conversations.
With more specific goals in mind, a brand would be wise to take advantage of filters to fine tune results, such as:
- Include Content Containing – Search within the current results. For example, you could enter “Saints” to restrict the Super Bowl 2019 topic’s results to only content that mentions the Saints.
- Excluding Content Containing – Omit all data containing certain keywords. For example, you could enter “Trump” to exclude all content that mentions Trump (which can skew results these days!).
- Domain(s) – Restrict results to only mentions posted on certain domains. For example, you might only want to analyze mentions from a particular website, such as “amazon.com” or “reddit.com.”
- Source – Restrict results to only mentions from a certain source type, such as News or Twitter.
- Country – Restrict results to only mentions from a certain country, such as Canada. NOTE: Not all content contains country data. If you narrow your results to a specific country, your results exclude content that contains no country data.
- Language – Restrict results to only mentions authored in a certain language, such as French.
After you’ve spent time narrowing your search based on your brand’s criteria, you’re ready to unlock amazing potential. We’re happy to walk you through the steps detailed above with a personalized demo, by the way.
But for our purposes here, we’re going to explore five that are likely overlooked, and offer pretty far-reaching potential to a wide variety of readers – along with some pitfalls that Next Generation AI analytics can help brands avoid!
- Crafters
- Fireworks Fanatics
- Sound Sensitive Segments
- Under 18 Power Users
- Other Nations Celebrating Independence
Crafters
Everyone loves to celebrate and have cute accessories for their family cookouts, but being budget conscious is top-of-mind for most. So, brands that can help families save money and look fabulously clever doing so will win valuable bonus points with harried homemakers.
Offering DIY tutorials for the 4th of July is one way for brands to approach it (found via the #art hashtag in word cloud):
This Twitter-handled “Queen of Cr8tvty” commands quite a following, and the brand she’s partnered with is undoubtedly thrilled with the connection. They’ll want to monitor engagement levels as they go though, as 20 and 10 engagements for an audience over 100,000 maybe isn’t everything they’d hoped for.
Influencer Discovery Analysis Uncovers Red Flags
Influencer identification in NetBase can be done ahead of an engagement. We help brands perform an influencer discovery analysis to uncover these very important indicators:
- Among the authors talking about a brand or category, who has influence among their social followers with a high follower count?
- What are the professions and areas of interest for influencers talking about a brand or category?
- Who is creating meaningful content for a category or brand?
- How frequently do influencers post about a given brand or category? What is their sentiment towards the brand or category?
- How do influencers impact conversation about a given brand or category?
It’s still a great niche to go after (crafting/DIY crowd), just proceed with caution before partnering with influencers in this and any niche!
Fireworks Fanatics
Surely this segment hasn’t been missed by brands this July 4th? Well, not entirely – but they are taken for granted! We know fireworks are a key ingredient to any 4th of July festivities, but some want to take it a bit further. And no, we’re not talking pyrotechnics.
The missing niche are those who want an extreme experience:
Experiences are everything these days, so if you can offer them – have at it.
Don’t have a helicopter handy to hover overhead? No worries – you can offer:
- Virtual experiences via Oculus Rift or whatever VR capabilities you may have, assuming you have any!
- Sponsor a potato sack race or a competitive eating contest, or (depending on your crowd) a history contest, with winners choosing the associated fireworks finale as part of the prize.
- Or even just a fun, promotion-free place to watch with other fireworks fanatics, complete with activities that excite the senses.
Sound Sensitive Segments
On the other end of this spectrum, of course, are those who hate fireworks due to sound sensitivity. Veterans and their K-9 companions suffering from PTSD have lots of trouble with the 4th of July.
And then there are civilian pooches who, by and far, just don’t do well with these startling explosions happening all around them.
And then there’s a segment that’s not heard from often and should be, are autistic children – of whom the piercing noises can physically hurt.
Brands missed out on a huge Independence Day opportunity here – the right brands, that is. Offering veterans, pets and affected families a quiet place to celebrate would be amazing. The brand that eventually catches on to the potential here and hosts a “fireworks free” event somewhere off in the countryside for any of those affected with end up as famous at Nathan’s is for its annual hot dog eating contest.
Under 18 Power Users
This segment is amazing for the potential it offers. Not only are these folks wildly active online – and fickle – they’re every brands consumer base in a few short years. And for some, it’s your consumer base right now!
They’re not overly excited by traditional things, like traditional holidays, as demographic breakdown demonstrates:
Does this mean younger females are less patriotic? Hardly. But their underrepresentation here makes them easy to miss – and that’s unfortunate with #TeenChoice trending.
What does this awards show have to do with the 4th of July and brand marketing? It’s time for kids to start voting for top talent to win awards. And you can bet these kids are all about music.
Understanding that this time of year, and the 4th of July specifically, is important to teens for a very distinct reason, can help brands create messaging that resonates – and gets noticed.
A brand promo offering Black Pink swag and wishing the popular South Korean girl group well, or the equally popular BTS, would go over well with the under 18 crowd. And that is huge as this segment is notoriously skeptical and disengaged from typical brand promotions. Even just taking part in the conversation can be amazing for a brand seeking to connect with this up and coming audience.
Identifying trending conversations and understanding this demographic’s language is something you can do with NetBase as well.
Other Nations Celebrate Too
And while the 4th of July may be popular in the United States as its Independence Day, there are many other places in the world celebrating similarly – and around the same time.
Some may be celebrating the release of a new season of the popular TV series, Stranger Things:
But others, like those in the Philippines, have a popular and viral Independence Day spoof celebration, that any global brand could participate in and win amazing notoriety online.
It’s a trend of imagining how Philippine heroes would act or what they would say in today’s modern world, and posts are labeled with the viral hashtag #RP612fic, which means “Republic of the Philippines June 12 fiction.”
Using the hashtag, Filipinos put a modernized spin on the heroes and stories [they] read about in our elementary school textbooks.
Like lots of possibilities online, this one was a bit confusing to sort out at first, but that’s part of what draws so many to it:
And brands that take the time to track down the root of these viral trending conversations, like #RP612fic are making amazing discoveries and finding ways to differentiate every day in an increasingly crowded online marketplace.
And NetBase makes it pretty easy to accomplish. Reach out and we’ll show you how to create fireworks for any brand online – any time of the year.
