Social Media is a powerful tool forbrands in connecting with their customers. Nike’s Digital Marketing strategyand focus on Instagram has enabled stable business growth despite the pandemic.

Nike’s dominance on social media isthe result of a strategic digital transformation. Five years since theirdecision to become digital-first, they are the most followed consumer brand onInstagram with 300M followers. We had earlier analysed their presence on Instagram andvarious factors contributing to their success. Here is anexcerpt of three pointers from Brian Peters, Team Buffer.com and Wes Warfield,Social Media Manager at Nike.

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1. Use a personalized approach to engage with consumers

Nike handles more than a million conversations a year across 200social media handles and yet the brand manages to make every conversation ahuman-to-human interaction. It is challenging to personalize customerengagement at scale, and this can be a major differentiator for your brand. Tomake this happen, there are several questions that every employee should beable to answer about the brand such as:

• Who are we?
• What do we do?
• Why do we do it?
• What do we stand for?
• What is our brand voice?
• How does our product improve people’s lives?

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2. Align the organization to provide synchronized customer support

Coordination between various productlines and channels in communicating with customers is critical to have aunified brand voice. Hundreds of people across dozens of departments work inNike's customer support through social media. With so many product lines andgeographies to manage, Nike took a strategic approach to ensure collaborationamong various customer facing teams where each team is briefed on stories thatvarious handles are going to tell. This ensures consistency in terms of voice,messaging, hashtags, captions, etc. Nike also chooses the conversations itneeds to be a part of carefully.

It is essential that your socialmedia team sits down to discuss various stories to tell and be prepared forissues customers might have at both a macro level and micro level. Post this,empowering the employees to respond in the way they seem fit in representingthe brand is essential to make sure that the interaction is as human andrelatable as possible.

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3. Build a community around your brand

Try to be a part of people’sreal-life stories. Listen to their experiences or grievances they share online.Post something that gets your users talking. Form meaningful relationships withthem. This will fetch you amazing returns in the long term and give a deeperpurpose to your brand, which will keep you going.

Winningdespite a pandemic

Nike’s digital shift helped thebrand tide over difficult COVID-19 times. It delivered strong revenue growth of41% over that of 2020 and a massive 147% growth compared to the fourth quarterof 2019.

Brands need to understood that intoday's age, digital marketing alone is not enough. Digital outreach andsupport across various channels are as important. This improves trust in thebrand and in-turn conversion rates, profits, and creates a strong brand.Nike is just one of the many exampes but a formidable one in this game. Thoughemulating Nike may seem challenging in the beginning, once the results (andrevenues) start rolling in, there is no going back.

Sources: https://buffer.com/resources/instagram-community-nike/