Newly elected French President-Elect Emmanuel Macron released this video on Twitter three months ago on his page and had some traction on Twitter, after he was elected President, but didn't garner the traction on Facebook to his target audiences, the US. Now, this video has gone viral with shares throughout Facebook by American audiences. Why didn't the video go more viral on Facebook, when it was first released, although it had a powerful message to Americans that are anti-Trump policies towards the environment, immigration, and progressive technology development?
The answer would seem obvious that the video message should have resonated with the anti-Trump protesters in America and should have gone viral immediately, when first released, but it didn't. In order to understand the recent viral explosion of this video, we have to look at when this video was released, how it was released and learn to use this lesson for future digital marketing strategy.
Just Because You Build It, Doesn't Mean that They'll Come
French President-Elect Macron released his video on his Twitter page on February 9th, 2017, which was targeted to the US audience, but unfortunately, when it was released, it didn't get much attention by people in America at that time, since the new US President, had just began his presidency, with writing day after day new Executive Orders and Tweeting up a storm that was causing most anti-Trump voters to focus on the day's occurrences in the US, such as on the Muslim ban, Ivanka's ousting from the store Nordstrom, and the various amounts of protests occurring throughout the country. Unfortunately for President-Elect Macron, his video release timed with the upheaval in the US, was probably not the best time to release the video. This is a good lesson for all of us digital marketers, timing matters of information released to a Social Media Platform.
Now that things have calmed down a bit in the US and the French-elections diverted the US's attention to focus on France, the video now resonates to who President-Elect Macron was trying to target in his initial messaging, which has now gone viral in a big way. Remember, timing is everything and can make a huge difference, when trying to meet your objective in trying to communicate to a specific audience through social marketing.
Also, we should note, that President-Elect Macron only had his video on Twitter initially, rather than releasing it to various social channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and SnapChat. Digital Marketers, don't make President-Elect Macron's mistake to only stick with one digital marketing channel to release your content and assume that it will go viral. Make sure to create a holistic digital marketing strategy of releasing your information to various channels, since not everyone uses the same social media channels. Timing and exposure to as many channels can make the difference of a successful social media marketing launch and one that will crash and burn.