As a Digital Marketer, watching the last year of the 2016 election and the first 6 months of Trump's presidency, I must admit, he's a master at Social Media Marketing. Whether you like or dislike Trump, he knows how to get people's attention in both a negative and positive way simultaneously on social media, that doesn't seem to hurt his brand, himself. With every tweet, Democrats and Progressives immediately respond to contradict his postings, as well as, the Republicans respond to show their support.
Trump Followers Still Follow
Yes, the polls show that he's not well-liked in overall America and has the lowest polling numbers ever for a president at this stage in their presidency, but his support from his followers have not been diminished in a way that he can't move forward on some of his objectives. Look at how the Republicans still support him, regardless of his antics. Take a look at the June 12th NY Times article on how he was praised recently and you can see that his brand is still not tarnished.
As marketers, the golden rule is to always protect the brand, and most digital marketers strive to garner positive social media to create a halo effect on the products or services that they are marketing, but for Trump, that's not his goal. Trump, since he is the brand, doesn't care what he says, as long as it is him, that is saying it. In an interesting way, maybe as marketers, we should learn from it. Trump can release a tweet and it causes an immediate reaction, not only in the social media sphere, but in all marketing channels,since it gets picked up and talked about on broadcast and print. I'm not saying to put out every single word that comes to our mind, since as marketers, we are not the brand, but represent the brand, but maybe we can find some authenticity to use in our wording, when we time a release, and how often we message to get a response in social media.
From studying Trump on when he releases his tweets, it's primarily early in the morning, that allows the morning news cycle to pick up his tweet and make it an all day "Trump" news day. Now some may say, that he can't contain himself, which is why he does it in the morning, probably as soon as he wakes up, and I would agree, but he has now done it so often and sees the reactions that he receives, that I believe it's now intentional why he does it around the same time, every time he tweets. As digital marketers, if your tweeting randomly or without strategy, maybe this is a lesson to learn from Trump.
By choosing certain times of a day, before a news cycle starts, digital marketers can get out what needs to be promoted, before competitors or try simultaneously sending out messages, to see what resonates to the company's target audiences. This may seem simplistic, but I have met with several companies that have not implemented any type of strategy to their social media outreach campaigns. If the one thing that I have learned from Trump in all of this, is social media is more powerful, when you're controlling it compared to allowing others to dictate what's out there about your company.