With most of the population working from home, social media usage and digital content consumption has exploded.

Because of that, an unprecedented and fascinating development is occurring in the marketing world; certain brands are seeing abnormally large increases in their organic social mentions, while others have completely flatlined.

With everyone quickly rethinking marketing strategies and pivoting communications to fit our new reality, social media has quickly emerged as the channel for reallocating funds. But in the rush to adjust, are brands pausing long enough to fully analyze how the organic conversation has shifted?

It’s never been more important to authentically connect with social communities. So where can brands look for guidance as they find their new voice? Answer: the organic conversations of their online audience.

We used the Tagger platform to take an in-depth look at three brands who have experienced a considerable spike in organic mentions this month, namely Clorox, Call of Duty, and Uber Eats.

By analyzing key social listening benchmarks and evaluating the efficacy of brands’ responses (or lack thereof), we were able to deduce three key ways that companies can take advantage of a bump in organic social conversions, while staying mindful of the current climate.

1. Partner with the largest voices mentioning your brand 

Identify the individuals creating the most engagement when they organically mention your brand. Identify these individuals and bring them on as authentic spokespeople. Engage with them on a personal level and look to build an ongoing, mutually beneficial partnership.

In the case of Uber Eats, they created new partnerships with multiple large grocery store chains and major food brands like Chipotle and Starbucks. Those new partnerships are not only driving business, but they’re also driving social engagement as those partner brands tag Uber Eats in their respective online content.

Uber Eats mentions went from around 3M on March 10th, to 26M March 19th, then spiking at over 100M after announcing grocery partnerships on March 24th.

2. Identify your new brand voice by discovering, engaging with & partnering with creators

Even before the current global surge in digital consumption, influencers had an 11x higher ROI compared to traditional advertising. With social engagement being at an all-time high, this is the perfect opportunity to invest in an influencer marketing platform like Tagger to discover new voices who are authentically discussing your brand.

For example, Clorox is purposefully creating less obvious advertising to reach new audiences during the global pandemic. New partners include a family/mom influencer who is trying to keep her home and family disinfected on a daily basis with everyone at home. This kind of authentic (and highly effective) messaging came from social listening tactics and paying attention to organic brand mentions.

Call of Duty is an excellent example of engaging with fans to promote organic mentions. As more people are on screens playing, the brand has stepped up to increase interactions with fans, especially on Twitter. After posting 128 pieces of content across all of February, Call of Duty content jumped to 400 assets in March (313% increase in content – mainly Twitter).

In the span of one week, Call of Duty jumped from averaging a reach of 5M unique individuals per day to an average reach of over 100M per day.

The key here is to make sure that all content your brand releases provides real value to your audience. Looking at the social listening indicators, what are they talking about right now? What need could your brand fill with original content?

Staying in the conversation is important. Showing your audience that you’re listening to them goes a long way in cultivating the “know, like trust” factor with consumers.

Every brand is facing difficult decisions right now about how to pivot their messaging. For many, marketing has become a secondary or tertiary concern. However, as the data has shown, social conversations have not paused, if anything they’ve increased. So as a brand, it’s your responsibility to know what that conversation is, how it has shifted, and to respond in a way that is thoughtful, responsible, and authentic, providing value in the same way you always have.

Look to your audience, and especially organic mentions, for direction on how to adjust your brand voice in the current online marketplace.