Insights:Should your business branter?

Before you pull out the dictionary to see what, or who, a branter is you should know it’s another of the endless portmanteau (BTW – portmanteau is a real word you can look up) that the internet seems to breed like rabbits.

Branter is a fairly recent term for brand banter. This is when brands exchange friendly teasing remarks on social media platforms. Twitter is the platform that gets the most branter and the most comments about branter.

When done correctly, branter can be fun, help grow brand awareness and further define a brand’s personality. It’s also an effective why to increase social media fans. Branter between two top brands may also create the appearance that these two brands are the only important ones in a particular market segment. It’s better to compete against one than everyone, just ask Coke or Pepsi.

The challenges to successful brantering are many. First, the subject must be timely and appropriate to your brand’s personality. Because of the immediacy of posting branter it is usually a spur of the moment decision and requires decisive action which is a risk many companies are not comfortable with.

Another risk of brantering is coming off as petty or mean if the right tone is not taken. Perhaps the only thing worse than tone deaf brantering is having to apologize for it on your social media platforms.

Finally, and perhaps the worst scenario, is trying to start a branter with another brand and they decide not to join in. Then it just looks sad and most brands really don’t want to be pitied.

So before you start brantering you’ll want to consider the positives and negatives with this somewhat risky approach to social media brand building.

If you’d like to learn more about social media trends and best practices give Insight’s social media strategists a call at 605-275-0011 or send us an email.