Social Media Marketing

Thailand's bombing tragedy led the week on Twitter, divorce lawyers were a central theme of the Ashley Madison leaks, and #WorldPhotographyDay gave the Twitter community much to celebrate in beautiful pictures.

A bomb killing 20 people Monday at the Erawan Shrine, a popular Bangkok tourist site, was reported on Twitter within moments of the blast. News channels were the predominant source of Tweets, using images, short video and GIFs to report on the event in real time. Hashtags trending around the explosion included #Bangkok, #PrayForBangkok, #PrayBangkok and #PrayForThailand.

Brands across Asia generally steered clear of the tragedy. Those that did, such as Yamaha Indonesia, choose to tweet on the topic kept it simple and empathetic.

Bangkok Hospital used Twitter to push for a blood donation drive with this tweet that linked back to a Facebook page.

#AshleyMadisonHacks was another trending topic this week, after hackers released 9.7 gigabytes of data stolen from AshleyMadison.com. The data included the names, addresses and sexual desires of the cheating site's more-than-30 million global users. Brands were reluctant to post on the topic, but users had a field day anticipating the windfalls for divorce lawyers. This particular GIF generated more than 500 retweets.

#WorldPhotographyDay was a cause for celebration on Wednesday. The visual nature of the hashtag was a great opportunity for brands like Disneyland to use Twitter as a channel to drive traffic to their Instagram accounts.

Tourism New Zealand integrated user-generated content (UGC) into its World Photography Day tweets to drive traffic to its website, as well.

This Samsung post skillfully used the hashtag to promote its latest smartphone, while the Smithsonian stayed well on-brand by delivering an historic photo from its archives.

NASA's sophisticated and well-executed social media strategy is paying off in spades. The International Space Station earned close to 2,000 retweets on World Photography Day, while a similar Tweet from American astronaut Scott Kelly earned more than 4,000.

Travel, tourism and geographic brands also made use of the golden opportunity to share their messages with pictures. Here are examples from National Geographic and Travel + Leisure.

Even brands without a visual presence found clever ways to promote themselves on World Photography Day, such as this post from social data intelligence platform Talkwalker.

Another hashtag brands had fun with this week was #MakeLifeBetterin3Words.
Brands also had fun with the #MakeLifeBetterin3Words this week. British Airways kept it short and sweet, while Oxfam and Land Rover stayed on message, and Skype had fun with a GIF.

General Electric drew on engaging content from its successful Six Second Science Vine series from 2013, reposting this colorful video with a new hashtag. 

Homepage image courtesy of NASA's International Space Station

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