Madalyn Sklar

Creating FOMO to Build Your Brand

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Ever seen a friend tweet from an event and felt a tinge of pain that you couldn’t be there? Most of us have been there. Next time, we’ll make sure to get tickets on time so we can enjoy ourselves and catch up with friends. We do this because we don’t want to miss out on an excellent opportunity. The tweet/post/message that triggered this response created FOMO, and as a result, we’ve made a positive action. Could you use this tactic to get your audience to click that CTA? That’s what we wanted to discuss in this week’s chat, and who better to talk to than the FOMO Creator herself, May King?

Here’s a summary of our chat with May King.

Guest: May King Tsang
Topic: Creating FOMO to build your brand
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.

Q1: Why is FOMO important to a business?

The Fear Of Missing Out, fondly known as FOMO, is important to a business because it helps you connect to the group of your audience who don’t often engage actively with your content. These are your lurkers, and creating FOMO can help encourage them to step up and engage with you more.

As Christine succinctly put it, when you create buzz and scarcity around your product or service, the demand for it increases, urging people to take action such as registering for your event or purchasing your service.

Q2: Who are lurkers and why is it important to create content for them?

Lurkers are your silent observers. They won’t share your posts, like them, or comment on them. But they will be watching, and when they need a service, you’ll be the first person they think of. However, for them to recall you at a time of need, you need to constantly show up on their feeds. Even if they’re not responding and engaging with you, keep creating content focusing on them because that’s how they’ll remember you.

Even though your lurkers don’t often show themselves, they’re a crucial part of your target audience, as Masooma pointed out. They’re warm prospects and because they already know who you are and what you do, they’re easier to convince and convert than a cold lead.

Q3: What are the 5 steps to creating FOMO?

According to May King, creating FOMO is a five-step process.

  1. Building your community
    Everything you do on social media is for your community, so focus on creating content for them, engaging with them, encouraging your lurkers to participate, and nurturing your audience.
  2. Relationship building
    Your audience is everything, and to successfully create FOMO, you need to have well-developed relationships with your community–both lurkers and otherwise.
  3. Authority
    Use your social media presence to establish your authority in your field. Showcase why you’re the best in the industry.
  4. Notoriety
    Start developing media buzz. The more popular you are in the media, the more curiosity that you can arouse with your activities.
  5. Direct communications
    Use Twitter DMs with purpose. Communicate transparently, and be respectful of other people’s time and personal space. If used well, DMs can be a great tool.

While May King’s steps were broad, our community members also chipped in with a few specific steps for creating FOMO. Alyx suggested that it starts with identifying your ideal audience and your offer, and goes all the way through establishing clear timelines, creating content, and executing your FOMO campaign.

Q4: How can building relationships help you create FOMO?

Honestly, I think building genuine relationships can help with everything in life. It helps create FOMO as well because when you start engaging with others when you make that first move, you show others that you’re genuinely interested in starting a conversation or sharing a discussion. Once they get to know who you are as a business, they’ll be happy to talk to their friends about what you do. If they like and trust you as a friend, you’re the first recommendation they’ll give to others, creating FOMO for you.

What’s more, when you start making relationships with people, you’ll automatically create FOMO on a large scale, as Madalyn said. For example, imagine you’re collaborating with a colleague on a project. You share bits and pieces about your work on Twitter, and your audience will be keen to know what you’re up to and to get involved in what you do. They’d want to be in on it and that’s FOMO too!

Q5: How can you showcase your authority when creating FOMO?

Share what you know–not in an annoying know-it-all way, but in a friendly manner. Social media is about being social and friendly, and the more helpful your content is, the more people you’ll attract to your content. To establish your authority, share a variety of content on your subject matter such as blogs, videos, guest posts on external publications, posts, links from other creators, and opinions. Participate in Twitter chats, Spaces, threaded conversations, and online events so people can see and hear from you directly.

Speaking of how to showcase your authority, Cindy suggested sharing your thought processes. For example, if you sell a physical product, tell your audience why you chose to design it the way you did. If you offer services, tell them why you do what you do and how exactly you go about solving problems in your business. Doing so can help your audience see that you know what you’re doing and they’ll trust your decisions more willingly.

Q6: How can a cause, charity, or business get noticed on Twitter?

Our guest told us about how local charity Kinder Leeds got noticed on Twitter. They asked their community–volunteers, event speakers, members, and well-wishers–what kindness meant to them. They came up with a hashtag to collate all responses in one place and as people responded to the questions with their own posts, videos, and comments, the hashtag grew bigger and bigger, helping Kinder Leeds get the recognition they needed.

Moral of the story? Start engaging conversations with your hashtag.

Julia from NOW Marketing Group shared a few more ideas you can implement to get noticed, including featuring the humans behind your brand so people can resonate with you better, using GIFs and video content to stand out from a busy feed, and using highly-specific hashtags.

Q7: Share some examples of how you’ve won clients using these 5 steps?

May King told us about the time she was live-tweeting at Social Media Marketing World in 2018. She saw Andrew and Pete speak and pitched to them. They hired her to create FOMO for their events, even giving her the title that’s now become synonymous with her name.

On another occasion, she interviewed Chris from Lately.AI, who referred her to Fuel podcast, who in turn, referred her to the British Association for Sustainable Sport.

All that said, you may not always get clients instantly using this strategy. Our guest mentioned the time a client had lurked for 18 months before reaching out to hire May King. That happens too. And that’s why it’s important to consistently create content for your lurkers.

Q8: The 5 steps together spell BRAND. How important is your brand in creating FOMO?

Branding is everything when creating FOMO. How people respond to you depends on how you differentiate your brand from everyone else. When you nail branding, your lurkers will trust you and know that they can always rely on you. Make sure you make a good first impression on your audience.

After all, as Vivian from Nimble so nicely put it, people won’t care if you’re selling the same thing that a hundred others are selling. They’ll only follow you for what makes you unique.

Well, folks, that’s all from me this week. Thanks so much for reading through, and for more great insights from our chat with May King, have a look at this Twitter Moment that Joana put together. And if you have some spare time next Thursday, join us live for our next #TwitterSmarter chat. We’ll be on from 1pm ET. Catch you then!

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About me, Narmadhaa:

I write all the things—technical and marketing copy to fill the pocket; haiku and short stories to fill the soul. A social media enthusiast, I’m a member of the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and always happy to take on writing gigs.

Say hello: Personal blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

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