White House Press Photographer Pete Souza shared an image of President Obama with his daughters supporting a local ice cream store on Small Business Saturday. The shop, Pleasant Pops in Washington D.C., is a Square merchant, and the picture features a Square Stand front and center.
We transformed a small moment in time into something bigger by showcasing Square's values, championing our sellers, and celebrating positive national sentiment around small, local businesses — in this case, demonstrated by none other than President Obama.
The goal here was to simply raise the profile of Square, our products, our sellers, and small businesses in a relevant, timely way.
Moving in real time is a critical piece of Square's overall social media strategy — but we always stay true to our brand, never trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Our sellers and their customers (in this case, President Obama) constantly share about their experiences, and we're always listening carefully, prepared to respond quickly when great opportunities arise.
Here, our strategy followed suit: Identify the opportunity, be thoughtful, and move quickly. In this moment, POTUS became Square's top influencer and a major champion of local business.
We successfully leveraged this opportunity, responding to a piece of highly-visible content with a real-time, on-message Tweet that succinctly raised awareness for Square, our products, and (the very timely) Small Business Saturday.
We crafted copy that was natural to our voice, true to our audience, and associated the picture of POTUS to our overall brand mission. On the surface, this tweet allowed us to showcase an incredible Square seller in the most presidential of ways, but it also naturally laddered up to our broader Square story of celebrating local business and promote economic empowerment.
This Tweet helped us shatter our monthly measured benchmarks in organic impressions and engagement rate.
Tangible results as of this entry (all organic):
