Welcome to the INFINITI Social Guideline. It has been created to help you create social posts that are on-brand and consistent. To be a strong brand we have to be a consistent brand. This will result in greater trust and success for the brand in the future.
Contents
What We’re Aiming For: Social Goals
Who We Want To Talk To: Audiences
How To Speak To Our Audiences: Social Tone Of Voice
Social Visual Standards:
How Do We Look On Social?
Social Examples
Community Management:
Interacting With Our Community
Sentiment Response Directory
Engaging With User Generated Content
Social Listening
Influencers & Collaborations
Hashtags
Social Goals
What Are We Aiming For On Social?
Brand building on social media helps build stronger relationships more cost effectively:
• It adds to sale activation efforts
• It turns indifference to brand advocacy
• It builds brand awareness to our legacy history in Japan
Progressive Challengers are always looking for ways to realize their ideas by searching for like-minded people, activities and environments. They’re continually on a journey to better themselves.
What they are looking for is inspiration to channel their inner power.
Social is where we have this opportunity:
• to inspire them with ideas they can get excited about,
• bring them closer to people like the Quiet DISRUPTORS that they admire and
• be a brand that has a purpose in their life
Hence the ROLE OF SOCIAL FOR INFINITI is:
BE A BRAND THAT HELPS PEOPLE REALIZE THE STRENGTH OF BELIEVING IN YOUR INNER POWER
Audience
Who Are We Talking To?
The world of our progressive challengers is dynamic, vibrant, and alive. While in the past it was important to capture the car and its performance in this Experience Your Inner Power world, it is equally vital to tell the complete, holistic human story.
For the visionaries of INFINITI, exerting a sense of inner power is in the every day. They’re keen to seek others who hold elements of inner power and powerful expression, who constantly challenge the status quo by being bold, fearless and assured. In moments of meditation to building unforgettable memories with loved ones, our Progressive Challengers thrive in self-development and see luxury in doing so.
Narratives and stories should see the INFINITI range as the main facilitator that empowers Progressive Challengers in moments of humanity, inner power and hints of luxury to create a holistic human-centric storyline.
Social Tone Of Voice
How We Speak To Our Audiences
Everything we do online should consistently reflect INFINITI’s brand promises, values, and brand guidelines.
INFINITI’s tone of voice springs from our brand personality, our values and our way of thinking. It is an expression of ourselves – the people behind the brand and the lifestyles we serve.
A consistent voice is important for building a relationship with our audiences. When you cultivate a voice that the audience can relate to, they will be more likely to share INFINITI’s messages in their own words.
The INFINITI brand social media voice has a:
• Character: professional, warm, confident
• Tone: conversational, personal, friendly
• Language: simple, concise, informative, reasoning
Tone Of Voice : The Tonal Descriptors When We Speak, We Are:
Social Visual Standards
How Do We Look On Social?
The INFINITI social universe is clean, curated and visually stimulating.
From slow-toned Makers content to vibrant Japanese seasonal content, all social content will always have a human-element to its storytelling.
All subjects will carry themselves with confidence, an authentic and approachable energy, and can tell their stories with humility and excitement.
We are a brand that is clear with it’s direction and always try to showcase the human & real side of ourselves.
Our brand history and technical artistry means we encourage art and design elements into our visual content- cinematic shots over typical car photography, the natural moments in life, and the experiences that make us who we are. Each INFINITI is lit and lensed with a careful balance of organicism and sophistication.
Our content should always look natural and real vs. overtly re-touched and artificial.
All social content needs to be adapted for each platform to encourage optimal viewing experience.
Social Visual Standards
Social Examples
As part of the new logo roll-out please ensure that after the brand reveal, ALL your social channels have the new logo implemented as per the below references. The black logo on white background is mandatory as we move further away from the previous VI which leveraged dark backgrounds. Additionally, this icon stands out best for both day and night mode.
INSTAGRAM FEED
INSTAGRAM STORIES
INSTAGRAM REELS
TWITTER FEED
FACEBOOK FEED
FACEBOOK STORIES
FACEBOOK FEED
FACEBOOK STORIES
YOUTUBE VIDEOS
YOUTUBE SHORTS
YOUTUBE END SCREEN
YOUTUBE THUMBNAIL
LINKEDIN POST: STILLS
LINKEDIN POST: VIDEO
YOUTUBE NEW LOGO
INSTAGRAM NEW LOGO
LINKEDIN NEW LOGO
FACEBOOK NEW LOGO
YOUTUBE NEW LOGO
INSTAGRAM NEW LOGO
Community Management
Interacting With Our Community
LINKEDIN NEW LOGO
Click "download" for Horizon asset
Click "download" for social logo asset
Click "download" for YouTube End Screen asset
Click "download" for YouTube Thumbnail template
On INFINITI’s socials, sharing or taking content from elsewhere (person or organization’s channel) to report on our own platforms is highly recommended. However, it’s important to cite the authors by asking. Social sharing is the practice of taking content from elsewhere (another person or organization’s channel) and re-posting it or sharing it through your own.
This can be a post, image, video, or article, for example. But remember! When sharing others’ content, you need to cite the authors and may need certain permissions depending on the channel. It is also important to respect regional copyright laws when posting or sharing photos and other imagery.
• On Instagram: you need to cite the original source by mentioning where the original picture came from and tagging the original source (if it cannot be tagged, type their name in the post).
• On Facebook: simply make sure to cite your original source if you feed their content into your own post.
• On Twitter: “retweeting” does not require any permission. When using the integrated retweet button the letters “RT” will automatically be placed before the users name at the beginning of the tweet you are sharing (if not don’t forget to add this in yourself). Best practice is to add a comment or line of encouragement when retweeting to demonstrate active engagement as opposed to passive sharing.
On INFINITI’s socials, sharing or taking content from elsewhere (person or organization’s channel) to report on our own platforms is highly recommended. However, it’s important to cite the authors by asking. Social sharing is the practice of taking content from elsewhere (another person or organization’s channel) and re-posting it or sharing it through your own.
This can be a post, image, video, or article, for example. But remember! When sharing others’ content, you need to cite the authors and may need certain permissions depending on the channel. It is also important to respect regional copyright laws when posting or sharing photos and other imagery.
• On Instagram: you need to cite the original source by mentioning where the original picture came from and tagging the original source (if it cannot be tagged, type their name in the post).
• On Facebook: simply make sure to cite your original source if you feed their content into your own post.
• On Twitter: “retweeting” does not require any permission. When using the integrated retweet button the letters “RT” will automatically be placed before the users name at the beginning of the tweet you are sharing (if not don’t forget to add this in yourself). Best practice is to add a comment or line of encouragement when retweeting to demonstrate active engagement as opposed to passive sharing.
Community Management Sentiment Response Directory
Social Sharing
Engaging With User-Generated Content
On INFINITI’s socials, sharing or taking content from elsewhere (person or organization’s channel) to repost on our own platforms is highly recommended if the content visually aligns with our social content.
It’s important to cite the authors by asking permission depending on the channel. It’s also important to respect regional copyright laws when posting or sharing media.
• On Instagram: you need to cite the original source by mentioning where the original picture came from and tagging the original source (if it cannot be tagged, type their name in the post).
• On Facebook: simply make sure to cite your original source if you feed their content into your own post.
• On Twitter: “retweeting” does not require any permission. When using the integrated retweet button the letters “RT” will automatically be placed before the users name at the beginning of the tweet you are sharing (if not don’t forget to add this in yourself!). Best practice is to add a comment or line of encouragement when retweeting to demonstrate active engagement as opposed to passive sharing.
Brand Advocacy: 4 Cheat Codes To Maintain A Good Level Of Incoming UGC
Social Listening
Listening To Our Community
Social listening is the backbone of any good social media strategy and should be considered step one when starting a new channel, account or campaign. It allows companies to hear what stakeholders are discussing online and by using keywords
and search terms that track conversations can provide insights that inform what content we produce, what channels or platforms we place it on and measure how effective it is.
Common questions answered through insights:
• Where are social conversations taking place?
• What is the attitude or sentiment?
• Who is influencing opinions and driving behavior?
• What drives social behavior and sharing?
• What are the drivers of action?
• What is the social share of voice?
• What are the main questions being asked?
Influencers & Collaborations
Key Leaders In Our Communities
On top of tracking conversations, social listening identifies those who are leading them - ie. online influencers.
Each of these will have their own respective influence and credibility, normally defined by the number of followers or individuals who are likely to see their posts. They can have significant power to influence opinion and affect decisions.
Who to follow (and unfollow)
Identifying the influencers will also help find the right people and accounts to follow as they will be of interest to your community and may provide more content for your account.
• Look for experts, professionals, and quiet disruptor key opinion leaders in the art, business, tech and lifestyle industries
• Organisations and conferences that are focused on automotive and innovation
• Appropriate lifestyle and automotive bloggers, journalists or media orgnisations
• Top tier trade publications
• Other INFINITI-affiliated accounts
Hashtags
You are responsible for crafting your voice while joining a larger discussion. See what hashtags are trending and make use of them – if and when they are relevant to INFINITI. Hashtags link content to specific conversations and organize responses by making tweets more easily searchable and grouping messages together that all share a hashtag by adding context and metadata to tweets.
Though popular hashtags are great for reach, you can’t use them anywhere randomly. At INFINITI, we have a foundational set of hashtags that we recommend pairing with our products:
• QX60: #ConquerLifeInStyle
• QX55: #DemandCenterStage
Otherwise, we trust that each region can choose appropriate and relevant hashtags for each post. To keep posts succinct and clean, our hashtag strategy is:
On Facebook: Hashtags work best for those audiences on Facebook who are already inclined with our posts. We advise you to use 2-3 Facebook hashtags to boost your reach. On Facebook, branded and industry-specific hashtags work well for cross-media promotions and monitor key activities through
On Instagram: Instagram allows up to 10 hashtags per story and 30 hashtags per post and reels. However, this does not mean you clutter your posts with the best Instagram hashtags. Liberal use of 3-5 Instagram hashtags on feed posts and Reels copy is good enough to get you a killer engagement while 1-3 is recommended for Story posts.
On Twitter: Home to the community hashtag, we aim to add 1-2 hashtags for decent reach on Twitter. .
With each channel, we advise you to utilize the most effective posting days and times as you understand your own channels.
Link Shortening
How We Measure Success: KPIs On Social
On all our social platforms, there are character limits that include URLs. To keep posts neat and allow the focus of our posts be solely on the messaging, we highly recommend link shortening.
As an organization, we use content management platform, Sprinklr to create, post and report the details of our social content. In addition, the character count on Sprinklr will automatically adjust for the shortened link once a URL is added to only 19 characters, but the link itself will not appear shortened until your post is published. Images also count as links for this purpose, so including an image in your post will also use 23 characters.
To keep shortened links consistent across regions and platforms, we recommend Sprinklr to make measuring engagement easier and more precise.
After logging into Sprinklr, navigate to URL Shortener by pressing Command + Shift + K. Type of paste in your URL, click the URL Shortener, and the shortened link will be available. Click here for a video tutorial.
A ‘key performance indicator’ (KPI) is used to determine how you are performing against your objectives. Social media KPI’s you could be focusing on are:
1. Engagement: Engagement measures the amount of likes, shares and comments your social updates receive. Facebook and Twitter see engagement as a sign of quality and popularity.
2. Reach & Impressions: Reach indicates how far your message is traveling and is measured by followers, impressions and traffic data. Impressions are an indication of how many times your post appeared in someone’s newsfeed.
3. Leads: After considering engagement and reach, it is important to ask how many of these engaged people are actually interested in a purchase and how they fit in to the sales funnel, which is where directing people to sign up for company newsletters or to the website can help.
4. Conversions: Conversions refer to those in the audience that actually ended up making a purchase. This may be easier to measure in some situations than others as we do not directly sell online currently, but is an interesting metric to keep in mind.
Best Practices
Dos And Don’ts
Four ways to help drive traffic to our channels
Keywords: If interacting with social conversation, trending topics, or even just a product post, we want to make sure that our content is always including the relevant keywords that allow our posts to be seen and searchable.
Amplification/paid reach: Attention is the most precious of all commodities – organic reach alone is not always enough. Amplification of content can help break through the clutter in a crowded media landscape. Paid content placement and syndication tactics across a wide variety of digital platforms can include: social ads and promoted posts, email marketing, search engine optimization, mobile ads etc. For further support or questions regarding amplification, please do contact regional support or your regional marketing contact.
Signatures: An action as simple as linking to your social channels and platforms from an email signature can itself have widespread effect, amongst customers, colleagues and third parties.
Events: Promoting the social channels at all INFINITI events is another driver of traffic.
Time your post: to maximize audience engagement
Incorporate a call to action: “Like this post if” / “retweet this if…” or “follow this link to find out more about what INFINITI is doing”
Link your post to the wider conversation (social listening)
Respond to audience needs when creating content - fill the gaps
Use hashtags to track your own topics, and link outside to others
Mention other accounts, social media personalities or influencers in the debate that you want to connect with using their online profile
Share posts and retweet content that’s relevant to your audience
Shorten links with the same link shortener (e.g. bitly) so you can track the number of clicks it receives
DOS
• Checking your posts for grammar and spelling before you send them
• Do time your post to maximize audience engagement
• Do incorporate a call to action: “Like this post if” / “retweet this if…”
• Do link your post to the wider conversation via social listening
• Do respond to audience needs when creating content - fill the gaps
• Do use hashtags to track your own topics, and link outside to others
• Do share posts and retweet content that’s relevant to your audience
• Do shorten links with the same link shortener via Sprinklr so you can track the number of clicks it receives
• Keep your post length short keeping mobile users in mind
• Always monitor your feeds and be prepared to react.
• Refer to your organization as “we” rather than “I”. This helps create a sense of community and teamwork.
DON’TS
• Don’t be unprofessional: When it comes to company clients, partners, colleagues, and even competitors do not share confidential information, criticize, or spread false information.
• Don’t post too much corporate-promotion can lead followers to tune you out. Make sure to contribute to existing conversations, retweet smart links/statements.
• Don’t misrepresent yourself or your company. Every action online is, at some level, traceable, so make sure the content that you are creating and impressions you are leaving, no matter how big or how small, are accurate and honest.
For any questions regarding this guideline, please contact the Global Marketing team.
