What are the keys to creating a great social media campaign? Well, first of all, we need to understand what a social campaign really is. What it isnโt is just standard social media use–posting a picture each day on your businessโs Instagram profile is great but isnโt a social campaign. Social media campaigns are focused, concerted attempts to reach a marketing goal that is driven primarily via social media use. To that end, here are some tips to make your profiles work for you by creating a strong social media campaign.
Choose a Campaign Objective
Maintaining your social media presence is a great habit to have, but having a clear objective and a plan for achieving it is what makes for a real social campaign. While some objectives are unique to these social platforms, often your social media campaign objective wonโt be all that different from a more traditional marketing objective. The following are a few examples of social media campaign objectives:
- Hit 1000 followers on Instagram
- Create an email list of 100 active, engaged subscribers
- Increase sales of Product X by 20%
- Get 50 user feedback survey responses
- Grow overall website traffic by 10%
This is certainly not an exhaustive list of potential objectives; the possibilities are basically endless. But all these examples share a few traits in common:ย
- Measurable: All these objectives are, well, objective! Rather than using vague statements like โmake my social media presence betterโ or โmake our customers happier,โ pick goals that can be measured–anything to which you can attach a numeric value (100 new Xโs; increase by Y percent, etc) is usually a good start.
- Specific: Itโs tempting to want to โgo bigโ with a campaign to reach all your desired outcomes at once, but picking one clear objective at a time will let you remain focused and make it much easier to keep your campaign on-track.
- Achievable: This is harder to define as every business is different, but make sure your goals are realistic. Starting with a huge goal and missing can make your business feel like a failure, while starting off a bit smaller and nailing it can help you learn lessons to reach for the bigger goals next time around.
Define the Scope of Your Campaignย
Next, youโll want to be clear about how far your campaign will reach and what platforms youโll be using. Is it going to live just on Facebook? Will it encompass all your social media platforms? Is it a sub-campaign within a larger marketing campaign? How long will it run? This is an important step because knowing what platforms will be a part of the campaign will help define what strategies you can utilize–for example, asking users to click a survey link might be easier on Facebook, whereas asking users to share their personal photos of your product might be more effective on Instagram!
This is also where youโll need to address your budget and how the money will be spent. Do you plan on taking advantage of social media platformsโ various paid advertising opportunities to increase your reach and meet your goal? Or are you hoping to save that money and push your campaign organically, understanding it may require more time instead? Organic growth can be great for ensuring your audience stays truly engaged, but paid social campaigns often allow you to take advantage of the platformsโ information and algorithms to target the perfect audience. These are the sorts of decisions youโll need to make when defining the scope of your campaign.
Incentivize Participation
Your next step is to figure out the mechanism(s) of your campaign: How you plan to take an audience and get them to help complete your objective. Here are just a few ideas of how you can incentivize your audience to participate in your campaign:
- Giveaways: A good giveaway can be an effective way of increasing audience participation in your campaign. For example, a giveaway in which one of the rules for winning is that an entrant must โfollowโ your Facebook profile is a great way of achieving the objective of growing your follower count. Just make sure that the product or service youโre giving away is both valuable enough for people to care and relevant to your business (eg: for a restaurant, a dinner for two is more enticing than a $5 gift card or a coupon for free ice skating lessons).
- Discounts: If your objective involves asking your followers to do something a bit more involved (make a purchase, take a survey, sign up for a newsletter, etc), then a one-time discount offered to all participants can be a valuable incentive. Weโve all been at the store and been told we could โget 10% off your next purchase by taking the survey on your receipt,โ and that same logic applies to social campaigns too.
- Exposure: One of the fun parts of social media is that often, people just want to be recognized and love hearing a shout-out from their favorite brands. If youโre trying to increase your reach on Instagram, simply ask users to tag you in pictures of them visiting your location or enjoying your product and say that the best pics will be shared onto the businessโs personal page!
Stay Actively Involved
This is yet another reminder that social media is–wait for it–social. People expect engaged, thoughtful responses to their comments, concerns, and especially questions. While running your campaign, make sure youโre keeping an eye on the platforms to the best of your abilities so you can thank participants, (politely) address potential criticism, and answer questions about the campaign or your business in a timely manner. It doesnโt have to be a 1-minute turnaround time, but if youโre taking days to respond, youโre missing out on great brand-building and customer service opportunities. And remember–engagement and conversations help increase reach.
Track Your Progress
Lastly, never forget that one of the biggest benefits of using social media platforms is the wealth of behind-the-scenes analytics at your disposal 24/7. If youโre consistently responding to your followers, you should also be consistently tracking your data analytics. If a paid campaign isnโt performing up to your objectives, donโt waste money–change it on the fly! If youโre finding a particular type of post is getting tons of engagement, change your calendar to include more similar content. Campaigns donโt have to be (and absolutely shouldnโt be) โset and forgetโ situations, and the more you pay attention to campaign performance at the moment, the more likely you are to see positive results at the end.
Social media campaigns are certainly a โstep-upโ in work from basic social management, but they can be hugely effective ways of reaching your business goals and objectives. They also come with a lot of work and a lot of questions, and Skol Marketing is here to help you every step of the way. If youโd prefer one-on-one guidance or would like to discuss how our assistance can help you reach your social media objectives, please donโt hesitate to contact the local social media experts at Skol Marketing.
