In this day and age, running a social media campaign has to be a top priority. From some of the top brands to the least- the hashtag campaign is visible and prevalent across all industries.
Why? Contests and campaigns are the fastest way to increase engagement on social media. While brands may decide to launch social media marketing campaigns for a variety of reasons such as, to build a robust online community, celebrate a company milestone, launch a new product, and so on, they are ultimately looking to increase brand awareness, customer engagement and brand affinity.
At The WRIGHT Consult (TWC), it’s our job to help brands run incredible social media campaigns. Whether this is your first social media marketing campaign or you’re a seasoned expert – let’s look at five things you need to do in order to run your best social media campaign to date.
1. Set your campaign goals
What is the main goal of the campaign? Does your brand want to increase social media followers? Generate more buzz online? Accumulate brand mentions? The first step in the process is to outline what you want the campaign to accomplish. Find your focus and identify how your social campaign will help you achieve your business goals. At TWC, we initially send out a questionnaire to our clients to address these key questions and start the process in developing an effective campaign.
2. Choose your social networks
Next, once you’ve determined the goals of your social media campaign, you’ll want to decide which marketing channels to collect customer content on. The marketing channels you choose must reflect your target audience. Whether Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google Plus, YouTube, Snapchat etc; it’s important to identify your buyer’s persona and know where to meet them. This will then give you a clear idea where to focus. For instance, if most of your customers congregate on LinkedIn, you may want to make this platform a priority.
3. Engage with your campaign’s participants
One of the most important things you can do to improve your campaign’s social ROI is to engage with its participants. As customers begin to post content with your hashtag, pay close attention and make an effort to “like” and “comment” on all positive submissions. When customers see your brand engaging with real people, it helps to validate your social presence and humanize your brand.
4. Display your collected content
Once you’ve collected a pool of content, you’ll want to put it to use. Select the highest quality and most on-brand content to display on your marketing channels. It should be displayed both online (i.e., email marketing, product pages, etc.) and offline (i.e., live displays, packaging, etc.) Celebrating your customers — with their permission of course — on your brand’s owned media is one of the best ways to increase customer loyalty and retention.
5. Measure and analyze your campaign’s success
This is the fun part; as you begin to wrap up your campaign, assess the progress made on your original goals. Expect to measure both quantitative and qualitative results. By analyzing your campaign’s submissions, you may uncover surprising new information — such as how your customers are actually using your products post-purchase, etc.
If you follow the above five steps, your social media marketing campaign is guaranteed to see results. But what is the secret sauce of a fantastic social media campaign? Above all else, keep your campaign authentic and fun. If you’re engaging with and celebrating your customers, your campaign is bound to succeed.
If you need further help with social media management or digital marketing on a whole, reach out to us at TWC. We will help you with the right strategy.
Let us know your feedback below or send us an e-mail to info@thewrightconsult.com, we would love to hear from you!
About the author:Andre Wright is a visionary and successful entrepreneur who passionately helps organizations leverage the power of digital marketing to grow and improve their businesses. He is a Partner & Head of Digital strategy at The WRIGHT Consult, LLC and has been successfully helping businesses for many years with online strategy and conversion optimization tactics.
