Social media campaigns are organized marketing strategies that use at least one social media channel to strengthen information or attitudes about a brand, service, or product.
However, you are advised not to be limited to social media channels only − you should also include Google in your mix. Depending on your market, the popular social media channels you want to focus on are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Snapchat.
This article will provide some great ideas for enhancing your social media campaigns. With social media, you do not need the services of a fancy ad studio. Instead, you can manage your social media channels with a virtual social media assistant (a remote worker specializing in social media). However, what is the purpose of a social media campaign?
What is the purpose of a social media campaign?
A social media campaign can be utilized to reach various business goals. These can include brand visibility and awareness, such as exposure to crowds or a particular target market. Social media campaigns generate or solidify certain brand sentiments.
They sway your target market by identifying or reflecting on your brand. They might view the brand as caring, reliable, or innovative. Additional common goals of social media campaigns include increased sales (conversions), loyalty, or engagement.
Time to brainstorm
Plus, it would help if you had a plan. And this is what this guide is about – to help you.
Brainstorm your social media campaign themes.
This starts with effective planning and a brainstorming session, in which you can approach problem-solving using lateral thinking. During a brainstorming session, you can harvest fresh and creative concepts to solve your problem and, more importantly, set out your social media strategies.
Consider which media you are going to use.
There are several social media platforms to choose from. Each has a slightly different market segment, meaning additional content should be produced.
Your creative sizes must also be optimized to match the various social media platforms’ best practice guidelines.
If your product is apparent and you want to target a younger demographic, you should consider using Instagram. Nearly half of its users are aged between 18 and 34 years old. Make sure your images are unique and your photo quality is excellent.
You might need to arrange a professional photo shoot to ensure your images meet the highest standards. Your opportunities are endless.
Now well established, Facebook is still a space you should use—it has over 2.7 billion users globally. It does attract a slightly older crowd, and they like a combination of great images with catchy text.
However, use their live streaming since the engagement rate is 17% higher on live streaming than on a scheduled post. Also, you can use live streaming for master classes to boost your followers’ value and thus help increase your brand value.
TikTok
TikTok is A new yet interesting platform with over 800 million users. This channel is more video-content driven, mostly 15 seconds long.
It is viewed by a much younger group than Instagram, so keep it fun, fresh, and crazy.
Still extremely popular, Pinterest is great if you want to create mood boards and share and find great ideas; like Facebook, it combines visuals with text. Facebook is straightforward to use to engage with others.
You might include emails in your campaign to get the word out to your existing client base. Setting up newsletters – note: fewer links and images can help you avoid the spam filter while making the copy engaging and clear.
After all, the entire goal is to drive and activate your loyal clients to join you on your social media channels. More so, with newsletters, you can collect a wealth of data.
Consider your content carefully.
If you are a florist, go for color and more color. However, keep your branding and visuals in mind. Otherwise, you can produce a wealth of content, from webinars, podcasts, videos, GIFs, photos, photo albums, or collections of images to plain, simple text.
It all depends on the message you want to convey and your imagination. Do remember − you can make it enjoyable by using influencers. Just make sure that these individuals match your brand.
Going through an agency will be a good idea to lessen the risks. Selecting the best brand influencer can drive more traffic to your profiles than you can do single-handedly.
Also, ensure that you follow regulations. Include a clause that the influencer should add a note in the form of a #ad to indicate that their post is a paid ad. Don’t try to fool your clients − by being dishonest, you will lose clients rather than gain them.
Take note of your competition.
Look at what your competitors do to get some ideas, but do not copy them. Use their ideas and improve on them.
Your brand is not the same as theirs, so if you copy them, you are including their brand in yours, which can be problematic. If you are unsure, ask yourself what they did – whether they used videos or GIFs, or are they using Facebook instead of TikTok?
Adjust to the buyer’s journey.
Not every piece of content you generate will achieve your goals successfully, primarily because you will target a wide variety of people at different stages of your sales funnel.
If you need the inspiration to produce original social content, change your focus to creating content explicitly where your clients are in their buying journey.
Awareness
In the awareness stage, you aim to boost the number of people who recognize your brand, its services, and its products. The content you produce at this stage must be attention-grabbing, but doesn’t necessarily have to speak openly about what your brand offers.
Your goal is to capture your spectators’ attention. There are a small number of techniques you can employ to accomplish this:
Use Images
Posts with images generate 659% more engagement than text-only posts. Having the correct visuals in your social media posts is critical to grabbing the attention of your clients, who swiftly move from one profile to the next.
However, your visuals should be both unforgettable and compelling. Your clients should also be able to grasp their meaning and retain the information quickly, so don’t overcomplicate things.
Share user-generated content
Save some energy and time by distributing content that your followers have created. This will help proactively boost interest and promote your brand while enhancing your clients’ egos.
In addition, let us face it: we could all use a little ego boost now and then. Your clients will be so thrilled by your brand sharing their social media content that they will become your new influencers. They will share info with their followers. In the end, that is a win-win situation.
Engage with your fans.
The wonderful thing about social media is that it permits two-way communication between the followers and your brand. Ask your customers questions, comment on their posts, or take a poll to engage in discussions they already have on the platform.
The more active you are on the various social media channels, the better your odds are of boosting your brand awareness. Ongoing fan interaction will be a great addition to your total social strategy.
Connect your social media platforms to your website
During the deliberation phase, you must use social media to drive traffic to your blog or website.
Your website centers all the information about your brand and your products or services. Your brand’s blog and website can offer white papers or e-books to learn more.
Share customer testimonials.
Your brand supporters will often share encouraging reviews of your brand on social media. Use those client endorsements to tell a story on your social media channels.
During the deliberation phase, your clients seek feedback from other clients that will eventually sway their buying decisions. Some 92% of individuals trust endorsements from natural persons.
Use your social media for customer service.
Your fans on social media may want to interact frequently with you online. They might send you a shout-out via social media; nonetheless, they may also have trepidations or recommendations for your brand.
Do not be afraid to interact with your clients by replying to their queries or acknowledging them for their remarks.
Do not forget to analyze the power of your work.
After you have completed your social media campaign, you need to analyze it. The data you generate from this will be helpful for your next brainstorming session. You will know what worked, what did not, and what can be changed.
You will also learn more about your clients and where they are in the sales funnel, which will help you when you create your content.
To recap: How to Generate Stellar Social Media Campaigns
To know whether the content is good enough for your social media pages, consider this: It’s not “good enough for social media” if…:
- It is not good enough to embody your company or brand
- It does not tell a story; the image is blurry, grainy, or dark
- You wouldn’t want your content to be seen by a vast audience
- If you wouldn’t share it on your more traditional channels, like your website or a poster
- You would not want the content to be shareable on social media
- Your content was not proofread; it is just not engaging
Do not post it if you don’t want this to be your first impression of your brand, if you did a rushed job since you did not have the time, or if you did not put much effort into it.