Have you seen the famous “Live There“ video campaign of Airbnb on Facebook[1], Twitter and other top social media sites? The creators of this social media campaign did a great job of attracting the attention of travellers who were looking for a good accommodation in their travel destinations. As a result, the campaign video received 11 million views. As you can see, creativity in social media is an in-demand skill in this digital age that’s very much needed by businesses who want to grow their customer[2] base.
As the trend shows, people are particularly drawn by visual social media. You just have to let your creativity flow through your social media campaigns to make all these things work. Otherwise, nobody notices. But how do you get creative, especially when the pressure is on, with all the big players in your industry swarming everywhere in social media?
Wait, you don’t really need to compete with what they’re doing now. What you need to do, is to focus on being creative in your brand in reaching out to your audience. And you can achieve that by practicing what you’re probably doing every day. That would be running through a process of laying out all your ideas, filtering the best ones and working them out into execution. Sounds simple?
In this post, allow us to guide you through this process of how you can be creative with your social media campaigns.
Just like any other project that you would want to start, you have to give your campaign a good, memorable name. Take a look at Charmin, a top toilet paper company that uses social media. They called their campaign #tweetfromtheseat to promote their brand. It’s a funny and sweet name that captured the smiles of their brand users, which made the campaign clicked by a huge audience.
To be able to invoke your creative self, you need to have clarity as to why you’re running this social media marketing campaign. Real creativity reveals itself from our mental reserves when what we do, connects to a bigger purpose. This way, there’s more room to exercise the freedom of expression. Yes, you want your brand to be recognized, you want to establish rapport with your online community, you want more customers and sales.
But what exactly are you trying to achieve and what specific outcome are you expecting from this effort? A good answer that will truly help you be more creative in following the next steps, relates to something specific and yet is big enough to leave a lasting impression. Consider these lines as an example, “Through this social media campaign, I want to change the lives of those who are starting an online business by showing them through videos that they can do anything they set their minds to. I expect 50 million views or more for our Youtube videos and 5 million clicks to our website.”
Now that you have clear goals on what you want to achieve in implementing a social media strategy, planning the campaign details comes next. Your campaign goals can only be effective when your interactive social media ideas are targeted to a specific audience. You need to know who you’re talking to. You need to have information on their demographics. Simply said, you have to research.
| Strategy | Description | Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| Guest Blogging | Collaborate with influencers to create guest blog[3] posts on their platforms. | Reach new audiences and establish thought leadership. |
| Takeovers | Allow influencers to take over your social media accounts for a day to share their content and engage with your audience. | Increase engagement and follower growth. |
| Giveaways | Partner with influencers to host giveaways where their followers can win your products or services. | Generate buzz and increase brand visibility. |
| Influencer Reviews | Ask influencers to review your products or services and share their experiences with their followers. | Build trust, credibility, and drive sales. |
There are so many ways to research the segment of people you want to reach out in your social media campaigns. Where better to go than social media sites? For instance, Facebook and Twitter each have platforms that can be looked into to dig demographic and interest information.
Gain insights from latest posts and trending terms. Find out what your customers are talking about. Use Facebook analytics or Twitter followers analysis tools. You will understand better who your audience is and what they want. This way, you can learn their language and use it in campaigns.
Alternatively, you can ask questions directly to your target community. Talk to them in different social media networks. You can also run a survey and let them answer. Make sure to ask something about their interests, preferences, what they dislike and their challenges. One smart way to find out more about your audience is to research your competition. Go ahead and visit their social media profiles to learn the conversations they initiate and how they’re engaging their followers. Also observe the levels of engagement they receive for their own campaigns.
Now that you know who you are talking to, you can finally talk to them. Yes!
Whether you write it on a piece of paper or use a mind map software, just spill out all ideas that come to mind. Then it’s time to distill what really matters. You need to identify the common point of interest between your brand and your audience. Come up with something that both of you can connect with. This should fire you up with exciting social campaign ideas. Like for example, if your product is coffee beans, and you know that most coffee drinkers are readers, you can relate with “What books have you been reading these days?” campaign. You can build a campaign around a free giveaway offering books as gifts. Or, you can create a campaign that sparks interest about a particular book that will boost your brand awareness (e.g. photo sharing of people reading books with their coffee mugs.) Just with this idea, you can get your creative gears into action.
It’s time to review the ideas you wrote down. Rate them from 1 to 10 or however you like to do it, 1 being the best, 10 being poor. Simply decide which campaign idea is the final one that you’ll take. Good job! You now have your social media campaign plan.
Not all campaigns may be appropriate for all social media channels. For example, posting videos and images are great in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter but not okay in other text-based social media networks. Identify social networks that are effective for your brand. Prepare well thought-out content to publish. Tailor your content for each specific network. Think of it like this, if you’re using Twitter, what hashtags are best to use? If you’re publishing in Youtube, what video tags are the best?
When you’ve deployed your social media campaigns, you need to know how it performed, whether it did good or didn’t reach your target goals. It’s a good practice to identify ahead the metrics you’re going to track and later measure. For example, you can measure the number of referred visits to your website, when you set-up a Facebook campaign that invites people to participate in photo sharing on your website. When you’re able to measure any metrics, you can immediately tell what works. Then you can repeat those campaigns that work and stop those that don’t. At the end of the day, you’ll be happy to see that your creativity pays off.
Don’t limit your campaigns to the bandwagon. Go with your unique, exhilarating and unconventional ideas. Sometimes breaking the status quo is just what’s needed to make your audience excited about your brand and message. Go beyond boring and try out new things in your industry. See how your audience responds. Course-correct when necessary.
Are you ready to put your ideas into motion? Do you have your next social media campaign in mind for your brand? You don’t need to go through all the mumbo-jumbo of campaign creation, management and measurement. With the right social media marketing tools, everything is but a click away. That’s not an over-simplification. When you have your own campaign ideas ready, you only need to plug them in using the right tool.
Take sociamonials.com, for instance. It’s a great social media management software that will bring all your precious social media campaign ideas into life. Using its top-of-the-line tracking system, Sociamonials will help you succeed in winning the hearts of your target audience by letting you run campaigns that surely work. Test it and see for yourself. Sign-up for the free trial.
To measure the success of your social media campaign, track metrics like engagement, reach, conversions, and click-through rates. These numbers will give you a clear understanding of how well your campaign is performing and whether it’s achieving your goals.
To effectively target a specific audience, you need to employ smart strategies and personalize your content. Consider their interests, demographics, and behavior, and tailor your social media campaigns accordingly for maximum impact.
To ensure your social media campaigns align with your brand image and messaging, maintain a consistent tone, style, and visual identity across all platforms. Use your brand guidelines as a foundation for creating engaging and creative content.
When running social media campaigns, it’s important to be aware of legal considerations and ethical guidelines. Ensure your content follows copyright laws, doesn’t mislead or offend, and respects user privacy.
To effectively manage customer feedback and respond to social media comments, listen to your customers, address their concerns promptly, and provide helpful and proactive responses. Engage with your audience and show them that their opinions and experiences matter to you.
English 
Español 
Français