Social media is a great medium to improve brand awareness among customers, to engage customers in exchange for long-term loyalty, and to boost product sales. But if not executed efficiently, it can prove to be a waste of money and effort. In this post, I’ll talk about the seven elements of a successful social media campaign.
Targeted
Every social media campaign is unique on its own. But, all successful social media campaigns have identical set of success criteria and objectives. You should take your time and put some effort in thinking about your goal, the target audience and the expected success. Are you willing to improve the brand awareness among a fresh target audience or to inform, educate, and engage the existing customers? Do you wish to activate thought leaders and key influencers? Do you want to create buzz about your newly launched product or want to improve sales of an existing product line? What actions should be taken by the target audience? How will you monetize the engagement and traffic you generate?
Focused
Many people simply throw money at their social media campaigns and hope that it will come back to them with full value. But, it’s not true. Your campaign should be focused on specific issues, competitor or customer pain-point. Make sure you are conducting a direct response type social media campaign. With focus, you can easily create the appropriate content and message that recognize a set of actions your customers need to take.
Measurable
The success of your social media campaign can be measured by establishing appropriate metrics. It becomes straightforward, if the objectives and the actions to be taken by the customers are clearly defined. One of the scary things about social media campaigns is, once messages are sent out, you cannot regulate its performance and results.
Your social media campaign may produce unexpected results. If you fail to hit your targets, don’t conclude your campaign as a failure too quickly. In such situation, take a close look at all the metrics and reallocate your resources.
Great Content
During the initial days of the adoption of social media into the field of digital marketing, any creative and original campaign was capable of creating lots of buzz. But in the present crowded marketplace, things have changed and become a bit difficult. You have to work harder now to get the attention of your customers. The most important factor for a successful social media campaign is to create a great content represented in an engaging and interesting way. If you are familiar with the interests and pain-points of the customers, you would have better idea of what make them dance and excited.
Simple
You should keep your social media campaign simple and immediate. Creativity is good up to an extent. If you are asking too much from your particular audience, they may feel overwhelmed and move on. You should offer something to your customers they would accept as rewards for their engagement. You are not restricted to a set of offers. Most soft offers would do as long as your social media campaign is relevant, engaging and fun.
Medium and Message
A great message can help in creating a great campaign, but it’s not enough. For your campaign to be successful, your message needs to be communicated via appropriate the channels. You cannot completely rely on just The Big Three – Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. What if your target audience doesn’t hang out on these places? Additionally, it has been observed that people behave differently on different platforms. You need to find the perfect match of platform and message.
Your campaign should be completely integrated with all your advertising, marketing and public relations activities. This will increase the impact of your social media campaign on your audience.
Memorable
Most successful campaigns establish an emotional bond between the subject product and the target customers by offering a combination of a great content and an experience. You should engage your customers in an ongoing conversations and show you care about them.
