How To Create A Successful Social Media Campaign

How To Create A Successful Social Media Campaign

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  SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA Answeringthe5KeySocialMediaQuestions HowtoCreatea Successful SocialMedia Campaign HowtoCreatea Successful SocialMedia Campaign
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  SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA Part 1 CreateaSocialMediaCampaignPlan PAGE1HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN One of the first things that you should do before starting a social media campaign is look at the overall social media strategy and make sure that it is aligned with your campaign objectives. Like all marketing campaigns, the most successful social media campaigns begin with a plan. First and foremost, in order to understand the main objective, you must ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Are you trying to establish a brand identity? Are you looking to connect with potential consumers? Or are you doing this to improve your search engine optimization (SEO)? Understanding your main objective is the foundation from which the rest of your social media campaign should grow. This will help keep your campaign focused, thus increasing your chances for success. Once you have defined your main objective, start setting your goals. Make them as concrete, measurable, and achievable as possible. Consider for example if you were a company that was looking to increase consumer engagement. A goal for this objective might be to increase the total number of engaged users by 25% or, would be aiming to increase weekly total reach by 35%. Or for example if you were a company that was looking to increase lead generation through social media and you were currently getting five new leads a month, setting a goal to get 75 new leads in the next 6 months is more realistic than setting a goal to get 500 new leads. By creating specific and realistic goals, you’ll be able to rate your performance based on real values.
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  Part 1 CreateaSocialMediaCampaignPlan PAGE2HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN Say your goal doesn’t involve a number. That’s okay, especially if you are still in the trial phase and your company does not yet have a formal process for setting objectives with social metrics. But in any case, you still need to determine which tactics will be most beneficial to reaching your main objective. That is, which tactic will allow you to manage the best possible social media campaign? If your main objective is to generate awareness, your goal could be to develop monthly social media content that inspires your audience. Once your goals are set, and they feel realistic and achievable, your next step is to map out the campaign. The possibilities are endless if you can think creatively and keep your end goals in mind at all times. Building a successful social media campaign requires a good deal of involvement, both in terms of keeping up with all the latest trends and in maintaining ongoing relationships with customers and fans. Social media is a two-way conversation between the brand and the audience. If the company ignores the second part of the equation, then the marketing effort is most likely doomed to fail. Buildingasuccessfulsocialmedia campaignrequiresagooddealof involvement. SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA
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  Part 2 Answerthe5KeySocialMediaQuestionsbyListening PAGE3HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN So it is time to start answering what I call the 5 key questions that will help you select the best possible tactics to build a successful social media campaign. It is at this point when listening becomes most important. Social media monitoring can deliver a vast amount of data, allowing marketers to get a better idea of who their audiences are and what they think about the products, ads and campaigns. For example, knowing that your online consumers are women will change the focus of your marketing campaigns and the content that you release. You receive a vast amount of up-to-the-minute data.. Every insight that you can glean from the data is an insight you can use to improve your campaign. You will be able to develop and adapt the content of your campaigns around the insight that you gather. Listening Understanding Analyzing HOWyouraudience feelaboutyour campaign? WHEREyou postyour campaign? WHATyour competitors aredoing? Whichtopics interestyour audience? WHOisyour audience? 5. 2. 3.4. 1. SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA
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  DetermineWHOisyourtargetaudience1 PAGE 4HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN Determine whoyour target audience is. Who specifically are the prospects and customers with whom you want to engage on social media? The more you know about your audience, the easier it will be to engage with them on social media, thus the easier it will be to get the results you’re looking for. Create a set of marketing personas for the segments you want to reach. Understand your target market’s point of view and activities. Think demographics. What are your target demographics, interests and priorities? Consider influencers, buyers and end users. Createaset ofmarketing personasforthe segments youwanttoreach. SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA
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  LearnWHICHtopicsinterestyouraudience2 PAGE 5HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN One ofthe key elements of a successful social media campaign is to know which topics interest your audience. The prospect interests can be a bigger benefit than knowing a name or email address early on, because with prospect interests, you can reach the right audience with the right information. You need to know what are they talking about and how they talk about it. You should know the context of the conversation. Know their senses of humor: what entertains them; what makes them laugh; what jokes they like to share. You need to start listening to more than just customer comments about your products. It is imperative that you start analyzing what topics are of interest to the audience within your industry. With this information you can start to see any emerging trends that could be occurring within your sector. This will allow you to start creating content that will attract more potential consumers, build stronger relationships, develop better campaigns and of course, generate more buzz. Finally, perhaps most importantly, you will be able to develop content for you campaign with the tone and sense of humor that will catch your audience’s attention and engage them. Also consider your audience’s social media behavior. Does your market lurk, share, or create social media content? What incentives will make them act?. You can fill your Facebook page with posts but if they do not interest your target audience you will not get the desired results. Another key point is to detect a social media phenomenon. If you can effectively select and monitor key words that are related to your brand, you will greatly increase your chances of identifying a social media phenomenon. This was the case of Toddy, who was able to take advantage of the One Direction album release. The goal was to break the record for most unique views on Vevo in one day. This gave fans the incentive of sharing the page with their peers, since they could not refresh the page to increase the number of visits. Toddy’s community managers identified this phenomenon and started helping the fans to get the needed amount of unique views by creating the #Toddyrectioners Campaign. As a result, Toddy became the first Argentinean brand to reach a global trending topic in an organic way. SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA
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  UnderstandWHEREyoupostyourcampaigncomments3 PAGE 6HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN A commonmeasure of success among marketers is the number and quality of mentions that a campaign receives via social media. Where you post your content can determine how often your article is shared. Having your work in front of the right people will generate conversation about your brand. So it is important to track the sites that have most influence, indentify the people who are influential and understand which site generate the most buzz. With this information, you can learn which sites and influencers are likely to be interested in your next campaign allowing you to focus your efforts and create strategies for future planning. Whereyoupostyourcontent candeterminehowoftenyourarticleis shared. SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA
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  AndwhynotseeWHATyourcompetitorsaredoing4 PAGE 7HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN Another sourceof information to identify hot topics, influencers, media outlets and industry sites could be your own competitors. This includes brand competitors and/or target audience competitors. For example, Coca Cola might want to look after Nike or Adidas since they share the same target audience. You can monitor the different activities the competition is undertaking, such as specific campaigns and analyze the results. You can analyze the humorous tone they are using to communicate with their audiences. The humorous tone should fit your brand’s voice and should appeal to your target audience. Are you gentle and family-friendly? Or edgy and a little out-of-bounds? These insights will help you to choose wisely when matching your tone for your audience. You can also monitor any weaknesses that the opposition may have and take advantage of them. Seeing what others may be doing differently will help you adapt and intensify your efforts. By undertaking these activities, you will be able to establish yourself and grow your own online presence. It is not so much about constantly Tweeting or pushing out content, but being aware of where they should be placed. This is an ongoing process with searches and queries that need to be monitored and updated regularly to adapt to changes within the industry. However, when conducted correctly, these tips will certainly improve your visibility online. SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA
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  AnalyzeHOWyouraudiencefeelsaboutyourcampaign5 PAGE 8HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN Once youhave launched your campaign, you need to start monitoring how your audience and consumers feel about it. Do they like it? Are they talking about it? Are they commenting about it? And most importantly, are they engaging with the campaign in the way you planned? Brand sentiment can be measured through analyzing the data collated by social media tools. By looking at the sentiment, you can have a greater understanding of how online users feel about your campaign and what issues need to be improved upon. With this information, you can determine the effectiveness of your campaign. You need to start listening to the conversations surrounding your campaign. You don’t want to miss out on the essential information. Any negative conversation that arises during the campaign needs to be addressed to make sure that it does not smear the whole campaign. The good news is that by listening, you will be aware right away that there is an issue; you will know where the problem is and what it is about. All this information will give you the tools to create alternatives solutions to fix the problem. Brandsentiment canbe measured throughanalyzingthe datacollatedby socialmediatools. SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA
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  PAGE 9HOWTOCREATEASUCCESSFULSOCIALMEDIACAMPAIGN Now thatyour campaign has been implemented, it is necessary to monitor and analyze your performance. You can obtain data from different sources, like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics, but what is imperative is knowing how to analyze it. Here you will have to look after your objectives and select the best metrics that will help you analyze the success or failure of your campaign. A couple of questions to ask are: Did you meet your goals? What, in your opinion, was the biggest contributing factor to those outcomes? At what point did you see a spike or a drop-off? Also, when the time comes to measure the effectiveness of a social media campaign, another good tool that should be at the top of your To Do list, is social media monitoring. This will allow you to examine what is and isn’t working in your campaigns. By looking at the data and deriving insights from them, you’ll be able to make course corrections and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns. Nowthatyourcampaignhasbeen implemented,itisnecessarytomonitor andanalyzeyourperformance. Part 3 MeasureyourCampaign SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA
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  About Socialmetrix About theAuthor Socialmetrix is apioneer company in social media analytics with large corporate clients in more than 10 countries. We have been developing and providing technology to harness the power of social business intelligence since 2008. Our mission is to deliver our clients the best social media analytics solutions, as a means of combining product technology, local expertise, and professional services. Luciana Sario has broad experience in online MKT. She is currently collaborating with socialmetrix as a Marketing consultant. For more than 10 years she has been researching and analyzing the changes and transformations in this field. Her expertise has allowed her to develop innovative marketing solutions to maximize revenue and growth for companies such us IDC, IBM, Oracle and RIM, among several others. Check out our blog to be up to date in social media SocialMediaAnalytics Formoreinformation GetthelatestSocialMediaTrends Ifyouneedanyhelpwithyoursocialmedia monitoringpleasecontactusat socialmetrix @socialmetrix [email protected] SPECIALREPORTSSOCIALMEDIA