Three steps for creating social media campaigns with impact

Before the internet became a one-stop-shop for information, the number of touchpoints a brand had with its target audience was limited.

Today, with the internet at our fingertips, brands must do much more to appease, attract and retain consumers. As such, communicating with end-users in a timely, human and professional manner across all channels is a top priority for many organisations.

Social media has emerged as the default marketing channel for many brands, enabling them to communicate their personality and key messages, as well as having direct conversations with their followers.

Regardless of whether a brand is starting on its social journey, or looking to refresh its approach, all organisations need to think ahead and focus on three key areas:

• Developing a social media strategy
• Conduct a content audit
• Identify and deploy a community management platform which meets your measurement needs

Let’s take a look at what these steps entail:

Develop a social media strategy

This is perhaps one of the most important, but most commonly overlooked steps of any social campaign. Before a brand even thinks about posting on its social channels, it must define what it wants to achieve, when, and how it’s going to get there. Ask yourself:

• Who do we need to target? Do we have a target persona? What content works for our audience?
• What do we have to say?
• How can we say it? How is this different to what others are saying?
• What is the business goal?
• What social channels should we use to achieve our goals?
• What do we want the audience to do after engaging with the social post? What action/reaction do we want to inspire?
• Are there any relevant industry hashtags which should be used?
• What’s the process for dealing with inbound enquires or complaints?
• Do we have data from our social media analytics over the last 12 months to use as a reference point from which to measure progress?

Get started with effective social media content

A social media campaign is only as good as the content it amplifies. Whatever type of content you’re leveraging, it must include a clear call to action.  How you communicate this should almost certainly include video: it’s estimated that by 2022, video streaming will make up 82% of global internet traffic, something which all brands should capitalise on. Other types of content you should consider include:

• SlideShares
• eBooks
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Company blogs

How you present this content is also important. On platforms such as Twitter, which are primarily used on mobile devices, it is important that profiles do not resemble a wall of text. Statistics show that posts with branded visuals perform 94% better than those without. Relevant images will help your copy stand out and can stop users from simply scrolling through without engagement.

To get the most from a social media campaign, I’d also recommend making good use of community management tools such as Sprout Social, or Percolate. These offer features such as reporting against key metrics and social listening. There are many solutions available, so before you purchase a licence, make good use of the free trial to ensure that it meets your needs.

Measure the outcomes of your social media campaign

In order to measure success, businesses must understand what they are looking to achieve from the campaign.

This could be:

• Driving traffic to a specific destination (e.g. homepage of a website, a gated asset, or event sign-up)
• Increase in relevant followers resulting in lead-generation
• Increase in share of voice against specific key messages on social channels
• Increase in post, media and/or video engagement rates, against your benchmark levels
• Increase in positive reactions to your content, from your target audience

So, that was a whistle-stop tour of how a brand can strategically approach and achieve success with social media engagement. If you are interested in enhancing your social media presence, or even introducing new segments such as social influencer relations, get in touch in with Babel, and find out how we can help you!