In this digital age, businesses have to find ways to stay ahead of their competitors in order to remain in business. As such, they have to always focus on capturing the attention of as many people as possible on social media. This is because social media has become the biggest digital marketing tool where brands can thrive. The different social media platforms available today are the most effective channels where marketers can engage customers, promote brands, interact with prospects and grow businesses.
The result of this is that businesses are increasingly tapping into the opportunities that these platforms provide by using different marketing strategies. Today, companies are allocating huge budgets to social media marketing in a bid to create avenues for communicating directly with customers. But, with the numerous companies using social media platforms to market their products, businesses have to find ways to get noticed in a space that is increasingly getting crowded.
So, what can you do to make your marketing campaign stand out? Here are 9 social media campaign ideas to help your business stand out:
1. Pick the right social media channel and invest in it
Before you roll out a social media campaign, you need to determine which social channels your target audience uses. The social media platforms that are available out there are not equal. This means that not all businesses that use them get the same results. Some register amazing results while others don’t. For instance, B2C companies tend to register great results on Instagram while B2B companies do incredibly well on LinkedIn and not Instagram.
This is important because without this knowledge, your marketing efforts will be futile and a waste of resources – they will not yield the results you desire. Of importance to understand is that customers have preferences and in social media usage, statistics show that persons of different age brackets have a preference for different social channels.
Statistics show that adults aged 50 and above use Facebook and Youtube as compared to younger persons. LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram are largely preferred by persons aged between 20 and 40 years while Twitter and Snapchat are common among persons aged between 20 and 30. Depending on the demographics of your target audience, these statistics should play a critical role in determining the social channel that you choose to run your marketing campaigns.
2. Craft a content strategy
Most marketers fail in their social media marketing efforts because they launch campaigns without developing a content strategy. Successful social marketing does not happen by accident; rather, it is a result of deliberate, strategic planning. To succeed in your social media campaign, approach it the way you would a blog. Start by looking at the big picture and create content that resonates with your target audience. Having a content strategy helps you in running a successful social media campaign by:
- Setting goals for the campaign and tracking progress
- Enabling you to identify opportunities for making the campaign successful
- Creating content that captures and converts prospects
- Reducing marketing cost by maximizing the available human resources
Before you start sharing content on social media, take time to map seasonal content that you need to share with your audience. Also, map content related to business events such as launches that your business has scheduled. Collaborate with your marketing staff so you know which events are coming up and have a strategy on how best they can be promoted on social media. Create an editorial calendar so your social media team is clear on when the content should be shared on social media and which social channels it should be shared on.
3. Make visuals an integral part of your content
It is an open secret that visual content appeals more to social media viewers than text content. In fact, statistics show that visual content is shared more than any other form of content with 65% of users being visual learners. Whether the visuals take the form of static images, quote graphics, infographics or videos, they have a way of stirring user engagement on social media.
Whatever social media channel you choose to use, posts that features content attract social shares. A good example is Facebook where posts that feature images attract 2.3x more engagement than posts that don’t. To increase the success chances of your social media campaigns, create a pool of images and videos for use in brand promotion.
You can do this by hiring a professional photographer or videographer to take high-quality images or create high-quality videos. Alternatively, if you do not budget to hire professional photographers, consider searching through license-free sites such as Stocksnap.io or Pixabay to find interesting images that resonate with your brand to boost your visual content for free. The other way to generate visual content is to share photos of yourself, product images and live videos that reflect the substance of your business. This kind of content enables your followers to put a face to your business.
4. Make your branding on social media consistent
Your branding on all social media accounts should be consistent to avoid confusion and communicate a distinct feel and look that makes your posts appealing to your customers and followers. This is because your presence in this space dictates the performance of your brand. With most customers turning to social channels to research brands prior to purchase, you need to ensure that your branding remains consistent for easy recognition.
Some of the branding elements that you need to pay attention to are the graphics and design of your brand. Essentially, the appearance of your brand is largely determined by your colors, logo, layout, and design. Its visual identity is largely influenced by how all these elements work. Consider using different customization tools to create pages that are visually stunning and reflective of your brand’s message and personality to ensure that your customers are able to recognize you with ease.
5. Listen to your audience and anticipate its needs
To anticipate the needs of your target audience, you need to be aware of what content they will find helpful, content that will encourage them to engage. To do this, you need to understand your customers then apply that understanding in your marketing strategies, including social media. One way your business can enhance its understanding of target audience needs is by being proactive. In addition to engaging them via social channels, businesses need to make their followers feel respected and valued by seeking their advice and opinions on specific topics.
An easy way to do this is to pose important questions that are related to the industry or core issues that the businesses seek to address and inviting followers to share their thoughts. This move is likely to generate discussions among your followers and serves as a great tool for capturing feedback about the products or services that a business offers. In addition, it shows your target audience that they are important to you and demonstrates your trust in them. In return, your business gets to understand them better, placing it in a better position to anticipate their needs.
6. Embrace social media analytics
Social analytics are critical to businesses, whether big or small. Overlooking them could mean missing out on important insights on the success or failure of a social media campaign as well as information on what your followers are really interested in. The data that your business gets by analyzing the performance of its content, as well as the campaign reach, is at the heart of identifying strategies for maintaining and expanding engagement with its customers.
Using social media analytics, businesses are able to get a sense of how their followers feel – what they like and don’t like as well as mitigate complaints. At the same time, analytics provide feedback that helps businesses measure the effectiveness of content so they know which content is stimulating interest and which is not. In reviewing analytics, a business should not just limit itself to the performance of its social media posts, it should also review the performance of posts shared by its competitors. For instance, a business may think that video content posted on Facebook would be most effective but after looking at analytics, it may realize that its target audience engages more with Instagram stories shared by its competitors.
Based on analytic trends, a business can review its content strategy so as to align its content with what is working for its followers and quit focusing on what is not working.
7. Add fun to social media
The interactions that a business has with its followers and prospects on social media should be both humane and fun. In fact, brands that stand out in the crowded social media space tend to be those that build strong connections with their followers by tapping humane qualities and sharing messages that their followers are able to relate with.
It is a fact that social media has caused a shift in the way businesses connect with their customers in a significant way. It is not just about outlining the benefits that customers will derive from a product or a service, or sharing a strong call to action – rather, customers are seeking to connect with brands at a deeper level, they want to see content that is valuable and helpful yet entertaining and educative.
This means brands should focus more on creating personalities that reflect their core values and give them a voice that customers can relate with in a way that is fun and interesting.
8. Allow customers to define your business brand
Giving customers an opportunity to define the brand your business carries can be a powerful way to stand out on social media because it allows them to own the brand and to take engagement a notch higher. The way to do this is to have your fans tell stories about your services or products. This enables you to know how much value you provide to them. Also, encourage your followers to share ideas and the expectations they have of your brand.
Beyond this, it provides you with the opportunity to understand why your customers buy your brand and also allows you to analyze other brands in the industry that are similar to yours. In the process of defining your brand, customers enable your business to create user-generated content that is extremely powerful in marketing your business. This content is useful in your social media campaigns because your business can leverage it to create brand advocacy and build a stronger connection with its target audience.
9. Make use of employee advocacy
One of the most powerful tools you can use to stand out on social media is employee advocacy. Fostering collaborations with employees in a way that enables them to contribute to social media campaigns can make your campaigns incredibly successful. There is evidence that employee engagement in digital marketing improves the quality of content that a business produces. There are three key dimensions of employee advocacy in social media campaigns. The first dimension is their engagement in amplifying content, including having them participate in marketing events, campaigns, and promotions in a way that supports your goals.
Secondly, employees from Joel House Search Media can provide social proof that boosts engagements. Since they are considered people like customers, when they advocate for the brand or company that they work for, they are able to bring a sense of comfort to customers and prospects. Thirdly, employees can help with social recruiting. Because they reflect talent in the business or brand, employees can help top talent that the business needs to grow.
For employee advocacy to deliver desired results, businesses need to involve their staff in developing content for the social media campaign. Such a move helps business overcome the challenge of creating content that is both relevant and appealing to customers and produces great results because they are brand experts. Often, they have the information and knowledge that customers need and their expertise helps foster more trust than any other advert that the business can ever run.
