Effective Social Media Campaign

by: Nur Naqiah binti Jalaludin 2009198131

So you want to increase sales or promote your new product or brand? Social media campaign is one of effective ways in doing so.Social media sites make great tools to engage prospects and customers as well as share content and messages about your brand. It is a great way to increase brand awareness, engage with customer, gaining long term loyalty, generate a short term boost in sales, etc. We have seen successful social media campaign that help in promoting a business or an organization as seen with social media campaign by Chester Zoo.

However, one does not simply engage into social media campaign without planning it wisely beforehand. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Here are some suggested key questions that one can consider before planning for a social media campaign:
1. What is your company's marketing objective?
2. What results do you wish to achieve?
3. Who on your team will be responsible for monitoring your firm's online presence and interacting with prospects and customers?
4. How much time will this employee be able to devote exclusively to social media?
5. Which of the social networking tools are best for your business?

Organizations must also take account the consideration that social media enable two-way communication which allow customers to give feedback, receive information from the organization through various social networking sites.

Effective social media campaigns consists of these characteristics:
1. Targeted
Set of clear objectives and success criteria. Target audience must be considered based on the objective of the campaign. Set achievable objectives and target specific audience.

2. Focused
Ensure that your campaign is of the direct response variety. Campaign are not spammy and don't just promote site links. Share something interesting and not just the same message to the audience.

3. Measurable
Creating a clear objectives and defined actions will provide straightforward message to the audience and this will make a clear and measurable success of the campaign.

4. Great Content
The cornerstone of any effective social media campaign is great presented in an interesting and engaging way. Social media campaign must be well organized and consistent. Updates on site must be consistent or audience will be confused. They must also interact with audience who leave replies and comments.

5. Simple and The Right Medium For the Message
Think about the actions you want your audience to take and match the medium to the message. For a campaign to be successful, do not register on every social media site. You might not be able to control every site and this will lead to fruitless campaign.

6. Memorable
Social media site must also be user-friendly and build relationships to increase perception of value and builds loyalty. Campaign shall also be as honest as possible. Trust is very hard to earn back once lost. To create a memorable campaign, innovative value is a must-have in a social site.

7. Profitable
There are plenty of siren voices that will say you can't put a price on customer engagement.

Social media marketing takes time in terms of results. Planning and carry out the social media campaign does not take that much time but audience would not be able to change behavior overnight. If within few months, the results aren't shown, changing strategy might work.

Reference:
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29272/5-Awesome-Examples-of-Engaging-Social-Media-Campaigns.aspx
http://sem-group.net/search-engine-optimization-blog/how-social-media-influences-consumer-behavior/
http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/203359
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/effective-social-media-campaigns.html