If you read my article on what is a marketing campaign, I’m sure you’ll know what is a social media campaign too. It is a specific subcategory of a marketing campaign that has unique characteristics. If you are into social media marketing, you must know what is a social media campaign, how it is different from a strategy, and how to create one for your business.
Let’s get to business…
What is a Social Media Campaign?
A social media campaign is a systematic marketing effort to achieve a marketing goal via a social networking platform. It is a type of marketing campaign where you only focus on social media marketing. When you are using social sites to achieve a goal and reach your target audience, you are said to be using a social media campaign.
Dove Project #ShowUs is a perfect example of a social media campaign. It was aimed at persuading women to share their photos to make them represented in media:
The campaign turned out to be a huge success with more than 650K hashtags on Instagram:
The unique characteristic of a social media campaign is that it uses social platforms to reach your target audience and achieve your goal.
Social Media Campaign vs. Marketing Campaign
The social media campaign is a type of marketing campaign. Any marketing campaign that uses social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
As such, there is no difference between the two.
It is a specialized type of marketing campaign that uses social networking platform as its primary channel. It has the same 5 components as discussed here but the marketing channel is always social media.
How to Create a Social Media Campaign
This is the real task. Creating and implementing a social media campaign is what you must be an expert at to stay ahead of your competitors. An estimated 4.41 billion people will be using social media by 2025. You must create exceptional social media campaigns to stand out from the crowd.
How to do it?
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to create a successful campaign:
- Set goals
- Identify buyer persona
- Decide with the social media platform
- Create an editorial calendar
- Track and tweak.
1. Set Goals
Setting clear goals using the SMART goal technique as discussed here is the first step towards creating a social media campaign.
The goal, in this case, has to be related to social media. For example, getting 10,000 new followers for the Facebook page in 50 days. The goal must be achieved via social media or it needs to be related to social media. Because this is what makes your it a social media campaign.
If you can achieve the goal through any other channel, it won’t be considered a social campaign.
For example, having the following goal for your campaign means you’ll not be using a social networking platform to achieve it: To increase organic traffic by 20% in 3 months.
So, the goal must be:
- SMART
- Related to social media marketing.
2. Buyer Persona
This is a crucial step. Identifying the right buyer persona for your campaign is essential for its success. The right persona is one that uses social media to connect with your company.
You must have information about your ideal customer’s preferences when it comes to social media usage. What social media platform they use, how often they use it, what types of accounts they follow, what is their motivation to use the platform, what content type you love interacting with on their favorite social media platform, and so on.
These are a few basic questions that your buyer persona must answer. This will help you improve targeting and select the right social media platform. This requires a lot of market research, surveys, and interviews. You need to collect data from your target audience to collect this information and update personas accordingly.
People have different preferences when it comes to using social media. For example, teens love using YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat:
If you are targeting teenagers, you must use one of these social platforms to connect with them. Using any other social network won’t be a good idea.
This is what makes buyer personas a crucial part of the campaign setup process. Incorporating essential information in buyer personas will help you improve targeting significantly. Add the social media preferences section in the buyer persona template you are using and update it accordingly (using data collection and market research).
It is a must-have step for creating effective social media campaigns.
3. Social Media Platform
What social sites to use for your campaign is another key step in the process. This must be derived from the campaign goal and buyer persona.
If you have updated buyer personas with social media preferences, selecting the most relevant platform won’t be an issue. And this will also guide goal setting.
Remember, the best social platform is one that is linked with campaign goal, marketing strategy, business strategy, and buyer persona.
4. Create an Editorial Calendar
Yes, you need an editorial calendar for a social media campaign.
Why?
Because it helps you stay organized and keep posting fresh content to keep followers engaged:
This is, however, not essential but highly recommended. It plays a significant role in your campaign’s success and effectiveness.
For example, if your campaign goal is to increase the number of followers, you can get new followers with or without posting new content. But publishing fresh content consistently will increase organic reach and new followers will have something to engage with.
Even if you are running a social ads campaign, you must create an editorial calendar to keep your account alive and active.
Follow this guide to create a content calendar for your social media campaign.
5. Track and Tweak
Once your campaign is running, it requires constant monitoring. Don’t let it run unsupervised. Rather monitor its performance in real-time to tweak it proactively.
This also includes experimentation and A/B testing content formats, content types, creatives, etc. For example, if you are publishing different content types to increase organic Facebook followers, you must monitor how different content types perform.
Do video posts drive more followers as compared to image posts?
All social media campaigns require tracking which refers to monitoring and analyzing performance. The more often you do it, the better. The idea is to identify issues and fix them on time before they do more damage.
Are You Ready to Create Your First Social Media Campaign?
Now you know what is a social media campaign and how to create one for your business, you are ready to get rocking. Follow the 5-step process covered above to create and run professional campaigns that will drive massive results.
Featured Image: Pexels
