Complete Guide On How To Plan A Social Media Campaign

Social media has become a vessel for success for many small and large businesses. With more than 2.9 billion active users on Facebook, 1.4 billion active users on Instagram, and 365 million active users on Twitter per month, it has become a marketing channel that simply can’t be rivaled.

Social media posts have the ability to reach a wide audience, in a short amount of time at virtually no cost. That being said, to reap these rewards, your social media marketing campaigns need to be successful.

Successful social media campaigns require a strategy, careful planning, and clear goals. So, if you’re about to launch a new product, provide a new service, or you’re just looking to increase your following and your reach, follow this complete guide to creating a successful social medias campaign.

By taking all the right steps, you will no doubt increase your brand awareness and sales.

What Is A Social Media Campaign?

For all those new to the world of social media marketing, let’s start with the basics. What exactly is a social media campaign?

It’s a coordinated marketing effort that assists a business in achieving a goal. The key factor is that this marketing effort is carried out on one or all of the major social networks.

Social media marketing campaigns focus on a set goal or goals over a specific period of time. It could be weeks or months or even a recurring campaign. In this way, they differ from the usual everyday interaction your brand may have with its followers.

Campaigns have measurable outcomes and work to influence social media users to act or feel a certain way. To achieve this, a social media campaign needs to be far more concentrated and targeted than a brand’s usual marketing efforts.

Examples Of Common Social Media Campaigns

There are so many features on social media and all of them add a different element to your campaign. For example, Instagram Reels, Live videos, and daily vlogs are all great ways to connect with your followers and market your brand.

When it comes to choosing the right campaign, it must be authentic to your brand identity and culture to ensure it resonates with your followers.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of common types of social media marketing campaigns below so you can start formulating your social media strategy.

Polls

Polls are a great way to engage with your followers target and find out what they want from your brand. This is a smart way to start your social media campaigns if you’re having trouble setting your goals.

Polls could ask your followers anything from what content they want to see more of to what type of products they prefer, or even how they rate your service.

You can set a poll up on Instagram stories, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. This allows you to reach a specific target audience on one social media channel or you could hold the poll across all social media channels.

Use the data you collect to frame the rest of your social media campaign to ensure that you are giving potential customers what they want.

Partnerships

Partnering with other brands or social media influencers is a great way to raise brand awareness. It also helps to reach a much larger audience and leads to more followers and website traffic.

It’s important to remember that how your target audience perceives your brand is integral to the success of any social media marketing campaign. So, be sure to partner with brands and influencers that resonate with your brand and your target audience.

Giveaways

Another popular social media campaign is to have a giveaway. Not only does this get your target audience psyched about your brand and what they could possibly win, but it’s also one of the best ways to raise brand awareness.

Orchestrating a giveaway is simple and the results are incredible. Post on your chosen social media channel about a giveaway of one of your best sellers. Then, to ensure increased traffic and followers, make the giveaway subject to a few easy-to-carry-out instructions.

For example, to enter the competition on Instagram, the potential customer will need to follow your page, like the post, and share the post on their Story. It’s the perfect way to increase your social media presence and get more followers which could lead to more customers.

Events

Hosting an event for a new product launch helps to personalize your brand and allows your followers to get to know you.

Running a business on social media as opposed to having a physical store or office can often decrease the reliability of your brand. So, it’s good to remind your customers that behind the Instagram account there is a person working hard to deliver user-generated content.

The event could be in person or even on Instagram Live. This way, your followers get to meet you, ask you questions, and give you suggestions on how to improve your product.

Hosting an event as a part of your marketing campaign does wonders for brand awareness. It can help increase your social media following and drive website traffic leading to more sales.

Giving Back

It’s important to use your social media platform to give back where you can. This also shows your followers that you value the support you receive from them and the community.

So, you could pledge on your social media account to donate some of your products or a cash amount to a charity organization in need.

This small act of kindness not only helps the community but also shows your followers that your brand cares about making a difference.

Setting Social Media Marketing Campaign Goals

When you start planning your next social media campaign, it’s important to establish your social media campaign goals. This will help you streamline your campaign to achieve exactly what it is you need for your brand or new product launch.

Below we take a look at some important social media campaign goals to help take your brand to new heights.

Increase Traffic

If you’re starting out, about to launch a new product, or just looking for more hits on your website, increasing traffic should be a top priority. To do so, it’s important to create content that is interactive and draws your followers in.

You want to create engaging posts, Stories and other content like Instagram Q&As and Facebook Lives to promote your product or service and to capture the attention of your target audience.

Once you’ve got their attention, encourage your followers to check your product out on your website by pointing out the link in your bio.

Boost Sales

Social media campaigns are a great way to boost your sales. To do so, structure your social media marketing campaign around visual content or hashtags that are interactive and get your customers excited about your brand.

By raising brand awareness and creating hype around a new product or event, you are bound to see an increase in sales.

The perfect example of a successful social media marketing that led to skyrocketing sales was the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino campaign. Starbucks created a limited edition, whimsical Frappuccino that became trendy to photograph and share on social media.

Starbucks encouraged users to use the hashtag #unicornfrappuccino to share their experiences on social feeds. The campaign was so successful users were flocking to Starbucks to buy the colorful drink. This led to an overall sales increase of 3% in the year the campaign ran.

Improve Brand Awareness

Improving brand awareness is an important social media campaign goal. A good place to start would be to establish a presence on several social media platforms. For example, don’t only market on Instagram. Ensure that you have a presence on Facebook and Twitter too.

Another way to bring awareness to your brand is to interact with your users and show that you are online. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend 24 hours a day on Instagram. You could make use of a social media management tool and schedule posts for countries out of your time zone.

Content is also important to improve brand awareness. For example, incentivizing your followers for sharing your content and using hashtags through giveaways will have your brand all over social media in no time.Your followers get the chance to win something and you get exposure to a wider audience. It’s a win-win situation.

Zoom’s virtual background campaign is a successful example of brand awareness from user generated content.

At the height of online meetings, Zoom started a virtual background competition that invited its users to share pictures of them using one of the quirky backgrounds. Zoom chose a weekly winner and published the winning picture online.

This fun and creative competition took social media by storm. As more people became aware of the competition, more people started using the platform.

Engage With Your Audience

In any successful marketing campaign, whether on social media or otherwise, connecting with your target audience is vital.

When it comes to a social media campaign, you want to connect with your followers on two levels. First, is the usual surface level. In other words, you want to get their likes, comments, and shares on your posts.

The second level entails connecting with your audience through relatable content that makes them feel a certain way about your brand or view your brand in a certain light.

Coca-Cola, one of the biggest and most well-known brands in the world, was super successful in connecting with its audience with its ‘Share a Coke’ campaign.

This campaign was a fun way for consumers to connect with the brand and find their name on a coke bottle. This small feature made consumers feel connected to their coke bottles.

How To Create A Successful Social Media Campaign

Now that we know what a social media marketing campaign is, and the various goals to set, let’s take a look at how to create the ultimate social media campaign. Over and above identifying your target market and creating social media content, there are important steps in the process to understand.

Competitor Analysis

Before embarking on your social media campaign, you need to take a look at your competitors. This step could give you an indication of elements that work and those that don’t.

Firstly, take a look at the campaigns previously run by your competitors. Are there any similarities in the type or format of the content? If so, did it work for them, or was it not received well by their audience? This will set you on the right track and ensure that you don’t repeat any mistakes.

Secondly, look at whether your competitors’ campaign was a success. Did they engage well with their audience? Did sales and following increase? If not, then it may be a good idea to rework your campaign around your competitor’s shortfalls and relook at your goals.

Lastly, how did your competitor administer their campaign? What social media channels did they use? Did they involve influencer marketing or use polls?

Knowing your competitor is the best way to ensure you stay relevant and engaging.

Choose A Single Message To Promote

Choose a single message, stick to it, and structure your campaign around it. Social media is overwhelming as it is, so make sure your audience is able to identify your message.

If you have too much going on, chances are your followers will not be able to relate to any of it and your campaign will be a failure.

Deliver the message over multiple social media platforms. Different audience members use different platforms so you’re bound to get more reach.

Choose Content Type And Format

Another important step is to choose the type of content and format. This is ultimately how your campaign will come across to your audience. You could use live videos, shorter one-line captions, or even influencer marketing.

Your format should align with your campaign, its goals, and your target audience. So, when choosing your content and format, think about why you are running your campaign, what you hope to achieve, and who you hope to reach.

You should also consider timing. Are there any special holidays coming up that could have an influence on your content? For example, Christmas or Halloween. Be creative and use this as an opportunity to grab the attention of your target audience and lure them into your campaign.

Balance Sponsored And Non-Sponsored Content

No follower wants to open their Instagram and continuously see promotional content. While some promotional content is good, especially for partnerships, too much could come across as disingenuous. So, you should always include some non-promotional content with your campaign.

Followers also want to support a brand that supports and helps them. In other words, non-promotional content that is helpful to your followers will keep them coming back to your page. Consider doing a FAQ about your product, services, or your industry in general.

Show your audience that you value their engagement by providing useful content that doesn’t necessarily lead to money in the bank.

Engage With Your Audience Regularly

Always take the time to engage with your followers. This will go a long way in promoting brand loyalty. Be sure to respond to their comments, story shares, or direct messages.

Encourage your followers to share their new purchases and tag your account so that you can share it on your page.

This small gesture goes a long way to personalize the experience for your followers. It makes your brand more relatable and instills customer confidence.

Don’t Forget Hashtags

Hashtags are at the heart of any successful social media marketing campaign. They have the ability to create hype and help your content reach thousands of followers in a short period of time.

It also helps you keep track of the interactions on your page to see what content is working and what’s not.

Conclusion

Social media has forever changed the way brands market themselves. By following the right steps, your posts have the ability to reach hundreds or thousands of people in an instant.

So, if you’re looking to embark on a social media marketing campaign, whether it’s to increase website traffic or boost sales, you need to do it right. This guide is the perfect place to start and can help you every step of the way to ensure the success of your brand!