What makes a creative and successful social media campaign? Look closely at some successful brands and you’ll see then tend to have some similar characteristics. A greatly successful plan utilizes four main strategies: a plan with a purpose, measurable goals, promotion across various channels, and analysis. Incorporate those components into future strategies and your campaigns will succeed.

1. Develop Your Plan

To have an outstanding social media campaign, creating and developing a strategic plan is essential to success. Strategies are meant to be individual to the campaign, but should also work toward achieving your overall goals in social media as a whole as well. Don’t create friction in your goals and ensure that you’re accomplishing your existing marketing efforts as well.

It’s important to do a lot of thorough research, analyzing your existing campaigns and social platforms to pinpoint where improvements could be made, what your competition is doing, etc. Determine which platforms are suited for your current purpose and will help you achieve your needs based on who you’re trying to reach and what your message is.

Spend time researching where your target audience spends a majority of their time and when they’re there so that you can leverage those platforms to your full advantage.

Determine your marketing budget for the campaigns and strategically allocate funds where they will be most needed. This will include deciding whether or not you want to use paid resources or rely strictly on organic tactics.

Lastly you’ll need to decide what your campaign goals are and how you’re going to measure them to prove a significant ROI from your campaign.

2. Define Your Goals

Without clearly defined goals, there’s no way to determine if your marketing campaign was a success or not. Creating measurable, attainable goals for each campaign is an important step in planning for success.

Some key goals that are common in marketing are:

• Increasing brand awareness – getting the word out there so that you can be recognized as a company. This is especially important if you’re a new business, or just new to social media.
• Driving traffic to your website – maximizing social media to drive increased traffic to your site and blog is a great goal. Not only can this potentially increase conversions but it can also allow users to share your content on social media.
• Increase users time on site – consider creating more than the short-term goal of getting users to your site. Give them something to do on-site that makes them want to stay and increase their loyalty to you.
• Improving conversions – if your outreach is well-established and your web visits are consistently high, you should be working toward increased conversion rates.

3. Promote

Use multiple channels to promote your campaign for those who are and are not on social media. This will ensure your goals are being attained no matter where you users are. Utilize the channels to your advantage and use them wisely.

4. Analyze

One of the most important steps in any marketing campaign is analyzing your results. Did you reach your goals? Where is there room for improvement? Could you have done things differently to achieve better results? The answers to these questions will help you determine if your campaign was successful or not, and where you could use some re-strategizing.

2018 Update – Social Media for a Cause!

In 2018, social media has far more importance than a few fun tweets here and there. Companies, especially online retailers, need to have a sharp product set, fun images, and a solid way that the business stands out.

One of the best ways to stand out in 2018 is by giving back to charity! Everyone knows Tom’s Shoes, but there are many smaller companies such as Sock Problems, FACT Goods, and Pura Vida that have charitable aims as well. FACT Goods, for example, has a Faith Hats campaign that supports several charitable causes.

Companies can leverage these awesome initiatives to improve their social media presence. Warby Parker has a “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair” campaign for their glasses that is often highlighted on their social channels. Warby Parker also highlights their newsworthy contributions on social media as well. Check out this tweet example:

Good luck with your social media in 2018 and beyond!