DailyBlogr - The 7 must have features of a successful social media campaign - SEO News

Posted November 19, 201014 yr

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First off, what are todays Social Media campaign trends? What makes a social media campaign? Even better, what is a social media campaign?

Very often, when somebody decides to market their product online, be it a FMCG product or an online service, they start to think about online marketing like your regular marketing efforts. Which is to put in your money, milk your resources, push your product to as much people as you can in the earliest possible time period.

Is this a wrong approach? Hell no. How could it be wrong when marketers have been successful at this time and again?

The truth is, this strategy isnt wrong but, it possibly isnt the best one, you couldve used.

Online marketing is no longer about trying to engage your audience. And social media is no longer a marketing tool for your product.

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I wish it was, in fact it might have been for some time (and also even now), but the fact is that it isnt working and were still in a transition period, learning new things, experimenting newer strategies, and learning from mistakes.

So, what are social media campaigns?

Theyre not any longer your average, on the face advertising, not even are they about engaging customers through social media channels, and most definitely, social media campaigns arent about using a set of tool like facebook and twitter just because they are available.

Social Media Campaigns today are about creating experiences. Rich, memorable and engaging experiences.

Im not trying to say that they arent about brands or selling. No, they are indeed about selling stuff online, but weve evolved, weve learned from our mistakes, weve gotten clever and were no longer in the era of persuasive buying. Weve moved on to a new era of experiences and relationships.

We buy what we like, not what we actually need. We share, because we enjoy, not because you were asked to.

Now, where does this bring us? Does it make online marketing easy?

I think not. It has moved up further more levels, and things could get complicated if you dont understand or try and learn about the environment.

What are the features of a successful social media campaign?

</h3><h3>1. Simple execution – Easy comprehension

For any campaign to make an impression in the most effortless way, in the shortest possible time, to the right audience, there is no other way than to get as simple as possible in concept. This might sound silly, but getting simple doesnt mean that the campaign itself has to be simple. It means that the final product should look simple.

Any concept can be made either amazing or stupid based on how well it is being presented. Simple ideas can be made to appear complex and complex ideas can be made to appear simple. However, the idea is that the final product the audience sees should be simple to comprehend, even though it means a completely complex concept and execution. The audience doesnt really bother about how difficult or easy it was for you to make the product, but they subconsciously are bothered about whether the campaign is easy to understand or not. If it doesnt, then the whole exercise goes a waste.

2. Be unique, stand out or get buried

There is so much of noise out there that, audience these days have developed their own method of separating signal from the noise. If you think from a producers perspective, the only way to stand unique is to get familiar with all the noise out there. Listen to the demands, listen to the critics, study the trends, find out what people like ad dislike. Bottom line be a good listener and a good consumer first. Then, you can at least, sense if youre creating an average concept or not. It is easy to get carried away though. When you hear a lot of junk, you could get all excited and inspired by numerous trends out there. There is nothing in improvising on a trend, but again the successful idea would be to stand out and be the yellow shoe guy.

3. Be Short and Sweet, Lean and Mean

Let us just accept the fact that we dont have much time with us these days. And with all the multi tasking and mayhem, we dont really have an attention span of more than a minute maximum. A minute would be being too generous, some studies even suggest that attention span of the current generation is in seconds, which is not at all surprising.

So, with an attention span of a few seconds, we have to communicate a lot, and that is no easy task. The solution is to be short and sweet like a miniskirt. Make it to the point, with no distractions what so ever.

4. Cohesiveness to the brand

There are several cases of social media campaigns gone ineffective because of this point non cohesiveness to the brand. While all our efforts are towards a great interactive and engaging campaign, there is no use of being funny if people dont remember you or your brand. So the idea is to be funny and entertaining as possible, but at the same time, cementing your brand at the back of their subconscious mind un-obtrusively. Now, this can be tricky.?For every campaign, theres a thin line that divides between promotional quotient and engaging quotient. For every social media agency, the challenge will be to create a campaign, that doesnt get too promotional or too entertaining. Successful are those who can find the right mix. However, there are no thumb rules here that might work for all campaigns alike. Based on the audience, the product and the medium, the equation changes accordingly.

5. Emotions speak volumes

To explain this point, Id like you to list out three recent social media campaigns that youve come across recently. I bet that all the three were either entertaining, funny, surprising or just plain awesome. What does this teach us? Were all emotional beings, and keeping all the numbers and talking aside, what registers most in our minds are emotions. We like to laugh, we like to cry and we like to get inspired. There are several of those emotions out there, and I strongly believe that unless a campaign, be a it a video or a picture or a series of events, capture any one or more of those emotions, there is no chance that it stays in peoples mind.?A very thorough study of your brand, its associated emotions and perceived values can easily give you clues about what might work best for it in a campaign. Do not ever miss to forget this factor or youll be creating products without souls.

6. Prompt for Action

So, let us say that you have a campaign in place with all the necessary ingredients. And lets assume that people like it. Whats next? If its a funny video or a viral message, people might share it, but is that all that you need? The answer depends on what your overall strategy is. Do you have a landing page in place to collect the entire buzz? Do you have a contact page where you need people to register? These are some of the questions to ask when you have a strategy in place. Every campaign should have a funnel mechanism attached to it and every even should trigger an action. It could be as simple as sharing a video or signing up for an early invite. You have to figure that out first, as to what the action item is and create a web around it so that everything falls in to the funnel, once the campaign is active.

7. Bring clarity in your message

Sometimes, there is no obvious message in campaigns. And I know many people shrug shoulders while I say this. A message? Whats the point??Well, the fact is that whether you deliberately put it in or not, every social media campaign carries a message with itself. Sometimes, these are cleverly fabricated ones, and all the other times, they come out naturally. So, you can either leave it to the audience to make it out themselves, or you can always embed clues in the campaigns about the message that you want to share. When I say message, it doesnt mean a strong message, it could be a subconsciously shared one. One that might not even show up in the campaign, evidently. But clarity is very important in your message. Often, when you leave it to the audience to guess it out, it might get mis-understood. So it is always safe to give clues of your own.

Summary

Social Media Campaigns are all about finding the right medium, the right mix of tools and the right story to tell. You can tell a story in different ways, but only a few stories remain in peoples mind. When we just have only a few seconds to impress the audience and trigger an emotional spark in them, you better create a short and sweet, to the point communication strategy without all the unnecessary fluff. Sometimes, it is important to know what goes out, than what goes in a campaign. Hope it all made sense.

Join Dailybloggr Community on Facebook The 7 must have features of a successful social media campaign was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

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