You’d be surprised how many times it’s come up over the years, especially working with B2B clients. The general guidelines I give anyone asking about an organic social campaign are:
Know your KPI’s
Before you even start planning your social media campaign, ask yourself what you plan to gain from it. There’s no point doing a campaign for the sake of it! You want to know what you’re doing and how you can measure the success of the campaign.
Know your target audience
any organizations assume they know their audience/buyers, and many find they don’t know them that well when they research them. If you don’t know your target audience or buyers, how do you know what will resonate with them? And how will you know where to find them or even if they’re following your accounts?
If it’s been a while since you’ve done persona work for your organization, check out our handy persona cheatsheet to help you.
Know your platforms
One size does not fit all when it comes to social media. Know what’s suitable for each of the platforms you’re planning on using. What works on Instagram is not always welcomed on LinkedIn or even Facebook. Make sure to take this into account at the very beginning of your planning because if it comes in further down the line you may be forced to start again.
Research hashtags
I won’t go into this too much as we already have a blog on the dangers of not researching your hashtags, and we all know of the now famous example of #susanalbumparty. However, it is important to check the readability of a hashtag that you’re creating specifically for a campaign to avoid becoming an example of what not to do.
Another good point to note is if you’re using hashtags that are already out there within your campaign, like #marketing, then look into how relevant it is to your content, the search volume for the hashtag and even related hashtags. There are a number of tools out there, paid and free, that will do this for you.
Engaging copy
More than ever, your posts need to be engaging. All thanks to Facebook’s push towards meaningful brand interactions, which if history shows us anything will be replicated in some form or another by other platforms. Engaging doesn’t mean, and shouldn’t mean always including a call to action. This is pretty poor practice on organic posts. You want your posts to be authentic to your brand, you want them to flow and be interesting. Your brand needs to be like your friends on social media, your updates need to add value, be of interest and make people want to hit that like or reply button, and even the share button.
Good graphics
Previously we’ve told you about the ideal image sizes for the different social media platforms, and that definitely comes into your campaign planning. In planning, think about the imagery that draws your attention on social media. What makes you stop and pay attention? Draw from that. In B2B, so many organizations get it wrong and create bland and sterile images. It’s 2018, let’s move away from this and create some social images for social platforms!
Your graphics don’t have to be static images, you can add in GIFs and videos or animations to your campaign. All work well on social media and if done right, will be received well.
Don’t overbrand your images and don’t afraid to have fun with them. A great example of an organization that does well with their social imagery is MailChimp. If you look on any of their social channels, you’ll see that they use bright and colorful imagery but they also have fun with them. MailChimp breaks the mold of boring B2B campaigns.
Above all, the best advice I can give you is to think outside the box. A good campaign, no matter the platform, always brings something different to the table – just look at what Poundland did with their Naughty Elf over Christmas. It may have caused some controversy but it increased store sales, social engagement and got people talking about the brand. If you need further help with planning your organic campaigns or with community management, contact us and we can see what we can do.