5 Characteristics of Highly Effective Social Media Campaigns

Use High-Quality Visuals When it comes to successful social media campaigns, high quality visuals cannot be ignored. With social sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Vine growing in size and Facebook’s own algorithm putting an emphasis on rewarding photos over text updates, visual content is in. When it comes to visuals you have a lot of choices for what you can create, these choices include:

  • Shareable coupons
  • Sales promos
  • Educational graphics
  • Funny graphics
  • Content graphics
  • Memes
  • Infographics
  • Promotional videos
  • How-to videos
  • Funny videos
The good news is you don’t need to pick and choose just one of these items. The best social media campaigns use multiple items from this list – multiple times. If you don’t have an e-commerce store you can share a printable coupon with your customers and ask them to bring it into your brick-and-mortar store: Facebook_example_coupon Of course, not every campaign is about generating direct sales and there are plenty of ways to run other types of successful social media campaigns using visuals. See the list above for ideas!

Make Frequent Postings at Optimal Times

Another important characteristic of successful social media campaigns is frequent postings. If you want your campaign to be successful you have to ensure your audience knows about it. Posting once a week or even two times a week is not enough – especially if you’re posting at random hours of the day or night. You have to be strategic about when you post and how often you do it. Kissmetrics has put together a post about the Science of Social Timing that can help you optimize when you post to your social networks. Of course, these suggestions are generic and you should try posting at different times of the day to see when your audience best responds to your posts. For example, we have one client whose audience responds best to Facebook posts at around 3pm EST and another one whose audience responds best around 1:30pm EST. It’s up to you to figure out the right time to post – and also how frequently to do so. I usually suggest posting at least twice per day. You can use software like Buffer or HootSuite to schedule your posts in advance if you’re afraid you won’t have time to do it each day.

Increase Your Fan Engagement

Simply posting to social media sites isn’t enough to make a successful social media campaign. You absolutely MUST engage with your fans as well. If they ask you questions, answer them. If they express excitement, encourage them! It is really important to have someone who is dedicated to reading and responding to messages. While it may be impossible for some really big brands to respond to thousands of comments that are left every day, someone should be reading them all and looking for any questions or concerns that need to be addressed.

Be Data-Driven

One could argue that this should be the #1 tip on this list. Using a data-driven approach to a social media campaign means you know, without a shadow of a doubt, whether it was successful or not. By using a promo code in your visuals you can easily track the number of sales from a social media campaign. Additionally, by using trackable URLs you can look through Google Analytics to determine if a specific campaign had positive results for you based on conversions, time on site, bounce rate and so on. If you don’t take a data-driven approach to your social media marketing campaigns, there really is very little reason for using them.

Integrate with Email Marketing

The best social media campaigns are multichannel – most specifically they are integrated with email marketing. The inbox is still one of the most effective places to reach a customer, and you can easily turn a social media graphic into an email graphic: You can either create separate promo codes so that you know how many people responded to the campaign by channel or you can use the same promo code for the entire campaign across both channels (like in this example).

Are You Ready to Get Started?

Do you have any questions about the tips in this post? If so, please leave a comment below and we’ll be sure to answer them! Do you need help putting together a successful social media, SEO, or comprehensive internet marketing campaign? If so, contact us today for a free consultation!]]>

TJ has worked in the digital marketing space since 2006. He has worked at a number of agencies and and helped hundreds of clients grow their business through SEO, PPC, Social Media and Content Marketing. He currently lives in Lehi , UT and enjoys spending time with his family.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search

DOWNLOAD OUR GUIDES

RECENT POSTS

CONTENT TOPICS

SOLUTIONS

Join an E-commerce Newsletter Worth Reading

Subscribe to our twice-monthly, no-fluff newsletter packed with actionable insights to help grow your D2C brand!