How do I Create a Great Social Media Campaign?
How do I create a great social media campaign?
This is a question we are frequently asked. It comes up in discussions with business owners, heads of marketing, and even with friends and family over a coffee. When we answer this question, we like to draw from ‘real life’ examples of great campaigns to bring to life what made them so successful.
Exploring what ‘great’ looks like is a technique which will help you to sharpen your own campaign ideas as well as how the campaign is delivered. Of course, we’re always on hand if you need a sounding board or are simply stuck for ideas.
Let’s take a deep dive into two outstanding social media campaigns and why they stand out from the crowd.
Apple’s Shot on iPhone Campaign:
Apple’s Shot on iPhone Campaign has been running for some time, and in fact is still going today. This clever campaign embraces winning ingredients in that it is practical, visually appealing and has great marketing principles around it to encourage engagement and sharing. These three key ingredients typically underpin social media campaigns which perform.
Apple’s campaign shows viewers the quality of the iPhone camera, which is something that has often been superseded in quality by direct rivals such as Google and their Pixel phones. It does this by using iPhone cameras for all their own social media promotional videos effectively saying to their audience “we use them for our multimillion-dollar video campaigns, so they are more than good enough for your food and holiday pictures”.
Furthermore, Apple harness viral marketing, in this instance, by creating the hashtag #ShotoniPhone. They then encourage anyone who posts images on social media to add that they were shot on an iPhone by adding the hashtag to their post. This has been done 21.2 million times, at the time of writing this article, evidencing that Apple has now multiplied its audience dramatically. This is because each of those 21.2 million posts will be seen by many people from different backgrounds that may not be following Apple or have much of an interest in them. This can be changed once they see the quality of the images that other people are posting and could convince them into developing an interest, following their social media accounts, and even purchasing an iPhone for themselves. All of this is done at no additional cost to Apple.
Finally, in the campaign “Powder”, from the image at the top of this section, they have used professional snowboarders in the video campaign. These snowboarders each have a large reach and following who will want to watch the video so that they can see these snowboarders doing what they do best. This will then bring an entirely new audience to the Apple social media pages of avid snowboarding enthusiasts.
This is also a great choice of targeted audience by Apple as these snowboarders would love to create videos of themselves snowboarding and showing off their skills and maybe saving for a big, expensive camera in order to do so, or are using an old phone that may not be giving them the quality they require. Apple’s campaign shows this audience that an iPhone provides a fantastic camera which meets their requirements and ultimately encourages them to buy one. Also, it shows that if their favourite snowboarders use an iPhone to make great videos then they can to.
Spotify Wrapped:
Spotify Wrapped is our second example of an impressive social media campaign. The premise of it is that, at the end of each year, Spotify gives you personalised information on your most played songs, artists, and albums plus many more in depth statistics such how long you’ve listened to a particular song etc, all of which being very interesting to see.
Spotify then has a feature that collates this information into a social media sized image, which is easily shared across all social media platforms. This results in millions of people each year posting their Spotify Wrapped, that they then discuss with their friends and family. It is also important to note that thousands of influencers also share their Spotify Wrapped at the end of each year with their followers causing a colossal increase in organic reach for the campaign as people around the world, with all kinds of different follower numbers and types, share their stats. This is also accompanied by a hashtag each year adding further fuel to the vial marketing campaign.
The whole campaign creates a stimulus of “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO) amongst people who have not got Spotify. This is because each year they see all of their friends posting and discussing their Spotify Wrapped along with their favourite influencers and the internet in general. Consequently, they then go and purchase Spotify so that they can be involved and will not be left out of the conversations with their friends.
One of the main things to note here is that most of this promotion is organic and comes with little additional cost, as the distribution is done naturally by their followers sharing to their own followers, including influencers. The only necessary cost involved in the campaign would be the creation of the Spotify Wrapped tool. This makes it a great campaign as it has an incredible reach and comes at a small cost.
So, what are the key lessons to learn?
Apple’s Shot On iPhone campaign and Shopify Wrapped illustrate how strong performing social media campaigns are underpinned by a creative concept combined with effective implementation and a delivery method which people can easily adopt and want to adopt.
These social media campaigns use a multitude of different online marketing methods, including, influencer marketing, viral marketing, organic and paid marketing, content marketing and many more. They also make their campaigns engaging, personalised and encourage their followers to share the campaign amongst their own followers which increases the campaigns’ reach. Ultimately, these are the key components to shaping a successful social media campaign.
For further information on how to improve your social media marketing campaigns get in touch with the Flourish PR team.
