A social media campaign is a series of coordinated posts that transfer a coherent message to promote a specific event, product or feature. These interconnected posts should include a clear and catchy copy with specific hashtags, if applicable, and visuals. In this post I review the most important questions you should ask yourself before creating an effective social media campaign.
1. Why should I plan?
In communications, planning is important. Although at first it might sound easy, planning is the toughest part. Careful planning increases your campaign’s success rate and reduces a chance of making changes in the middle with more stress and at a higher cost. When planning you have to be creative, think strategically and communicate clearly with the team members involved in the campaign.
2. Which channels to choose?
You might think that considering overall goals of your campaign should come first. But deciding on channels is more important, at least for two reasons. First, your goals will partly depend on the social networks your campaign content is going to appear on. Second, without knowing which social networks you are going to use, it is tough to create a specific content. For example, what works great on Facebook, might not be performing well on LinkedIn or Pinterest.
3. What are my goals?
Now is the right time to choose SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) goals for your social media campaign. What do you want to achieve? Possible goals:
· Increase followers’ base
· Promote an event, product or feature
· Generate email sign-ups
· Distribute content
· Drive traffic to your website
· Improve customer service
To set concrete goals, consider how your content performs on various social networks. To do that you might resort to analytics tools available for each channel. Once you have gathered performance data, you can easily formulate your goals that can follow this format: “This campaign aims to improve [your goal] by [%] over [indicate time span].”
4. Who is my audience?
Defining you audience/s is also important in planning your social media campaign for three reasons. First, you will know what content to create so that it resonates with your audience. Second, with the specific content you will be able to offer your audience/s what they need and care about. Third, thanks to these points, you will be able to increase conversions.
5. When and how often to post?
Timing and frequency will depend on the number of posts you plan to publish. Previously I shared a post “The Ultimate Social Media Posting Frequency Guide” where the author explains the best time slots and frequency for posting on specific channels. Bear in mind that these two points heavily depend on your region.
6. How to document a campaign?
I also find it useful to put campaign’s phases into a proposal. In this way you have a clear plan with concrete steps in front of you. Plus, it is easier for senior management to evaluate your idea and give you a green light. A proposal should include: name of the campaign, brief summary of the idea, description of the audience/s, specific goals with performance metrics, and posts’ schedule.
7. How do I put my campaign plan into action?
Here comes the most exciting part of the whole affair – execution. First, start by drafting post copies. Consider relevance and the use of different social networks, then suitably craft your messages. While an ideal Facebook post should contain 40 characters, a Twitter post - between 71 and 100 characters. Here is a quick guide by SumAll on the use of characters across various social networks:
When you have prepared the copy, consider creating some visuals, either images or videos. Once you have carried out these tasks, you can start putting all your content into a social media content calendar.
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The Importance of Setting SMART Objectives for PR Campaigns
How to Create a Powerful Social Media Strategy in 5 Easy Steps
How to Create a Compelling Social Media Conversation Calendar?