Last week we talked about The Five Reasons to Hire an Agency for Digital Management, two of the most important reasons being strategy and integration.
Many people still believe that managing a brand’s social media accounts are the same as managing your own personal accounts. Unfortunately accounts that follow the “fly by the seat of your pants” method tend to fall short. Users are left wondering what they’re actually getting out of being a fan. If you don’t have the budget or manpower to run a full-on social media campaign, the best thing to do to keep your page lively and on point is to run a mini campaign.
Mini-campaigns are different from traditional social media campaigns in that they are in fact, mini. They typically run for a shorter amount of time, include a lot less creative, and they don’t usually require any outside program building (IE Facebook tabs or micro-sites). A mini-campaign is one of the most effective ways to engage your fans, and integrate your brand strategy. Here are some steps we like to follow when planning a mini-campaign:
- Determine Your Goal: The first step to creating a mini campaign is to determine what you hope to achieve. Is it more fans, more engagement, brand awareness, all of the above? Make sure you nail down specific goals, and track them throughout the campaign.
- Develop a Concept: This might seem like an obvious one, but your campaign will need an overall concept. Make sure your concept is 1. On strategy for your brand and 2. On point with your goal. This past spring we developed a March Madness Campaign for our client, The National Chicken Council. The March Madness campaign had users voting on types of chicken marinades. Fans voted for their favorite and the marinade with the most, won. This campaign was both timely with the NCAA March Madness, and it was on strategy for the brand.
- Get Creative Involved: Campaigns with consistent, visually appealing components tend to resonate the most with fans. Get the creative team to develop imagery, videos, logos, etc. to help set your campaign apart from the rest of your content. But, remember to keep it simple as a mini-campaign is meant to be less time (and budget) consuming.
- Integrate your platforms: Make sure your mini-campaign goes across all of your social media platforms. If you have Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, use them all but make sure you cater the campaign to each platform specifically.
- Track your Progress: Finally, make sure you track your progress. Go back to your original goal, and see if you were able to reach it. Take screen shots, run analytics, and take notes on what worked and what didn’t .
If you would like to check out some of our mini-campaigns, check out this Facebook page.
