How to Build a Successful Social Media Campaign: A Five Point Framework

In our opinion the long-term use case forsocial media has been made: adoption isgrowing at an exponential rate; socialmedia is more trusted, particularlyamong key demographics; it‟s at theheart of the mobile experience and it‟sabout to converge with TV.° see the final slide for end notes and references Flickr: some rights reserved by joguldi

And while it still doesn‟t have the reach oftraditional media channels, and individualplatforms may come and go it‟s growing sorapidly that it has now become an essentialand powerful part of the marketing andcommunications mix.

The question now is not if or when. It‟show?How do you develop successful, creativesocial media campaigns? What works andwhat doesn‟t? Is there a guarantee forsuccess? What might it cost and deliver? Flickr: some rights reserved by L. Marie

Which is why we‟ve developed this five-point framework based on our experience of developing award-winning creative social campaigns over the last few years as well as what we see as industry best-practice.Flickr: some rights reserved by Todd Ehlers

The framework is not a guarantee of success, and like all conceptual models there are some ambiguities, however, we find that it‟s useful tool to help develop and evaluate social media campaigns.Flickr: some rights reserved by minicooper93402

In the long term we believe that social media will be about building communities and platforms not campaigns. However, we‟re pragmatists, campaigns are an excellent first step into social media, and a good way of determining what works best for your brand.Flickr: some rights reserved Mike_Fleming

conceptparticipationcontentpartnershippropagation

concept

That every great campaign needs a greatconcept is a banal observation. However, whilethere is some overlap, the types of concept thatwork in social media tend to be different to thosethat worked in traditional advertising. The primarychallenge of social media campaigns is todevelop shareable concepts. Most marketingand advertising collateral is not shareable.

You need to create messages that your fans,or brand advocates, can pass on to theirbroader social networks. Because, as you areprobably aware, social media is digital word ofmouth.

So how do you make sharablesocial objects? What is it thatmakes things shareable beyondthe obvious viral tricks of cutebabies and funny animals. Wellthere are lots of differentapproaches, however, we‟veidentified four broad types ofshareable ideas (or socialobjects as we often refer tothem).

Offers – coupons, discounts, samplesUtility – apps, customer serviceContent – entertainment, news, educationCauses – particularly peer-to peer giving

Align which social object youpick with the aims of thecampaign – sales, brand, etc.However, whichever one youchose, you must then ensure thatthey are remarkable – in bothsenses of the word.

remarkable [rɪˈmɑːkəbəl] adj1. worthy of note or mention2. unusual, striking, or extraordinary

so how do you makesomething remarkable,something shareable?

InnovativePeople love to share news oninnovation. Think how carmanufacturers and the techindustry use innovation topromote themselves. Whatare you doing that‟sinnovative?

ExclusiveScarcity, as economist have longunderstood, drives demand. Isthere a limited edition, or a trulyunique experience that you canoffer? For example, fashionbrands now offer access tocatwalk shows with live streaming.

UnexpectedPepsi Refresh was anunexpected move. And whileit‟s received a lot of attention,there are many who think thatit‟s not part of a coherentbrand message. Be carefulwhen using this tactic.

SimpleDon‟t over complicate the socialobject. Attention span on the webis incredibly short. We releasedthis simple puzzle picture as aJPG image, there is nointeractivity, it was just a picture,but we got 1M views in 2 weeks.

participation

“Its because of thisfundamental shifttowards user-generatedinformation that peoplewill listen more to otherpeople than totraditional sources.”Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO Google

The 90-9-1 rule wasdeveloped as part of a studyby Bell Labs on web 1% heavy contributorsparticipation, however, thework was based on already 9% intermittent contributorsexisting communities ofshared interest. In ourexperience it does not apply 90% non-contributorsto brand campaigns. Levels ofparticipation depend onexisting brand engagementand the type of participationrequired, but tend to be muchlower than this rule wouldsuggest.

TWO BROAD TYPES OF PARTICIPATIONCreative and „critical‟.Voting, commenting, sharing and „liking‟ are allparticipatory acts (critical). You need to provide thisalongside the deeper creative participation. Allparticipation is valuable. Don‟t judge the successof a campaign on the level of creative participation.

This is because different levels of participation reach differentaudiences. Creative participation reaches advocates andprovides depth. ‘Critical’ participation includes the mass anddelivers reach.

Don‟t expect or demand too much. In our experience,high-engagement brands can expect much higher levelsof participation than low-engagement brands.

So if you‟re Nike then you probablycould get people to the top of a Everest

WHY DO PEOPLE PARTICIPATE?An MIT Sloan study identified 3 maindrivers for participation. Love, glory andmoney. In our experience, love and thenglory are the most effective and authenticdrivers, however, we‟ve found that it‟soften a clever mix of all three that worksbest – a small financial reward oftenhelps with initial participation rates.

And it doesn‟t matter that creativeparticipation reaches a small number ofpeople, because you need it to activate yourfans. The small number of genuine believerswho will spread the word to others.

content

“We now generate as muchinformation every two days aswas generated from thebeginning of human history until2003.” Eric Schmidt – ex Google CEO

This means that scarcity of attention is the real problem. As Herbert Simon noted, we now live in an attention economy.Flickr: some rights reserved by robinvanmourik

And most adverts, with some notableexceptions, are not shareable content.So what do brands have to do?How do you reach audiences that youcan‟t interrupt?

CREATE GREAT CONTENTBrands have to take more responsibility forcreating their own high quality content. As, forexample, Shell did over 50 years ago, creatingthe Shell guides, edited and illustrated by greatartists and writers people like Sir JohnBetjeman, Paul Nash and Eric Ravillious.

Christopher Bailey, thecreative director ofBurberry, has observedthat Burberry is now asmuch a mediacompany as it is afashion company.

But it goes beyond just creating great content. Again you haveto plan for two separate audiences. You have to create twodifferent messages. One for your advocates and one for thepeople that they reach. People who would not necessarilyrespond to the first message.

Perhaps the best example of this is VW‟s Fun Theorycampaign. The website offered the chance forparticipation in a UGC competition (not much more than afew hundred entries) alongside in depth content.

But the messageadvocates passed onto the mass audiencewere the simple shortvideos that gave thecampaign enormousreach. (Over 20million YouTubeviews).

partnership

Partnership Partnership is, in our experience, a very effective way of reaching a wider audience. With Thinking Spaces for the Economist we developed the campaign with influential partners that helped propagate the campaign through their own social networks.

And it‟s much more effective ifit goes beyond propagation.With the Art of the TrenchBurberry co-created thecampaign with The Sartorialist(and as we did with ourpartners on Thinking Spaces).

The Sartorialist helped with the concept,the art direction and took many of theinitial photographs. He lent credibility tothe campaign (something we find worksbest with „new media‟ figures) and bothpartners benefited from the association.

propagation

SOCIAL FIRST AND INTEGRATEDThe most effective campaigns are „socialfirst‟, integrated campaigns. We workedwith Grey developing a Twitter and GoogleMaps mashup that worked with theirspace chair concept for a TVC.

DIGITAL INTEGRATION We advocate a „hub and spoke‟ approach – with, generally speaking, the social media spokes used for awareness and recruitment, with the hub being used for conversion.digitalplatform

COST AND RETURNSThere is a perception that social media issomehow „free‟ or „earned‟ media. It‟s not.Quality content and partners cost money. To„earn‟ attention you have to shift media spendto content, creative activity, channelmanagement and build. The „free bit‟ is theexponential return that a successful campaigndelivers. 46

WHAT’S THE ROI MODEL? There is no established, general ROI model for social media. However, that shouldn‟t be a surprise. We‟re only about three years in. And approaches, campaigns and channels differ widely. ROI models will be established as the channels mature. In the meantime it‟s worth noting that even before the advent of social media brand advocacy was proven to drive sales growth, by in some cases as much as 20%. The results with social media canFlickr: some rights be exponentially greater.reserved by sahlgoode

Measure everything. Benchmark against your own activity. Benchmark againstyour competitors. Develop your own attribution models, and ROI models. Testthem against others being developed in the market.

CONCLUSION° Be remarkable° Align your social object with your business objectives° Offer levels of participation° Think like a media company° Offer levels of content° Think about partners early on in the conceptual phase° Integrate with other media° Measure and benchmark

http://www.amusingourselves.com	1458
http://socialcommercetoday.com	1289
http://www.syzygy.co.uk	403
http://slabbertportfolio.wordpress.com	278
http://theartofsocialmedia.wordpress.com	129
http://mansitrivedi.tumblr.com	119
http://bundlr.com	50
http://www.scoop.it	40
http://feeds.feedburner.com	25
http://www.hanrss.com	9
http://paper.li	9
http://www.mansitrivedi.com	3
http://safe.tumblr.com	1
http://www.threadsy.com	1
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	1
http://66.163.168.225	1

How to Build a Successful Social Media Campaign: A Five Point Framework

by Syzygy London on Sep 08, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

16 Embeds 3,816

Statistics

How to Build a Successful Social Media Campaign: A Five Point Framework Presentation Transcript