By Amanda Goodhue, Director of Digital PR at /excelamktg, a social media firm based in Los Angeles.
One of the biggest challenges of running a social media campaign, especially for small businesses, is participation. You can blast it out on Facebook, tweet it multiple times, and include it in your latest email marketing– everything short of spamming your fans– but still a low amount of entries.
To keep your campaign from becoming a total disaster there are a few simple digital PR tactics you can incorporate in your campaign to help increase engagement. Below are two recent case client studies:
When jewelry designer client Maya Brenner launched a custom-designed contest app through Facebook earlier this year to promote her zodiac necklace collection, we wanted to make sure the contest received a successful amount of entries.
Our PR team took the opportunity to reach out to various individuals in the fashion blogging community, gifting a zodiac necklace in the sign of their choice in exchange for promoting the contest
In doing so, Maya Brenner was able to reach her targeted audience through these sites, promote her contest and increase visibility of her brand and the piece. So far, the ongoing monthly contest has garnered more than 1,000 likes and entries.
In 2011, our PR and social media teams ran a small Twitter hashtag campaign for Los Angeles’ skincare clinic Face Place in honor of Mother’s Day. The brand objectives were to highlight user-generated content with a fun approach and build awareness around the Face Place services and products by offering a prize
Since this was a Twitter-centric campaign, we made sure the hashtag was included in the title of the press release. This way, when the press release posted to Twitter, hashtag was activated (which made it especially easy for us to see who aggregated the press release).
Along with Face Place Twitter followers, the campaign was also shared with various beauty bloggers, inviting them to share their tips using the hashtag, and they did, with many submitting more than one tip!
With the growth of social media and the development of new platforms comes the growth of campaigns. If you’ve been having success on Facebook and/or Twitter, try connecting with your audience and customers on a new platform. If you notice Pinterest is driving more traffic to your webpage, create a fun pinning campaign. Are your audience heavy photo app users? Start a fun Instagram hashtag photo campaigns.
You don’t have to have to be a big brand or have a large following to run a successful social media campaign, there are brands big and small maximizing them to their full potential—just use your creativity and try some new tactics.
What beauty or fashion social media campaign has most stood out to you in 2012?
