What Are Social Media Campaigns?

Launching a Facebook or Twitter page for your business is merely a first step in customer and prospect engagement.  An untended fan base is worse than no fan base at all. Social media campaigns and promotions are designed to simultaneously attract new fans and followers while activating existing fans so they are motivated to regularly engage on your businesses’ social-branding pages.

What are some examples of social media promotions?

• Sweepstakes/Giveaways: Social media allows you to reinvent traditional sweepstakes by making them social and geared to groups of people participating. New and old fans enter and follow sweepstakes developments by connecting with your page where they can engage with your brand community.
• Contests: Invite users to share pictures, videos, essays (or whatever else you can think of) in a unique way that rewards the winner(s). Inviting fans to share their own content is quintessentially social and leverages the strength of social networking and sharing.
• Deals/Coupons: A great way to monetize your consumer base. Razorfish published a study that underscored the reasons consumers fan and follow brands and businesses; to get the best deals and to take advantage of the best promotions. This is a great way to activate your best customers and brand loyalists. Unlike with contests, fans are more willing to share these deals into their networks, multiplying the power of your followers.
• Trivia: Get your fans involved and learning about your brand. Run weekly/monthly trivia contests with prizes that create frequent return engagement by your followers.

The Best Way To Track Your Fans

Campaigns are fantastic ways to show appreciation for your fans, but they also deliver powerful data about your best prospects.

Promotions employ entry forms (or sign-up forms) that enable the collection of key customer and prospect criteria including:

• Demographics: Who are your fans? How old are they? Where are they from? Are they primarily male or female?
• User Behavior: When do your fans most like to engage on social sites? When are they likely to share your content? What sort of content are your fans most likely to share with their networks? What motivates them to act or buy?
• Contact Information: Would you like to collect email and phone information for email or mobile marketing? Gather a database of contact information and keep fans updated about your product and industry through lead-nurturing email programs.

Why Your Business Needs Social Campaigns

Small- to medium-sized businesses need new leads to survive. By filling out the forms when entering your social campaigns, you are converting a social fan in to a real business lead. Proper management of the information gathered in the entry forms will allow a business to asses its audience and plan and deliver the correct information to them through content marketing.

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have become hyper-competitive marketplaces for small- and medium-sized businesses.  Businesses work hard at increasing brand awareness by deploying these pages, so the recruitment and engagement of each prospect is hard-earned. A social-media promotion is not only a great way to get someone to ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’ your business page, but also to engage around offers and contests. And, they will share offers with their own friends inside their own social networks, creating a viral reach for your business.