How to run a successful social media campaign

When running a social media campaign, you have to overcome various obstacles while maintaining a content schedule — while also thinking of creative ways to achieve your goals. In this article, we’ll talk about ways you can run a successful campaign using common best practices along with real-world examples and inspiration from other campaigns. Check it out!

Set Smart Goals

Before kicking off your social media campaign, as yourself why you’re running it in the first place. What’s the main purpose of the campaign?

The answer to this question will guide the steps you must take during the planning and implementation stages.

The usual goals of any social media campaign include:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Increasing engagement
• Increasing sales
• Generating leads
• Turning leads into customers

After clarifying those goals, strive to be more specific. For instance, how much engagement do you want to generate? What specific metrics are you going to use (number of reactions, comments, and shares, increase in followers, etc)?

These are commonly called SMART goals, which stand for:

S – pecific

M – easureable

A – attainable

R – elevant

T – ime-bound

Setting SMART goals are critical to the success of your campaign. In fact, marketers who set goals are more likely to report success than those who don’t.

Craft Buyer Personas

After setting SMART goals, start knowing and understanding your target audience through buyer personas or customer profiles.

A buyer persona contains details about your ideal customers. Using such a document helps you craft messages that resonate with your target audience. Some of the details you must include are:

• Name
• Gender
• Age
• Work
• Location
• Favorite social media
• Interests
• Hobbies
• Pain points

HubSpot’s buyer persona creator is a great place to start when creating a buyer profile. You can also use Facebook Audience Insights to get more information about your target users.

Get Creative and Resourceful

By being creative and resourceful, you can extend your campaign’s reach in surprising ways. You can buy votes, or you can use existing platforms in new and exciting ways.

If you’re big on a specific social media channel, think of ways you can use it to promote your campaign. To understand this deeper, check what Eurostar did to amass 9.7 million impressions on Instagram.

If you find a unique way to use a popular channel, the internet usually does its work — you can go viral, and your campaign will essentially work by itself.

Involve Your Audience

But if you can’t come up with something that hasn’t been done before, why not ask your audience to help you out?

You can start by engaging them on social media during your campaign. For instance, if you’re doing live events, ask your existing customers to tweet or post about it using hashtags to generate interest.

You can also start polling for ideas, acknowledging unique customer thoughts or suggestions, or asking interesting questions that generate interaction among your customers.

Take Advantage of Trending Topics

As you create a campaign plan or a content calendar, create them in a way that allows for flexibility to accommodate any new or trending topics that might arise. Riding the waves of trends isn’t anything new in the marketplace, but it’s absolutely effective when trying to promote your brand.

For instance, Airbnb generated 36 million impressions and 1.3 million views during one Oscars weekend. It even found a workaround for a tough challenge — it wasn’t allowed to run a TV spot during the Oscars or mention the awards event. Check out their brilliant idea to tap into the massive audience that was the Oscars viewers. As you ride the trend and run the campaign, you’ll be surprised at how much people love unique yet simple ideas on social media.