Developing Successful Social Media

Campaigns

Understanding the Pr inciples of an Effective Social Media Campaign.

By Josse Alex Garrido, UTRGV Social Media Manager. July 2016

Outline Infuse social media at the roots. Define success. Define your message. Understand your audience. Gather the right tools and elements. Create a content calendar. Analyze performance & continue improving.

The biggest mistake organizations make is to think of social media as an

afterthought.

If you want your campaigns to be effective, you must include social media very early in the planning stages of your marketing efforts.

Define SuccessSuccess can mean anything, from simple awareness of your campaign to measurable forms of engagement.

Set your expectations clearly, and make sure you keep your main goal in mind as you are developing your social media campaign.

Define Success: Digital Measurements• Clicks to your website: This campaign objective is ideal when you have a

properly optimized landing page and want people to visit the page to learn more about your program or article.

• Conversions: When developing paid campaigns, several platforms allow you to keep track of specific actions you want to track (for example, how many people applied to your program or how many calls you received). You can also keep track of conversions by asking people how they found out about your event/program.

• Digital Engagement: The number of likes, comments, shares, etc., that a post has. The more the engagement, the higher the impression rate and the more people likely to find out about what you are trying to promote.

• Impressions: How many people have seen your post/update. Impressions by themselves are not a good benchmark metric, but can help you understand the general preferences of your audience.

Look at your numbers from different angles.A post about a deadline might not get a lot of

engagement, but it actually might turn out to have a lot of

impressions.

Define Your MessageWhat are you trying to do?• Persuade: Make people do something, enroll in a program, attend an

event, or engage with your cause.• Educate: Inform people about a program or project, provide additional

insight about a topic or help people understand the importance of something.

• Entertain: Amuse people, by providing content that is unique, interesting and timely, in order to entice people to keep coming back for more.

Define Your Message: Optimize Your Message for Each Platform• Facebook: Content with high entertainment value. • Twitter: Very short content and videos. In the first 5 words, you

need to capture people’s attention. • Instagram: A primarily visual platform.• LinkedIn: A professional network. Great for alumni.• Snapchat: Share “in the moment”• Pinterest: An inspirational platform.

Understand Your AudienceWhat kinds of posts/updates generate the most engagement?

What does the ideal audience(s) for my campaign look like?

Sometimes, it is all about time.

General Weekday Patterns• BC: Not very enthusiastic but love positive messages.• AC: Enthusiastic about school spirit/pride.• Morning busy period: Not very engaging.• Around lunch: Quick reads and high engagement.• Afternoon busy period: Rough period for engagement.• After work/school: Ideal for most updates.• Night: People want entertaining content at this time.

Gather the Right Tools and ElementsEach social media platform is unique.

Something that might generate lots of engagement on Facebook might fail to gain any interactions on Twitter (that is often the case).

Keep in mind that you will most likely need to develop content that is specifically tailored for each platform -- an animated gif for Twitter, but a graphic for Instagram and a video for Facebook, for example.

Source: 9Gag

Create a Content CalendarSome tools that can help you create and maintain your content calendar:• Trello: Project collaboration, approvals, comments, etc.• Google Sheets: Excel-like, auto-updates, easy to work with.• Google Keep: Allows easy task-collaboration and sharing.• Wunderlist: Great for task-lists.• Yammer: Multimedia internal collaboration tool.• Excel Online: Greater privacy-control for collaboration.• Dropbox: Allows a centralized cloud storage for projects.• Google Drive: Similar to Dropbox, integrates easily with other

Google products.

Create a Content Calendar: Things to Keep in Mind.• What regular events are happening around the time you are

planning to post your updates?• Use an active, human voice.• Be very mindful of your schedule and change it depending on

current events.

Be very mindful of your schedule and change it depending on current events

Analyze Performance and Continue Improving

It is important to keep a close eye on engagement metrics and overall reach.

Even if you have planned around a past content schedule that was effective a few months ago, be open to switch things around if you are seeing that the updates are not giving you the engagement you had planned.

Let your analytics data guide you in both the implementation and review of your social media campaigns.

facebook.com/utrgv/insights/

analytics.twitter.com/user/utrgv/tweets