For better or worse, social media is here to stay, however, it's evolved over time as new players hit the market and steal eyeballs, market share or show a platform who their real audience is and what they want.
The great thing is that every platform has a purpose and a target audience. The challenge is telling a compelling brand story or activating a promotion that registers with a variety of demographics across channels.
Social media has allowed two key things to occur:
1. Brands, and even CEOs, can now engage directly with their audience
2. Small business and startups have the chance to market like the big boys
For many of us, thinking about creating a campaign to cover every platform we think we need to be visible on can be overwhelming. The truth is that launching something interesting and fun on just one channel can translate across the others. Also, just because the social network exists doesn't mean you have to be on it. The worst thing you can do is stretch too far, too thin and not execute well at all.
When I worked in a corporate PR agency implementing multi-million dollar campaigns we didn't have social media, and, it has since, changed everything when it comes to connecting with your audience. Now, small business and startups can come up with their own kind of PR campaign that will attract media and grow awareness through social media.
What do I mean? Let's look at one example:
Got Milk? I can only imagine what the Got Milk? campaign would have looked like in its heyday with the help of social media, in conjunction with PR and advertising. I can imagine the number of teens posting pictures of their walls covered with Got Milk? ads on Facebook (a contest we actually held); not to mention the speed with which Call for Entries for a number of contests would have spread in general; college students across the country interacting with the Got Milk? Mobile, spreading the word and posting photos on Twitter; Moms sharing how they get their kids to drink milk; even the leak of the latest celebrity mustache photo session videos.
This all started with one simple idea that any small business can develop and spread for maximum impact.
Today, all it takes is a little creativity and the ability to develop something that connects customers in a meaningful way that and is relevant to your company. Companies like yours do it every day (https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/top-social-media-campaigns) and you can too with these PR tips for using social media;
What do you want to accomplish? Get your brand out there, increase engagement, increase sales, all of the above?
Define your target audience and what matters most to them about your company - This will give you a starting point for the next step as well as understand how your audience will most likely engage with your company.
Determine your budget and team - Great campaigns are rarely run by just one person so determine your budget and whether you can use an internal team or bring in an agency or freelancers to help. Do you have budget to amplify your campaign with social media ads?
Brainstorm - There are no bad ideas in brainstorming, just the one's you cross off. Gather your team for a session that will flush out that perfect, creative idea and messaging that your audience will connect with, along with prizes, how to win and how the campaign will end...all the details.
Plan it out - Just because you have the idea doesn't mean you put it in play tomorrow. It takes planning to create a successful campaign. You really have to think through how it will go, what messages go where and how long will it last. Maybe your campaign will attract media interest....you'll need time to put a PR plan in place, as well as advertising like Google Adwords, Facebook ads, etc.
Build Audience, Deliver and then Engage - Develop a content schedule that focuses on increasing your social media audience so that their is an audience ready to receive your brand message, and then engage regularly. While you can schedule all of your posts, the best engagement happens in real time. If the audience wants to engage and interact with you, then you need to be present.
Create custom content - It's important to remember that content needs to be custom-created per social channel as the needs and audience are different.
Management - A campaign like this can require all day, daily monitoring. Define who on your team is going to be fully committed and responsible for managing the day-to-day of your campaign; creating reports, engaging will all users, etc.
The Big Finale - Make a big deal about your winners. You've created so much hype through the campaign you don't want to end it like a wet noodle. Use the new following you've created to celebrate your winner(s) and toast your success!
Amplify through cross channel sharing - Think tik Tok to Reels or Instagram stories, shorts on Snap, etc.