Over the past decade or so there have been tons of awesome social media campaign ideas to stimulate learning. Here are two of the best we have found to illustrate what lessons to follow.
Social networking is not about farming followers, it’s a way of cultivating relationships.
What social media design techniques work best for your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.
When choosing to learn from others social media strategies, it is always helpful to choose one of the top dogs in social media.
Meet Starbucks. They have been successfully executing their social media marketing plan since the first days of social media and social commerce. For over 5 years, and their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.
With more than 18,000 retail locations in 60 countries, the coffeehouse is the picture of success.
Starbucks rode the baby boomer trend in the 1990s, the swelling ranks of mid-age professionals that created the need for a third place, ‘ an affordable luxury’ where people could share and enjoy a cup of coffee with friends and colleagues, away from work and home.
In our opinion, the company has inserted itself into the American urban landscape more quickly and craftily than any retail company in history. It has forever changed the way companies market themselves to customers. Here is how we feel they have been so successful:
Market segmentation
The company has stayed with the upper-scale of the coffee market, competing on comfort rather than convenience, which are the case with its closest competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts.
Execution
The company continues to focus on its original product bundle that includes good coffee, quality service, and a nice environment to hang around. They keep their attention on paying attention to the details of great execution and service.
Social media
One of the earliest adopters of the use of social media for marketing and social commerce, Starbucks has certainly taken a leadership position. Their social media strategy is built around their company website and 6 additional social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, YouTube, and My Starbucks Ideas.
We will review Starbuck’s social media strategy in detail below.
Adaptation and innovation
Starbuck’s business crowdsourcing, via its My Starbucks Idea website, has been a huge success. Why may you ask? Because they have combined the concepts of change, experimentation, social media, customer engagement, and market research and made the results key components of both their brand as well as their marketing strategy.
Have you given My Starbucks Idea a try? What did you think?
Starbucks has clearly embraced the digital realm. With a strong presence on multiple social networks, the brand has set a high bar when it comes to being social and engaging its customers. They are at or near the top of nearly every major brand ranking in social media.
Starbucks’ ability to wear so many hats corporate success, “local” favorite, and Internet sensation warrants strategic examination.
Why is Starbucks such a social media marketing success story? There are seven key reasons their social media strategy is a successful difference maker for their marketing campaign:
Here is our take on why:
Social media campaigns … customer relationships
Instead of solely focusing efforts on accumulating new customers, it cultivates its current relationships. This ensures more fans/followers in the long run, as well as the continued existence of brand advocates.
This holds true across the board: In-store experiences are highly valued, along with online engagement, emphasizing the importance of customer service.
Going to its customers
When Starbucks takes a photo, it shares it on Instagram, posts it to Facebook, tweets it on Twitter, and pins it on Pinterest. It clearly goes to where all its customers like to hang out. Cross-promotion is more valuable as the world becomes more digitally focused.
Each network provides an opportunity to reach a new audience, and integrating your strategy on each is crucial to increasing visibility and promoting the brand.
Here is what Mark Schaefer had to say about social proof in a recent blog post:
There seems to be no question that social proof will continue to be critically important to the consumer experience and ultimately our commercial success.
Starbucks is certainly taking advantage of social proofing in its strategy, isn’t it?
Customer engagement
They believe in letting customer engagement and conversation occur as naturally as possible. They listen carefully, observe, and apply new ideas from what they learn.
Happy customers are eager to share good experiences and offers. For example, the Starbucks frequent promotions like “buy 1 get 1″ garner an extraordinary amount of engagement on social media through comments, “likes,” and shares.
Google use of a story
Facts don’t persuade, feelings do. And creative stories are the best way to get at those feelings.
Have you seen the Google Reunion video where a story of long lost friends is told? The video was made by Google India, and the point, of course, is to promote Google Search. But it also reaches a new level of what can be done with the value of creative stories.
If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here …a short 3+ minutes.
The story is this: a man in Delhi tells his granddaughter about his childhood friend, Yusuf. He hasn’t seen Yusuf since the Partition of India in 1947 when India and Pakistan became separate countries and the two friends were forced to separate. The man’s granddaughter arranges for the two to meet again.
The story is simple and direct. It’s beautiful and honest, and true. The photography is spectacular. The music adds to the very good acting…
Do you use stories in your customer engagement … or perhaps in marketing messages? Good stories are a great way to develop an identity, personalize and build your customer base. Good stories:
Immediately focus on engagement, experiences, and emotion – central tenets that are attractive to customers.
The narrative makes your message relevant and memorable through personalization.
Stories are a great means for sharing and interpreting experiences, and great experiences have this innate ability to change the way in which we view our world.
Creative story lessons
A lot of us are trying to figure out how to improve the use of storytelling as part of our marketing. Very few of us do it well. There are several things to be learned from this excellent video:
Emotional connection
This video is about as emotional as it gets. Stories like this provide a chance to experience a variety of emotions without the risk of those emotions themselves.
Emotions like wonder, fear, courage, or love can be tested out in the minds of those as they listen to a story. You may remember the feelings of emotions which can trigger memories or create resolve as a result of hearing such stories.
The experience of hearing stories can awaken portions of emotional lives that may have lain dormant or have not yet been explored.
Be dynamic with your stories like Google. Nothing is more important to narrative content than imagination, so give vivid descriptions and use emotional hooks and humor to get people fully engaged.
This story definitely engages us, doesn’t it? Be creative, not only with words and images but also with the methods you use to convey them. Like the music as well as the messages.
Social media campaign ideas … understanding others
Well-told stories can help us to learn about other cultures, ideas and ways of thinking. They can provide opportunities to know how past generations responded to challenges.
They can also let us know how new generations are encountering and dealing with similar opportunities or the new challenges they face.
This video has some of each and then some. In the background is the partition of India, a painful episode in the history of India and Pakistan.
These aren’t just two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time. This is a creative story that builds on some big forces: politics, religion, geography, nationalism.
If you really listen to your customers, like Google has, you can leverage their stories to drive your creativity. By analyzing their stories of how your products and services fit into their lives, you can gain valuable insight into their needs and desires, which can be hugely beneficial to other aspects of your business.
Like product design and development and ongoing marketing strategy. The reunion has done that well don’t you think?
Creative social media ideas … growing intimacy
People are thirsty to know that they are seen and heard in our over-stimulated society. The rampant growth of “reality” TV shows certainly proves this.
When personal and life stories are shared, there’s a chance to know that “I am not alone.” The two old friends certainly don’t want to be alone any longer.
Remember, stories, when properly written, pull people into a dialogue. It’s about engagement and interaction. The audience is just as active a participant as the storyteller.
In contrast, many companies and brands still relentlessly push messages to their employees and into the marketplace—without meaningful context or relevancy.
The brand can be central in the story
It’s obvious that this video is promoting Google. But the use of Google is woven into the narrative in a way that feels natural. It’s not intrusive or forced.
It works very effectively. Especially when it is not about Google but about Google customers. Simply about how people use Google products.
The messages
There are two messages in the video that are being driven home by Google. The first is that the work Google does is making a difference.
It is making the world a better place through its search engine. But it’s not about technology. It’s about what people do with the technology. How they apply it to solve their problems.
The second message, while a definite subset of the first, is as important. That being the old world was one where people were driven apart. But there is a change in the old world where technology is ushering in a new world. A new world where people are brought together in a way that would not have existed a decade ago.
As a storyteller, I know my audience is experiencing one of the above benefits as they listen to my serious or funny stories. I see their breathing change, their attention focus and their foreheads wrinkle or relax. So much is happening in our shared experience.
There are no shortcuts when it comes to crafting a quality narrative. It takes a ton of creativity as well as time, patience, planning, and polishing to give your brand’s story sparkle and make it shine. We recommend you dive into using creative stories.
Related post: Social Media Campaign … How to Create an Eye-popping One
Next time you are building a marketing campaign, use a great story built from these lessons.
The conclusion from these examples
There are a lot of misconceptions about social media marketing. Just because you read something in a blog post or hear something from a credible source doesn’t mean it is true or true for you and your business.
Always do your research, and continually try to improve. Social media marketing is here to stay, and it can drive a lot of business for you, assuming you are leveraging it correctly.
There is more opportunity to fail in social media than to succeed if we treat it like any other marketing vehicle. Social media requires us to get away from being promotional and sensational and instead treat our customers with special attention. Special attention that means being social, building relationships, and creating trust.
Bottom line, listen more than you talk. You’ll be amazed how much you can learn about your audience when you shut up and listen. Try it!
Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
More reading on social media design from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Are you interested in learning how to winsocial media marketing wars? Looking for the latest social media marketing tactics? Perhaps you want to know the benefits of social media marketing for small businesses.
It is not terribly hard to accomplish these objectives. We’ll share with you how the most successful small businesses use social media to growbrandloyalty.
Social media has come a long way since then as have the strategies, tactics, methods, and power associated with social media.
A successful social media marketing campaign is multi-dimensional. It’s kind of complicated. Ask any social media marketer “How do you do social media marketing?” and you’re likely to get the “Um, where do I start?” look.
There are a lot of elements to address and minute details to cover. Often, the most difficult stage is the initial one, when you’re trying to gain traction and pick up momentum.
How many times have you seen companies requesting people to friend them on Facebook? Like farming, followers was the name of the game. Sad but true. The truth is that social media marketing campaigns are really about cultivating relationships with potential customers. Fan ‘skins’, by themselves, are of very little value.
Related: Social Media Marketing Lessons From the New Pros in Town
What is the importance of social media to your small business? Dialog with customers for sure. What about reading your content and remembering? Appreciating your help? Marketing? Building relationships? We believe it is all of these things, but the bottom line goal is relationship building.
Marketing for small to mid-sized businesses is a different animal than it is for big brands. For the former, cost is always a factor, they insist on measurable results (even if their metric is as vague as “Do we think it worked?”), and creativity usually takes a second place to cost-effective, day-to-day manageability.
And yet, whether you are Millifiore Skin Care, Black Tulip Restaurant, or Coca-Cola, the challenges are much the same: To grab prospects’ attention; re-explain quickly and memorably how you make life better and give them good reasons to buy now.
No matter how many zeroes appear on your marketing invoices, there is never enough money to reach the market the way you’d like to, so small businesses need to experiment with new ways to reach their target markets.
Small businesses win social media.
Why social media campaigns are so important
Social word-of-mouth
Social media enables consumers to generate and tap into the opinions of an exponentially larger universe.
While word-of-mouth has always been important, its scope was previously limited to the people you knew and interacted with on a daily basis. Social media has removed that limitation and given new power to engage a much wider set of consumers.
Hyper-informed consumers
Social media is transforming the way that consumers across the globe make purchase decisions.
Customers around the world are using social media to learn about other users’ experiences, find more information about brands, products, and services, and to find deals and purchase incentives.
Here’s how small businesses win social media marketing wars
Here are 19 action considerations for winning social media marketing. These are the ones we use most often with our clients. We believe they are the ones most critical to the success of your social media marketing:
Define target customers
It all starts with knowing who your customers are and knowing as much about what makes them tick as you can. Without this step, most of the other measures become just a shot in the dark.
So spent a lot of your time on this action. Keep in mind that you can’t be everything to everybody. Remember that not all customers are alike.
Choose best channels
Once you understand who your target customers are, you’ll need to study which social media sites they use most frequently and to what end. Social media takes a lot of time and energy, so you need to know where your time will be best spent.
Benefits of social media marketing … share unique content
Your content goal is simple … be as helpful as you can and be entertaining, or else be ignored. If you are going to put in the time and energy, you don’t want to be ignored.
What are you doing to make their first 30 seconds on your platform extraordinary? If you can’t answer this question, you need to start here. First impressions are everything.
Make consumers feel something. If you want to grab my attention on social media, make me laugh. Make me cry. Make me feel something, anything.
When I have a super busy day, and I am replying to tweets on Twitter I have no choice due to the amount of them and time constraints but to choose where and when I am going to respond. It is a natural choice for me. I respond to the people who grab my attention.
These are the people who are nice, who make me feel good. The people who are genuine. The people who make me laugh. Pull an emotional chord.
Don’t send snarky tweets trying to get attention. Most people can see right thru the snark and won’t respond. I ignore the trolls and the folks looking only for attention. Be genuine and offer something of emotional value.
Listening comes first and foremost to understand what customers are saying about their needs and perhaps about you. Once you have heard, then join in as near real time as you can.
Be YOU and be consistent. Remember customers deal with people and not businesses.
As we said previously, social media marketing takes a lot of time and energy. There many useful tools in existence that will help in the workload. But keep this in mind … customers take note when it seems they are dealing with a robot. Don’t be that robot.
Emphasize social
One of your key business objectives is to build relationships with customers. That end game results in customer advocates and trust. This process takes constant attention to being social on a very consistent basis.
Benefits of social media marketing … tell short stories and educate
Not sure what content your fans want? Prototype and test your ideas. Try posting different types of status updates, related and not related to your product and company. Also use your social media insights to see what your readers are engaging with the most, and then deliver more of it.
Many brands build ads and then share them with fans on their social media sites. A great example is with the Guinness ad we discussed in our article on Guinness marketing using storytelling. This technique used subtle messaging with a great story to appeal to fans. The story’s light touch made sharing the story seem less like an advertisement
Doing a great job of creating campaigns that tellshortstories and have subtle messaging is an effective campaign tactic.
If you’re inexperienced in video marketing, that’s okay. There is a vast variety of articles on the topic, and a good place to learn. But remember the best way to learn is by doing and practicing. Start your video creations with free tools like Vine and Instagram.
Consumers always enjoy good stories and helpful information that educates.
Social media campaigns.
Partner with complementary small businesses
Contests and giveaways are standard tactics on social media campaigns. You can overcome this challenge through some creativethinking. Find additional small businesses that fit with your objectives … say for contests. You can also retweet content on Twitter and likes Instagram photos of complementary brands that promote something related to your products and services.
During the Sochi Olympics, Coca-Cola hosted a contest/series called #CokeGames. The gist of it was that they created simple Olympics-inspired games like Bottle Cap Hockey, Coke Curling, Ice Cube Ski Jump. Then, they asked their followers to play along by filming and uploading short videos of the Coke fan playing the game. The incentive was an opportunity to win a $100 gift card.
Your small business could adopt this idea, using any local event as inspiration. It might be a local seafood festival or perhaps a local hockey team championship game. These local events happen all the time and offer great opportunities for the attention of your brand and therefore your relationship building.
How do you create fan conversation? One great way we have found is through asking fans a thought-provoking question. Use questions that relate to your brand. For example, Internet Explorer wondered how people imagine the web in 5 years. Remember that you need to be part of the community and give your answer.
When asked to share their vision of the future, fans had fun sharing their thoughts and others used the Q&A as a way to voice their opinions on IE’s products.
Show your fans the fun
It’s always appropriate for any business, large or small, to show its personality. If it’s a character that wants to be a little weird occasionally, go ahead and get a little strange.
Skittles is an excellent example of this tactic. Yes, most of their posts are silly, but it’s working for Skittles.
A typical day’s posts can include observations such as “Really annoying pirates carry pigeons on their shoulders” and shots from the page’s ongoing BFF series, in which it displays photos from users posing with their beloved Skittles.
If you’re a product-based company, ask your users to send pictures of themselves using your product or service in exchange for a shot at a prize, or for the honor of being featured on the page.
Post fun facts
Not all of your company’s posts should be brand-centric, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be branded. Kit Kat posts fun facts and takes advantage of modern topics, but also includes their tagline, “Break Time. Anytime.” on the images they share.
You should always look to tap into a trending political topic, particularly if it relates to your products and services. Find useful creative visual designs to reinforce the message.
Small businesses win social media … crowdsource ideas
Always use any and all ways to gain customer insights that you can employ. One way to accomplish this is to crowdsource ideas from customers. We have written about two companies that have used this technique very successfully. (See our two crowdsourcing articles … one on Starbucks and one on Legos.)
My Starbucks Idea website is at once a crowdsourcing tool, a market research method that brings customer priorities to light, an on-line community, and an effective internet marketing tool.
Encourage customers to give their opinions and reward the best ideas. It’s a great example of how a business can use social media as a mini–focus group and learn what customers want.
There are many ways a business can use social media to help manage customer service and experience. Start small, just collecting all inputs, good and bad. And then grow from there.
For example, the Olive Garden showcases their food with “Yum!”-inducing photos to draw attention to their social media as a way to solicit customer service insights. That’s to be expected of a restaurant.
What’s more impressive, though, is that Olive Garden uses their platforms as a gateway to customer service. They encourage customers to chat with their guest relations team about experiences at their restaurant.
Don’t you think you can follow this model? You certainly don’t have to be a restaurant. How serious are you about customer service and customer insight engagement?
You don’t have to make the social network your primary source for support, but you should respond and interact with your fans to answer their questions. You’ll not only boost engagement but also show that you’re human and you care about their opinions and issues.
Create new customer experiences
At the core of Ford’s social media marketing strategy is an effort to give the company’s potential customers a chance to experience the brand and the product in ways they never expected. Before the unveiling of the 2011 Explorer, Ford created a Facebook page that gave its fans sneak peeks at features and video interviews with the design team and chief engineer. And in both campaigns, it’s the customers themselves that are selecting and talking about the new experiences.
Scott Monty’s advice on whether Social Media Marketing is right for your company,
If your clients are there, you need to be there too … he also went on to say ‘You need to listen.’ Observe how they behave and act similarly.
Respond to everyone
No matter what you do, if you want to build engagement you have to be engaging with all customers and potential customers. What does this mean? Do a great job of responding to most comments.
Tag people in a comment stream to let them know that you’ve responded to their inquiry and appreciate their comment.
Analyze, correct, iterate, and learn
Analyze your measurement results, and continuously make corrections, iterate, and most importantly, learn.
Here is an important guideline to keep in mind for all of your social media sites. Follow the 70/20/10 guideline … not a rule, but a guideline. Let us break that down for you. The majority (70%) of content that a social media site page puts up should be brand- and business-building, meaning it’s information that is valuable to your followers. Content shared from other sources makes up 20% and the remaining 10% or less (NEVER more) is self-promotional.
Apply the 70/20/10 rule to your content mix and generate more interest for your social media and increase your customer engagement.
The bottom line
There are a lot of misconceptions about social media marketing. Just because you read something in a blog post or hear something from a credible source doesn’t mean it is right or true for you and your business.
Always do your research, and continually try to improve. Social media marketing is here to stay, and it can drive a lot of business for you, assuming you are leveraging it correctly.
There is more opportunity to fail in social media than to succeed if we treat it like any other marketing vehicle. Social media requires us to get away from being promotional and sensational and instead treat our customers with particular attention. The individual attention that means being social, building relationships, and creating trust.
Bottom line, listen more than you talk. You’ll be amazed how much you can learn about your audience when you shut up and listen. Try it!
Do you have a lesson about making your customer experience better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your clients?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREEquote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on social media lessons from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
