How To Run A Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign: Jay Thadeshwar
Immediate Success in Social Media Marketing
With the staggering growth of social media and its reach, marketers cannot ignore the power of social media. Social Media is a cluster of digital platforms which are made to bring people together and share their social lives online. Social media has been a hub for marketers, companies, journalists, public figures and social activists to promote themselves and catch eyeballs of those millions of people who use social media platforms as a utility.
Social media marketing doesn’t only mean marketing campaigns run by companies to sell their products/ services/experiences, it has a wider prospective.
Social Media Marketing includes:
- Promotion on social media platforms
- Activating your company’s brand
- Introducing new product on social media platforms
- Marketing your content
- Creating a public image as a social activist and gather public support
- Creating a strong profile as a professional in various fields
- Engaging people with your profile for a long term objective
- Selling your products / services / experience online with help of social media
- Developing a strong followers base
- Going viral for a social cause
- Going viral for a monetary cause …and much more
In nutshell, social media marketing can help you achieve anything that requires attention of masses. The only reason is that social media interacts with millions of people from all around the world. You get to know who your target customers are, where they are and how to pitch them.
Now…how do you start playing on social media and how far the success is?
Everyone wants to achieve some or the other goal through social media and that makes the market competitive. Let’s see, how to get immediate success on social media ?
Corporate biggies are hungry to get maximum social media coverage on web. Social Media Marketing is important because it’s a permanent effect. Once you get favor of your target on social media, they will be with you forever. Adsense or Adwords will give you one time visit from your customers but social media platforms will give you support of your customers forever if you know how to hold them. Whatever you post on Social Media, will directly be visible to your customers once they are engaged with your profile.
1. Live in Future
People keep advising you to stay in present and think about what’s going on rather than what is going to be in next few months. Focus on both and relate every current happening with future and figure out how it is going to affect the future. People already know the present, they are interested in future. You be the mirror of future, people will start following your reflections.
Example:
I’ll give you an example of a Facebook based car pooling service, Smart Mumbaikar. Raxit Sheth, the founder of Smart Mumbaikar knew that the petrol prices are going to increase in India and he fixed the launch date of Smart Mumbaikar to take advantage of what is going to happen in future. Social media was flooded with updates related to price rise, people’s anger and frustration on government.
Smart Mumbaikar targeted this movement and promoted itself as a tool providing multiple solutions – Saves Money, Saves Time, Reduces Traffic, Reduces Pollution and Reduces Stress Level.
They first decided to promote Smart Mumbaikar like this:
After the price rise, they changed the title of the snippet as below:
This campaign was successful and Smart Mumbaikar got famous immediately. People started using this app and suggesting the same to their friends. After going viral on web, Smart Mumbaikar got interviews by some of the premium news papers and news channels in India. The multiplying effect of social media really worked here.
2. Define Your Goals
Before starting any campaign or designing a marketing strategy, you need to be sure about what you want to achieve with it. Your goals should be very clear and depending upon your goals, you can plan your action. Follow Reverse Engineering while planning a marketing campaign for your business/product/service/brand/personal profile.
What do you want to achieve ?
- Hits on your corporate website
- Brand Activation
- Introduction of new product or service
- Pitch your potential customers
- Increase user engagement and build relationship with customers
3. Define Your Target Segment
Your product/service/experience will not be useful to everyone out there. Everyone has certain needs, requirements and problems and they need solutions for the same. Analyze your business with those needs and requirements; if your product or service can provide some solution to that person, he/she is your target customers. It can be worked out by other way also, analyze your product well. Define what specialty and core competency your product has and then analyze the market. Whoever wants the service or product that you provide is your target customer. Now, how to reach that customer through social media?
Every network has its own specialty and audience. For example, LinkedIns is exclusively for professional networking. You can market your professional stuff on LinkedIN. Twitter is majorly used by news enthusiasts, geeks and techies while Facebook is holistic and open. You need to determine where your target can be reached.
4. Content Is The King
It is very essential to develop a content strategy that is strong and consistent over time. Social media is a platform where your target customer is keeping watch on you regularly. You need to be regular when it comes to engaging the users. You should have content ready for next 7 days to engage users.
When it comes to user engagement, I love the Facebook campaign of Scorpio, a car from Mahindra & Mahindra.
Have a look, how they engage users regularly and with effective content.
- Mahindra Adventure, Contest
- Know The Scorpio Contest
- Multiple updates a day
5. Touch Hearts
Whenever you touch the sentiments of your target customers in a positive way, they themselves take you further and spread the word. Let’s talk about the Modern Mahatma Gandhi of India, Anna Hazare.
Anna Hazare is the most famous and most followed social activist in India. He fights against corruption and his facebook updates are more than awesome.
The Cover Page – Holding the flag of India with thousands of supporters. This picture itself connects him to thousands of Indians who are suffering from corruption.
Recently launched TV show, Satyamev Jayate, working for social issues in India has got immense support from Indians. People post millions of updates every hour regarding the show on Facebook and Twitter. Anna takes advantage of it and tries to associate his social work with that of Satyamev Jayate. People will find a connection with Anna Hazare’s movements and Satyamev Jayate’s movements and will be touched emotionally as these social issues affect their lives regularly
When it comes to touching hearts, even the marketing guru and a change agent of India, Aamir Khan is one of the best people to take inspiration from. People use Facebook and twitter for entertainment and Aamir, promotes social issues online on these platforms, to create awareness and gather support.
He doesn’t stop after spreading awareness, he asks for support and also publishes the results of his movement against social issues. He masters the art of engagement, he is the best when it comes to engage people with a cause until solution comes out.
Conclusion –
These are the basic tactics which you can use to get immediate success in Social Media Marketing. Remember – Social media connects people, people come there to feel social and gain social satisfaction, they have certain needs, certain problems, certain requirements….all you need to do is, tell them: We understand you, and we will provide you what you need, be it emotional experience, physical product, information or entertainment, We are here for you !!
