When it comes to successful social content marketing strategies, creativity reigns supreme. Today we have a guest-article by Janine Neutra who works as a “Senior Director of Online Marketing” for the San Francisco-based marketing company Wheel Media. Here she shares insights on “Effective Social Content Marketing Strategies” & it will become clear as we review these five strategies that in order to be successful with your own strategy it’s necessary to create something that is unique, while also being authentic.
The Inside Joke by Buzzfeed and HBO
To promote HBO’s show ‘Silicon Valley’ they enlisted the help of Buzzfeed in order to advertise. They understood their target audience and knew that many of their potential viewers are fans of Buzzfeed. Since Silicon Valley is known for being a hotbed for coders and programmers, they created inside jokes for their advertisements that would target that demographic. The result was a campaign that gained the attention of multiple coders and programmers throughout the country.
Doing this for your own brand would mean gaining a complete understanding of your target audience. Once you’ve done so, you can create personalized inside jokes that they’ll be sure to appreciate and remember. This is one of the better ways to create brand awareness & loyalty.
The Useful App by Charmin
If you think it’s difficult to provide successful content marketing for your product or service, think about how challenging it would be to do so for a product like toilet paper. Charmin, however, found a creative way to do just that. Their ‘Gotta Go On the Go’ app enables users to find and rate public restrooms, providing something useful while successfully promoting the brand.
Many business owners may think that creating your own app would be far too expensive or difficult. Companies like Mobi Blocks, however, allow businesses to create useful apps easily and at very affordable rates.
Twitter Tag Campaign by Edge Shave Gel
Twitter tag campaigns are becoming increasing popular because they generally don’t cost a dime. Creating a great campaign that gets people involved is the difficult part. Edge Shave Gel was able to do this with their #soirritating tag. The brand was getting at the fact that shaving and getting cut by doing so are irritating. Thousands of people jumped on the bandwagon and began tweeting the things that they found ‘so irritating’.
Doing this on your own requires nothing more than a bit of creativity and ingenuity, and it can create eyes on your brand quicker than just about any other method.
Vine Campaign by Tombstone
Tombstone used its name association to create a Vine campaign which featured Halloween based vines during the entire month of October. They posted a single video everyday throughout the month and created what turned out to be a viral sensation. The campaign was a huge success and it is even up for multiple awards.
For companies looking to do this for their own brand, it will once again require a bit of creativity. Planning will also be essential so you can be consistent with posts throughout the campaign.
Checking In by Burger King
The fast food giant cleverly created a strategy which involved constructing a digital Burger King Motel where customers could check in using the hashtag #motelBK. It was designed as a way to promote their new Chicken Tender crisp burger and the stay at the motel was seen as a way to cheat on the Whopper without being noticed. It was obviously both clever and quite funny.
This particular strategy will once again require quite a bit of planning and creativity. It can, however, be a very effective way to develop an audience that thinks it is ‘cool’ to check in with your brand.
Reviewing the Strategies
As we’ve mentioned, the success of all of these content marketing strategies came from a whole lot of imaginativeness & creativity. While a lot of the work necessary to create this success for your brand will come from your own creativity, there are quite a few things that you can take from the successes of these five strategies. Hopefully this overview has given you some ideas for exactly what you can do to create your own successful social content marketing strategy. Good luck!
About the Author
Janine Neutra has worked in online marketing since 2000, where she managed search and social media marketing for a national nonprofit organization. She’s now Sr. Director of Online Marketing for the San Francisco-based marketing company Wheel Media, helping small organizations and startups create programs that get results.
Image Credit – Dive Bomb Media Blog