The main difference between social media and digital marketing is that social media is included in digital marketing. A lot of people today wrongfully believe that if they engage on main social media platforms they perform digital marketing, which is not necessarily true. Contrary to popular belief, a successful digital marketing campaign is made up of several other components, social media included.
The links between digital marketing and social media
In layman’s terms, digital marketing is all about building awareness and advertising a product or band by making use of numerous digital channels, not just social media. Main components include:
Internet marketing – Search engine marketing (SEM), web, mobile markets (Apple Store and Google Play), email marketing, smartphones, online banner marketing and social media.
Offline digital channels – Digital billboards, TV, SMS, radio, and word-of-mouth
As far as social media is concerned, we must mention that it is a fundamental branch of internet marketing. The rise of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook has completely revolutionised the way people interact, shop, advertise their business and of course, socialize. Social media is a broad term we mostly use to describe online platforms that connect people in exchange of information. Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, YouTube and Pinterest have become just as important as Facebook. In fact, if you own a website the best way to make yourself known in the online environment is to connect to all.
Main differences between social media and digital marketing
Digital marketing can survive without social media, however social media can’t thrive without digital marketing. That’s because marketing in the online environment includes social media. A multi-channel approach online renders better results, and companies can choose to work with channels that best complements their business mantra. Mobile ads, SEM, SEO and banner ads are all digital. They’re not included in social media. This means that digital alone – from a conventional perspective – is a sole one-way marketing approach.
On the other hand, we have Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter just to name a few, which are social media platforms. However, without engagement and interaction using digital marketing, these platforms would be useless when attempting to market a business. Sharing and commenting equals social media. The approach can only work when combined with additional media channels, meaning digital marketing in order to create a bigger impact and grab more attention.
The power of digital marketing over social media
Since social media depends on digital marketing, it’s safe to say that social media can’t live on its own in the online environment. Digital marketing alone, is all about online promoting. Many powerful and top-tier technologies are included in digital marketing, including email, websites, apps, messages, and sharing information. The latter approach is directly linked to social media websites.
Nowadays, most businesses operate online. Even though they have a physical office and still conduct offline marketing, they must have an online presence as well in order to boost awareness and improve leads. Unlike social media, digital marketing is a proven marketing strategy, and social media is an important part of that strategy. The array of online channels used to advertise is numerous, whereas social media marketing alone uses different social platforms. As opposite to social media, digital marketing works just as well in the offline environment. It’s not that powerful, but it works. Offline, social media has zero value.
Social media – the favourite branch of digital marketing
Digital marketing loves social media; and social media can’t live without digital marketing, so it’s a win-win. Whether we like it or not, these two are closely tied together. If you want your business to thrive, you need both. It’s the only way to make yourself stand above the competition. Companies of all shapes and sizes need to adopt the right digital marketing tactics to thrive. Decide on a channel – or multitude of channels – that best match with your business goals. Websites need to be linked to both Twitter and Facebook to generate organic visitors. But they also need to use direct mail campaigns and offline strategies to make themselves known to the masses offline.
When mixed together, social media and digital marketing work the best. Your new startup will thrive, online visitors will become paying customers and your website will end up on the first pages of major search engines. But that doesn’t mean offline tactics don’t matter; because they do, especially when attempting to appeal to local communities.
India or should we say India aspiring to become Digital India is changing and so are the citizens of this country. Be it an urban Indian (living in Tier-1/Tier-2 city) or a rural Indian (living in the villages), one thing that has changed the lives of millions of Indians is The Internet.
According a NASSCOM report titled ‘The Future of India*’ launched in association with Akamai Technologies, India’s Internet user base is the second largest after China. As per the report, India is expected to have around 730 million Internet users by the year 2020 (up from 230 million in 2016). Globally, the number of Internet users is expected to touch 4170 million by 2020. Internet has created a massive impact across all the sectors and it has changed the way we work and interact socially with our friends! [*Source]
Increasing mobile penetration, reduction in data rates, introduction of 4G etc. are expected to develop this market further! Along with the changing habits of the consumers, it became critical for brands to change the way they interact with their customers. Gone are the days when brands could blast a TVC and expect better engagement (and ROI). Brands have become more conscious about their ad-spends and increasing internet penetration has enabled many of them to capitalise on the growth of Digital Marketing & Social Media Marketing. When was the last time, you purchased a product by watching the TVC (without doing a thorough online review) 🙂 The evident NO answers why Digital is such a crucial medium!
Off late, this sector has attracted large investments and there is a sky-rocketing growth in the field of Digital Marketing & Social Media Marketing. In fact, Digital is the new Mainstream communication & engagement medium!! Engagement, Social Reach and Visitor Growth Rate are the key social media metrics tracked by social media savvy brands these days.
The massive growth in the Digital Marketing sector has not only attracted investments but has also led to rise of entrepreneurs who have ventured in digital marketing sector. Months before 1st July, 2015 when PM Mr. Narendra Modi set the foundation of Digital India, two common lads (Vikalp Kumar and Gaurav Sharma) from modest backgrounds residing in non-metropolitan cities were bitten by the Entrepreneurship Bug. They foresaw the upcoming boom that was to happen in the country on Digital Front and so RippleDME was founded!
For Vikalp & Gaurav, there were tons of challenges lying ahead, with new agencies mushrooming in the metros, having a market foot-hold among the giants of the game was a task. To provide cost effective digital marketing solutions seemed a distant dream when even breaking even looked like a farfetched goal. However, entrepreneurs never give up and they looked for strength within.
RippledMe : Humble Beginning
They set up RippledMe’s pilot office in their hometown in Allahabad the first of its kind, at a time when people didn’t even have any clue about digital marketing. Getting the right people to work for them was a herculean task. But they believed and they trained those people, developed the required skills in them and polished their talent till it was up to the mark for the job in hand.
RippledMe : Up-hill task of Ob-boarding
Though getting like-minded people on-board, training them & involving them in the eco-system was a tough task, they had a tougher task at hands. In order to sustain and grow their business they required Clients. They had to first sell their vision to on-board employees and now they had to repeat that task to signing up new Clients.
Clients in the metros wouldn’t believe that a new agency, with the team size in single digits and no prior experience could deliver, that too when the agency wasn’t even located in their city. So the RippledMe team took a bottom-up approach in their execution. Providing services to small business and startups with meagre budgets and yet they delivered, against all the odds around them and all the inexperience around them. Slowly, with time a corner turned. They associated with a startup with initial level of VC funding. With some money in the kitty, they were able to put the client on the map and even beat some of the established players with bigger budgets.
RippledMe : Perseverance pays off, ENDOCON2016 milestone
With experience, a lucrative portfolio and positive references, they started to climb up the ladder and latched on to bigger projects. With time, the clients realized that distance wouldn’t be a factor as far as spotless delivery and honest consultation is concerned. With bigger projects, came the opportunity to set industry benchmarks.
One such benchmark was ENDOCON2016. A top rated, annual, medical conference of Gastroenterologists. Usually there isn’t much noise about such events but RippledMe added the needed bling to it and gave it an online viewership of over 1 million. The first time any medical conference, held on Indian soil, was able to achieve that number [Source]
Along the way they accomplished distinguished tasks such as getting 5000 registered app for a client through integrated Offline and Online activities with CPA half of industry average. Also, proving a new business model for a client, right from the start of its marketing and channelising those efforts to transactions, thereby proving the complete working and functioning of a business idea.
With so many achievements in such a short span of time, RippledMe is a story of how average-joe entrepreneur(s) defeated all odds to create a brand in RippledMe. We caught up with Vikalp Kumar, Co-founder of RippledMe to share his insightful story to our readers. Let’s have a chat with him about RippledMe, their foray into Digital, future plans etc.
Q. How did you come up with idea of RippledMe ?
A. We realized that internet penetration in India stands at around 10%. With the oncoming of the entrepreneur boom, there are new businesses, ventures, prospects, etc grooming up across the whole landscape of India. Marketing is an expensive thing. It can’t be expected that each of these new ventures would have sufficient funds to undertake high-end marketing measures like TV ads, or Radio Ads or Print Ads.
Digital Marketing is the cheapest and the most effective way of marketing as it allows you to reach a very targeted audience and you can measure results for every penny you spent. The entrepreneur generation is teach savvy and digitally educated, hence to make them understand its benefits is easier and it also suits well to their budgets providing instant returns, which is basically the dream for any new business venture.
Q. Brief us about yourself and other founders ?
A. Company is founded by Vikalp Kumar and Gaurav Sharma. Both engineering graduates and classmates till their final day of education. After college, both went separate ways. Vikalp set up a new venture in software development. Gaurav turned towards job in mechanical sector. Both had their own mind sets at the time. Vikalp wanted a better market understanding, so according to him, the best way to do that was by being in the market.
RippledMe Founders – Vikalp(L) & Gaurav(R)
Gaurav on the other hand wanted to learn more about actual work flow in industry. After about 18 months, with different experiences under their belly, they teamed up again for a new venture, bringing their unpolished expertise and little experience in a joint team effort. Vikalp having been in business knew better what mistakes to avoid for the new venture and the way forward. Gaurav having been in service knew how to manage the operations and build a composite, self-sustaining teams.
Q. What has RippledMe set out to become ?
A. We want to be the go to name for Digital Marketing In India.
Q. Have you received any institutional funding ?
A. The company is bootstrapped. No outside investment or bank loan has been availed. We might look into external funding at later point in time. Our priority is growth, growth & growth 🙂
Q. How has been the overall response to RippledMe
A. The response has been encouraging. We believe that if we provide exceptional service, our clients will become our promoters and advertisers themselves. They’ll recommend us to others and word-of-mouth, no matter how small, but is still the most influential and believable source of marketing. Google employed it, so did One Plus One.
We are trying to be on the similar guidelines. First year was tough but no business is easy from the word go. We streamlined our processes, eradicated bottlenecks, trained unpolished talents and now are more hungry than ever.
Team RippledMe
Q. Can you guide our readers to some good resources on Online Marketing, Social Media?
Well, there is tons of information available freely on the internet. We, at RippledMe have an up-to-date blog on Social Media, Mobile Advertising, Online Marketing etc. They can refer & subscribe to RippledMe Blog here
Q. What is future road-map of RippledMe
A. With base built on new ventures, businesses and medium scaled prospects, we want to reach out to the already established brands and show it to them how they are being conned by digital marketing big shots.
Also, we want to develop a bigger base of trained talent pool. People who are apt in creative designing, eye-popping campaigns, analytics, research, communications etc. For this we plan to start short digital marketing courses in tier II and tier III cities so that youth can take advantage of this boom and can make Digital India a reality.
Q. Your thoughts on Digital India, Startup India and other initiatives taken by the government?
A. To keep it very simple, these are the best initiatives announced by the government. Driving License, PAN Card and other documents can now be safely stored on the DigiLocker Cloud. Startup India is an excellent initiative by PM Modi to boost entrepreneurship in India since entrepreneurs are the one’s that would shape India’s future 🙂
RippledMe’s story is indeed a story of Blood, Sweat & Perseverance which is what startup is all about !! If you are a startup looking for Digital Marketing services, do have a look at RippledMe a shot.
If you have any questions about RippledMe or have any questions for Vikalp, please leave them in the comments section…
Since the turn of the century have seen unprecedented change to the way organizations and their customers do their business. And the old saying ‘evolve or die’ has never been so apt. Companies of all shapes and sizes now face the mission critical and constant of adapting new technology to improve their efficiency and productivity. Below are some of the more important trends we think you need to embrace in order to future-proof your business, and stay ahead of the field as this chaotic century continues apace!
This article is contributed by Murali Urs, Country Manager of Barracuda Networks Our/We in the article refers to Barracuda Networks
Social Media
The rise of social media and its impact on how businesses interact with their customers has been one of the most seismic shifts in recent years. The numbers say it all; while a Times Square signage advertising can expect nearly 1.5 million impressions each day, Facebook had 1.71 billion monthly active users!
Increasingly, people expect to be able to interact with your business publicly, in real-time. Social media represents an amazing opportunity to reach more people, promote your business, deliver outstanding customer service, and resolve consumer grievances to minimize churn.
Our top tips for dealing with the social craze are:
1. Ensure you have a well-branded presence on Facebook and Twitter.
2.Create a social media calendar so you can plan your content output and campaigns in advance
3. Monitor the channels regularly and make sure you respond to all comments and messages- good and bad!
Responsive Design
Another earth-shattering development over recent years has been the staggering growth of mobile devices. Whereas back in Y2K you’d be most likely to use your phone purely for calling and texting (with the occasional game of Snake thrown in…) we now use mobile devices everywhere, and for pretty much everything. Invariably, customers now expect a truly consistent experience, whichever device they use to reach your business.
That’s why it’s absolutely vital to ensure that you’re using responsive design on your website. Responsive Design just means that your website recognizes which device a viewer is using and displays an optimized version for that device.
Go Paperless
Going paperless is not only an amazing thing to do for the environment, it can make a difference to your bottom line. The average employee prints an astonishing 10,000 sheets of paper every year which is an unnecessary expense you could surely do without!
Going paperless is also a great way to streamline your processes and manage projects more efficiently. Cutting down on the amount of paper in your business ensures important decisions and processes are no longer informed by flimsy scraps of paper and manual spreadsheets- while providing the peace of mind that your important documents are securely backed up and protected.
File Storage
The days of huge filing cabinets jamming up your office space are surely a thing of the past! There are too many advantages to mention when it comes to cloud storage. It’s inexpensive, saving you the expense of costly backups, and, since your data is encrypted, it’s infinitely more secure. It is also easy for the relevant people to gain access, great for collaboration and of course-saves your physical space.
With such a wide range of affordable options available, it seems crazy that businesses continue to run the risk of losing precious documents as a result of fire or flood.
Security
A lot of things have changed over the years, but unfortunately cyber threats have been one, unwelcome constant. Security techniques have certainly evolved, but then, so have the risks. It’s absolutely vital that you take precautions to keep your business safe.
According to a report by PWC, in 2015, there were 38 percent more security incidents detected than in 2014, causing catastrophic financial damage. In 2015, companies saw an average of 160 successful cyber attacks per week, more than three times the 2010 average of 50 per week, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation.
There are a number of things to consider to ensure you are protected, from firewalls, to anti-virus scans, and encryption of your sensitive data. Success often boils down to planning; how are you meeting the threats that are ‘out there’ and do you have a contingency plan to put into action if the worst happens-an early response can hugely mitigate the impact of an attack!
eSignatures
As technology has soared over recent years, many processes have been simplified and streamlined. But, bizarrely, the act of getting a document signed up is as sluggish and inefficient as ever, with businesses still relying on archaic methods to get the job done.
Using eSignatures, you can forget about the printing, signing, scanning, mailing and above all -Waiting, associated with the old-fashioned techniques. eSignatures are legally binding, just like real signatures, and they allow your staff, clients and partners to sign documents digitally (across multiple devices) and have them back to you in a matter of minutes.
Parle Products, one of India’s pioneers in the biscuit and confectionery manufacturing segment, has announced its association with Mumbai’s most popular Pandal in Lalbaug. This year, devotees of Lalbaugcha Raja will witness India’s first crowd sourced #BiscuitGanesha-an opportunity for devotees to be a part of its making. A 8 foot tall Ganesh idol made out of their favorite Parle Biscuits will be placed at the waiting area in the Pandal.
Recognized as one of the oldest and most revered idols of Lord Ganesha, each year the Lalbaugcha Raja witnesses millions of devotees that travel from all over the county to pay homage. Being one of the most loved brands, Parle Products this year, will add to their excitement as they wait in serpentine queues to pay their respect and pray to Lord Ganesha. Devotees will be asked to participate by sending in their tweets/comments using Hello #BiscuitGanesha on Facebook and Twitter. For each tweet Parle receives, users will get a customized response that showcases a dedicated Parle biscuit being put up in their name on the idol, thus building the #BiscuitGanesha. At the end of each day, Parle will share a time lapse video of all the entries they have received so far. Parle Products will also organize various spot contests and competitions with exciting prizes to be won, thus engaging with devotees and loyal consumers alike.
Speaking about the association Mayank Shah, Deputy Marketing Manager, Parle Products said
Every year millions of ardent Lord Ganesh followers visit Mumbai especially for the darshan, standing in long queues for many hours. With this innovative engagement, we plan to make their wait interactive and interesting and offer them an opportunity to win exciting prizes.
Last year, we had a similar activity which had received great response from the consumers; hence this year too we wanted further consumer engagement hopefully resulting in a better connect with our brand. We are getting the idol made specially from artists in Kolkata who have been known to craft beautiful figurines from varied materials.
The association will continue through the 10 days of the festival beginning on Thursday, 17th September, 2015. Hope that guys in Mumbai catch a glimpse of the Lalbaugcha Raja 🙂
In the past, there have been several articles on this blog where we mentioned how important “Digital Media” has become to anyone’s business. Social Media is now playing an important role in “customer buying behavior” & customer-sentiment echoes about your brand and might affect “buying behavior of prospective customers”.
Social media marketing is hailed as one of the best ways to promote a start up. It is cheap, relatively easy and pretty effective in helping a company establish its own identity and brand. While there are certainly many benefits to social media marketing, truly benefiting from your efforts requires a certain level of skill and dedication. With the wrong approach, your social media presence could even harm your fledgling business.
How many times have we deleted an item from a cart on e-commerce websites after reading customer reviews or seller reviews etc ? Social Media has become an important tool for ensuring that you get repeat/new customers, solving customer pain-points & getting useful feedback from them. In a nutshell – “Listening to customers & Monitoring your brand on Social Media channels would directly/indirectly affect sales“. It is also a channel to WoW your customers 🙂
In this article, we share some of the tips which would help your start-up in making most of Social Media & maximizing results in Monitoring.
Choose,Focus & Focus
Social Media has evolved rapidly due to which daily we see startups claiming to be the next Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. This indicates that there are options however, choosing the right platform for your brand & it’s nature of business [B2B or B2C] is of prime importance. It would be better to start small, listen, track and than spread your wings. If you are a startup dealing with Jewellery or any product dealing with aesthetics, than instagram is a great platform in which case, instagram analytics would be of prime importance.
Interact, Build relations & increase business
In many cases, the ultimate goal of social media marketing is to increase exposure, drive traffic and create leads. This leads to some misconceptions on how to use the platform. Simply promoting yourself everywhere you can will only find a small level of success. The true power in social media lies in building relationships, establishing authority & offering benefits to subscribers. Monitoring what is being said about your brand & interacting with your subscribers creates a very positive influence. Social Media monitoring tools like ThoughtBuzz can come in very handy in this case. The tool gives detailed analysis & insights into the reach, engagement hence, RoI for different social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc.
Monitor Influencers
Opening a social media account is just the first step for your startup. As a startup, there should be responsible, timely & active participation on the channel. A great way to do this is to find other relevant social media accounts, blogs, sites and services and mention them on your social media feeds. You need to identify the social media influencers – A i.e. identify relevant social media accounts, blogs & services and mention them on your social media feeds.
ThoughtBuzz has a good feature that helps you identify the “social media stalwarts” who matter the most for your brand based on the interactions of the fans with the community.
In a nutshell, Social Media cannot be ignored and at the same time, it needs to be monitored with the right set of tools. In this article, we have a look at ThoughtBuzz which suffices all our requirements.
ThoughtBuzz is an interactive social media management tool which has been launched by ThoughtBuzz, a Singapore based creative digital agency, with office in Delhi, Mumbai in India. We review the tool & mention some of the salient features which would make Social Media Management easier for professionals.
Dashboard
Once we login to ThoughtBuzz it prompts you to enter details about the presence of the brand on different social media channels. Users have the options to add profiles for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. Once added, user can monitor them at periodic basis.
User Feed
The latest ThoughtBuzz interface focusses on “Real Time Communication” where it would give you real-time notifications on the latest user activities across your social profiles on Facebook and Twitter. This can help the brand manager to filter the important messages & also ensure that there is timely communication.
Influencers identification & Content Insights
As mentioned before, “Influencers” are the one’s that matter the most for the brand. It could be a positive or negative sentiment that might be generated by the user on Social Media channels. But it becomes necessary to have key insights of your content available on people who are helping taking your content viral on these channels.
Conclusion
Just to summarize, there is no special Mantra to achieve success on Social Media. Certain tactics might work for the competitors however, might not work for your startup. Identify the right hash tags, make timely announcements, identify the influencers & convert passive audience into active audience so that you get the most of your social media channels. At every point, use Social Media Monitoring tools to track & re-iterate your online strategy.
Few days back, we had written about Social Media Week that kicks off on 23rd February in Bengaluru. Today, we have received some more details about the event & that creates a “Compelling” reason to attend SMW,2015.
Bangalore goes social again with the fourth edition of Social Media Week [SMW] in India with the theme being Upwardly Mobile: The Rise of The Connected Class. For more details, please refer this earlier article.
SMW’15 February edition is scheduled simultaneously across the world in seven cities– Bangalore, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Jakarta, Lagos, Milan & New York.
SMW,15 Highlights
Some of the highlight topics & sessions that will be covered at SMW, Bengaluru are as follows:
Panel discussion on Brand Reputation & Crisis
Weathering Twitter Storm
Internet Of Things [IOT] in India
Big data & Big Brands
Insightful workshops on Social Media for Travel Marketing
Social Media Week [SMW] has partnered with the Bengaluru City Traffic Police [BCTP] & kick-started an online campaign titled #ImTheChange encouraging citizens to click pictures, shoot videos & share their pledges towards road safety on SMW page.The campaign has already received 3000+ pledges and has created social buzz reaching to more than 1M Bangaloreans.
Social Media Week is a platform to share ideas, gain insights & collaborate to innovate. Involvement of the whole industry has made this property unique and that has been the success factor. We have more than 70+ sessions, 150+ speakers sharing their knowledge across 5 hubs. We are very excited to witness the social festival going live in the coming week
Bengaluru goes social again with the fourth edition of Social Media Week [SMW] with the theme being Upwardly Mobile: The Rise of The Connected Class. Multiple sessions through the week will explore the dynamic ways of how social media strategy is converging in multicultural market & how mobility devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones along with social technology have transformed the way we work. This international festival is hosted twice a year, in India by R SQUARE Consulting, an integrated marketing services firm.
About Social Media Week
The five-day event hosted at various venues in the city such as The Leela Palace, News Cafe & Big Pitcher among others; will bring together brands, agencies, influencers, practitioners, academic thinkers, entrepreneurs, public officials, celebrities & international experts, who will provide a blend of information and ideas through panel discussions, debates, master classes & more.
The event is scheduled from Feb,23rd ~ Feb,27th 2015. Registrations are already open & you can register for SMW, Bengaluru here
Key Highlights
Some interesting events in this edition of SMW include the following:
Social Media Strategy Challenge
‘App’athon
Tweetathon
Blogging Challenge
SMW’15 February edition is scheduled simultaneously across the world in seven cities– Bangalore, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Jakarta, Lagos, Milan & New York.
Speaking on the initiative, P. Krishnakumar, Executive Director & General Manager, Consumer & Small Business, Dell India said
The marketplace today constitutes of a dynamic set of consumers who are constantly evolving the manner in which they engage with brands and with each other. Social media has been one of the pillars of this evolution and Dell has embraced it as a key medium for outreach to keep in step with them. A consumer brand must recognize the value in being able to reach out to its audience in the manner that they prefer to connect.
We believe that SMW is a platform which explores the dynamic nature of social media. We also see it as the right platform to demonstrate that technological innovation is imperative in this context; and that a successful experience comprises of both the right technology as well as the right medium.
Rohit Varma, Founder R SQUARE Consulting & Director – Social Media Week Bangalore said
The aim of SMW 2015 is to understand how technology will impact the way we Live, Work and Create in a connected world and also how new ideas, innovations and technology will change our lives. The change is happening quite fast and platform like Social Media Week becomes very important to discuss, understand and implement social strategies for the connected class.
R SQUARE Consulting is one of the fastest growing marketing firms focusing on building Communities through Brand Properties and executing Marketing Communication strategies for Clients through Events & Activations, Digital Marketing & Technology and Creative Services. For more visit their website
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.
