Social Media

10 Clever Social Media Campaign Ideas to Help Grow a Clientbase

Mastering social media is a major plus if you want to compete in the digital marketing space. Here are 10 social media campaign ideas

By Digital Marketing Jobs Board

Finding clever social media campaign ideas to fuel your business requires a combination of old favourites and new approaches. It’s true that reinventing the wheel isn’t necessary for success. But you do need to bring your own unique voice to whatever you try.

In the following article, we’ll be discussing the social media ideas that work. And we’ll be giving you some clever ways of making them work for you. Let’s start posting!

10 Social Media Campaign Ideas

1. Showcase Your Fans

One of the best places to start with social media is your audience. User-generated content is one of the most common digital marketing trends and it’s a great way of posting something unique frequently in a way that is engaging and fun.

Of course, UGC means that your users make posts of their own experiences with your product. You share. There are methods for prodding this along.

You might ask them to make a post with a specific hashtag and attach some incentive to it. Like, say, a free month’s subscription or a giveaway item likely to generate interest.

And sometimes your users will just post on their own because they appreciate your product so much they want you to know about it. Share their post on your main page and surprise them with a special thank-you present. That’ll encourage more to do the same.

2. Be Generous

We’ve touched on this as a way of getting more user-generated content. But you can use giveaways in a number of ways.

Maybe it’s an ongoing thing that you set up every month. Or perhaps it’s a larger annual giveaway that your fans will be able to mark on their calendars.

This particular approach is considered one of the great social media marketing ideas. But it’s one that has actually been around for a long time and co-opted for the social media world. See McDonald’s annual Monopoly giveaway as a good example.

3. Teach

Service-industry or educationally-driven professions generally offer great opportunities to produce how-to content in the form of creative social media posts. For example, the blog Tasty has produced a series of short videos that run less than a minute on how to prepare standard dishes for the keto-friendly lifestyle.

Rather than packaging all that content into a 30-minute program, the blog makes use of time lapses, annotations, and sped-up playback to breeze through an entire recipe — scratch to finish — in seconds. It’s easy to watch and internalise for your own kitchen and plays beautifully to most social networks.

4. Ask for Opinions

Got an idea for your next great product? Perhaps there’s a feature you’d like to add into your subscription-based software. What better way to decide on your next move than to check the pulse of your users?

You can do this by creating online polls through various social platforms. To make this entry on our list of social media content ideas user-friendly, you’ll want to create a number of established selections and have your users click one. That way, you’re not trying to cull together random ideas and keep count at the same time.

5. Partnerships

If you really want some creative social media ideas, adopt the mindset that two (or more) heads are better than one. Reach out to influencers or companies that offer ancillary products or services to yours. See how you can work together.

Doing so helps you score on two fronts. It delivers a higher degree of value to your existing customer base. And it allows you to expand your offerings to a likely cross-section of customers who either haven’t heard of your product or service or who needed the extra push from a trusted brand to give you a try.

6. Go Live

The two best examples of this idea are Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) and Facebook Live. Reddit originated the idea by informing users of when a celebrity, famous person, or influencer would be available to take questions in real-time.

Facebook Live extrapolated the concept to video, allowing commenters to ask questions while the person of interest was on a video live feed. That person could then see the comments and questions and respond accordingly.

Whether using video or chat, it’s a clever idea sure to get your fans buzzing. Just make sure you’re genuinely interacting. You don’t want another Woody Harrelson AMA fiasco on your hands.

7. Respond to Complaints

This one is not for the faint of heart. But if executed well, it can win over a lot of fans, including the very complainers to whom you’re responding.

What you have to realise is this: people are going to talk about your brand on social media. Good and bad. Regardless of your response, it’s going to happen.

When someone drops a serious complaint, you need to be aware of it and respond as quickly and effectively as you can. How do you do that?

  • Be professional in your approach. Acknowledge the complaint and apologise for the user’s experience.
  • Ask the user to forward the specifics to a direct mail address (either email or on-platform messaging). Address the complaint in a way that improves the experience.

Don’t run from tension. Make it work to your advantage.

8. Use Humor

Being funny is difficult. But, you don’t have to be a standup comedian to make it work for you. Just run some searches for whatever you’re trying to get across with the keyword “funny” attached to it.

Then, search images, videos, and gifs until you find something that a) pertains to your messaging, and b) makes you laugh. If you find it funny, your audience likely will as well.

9. Name the Mascot

The Troy, Michigan, police department expertly used this technique to their advantage when they decided to become one of the first PDs in the country to get a police cat. They enlisted the help of elementary school students for a list of names.

They then put those names out to their social media followers in a poll to decide what the name should be. The winning pick: Pawfficer Donut.

10. Tag Your Way to Success

Restaurant The Melt used this one to showcase their delicious foods and frozen beverages, asking users to “tag someone who makes you melt.” Not only did it get out the desired message, but it also allowed their users to score some brownie points with their significant others!

Which Social Media Campaign Ideas Have You Tried?

These social media campaign ideas are only the beginning. We recommend checking out our guide to all things social media marketing for more useful information.

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