Social Media and Creative Thinking

Developing campaigns with new, creative social media ideas is a constant challenge for businesses.

A mix of tried and true methods, combined with out-of-the-box thinking, can assistance you lot develop an ad agenda that'southward relevant and keeps your target audience engaged and invested.

These 33 social media marketing ideas can assist y'all in successfully designing and launching your company's social media marketing plan. Keep reading to learn six ideas each for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, plus three bonus tips you can employ to multiple platforms.

Facebook social media campaigns

Organic and paid social media ads on Facebook help reel in new prospects and turn them into repeat customers. In today's pay-to-play mural, the real pull a fast one on to using Facebook effectively is to make the end user's experience feel natural — even if it has been carefully scripted and paid for.

You tin achieve results with carefully thought-out campaigns that mix organic and paid efforts for a seamless result.

1. Build high-conversion, advisory content for Facebook ad campaigns.  Linking a Facebook advertizement to a buy now page may seem like the best way to realize tangible ROI, but that move tin can go out visitors feeling taken reward of, jaded, and likely to click the "ignore ad" push button. Instead, create high-value content with strong subheadings and stone-solid takeaways. Allstate ran ads for their new Milewise "insure past the mile" plan, and instead of a "buy now" page, the ads led to an informational page about how Milewise works.

   While the page included side by side steps for getting a quote, information technology wasn't overly "salesy," and it provided visitors with the info they needed to naturally move through the social media sales funnel.

2. Play the emoticon game. Yous can double downward on marketplace research and become some interaction on your Facebook folio by asking people to "Like or Honey." Present two products or services, and invite viewers to hit the like button or love button in respond.
3. Run a photo contest. This is a fantastic way to generate more than interaction on your Facebook page, collect a ton of user-generated content, and encourage more people to similar your page. Y'all can increment the value of such a contest with a loftier-end prize.

   Inspiration Pattern Middle holds an "Ugly Kitchen Contest" every year, and the winner gets a kitchen remodel provided by IDC and its partners.

4. Do a Facebook Live interview. Much like Reddit'southward tried and true "AMA (Ask Me Anything)" format, Facebook Alive allows you lot to get intimate with Facebook followers and share highly engaging content like Tastemade's videos about Latte Fine art and their Tiny Kitchen.
5. Preview your content in photos and video. While linking directly to content is a solid tactic, offering a short preview with photos and videos to entice viewers to click through can increment traffic to your website or blog.
6. Ask viewers to "caption this," and tag a friend in a photo. Photos and videos get a much higher charge per unit of engagement than simple text posts. Enhance that ability past posting an unusual photo and asking viewers to explanation it.

   Add another layer of fun and bring more engaged viewers to the tabular array by asking them to tag a friend they experience is personified past the captioned photo. Y'all can even compile a serial of captioned images into a video only like ThatPetLife did in 2018.

Twitter social media campaigns

Twitter is now the social media center for customer support queries. Trends may quickly rise and fade abroad, but the right campaigns can more easily get viral. All-time of all, Twitter is also glory-heavy, allowing you to collaborate with personalities who enjoy their fan base of operations and ofttimes tweet back to fans.

1. Tweet regularly. Twitter feeds move quickly, so stay relevant by adding hashtags to your posts to piggyback on trends. Mix self-promotional content with related content and plenty of images and videos for best results.
2. Respond to comments — especially from disgruntled consumers. Sometimes the well-nigh positive thing to happen to a brand is a fast, decisive, and caring response to an unhappy client. Turning their frown upside downwards is even more than impressive to onlookers than making someone smile in the offset place. JetBlue is a perfect case of handling a customer issue correctly (and the passenger didn't fifty-fifty have to ask.)
3. Don't be agape to take fun. Charmin's 2014 #TweetFromTheSeat campaign was hilarious and cheeky — and won vi lucky Charmin users tix to that year'due south Super Bowl.
4. Run a poll — then follow through. The Oakland Raiders asked fans who they should shoot a backside-the-scenes video with, and posted the most requested video the side by side day.
5. Create moments. Twitter at present allows you to create a "Moment" by compiling Tweets, photos, and videos to summarize a current entrada and share them with followers. Imagine what you lot could do with a serial of targeted Tweets and images.
6. Clap back — nicely. Roast beef headquarters Arby's expertly trolled Wendy'south with their #MakeMySandwich hashtag when they created a sandwich image of the iconic redheaded girl in pigtails, and tweeted it in response to Wendy's constant trolling of other fast food brands.

Instagram social media campaigns

Instagram speedily became the undisputed queen of video content and remains an exceptional mode for brands to connect visually with their audience. Formerly mocked for being just a place to mail pictures of what you had for dinner, it's now a make marketer's paradise.

With thousands of influencers in every manufacture imaginable, Instagram's platform is the visual medium of consumers.

1. Partner with influencers. Find an influencer with your desired fan base, then create a sponsored post to share your brand and product with a new audience total of potential customers.
2. Host a takeover. Select an influencer to take over your brand for a weekend, similar when Sephora asked the founder of Clothes Your Face Live, Tamanna Roashan, to take over their feed. Both Tamanna and Sephora benefited from the entrada as they cross-promoted each other.
3. Host a giveaway. Pair up with a not-competing make to exercise a fabulous giveaway, and award a box of goodies to the winner of a photo, creative answer, caption, or hashtag contest.
4. Share user-generated content. Warby Parker leveraged user-generated content by asking customers to share #WarbyHomeTryOn photos on Instagram.
5. Create memorable hashtags. REI's #OptOutside hashtag encouraged followers to get outside and share their adventure photos — a peachy style to promote brand engagement.
6. Use Insta'southward "Story" option to promote wink sales and coupons. You lot tin can heave visibility by using a popular hashtag related to your brand and promotion.

Snapchat social media campaigns

Snapchat, rather than being "simply another Instagram," has a life of its own equally the "there-and then-gone" version of visual media — glimmer and you'll miss it. Snapchat was formerly a platform used primarily by pre-teens and teens to share images, but has now get a powerful tool for marketers seeking to capture the 8-second or less attention span of a millennial audience.

1. Embrace the Snapcode. The QR-looking Snapcode that is assigned to you is perfect for posting to other platforms to describe mobile social media users over to your Snapchat feed.
2. Buy a geofilter. These can be customized for your next event, or you tin can do like LA-based real manor developer Caruso and purchase an annual license to dress upwardly your Snapchats.
3. Run a Q&A. Snapchat Q&As are short, sugariness, and piece of cake to run — just have followers send you Snaps with their questions, then create a video of yourself and/or staff answering them to post on your Story.
4. Host a contest. GrubHub won the Shorty Awards in 2014 with their #SnapHunt scavenger contest that asked users to snap diverse images and/or doodle them to enter every solar day for a calendar week. Daily winners got $50 in GrubHub credit.
5. Merchandise coupons for content. You can collect a wealth of user-generated images of your production by offering a small-scale discount in return. This is an first-class way to partner with other brands for a dual promotion.
6. Go creative with iii-D. One of the well-nigh innovative Snapchat campaigns of 2017 saw Netflix use a 3-D World Lens to send viewers into the world of Stranger Things.

YouTube social media campaigns

Over 400 hours of video content are uploaded every minute to YouTube, which made the "social media platform" list for the showtime time in 2016. YouTube quickly blew past other platforms to land backside Facebook in the #2 slot going into 2019. YouTube can be a powerful addition to your social media toolkit, and provide your brand with access to fifty-fifty more influencers in your vertical.

1. Use intros and outros to create a consistent make image. This tin can help brand an instant impression on new viewers, and you can add together your social links to other form profiles to encourage cross-platform interest.
2. Partner with other YouTube personalities. YouTube newcomer and singer Peter Hollens' channel really took off after he partnered with violinist Lindsay Sterling for a Skyrim cover — a video that now has over 70 million views.
3. Link other content. Bulldoze traffic using YouTube to encourage people to visit your website. You lot can mention an offer using a call to action (CTA) to button traffic and drive revenue.

   Apply annotations. Linking to other YouTube videos you accept created can spur ongoing involvement. This works exceptionally well when you connect videos with similar content like the Holderness Family does annually for Christmas after their viral "Christmas Jammies" video of 2013.

4. Create how-to videos. Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are instructional. Take something your brand can assist people to practise well and show them how to utilize your product or service effectively to attain their goals.
5. Find a brand ambassador. Sponsoring another YouTuber is a great way to get mentions of your brand out there, and they can offering a personal fan-only lawmaking to their post-obit on your behalf. Scottish teen Jamie Genevieve congenital a makeup tutorial channel, and now is a brand ambassador for Rimmel London.

Cantankerous-channel social media promotions

The best campaigns can be adjusted and executed flawlessly across multiple platforms to reach a broader audience. Avert duplication — repurpose and tailor each piece of content for the new platform for best results. You tin can apply social media management tools to assist!

1. Cross-promote large initiatives. Sometimes multiple platforms can each be engaged to reach a different goal, using the aforementioned hashtag or initiative. Tidy Cat's #KittenWeek managed to leverage YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook in one of the biggest successes the brand has e'er seen — growing subscribers past 115 percent and garnering ane.5 million views in just ten days.
2. Drive to a promotion on a unmarried platform. For a big promotion, tracking on one platform may be all-time, and you tin also increase your cross-platform followings. For example, host a big giveaway on Facebook.

   Then tie-in targeted posts on your other platforms to encourage people to follow your Facebook page to enter.

3. Combine real-world and digital activities for greater impact. In 2013, Land Rover U.s. used on-the-footing influencers, a YouTube homepage takeover, and Google Ads at the start of an initiative that eventually increased its digital sales to an astounding full of 15 percent annually.

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What's adjacent?

Implementing these social media entrada ideas can help take your digital footprint to the side by side level.

You lot'll rapidly learn which platform is most effective for your brand, only don't limit yourself: a cantankerous-platform approach is always ideal.

Create a content calendar that allows yous to develop cadre pieces of content, and then redevelop the ideas independently for each platform to nowadays your audiences with a cohesive brand experience that is consistent merely fresh from platform to platform and day-to-day.

Contact WebFX for a social media campaign management quote today.

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