One of the challenges with social media is that it’s easy to start and it’s easy to stop.
Even the biggest, most resourced brands fall into the trap of running a successful social media campaign – and then nothing.
It stops.
The fan pages go quiet, the blogs stop, the Twitter channels fall into a deafening silence and YouTube dries up.
It’s difficult to maintain momentum.
Or is it?
Here are my five tips to help you maintain your social media momentum:
- Mash the trend – use social channels to create content around your brand. Combine social trends, keywords and other content that you have created (say from TVCs) in a unique way
- Share the message – don’t try to “control” your brand message or you’ll just end up in trouble. But you can control some of the mechanisms to do with online brand participation. Remember that knowing who drives knowing how – and some social networks outperform others
- Calendaring – look at your business plan and map out the announcements, the changes and the opportunities over the coming year. Think about how this can be supported with blog posts, YouTube clips, interviews etc, and then put these into an editorial calendar
- Design for participation – don’t look at entertaining people with your clever creativity. Design your social media in a way that encourages participation rather than passive consumption. Rather than just asking a question, post a Twtpoll; rather than asking for feedback, try uservoice to allow people to provide feedback and then VOTE on the answers they like best
- Guest post your CEO – you are going to need support, so why not get it from the top. Reach out to your CEO and offer to write up a profile on their recent achievements. Better yet, help them write a guest post for your blog or a video for your YouTube channel. Remember, social media is also about tapping your community for contributions
So, can this really be done? Take a look at this fantastic “movie” from Uniqlo that combines Twitter with video to create your very own customised video/TVC. They employ several of these tips in a way that puts their brand at the centre of a very personal experience. Try it out yourself … oh, and then think about how you could do something similar for your brand.
Such a great piece – I wish some of my clients would read it. I agree – you can start something, but can you maintain it – the painful and slow death is the worst, particularly when you’ve spent time and money building a community!
UTweet shows a real flare of initiative from UNIQLO. Interactive marketing campaigns like this are great for engaging an audience as well as brand awareness.
UNIQLO UK have started their own social media campaigns this Autumn with short styling videos being launched on their new YouTube channel. The videos were made as part of a competition in which people had to tweet their reasons for wanting to be restyled in 140 characters. The campaign worked across Twitter, Facebook and now their Fashion UK YouTube channel integrating the social media platforms. Winners of the competition are featured in the videos. Whilst this is not as big as UTweet it’s quite a nice little campaign to kick off their social media presence.
A challenge with social media is that it is easy to start and it is easy to stop. Even the largest and most labels resources fall into the trap of running a successful social media campaign – and then nothing.