Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Two Tips for Successful Social Media Campaigns

I’m a bit behind on blog posts with all the traveling I’ve been doing lately. I had been meaning to post about social media and politics closer to election day, but better late than never.

A few months ago I was asked to help out with a couple of local political campaigns. While I did some interesting political polling work during the Connecticut Senatorial race not too long ago, in local politics marketing is seen as more important than market research. So rather than conducting focus groups or polling for strategic positioning I was asked to act as “Digital Campaign Manager” in order to best leverage online advertising and social media.

What do you do with a relatively small budget and only three months? I quickly decided that the social media effort would have only two clearly measurable objectives. 1. Obtain more followers than any of the other local campaigns on all major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) and 2. Get the local paper to write an article about this success.

Other than accounts on the three major social networks noted above, I also decided that a blog rather than a web page would serve the campaign best. Blogs allow for easier more frequent updating, better SEO, and they leverage community and social media (especially Twitter) much better.

While both of the key social media objectives were achieved, had we had more time and slightly larger budgets I think the social media effort could have been even more successful in the only way that really matters, getting more people out to vote for you. Interestingly, corporate America is often looking to their marketing departments to drive short term traffic using social media in much the same way. I think this is a mistake, a longer term perspective should be taken rather than focusing on short term metrics.

Social media after all is all about networking. In business you can’t expect to build your network when you
need it, no it needs to be built well beforehand.

Just as different types of social media are best viewed as concentric circles of different sizes (reach) and different degrees of overlap (frequency); Social media overall should be viewed as one of many concentric media circles overlapping with other forms of marketing.

As an example, in the political campaign case above, as well as other social media campaigns I’ve worked with for non-profits, setting up an ‘event’ on facebook with an RSVP function can be a good way to increase visibility for a fundraiser. Friends or Fans on Facebook can then RSVP (opt-in) to the event while at the same time letting all their friends in the network see that they are participating.

Unfortunately though, I’ve found that opting into a facebook event is seen as a very low level commitment by the user. Therefore concentric circles of outreach (email, telephone folow-ups etc.) need to be used in conjunction with the initial social media tool in order to increase commitment and maximize participation.

Two Key takeaways: 1. Build your social media network well before you need it 2. Don’t think in isolation - reinforce the message and increase commitment using concentric marketing efforts

@TomHCAnderson

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