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Wildfire Report - Fuel Your Social Marketing Engine
Wildfire Report - Fuel Your Social Marketing Engine
Wildfire Report - Fuel Your Social Marketing Engine
INTRODUCTION
Social media has fundamentally changed how consumers discover new products and services, and the way they evaluate and make purchase decisions. Its shifted control of the conversation away from brands to consumers, causing word of mouth to spread wider and faster than ever before. This viral power which can potentially work against brandscan also be an engine that drives competitive advantage. Developing high-impact content that engages consumers is key to fueling that engine. But achieving this on a daily basis isnt easy; we constantly hear marketers say that cultivating a fresh, steady churn of social content is one of their greatest challenges. We designed this report to help. In it, well share best practices and tips on building a content strategy, driving consumer engagement through day-today messaging and large-scale promotions, and delivering content at scale. Youll learn how to apply these tactics to get maximum value from your content and build your social brand. The Wildfire by Google Team
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Content Strategy
Here are several guidelines to keep in mind as you plan your content strategy. Align content with your marketing objectives Content should support your marketing objectives. For example, if your goal is to build brand awareness beyond your existing fans and followers, your content strategy needs to reflect it. Youll want to create brandrelevant content that has a high likelihood of being shared, such as an entertaining video. By contrast, if your objective is to generate immediate revenue from your existing social audience, your content strategy should focus on creating compelling offers that drive consumers to sales transactions. Work from a well-defined plan and editorial calendar Its a basic notion, but the ability to create and publish content at scale requires advanced planning and coordination with your overall marketing plan. Use an editorial calendar that coordinates your content plan with your marketing campaigns, as well as relevant industry events and seasonal trends. While a plan is essential for efficiently publishing social content at scale, successful content strategies are also flexible enough to adapt to unanticipated events and opportunities. In general, the 80/20 rule will apply: 80% of your content will be planned, 20% developed in response to unplanned events. Take a cross-network approach A simple way to get more mileage out of your content is to leverage it across the different networks you maintain a brand presence on. For example, if youre running a YouTube video contest, post user-generated video submissions on your Facebook page that drive users to your Brand Channel. Doing so helps drive overall engagement, and links campaigns together with components unique to each network.
Develop an editorial calendar that coordinates your content plan with your marketing campaigns, industry events and seasonal trends.
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Tip
Experiment with different targeting parametersage, language, geography and so onto evaluate how your content resonates with particular audience segments.
just 16% of its fans.1 So while publishing a steady stream of content is a necessary part of engagement strategy, it is not sufficient. Organic reach alone will not get the message out. Brands can reach and engage a larger percentage of users by running paid social ads. Social ads drive engagement by tapping into the viral characteristics of social sites and broadcasting brand messages: ads generate Likes and shares, which increase visibility in the news feed. And since more than a quarter of social network users are likely to pay attention to a social ad posted by a friend,2 that news feed visibility has the potential to be quite impactful. Continuously experiment and test Content is an area where continuous experimentation and testing pays off. In social media, you can quickly test content elements to see what works best at driving engagement and action: headlines, messages, photos, offers, calls to action, and so on. You can test which day of the week and what time of day work best for posting content; you can also test by social channel, geography, language, and audience segment. Experimentation should be a standard part of your approach to social, with systems in place to set up and track your tests.
Understand what motivates your target consumers Marketers typically build personas or profiles of their target consumers describing who those consumers are, what they do, their interests and desires. In social media, interactions with a brand are often public in nature, so understanding how the social context influences behavior is an important aspect of the consumer social persona. For instance, content that activates consumers desire to display positive personal traits (e.g., intelligence, wit, compassion, etc.) can be very effective in driving engagement and sharing. Promote your content as paid media Many marketers arent aware that an active social presence doesnt guarantee them visibility in their fans and followers news feeds. In fact, most of a brands social audience never sees its page posts. According to one study, a brands posts on Facebook typically reach
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drive engagement
with large-scale promotions and day-to-day messaging?
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Promotional Campaigns
Promotional campaigns are a tried and tested method for engaging consumers and driving business results. Wildfire has helped brands run more than 250,000 social media campaigns. The most popular types of promotional campaigns used in social media are:
Sweepstakes
Similar to a lottery, where the prize winner(s) is/are chosen randomly.
SKYY Vodka
SKYY Vodka used a sweepstakes to build buzz around the launch of its new product, Dragon Fruit Infusion, and gain new Facebook fans.
To increase your sweepstakes visibility and entry rate, utilize all of your social channels. For instance, if youre running a sweepstakes on Facebook, cross-promote it on your Twitter page.
Trivia
Multiple choice question that allows consumers to measure their aptitude regarding a particular topic.
Best Western
Best Western encourages users to share their knowledge of American landmarks for a chance to win a Best Western Travel Card.
Users are more likely to share their interactions with your content when doing so reflects their style, personality or aptitude. To inspire your fans and followers to share your trivia campaign, be sure that its content allows users to express themselves.
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Quiz
Consumers self-categorize themselves based on their responses to a set of questions.
Tough Mudder
Premier obstacle course series Tough Mudder builds awareness about its cause by prompting users to take its Mudder Ready Quiz and determine their level of toughness.
Design your quiz with the user in mind: Is the topic catchy? Is it too long? Do the questions and answers make sense? Always consider how participants will react to your content by putting yourself in their shoes.
Coupon
Opportunity to claim coupons (vouchers or codes) that consumers can print or redeem electronically.
Original Joes
To boost engagement and drive in-store visits, restaurant and bar franchise Original Joes offered users who Liked its Facebook page a free order of chicken wings, redeemable at any of its locations.
A simple way to gain additional followers or generate new marketing leads is to place a reveal page or gate in front of your coupon content. Doing so requires users to Follow or Like your brand page, or provide information through a signup form to gain access to your coupon.
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Giveaway
Signup form to get on the list for a brand-sponsored giveaway.
Blowfish Shoes
Shoe designer and retailer Blowfish Shoes designed a Shoe A Day Giveaway on Facebook to increase sales and boost web traffic. Every day for a calendar year, the brand gave away a pair of shoes to a new customer and announced the winners on its YouTube Brand Channel on a weekly basis.
Giveaways provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your brands products and services. Seize that opportunity and offer campaign participants prizes relevant to your business, and that help them learn about what you offer.
Build buzz around your contest by featuring your fans and followers submissions photos, videos or essays on your social properties throughout the campaign. Doing so encourages user sharing, and contestants will appreciate the recognition you give to their content.
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22% of consumers who participate in a social promotion on Facebook publish a post about the campaign to their news feed
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(social sharing)
Drive Sales
Contest
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TurboTax Canada
TurboTax Canadas trivia campaign generated thousands of entries because it allowed users to demonstrate knowledge about a subject of interest to them.
timberland
Outdoor outfitter Timberlands Get Your Hortiscope quiz is an example of a social campaign that passes the share test. A user is inclined to share the results of Timberlands quiz because: (a) she gets to display results to her friends that prove she is trustworthy and practical, which is consistent with her own self-image; (b) she thinks her friends might also find the quiz entertaining; or (c) she wants to publicly align herself with a cause that users can rally around.
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mountain dew
Mountain Dew successful Dew Crew campaign included an intricate but easyto-follow game element that rewarded consumers for sharing and posting.
Users are 3x more likely to share the results of a quiz with their networks than their participation in a sweepstakes or video contest.
4. Deploy a mix of content and campaign types
A well-rounded social media marketing strategy includes a steady stream of varied content designed to influence a range of user interactions. Successful brands approach content creation from multiple anglessome might be aimed at achieving high participation rates and other at driving high sharing activity. Brands that excel at social marketing tend to publish more content than average, with a variety of content to support different business objectives. And they use paid media to amplify their owned content further, reaching new consumers outside of their existing social audience.
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benefit cosmetics UK
Benefit Cosmetics UK develops a constant stream of content to encourage and influence a range of user interactions. It maintains 10 custom content applications on its Facebook page alone: each offers a different interactive experience and unique opportunity for users to engage. Fans can rate and review products, read and submit beauty tips, interact with signup for giveaways, watch how-to videos and more.
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Cadbury
UK-based Cadbury indulges its chocolate-loving Google+ audience with exclusive on-air Hangouts featuring company leaders and chocolate experts. During these face-to-face interactions, Cadburys followers are allowed to pose questions and provide product reviews and feedback.
ideeli
Members-only online retailer ideeli frequently asks its Facebook fans to weigh in on fashion tips and trends with simple answers: Agree or Disagree, Like or Dislike. Users can quickly engage by responding with one-word answers.
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dunkin donuts
Dunkin Donuts stimulates user interactions by including a clear requestShare this post in its messaging to fans.
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Valpak
Direct mail and online coupon marketer Valpak maintains an ongoing dialogue with users across its social channels: the brand regularly recognizes Facebook fans who have participated in its social campaigns, and thanks Twitter followers for sharing its content.
Jersey Mikes
Local giving and community support are core values to submarine sandwich franchise Jersey Mikes business. The brand routinely showcases these values on its social properties through seasonally-relevant campaigns. During December, Jersey Mikes used its Calendar of Kindness to reveal ways to spread holiday cheer in the community each day of the month.
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Content at Scale
Successful social marketing involves creating and publishing content at a pace and volume greater than most brands are accustomed to. For many larger brands, social marketing spans multiple business units, product lines, regions, and social propertiesthe average global corporation manages 178 businessrelated social media properties6so figuring out how best to organize marketing resources to support social at scale has been a challenge. Brands overcome that challenge by adopting an organizational structure and internal processes that equip their marketing teams to handle the large volume of conversations, increasingly complex workflow, and rapidly evolving landscape that social media involves. For marketers, this means implementing the hub and spoke organizational approach, and developing company-wide policies around social media training programs, day-today workflow and triage procedures, and employee use of social media. The most successful social marketers will go beyond these principles and employ additional means to help scale their efforts. Weve outlined several of these best practices below.
The average global corporation manages 178 business-related social media properties.
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Use templates
The use of templates can greatly reduce time and effort required for creating content. Templates can be created in-house or by your agency and other third parties. Whenever possible, try to templatize the creation of new content: rather than build it as a one-off piece, consider how your content can be adapted in the future, and design it with that in mind.
content CHECKLIST
Have you created an editorial plan and calendar? Does your calendar reflect relevant company, industry, and seasonal events? Have you identified content for key milestones on your calendar? Have you tied your content to your marketing objectives? How are you factoring social advertising into your content strategy? Do you have a content testing strategy in place?
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Sources cited
1. Bannon, Deirdre, State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012, http:// www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2012/state-of-the-mediathe-social-media-report-2012.html Bannon, Deirdre, State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012, http:// www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2012/state-of-the-mediathe-social-media-report-2012.html Wildfire, 5 Best Practices for Increasing Earned Media, http://lp.wildfireapp.com/rs/wildfire/images/Wildfire_Report_Maximize_Earned_ Media_with_Social.pdf Wildfire, 5 Best Practices for Increasing Earned Media, http://lp.wildfireapp.com/rs/wildfire/images/Wildfire_Report_Maximize_Earned_ Media_with_Social.pdf Wildfire, 5 Best Practices for Increasing Earned Media, http://lp.wildfireapp.com/rs/wildfire/images/Wildfire_Report_Maximize_Earned_ Media_with_Social.pdf Owyang, Jeremiah, A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation, http://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/smms-report-010412finaldraft# Owyang, Jeremiah, A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation, http://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/smms-report-010412finaldraft#
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