How to Find Engaging Social Media Campaign Ideas

Social media campaigns are conversations. Brands are constantly in search for social media campaign ideas that will have their audience listening. A brand’s Twitter handle, Facebook Page or Instagram account will mean precious little if they don’t do much with it. It is only by using carefully planned and thought out content that a brand comes to life in that particular medium. Social media is an excellent way to communicate to your audience what your brand stands for, what qualities your product has.

Social media campaign ideas can come from a variety of sources. The key thing is that every campaign idea needs to be backed by quantifiable evidence that points to a strong link between the brand’s campaign goals and the proposed ideas. You could say that campaign ideas involve creative inspiration that is backed by data.

What qualifies a good social media campaign idea?

Before we start searching for the perfect idea, let us define what we are looking for. A successful social media campaign idea has to be

• Unique. Social media campaigns need to add something new. It cannot be recycled content that has nothing more to offer to your audience. The value proposition that you make about your product or service has to be sensitive to the particular needs of your audience. Broad, one-size fits all approaches to social media campaigns rarely work.
• A perfect fit.There should be a clear flow connect between your social media campaign idea and the solution that your brand’s products or services offer. It needs to fit with your product, brand personality and your campaign goals.
• Effective. Even though it is hard to calculate the RoIof your social media campaigns, it is essential that you test every idea on what it seeks to result in. Campaign ideas should aim at creating a change in some aspect of your social strategy. It could be reach, it could be engagement, but there needs to be a specific target attached to every social media campaign idea arrow.

Now that we’ve got that cleared, let’s start searching for the perfect social media campaign idea

How to find the perfect campaign idea

As I mentioned before, content ideation or ideating your social media campaign is a data-driven process. This means that a lot of the decisions that you take right from deciding what to talk about to how to amplify it comes down to data.

A good way to use data for finding the perfect social media campaign idea is to look at conversations that brands have had in the past that have gained traction. This means looking at what content has worked out well in the past for you and your competitors. You can also keep a lookout for content opportunities that are valuable in your industry or sector. This mostly involves being mindful of major events and social media holidays that your audience is interested in. If you are an ice-cream brand, then you definitely have to have a campaign around National Ice-cream month.

You could easily search the volume of Tweets that bear the hashtag associated with the event to gauge the number of Tweets. However, it will be hard to filter this list to limit it to brands, and that too within your industry. A much more easy and effective way is to use Discover’s wealth of brand data.

For example, say I am managing the social media content of a consumer electronics brand. It is pretty obvious to me that I should have content around Black Friday. Discover tells me that 320 pieces of brand content were put out by Consumer Electronics brands in North America alone last year. But what about an event like Paris Fashion Week? There were only five Facebook Posts from this sector last year. But this was one of the Posts:

This was part of Beats’ campaign around the event. It makes sense for them to do a campaign around it because they were associated with the event. Even otherwise, a great way to zero in on unconventional content creation opportunities that lie outside your sector is Whitespace Analysis. By targeting events and topics that interest your customer base you can wager high engagement. So, a consumer electronics brand considers its customer base to be young and fashion-conscious would benefit from running a campaign around PFW.

The ‘Important events in your social calendar’ tab in Discover will show you social media campaign ideas based on the upcoming social media holidays and top events. Further, it will show you the amount of content that was published around that event last year from your industry.

Take a look at the social media campaign ideas that Discover finds relevant for the Food and Beverages industry:

Now that you have made a decision to create content around a particular event or holiday, you still have so much left to decide: the content type, timing, number of pieces of content you plan to put out and so on. Discover can show you the content that resonates best with your industry.

For instance, this is how I take a look at the top Oktoberfest Posts on Instagram, by alcohol brands:

This can give me insights on what the key terms that most brands used in their descriptions are, what kind of Posts won a lot of engagement etc. With this information, I can start working on the blueprint for my social media campaign around Oktoberfest.

Bullet-proof your ideas with data

They say creativity is not an exact science. Well, you can push that limit a bit by supporting your creativity with some key data points. Social media campaign ideas need to be customized to your brand’s target audience. With data, you can arrive at a clear picture of who your audience is. Now you can focus your social media content to address their interests, key concerns etc.

You also need to know what content works on which platform. By analyzing how well your content has performed in the past, you can keep working towards streamlining your campaign strategy. An analytics tool can help you do that.

With Unmetric Analyze, for example, you can find how much Reach your Posts  get, how your Promoted Posts are working out, what engagement your Posts get etc. That’s not all. You can compare these social media metrics with those of your competitors.

You’d think that measuring would follow ideation. However, by checking your social media campaign ideas for effectiveness based on historical and industry-specific trends, you can be assured of social media success.If you are going to launch a social media campaign, this article is guaranteed to help you.
You can look to Discover for content inspiration. I’d also recommend David Ogilvy.

“ It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.”