When planning your activities on social media, always look at what other companies are doing. This also gives you an idea of what worked and what didn’t, leaving you with valuable takeaways for your own plan. Even though your industry might be totally different, knowing what companies did successfully will give you a new perspective and keep your content fresh.
Here are five recent social media campaigns you can learn from:
1. Discover Great Britain
VisitBritain, the United Kingdom’s official tourist board, created a Tumblr page, where it posts images and text to promote sights and sounds across the country. An integrated campaign, they also used advertising, including Tumblr sponsored pages and search ads on Yahoo!.
The Discover Great Britain campaign generated 15 million impressions and more than 200,000 notes — likes, reblogs, follows, and clicks — in just three weeks, both on Tumblr and Yahoo Travel. This activity tripled VisitBritain’s blog impressions, compared to the previous month. VisitBritain also claimed a 40% reduction in the campaign’s effective cost.
2. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
Yes, we all dunked a bucket of ice water on our heads. If you were on the Internet at all last summer, you either heard or took part in this campaign, which had one goal: to raise awareness of ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”), a progressive, neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells and eventually leads to death.
The campaign got more popular after celebrities and film stars joined the challenge. But did it achieve its objective? Considering people raised a whopping $115 million for the ALS Association, and shared 17 million videos on Facebook, it’s safe to say, “yes.” Those are huge numbers.
3. Feeding the Fans: The Hunger Games
A New York Times article had this to say about this campaign, based around the Hungers Games movies: “In the social-media age, the marketing of mass-appeal movies does not necessarily require a cast of thousands (or hundreds) or a Brink’s truck full of cash. Lionsgate keeps costs down by taking full advantage of low-cost media like YouTube, by making certain advertising decisions without relying on expensive market research studies and even by shooting its own pictures to save on photography.”
The first Hunger Games movie was also was hugely popular on social media. So the studio pulled out all stops — Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, iOS apps, Google+, Tumblr, and Pinterest — to keep fans’ interest alive for the sequels. Between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumbler, the Hunger Games has more than 6.5 million followers. Facebook updates on the movie’s official page routinely gain over 20,000 likes, and thousands of comments and shares. Also, as one of the more successful Google+ pages, the Hunger Games has been added to over 787,000 circles. And who can forget YouTube? Their channel over 45,000 subscribers and 18.6 million video views.
4. The WWF’s Last Selfie
A campaign by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) used selfies and Snapchat to create awareness about how many endangered animals are on the verge of extinction. The campaign was executed by WWF Denmark & Turkey and WPP Unclegrey, a Danish agency. It took advantage of Snapchat’s “disappearing” feature to create a connection between the disappearing images and disappearing animals. When people opened the snaps, animals asked them to “not let this be my last selfie.”
The WWF’s #LastSelfie campaign helped organization hit its monthly donation target in just three days. The campaign also won a Webby Award.
5. GoPro’s Creative Instagram Storytelling
GoPro, the camera of choice for extreme sports fans across the world, is designed to capture amazing video footage that lends itself to amazing content. So GoPro tapped into its internal team, as well as 140 sponsored athletes, to provide the company with content that goes straight to its Instagram channel.
Through Instagram, the company showcases many incredibly behind-the-scenes moments and never-before-seen perspectives, while also empowring customers to create similar content. As a result, GoPro receives over 300,000 visitors per day, with over 1.6 million YouTube subscribers and 1.6 million Instagram followers. This campaign also won them a Shorty Award.
Want More?
There are many more great social campaigns you can learn from. For starters, check out the 2015 Shorty Awards, the Webby Awards, and this feature from PR Week.
And don’t forget to subscribe to the Contentools’ blog for the latest social marketing tips and tricks.
