Social media has come a long way since the first social media site launched back in 1997. These days there are dozens of social media sites to connect with friends, family, love interests, and much more.
Helping organizations reach larger audiences and boost brand loyalty, social media has become an integral part of any modern marketing strategy.
As you can see from these statistics, any company would be a fool not to embrace the social media marketing revolution.
- As of 2023, there are around 4.89 billion active social media users around the world.
- Time spent on social media is at an all time high, with internet users spending an average 2 hours and 24 minutes using social media channels per day.
- Between 2020 and 2022, TikTok was the fastest-growing social platform with a jaw-dropping 100% user growth rate.
- According to Statista, using video on social media has an audience reach of 92%.
- Surpassing TV viewing time, forecasts reveal adults will spend 80 minutes per day watching digital video by 2023.
The average person switches between seven different networks per month. So, crafting the perfect social media campaign can be tricky. But it doesn’t have to be! Whether you’re looking for more engagement or generating extra revenue, you’re in the right place!
What Should a Social Media Campaign Include?
Similar to the way cached data helps apps to access data that much faster. Social media helps businesses swiftly connect with prospective customers no matter where they’re located.
There isn’t a specific formula to improve social media campaign. But the hallmarks of a successful social media campaign:
- Are backed up by a structured marketing campaign plan.
- Choose the correct tone of voice that reflects the brand and connects with the target audience.
- Use clear and concise messaging.
- Are honest and transparent.
- Can be scheduled over a specific time frame with measurable outcomes.
- Utilize visual content to encourage more likes and shares, e.g. videos, photos, infographics, memes, and screenshots.
- Can easily be repurposed.
- Spread out across multiple social media platforms for maximum effect.
- Should influence social media supporters to feel or act in a certain way.
- Use relevant hashtags.
- Establish connections with followers by getting active in the comment section.
- Use alt text, allow users to enlarge font sizes, and create a thoughtful color combination to ensure the campaign is accessible to visually impaired users.
- Add subtitles and captions to make social media campaigns more accessible to hearing-impaired users.
What Are the Most Popular Social Media Platforms?
To improve your social media campaign, customer satisfaction, and ROI, whilst gaining more leads, customers, and sales, the first place to start is by targeting the most popular social media platforms of the moment. For ease, we’ve done the research for you.
Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2023,
ranked by number of monthly active users (in millions).
Image sourced from statista.com
The ten most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2023, ranked by number of monthly active users, are:
Boasting 2.93 billion monthly users, this translates as 36% of the world’s population actively using Facebook! Allowing users to share status posts, videos, images, and external links, Facebook groups and pages enable users to contribute and join conversations linked to their unique interests too.
As the third most visited website in the world (after Google and YouTube), Facebook was the first mainstream social media platform to allow ads in 2006.
YouTube
Originally designed to be a dating site, YouTube has a whopping 2.5 billion loyal users. This equates to almost one third of all internet users!
Bought by Google after just 18 months in business, to give you an idea of just how big YouTube is, 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!
Created in 2009 as a free alternative to costly SMS text services, with 2 billion active users, WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app of the moment. Available in more than 180 countries and 60 different languages, WhatsApp users open the app an average 23 times per day.
WhatsApp Business is also available. Tailored to small local businesses, it allows them to answer questions and take orders quickly and easily.
Currently tied with WhatsApp, Instagram is the favorite social platform for users born between 1990-2010, AKA Generation Z. It allows users to take, edit, and publish visual content, and other Instagram users can then interact with that content via likes, comments, shares, and saves.
Known as the social media platform for connecting with brands, Instagram users spend an average 11.7 hours per month on the platform.
Free to use and approved by the Chinese government, WeChat is the most popular messaging app downloaded in China.
WeChat is similar to Whatsapp, in the sense that they both allow users to send text messages, photos and videos. What’s different is that WeChat messages are not end-to-end encrypted like WhatsApp. This raises issues surrounding privacy, although the number of active WeChat users begs to differ!
TikTok
Allowing users to make short videos and share them with other TikTok users, around 60% of TikTok users are aged 16-24. However, it may surprise you to learn that increasing numbers of adults are joining TikTok too.
Only launched six years ago, back in 2017, the TikTok following now represents 18% of all internet users.
Free to use image from Pexels
Facebook Messenger
At number seven is Facebook Messenger. According to Facebook, more than 900 million people use Facebook Messenger every month.
Allowing users to place calls, video chat, group chat, and even order, track and pay for food deliveries, Facebook Messenger is the second most popular messaging app in the world behind sister-company WhatsApp.
Douyin
Douyin is the original version of Tiktok. With over 715 million monthly active users, it is one of the most popular social media apps in China.
Douyin helps brands go viral by providing them with the tools to create highly engaging user-generated video content. To name a few, these include making it easy to buy products that feature in a video, booking hotels direct, and purchasing coupons.
Telegram
Offering limitless storage saved to the cloud, Telegram is an encrypted instant messaging tool that also offers hosted VoIP solutions and file sharing features.
The main difference between WhatsApp and Telegram is that Telegram allows users to send and receive messages from their contacts even without sharing their phone number.
Snapchat
With 635 million monthly users, Snapchat is just behind Telegram in the popularity stakes amongst social media users.
Allowing users to send photos and messages that are only available for a short time, an average 5 billion snaps are created daily.
What Makes a Strong Social Media Campaign?
So, now you have a better idea of what your campaign should contain and the best platform to post your next social media campaign on. But how do you craft a solid social media campaign that will attract the best engagement, brand awareness, improve sales and conversion rates, and boost website traffic?
Of course, each social platform has its own unique quirks and features that can be used to improve social media campaigns. But there are five fundamental steps along the path towards a successful campaign.
Let’s look at these together, along with some essential tips aimed at improving social media campaigns via the top three social networks.
What Are the 5 Elements of a Social Media Campaign?
The five vital elements of any rewarding social media campaign are:
Set clear goals
Before you get caught up in the details, it’s important to identify the goals of your social media campaign. Is it to generate new leads? Grow revenue? Increase brand awareness? Getting this clear in your mind will make it easier to create, manage and actively plan current and future social media campaigns.
You can then measure the success of your social media campaign based on the goals you’ve set. This will also help you to understand your brand’s unique selling points (USPs), whilst clarifying the purpose of your campaign.
Audience awareness
Create audience personas to gain insight into your customers goals and challenges. This will help you get to know and target your audience effectively.
Data-driven decisions
Unlike traditional forms of marketing, social media can generate a vast amount of lucrative customer data. This can then be analyzed to proactively improve future campaigns and help to understand the consumer-decision-making process further.
Insightful social media metrics to investigate include performance metrics, audience analytics, and competitors analytics. It’s also worth looking into data mart meaning.
Tailor your content
No matter the product or service, creating captivating content that engages your target audience is the driving force behind any successful social media campaign. Make sure your message is short and sweet. You want to leave them wanting more, not feeling bored or indifferent!
To enhance your campaign and promote social media growth, it’s crucial to implement targeted tactics that boost online presence and attract your target audience. These include utilizing strategic hashtags, actively engaging with followers in comments, optimizing accessibility features like alt text and captions, and employing growth-oriented strategies.
It’s also important to do your research on the best type of content for that particular social channel. For example, video ads are one of the most effective for Facebook Pay-Per-Click.
Multi-channel approach
The last piece of the puzzle is to unite your social media strategy with your digital strategy. Multi-channel marketing is all about giving customers choice. This helps to maximize opportunities to connect and interact with prospective and existing customers.
You can do this by using a combination of indirect and direct communication channels. This could be via branded email, a website, a mobile app, SMS messaging, print, a retail location, a promotional event, or even word of mouth. For result-oriented strategies, many savvy companies are experimenting with social testing too.
Free to use image from Pexels
Whether you’re just starting your first social media campaign or you’re looking for tips to improve your strategy, each component required for building a successful social media campaign is outlined below, coupled with tips on how to achieve it via Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp.
| Campaign element | Facebook campaign | YouTube campaign | WhatsApp campaign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Set clear goals |
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| Audience Awareness |
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| Data-driven decisions |
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| Tailor your content |
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| Multi-channel approach |
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Reducing the chances of missing crucial client calls and providing more flexibility on directing company calls, you could also consider a virtual PBX system to streamline the communication process further.
Image sourced from marketsplash.com
What Is an Example of a Good Social Media Campaign?
Here are a couple of examples of super social media campaigns to inspire your next social media campaign.
#ShotOniPhone
#ShotoniPhone is a hashtag used over the years by multinational tech giant Apple to promote the iPhone’s macro photography capabilities. Asking users to submit their best photos using the hashtag, Apple selected a handful to display across media outlets and over 10,000 billboards around the globe.
Encouraged to share the #ShotOniPhone and #iPhoneMacroChallenge hashtags on Instagram and Twitter, enthusiastic users generated over 26 million posts for these simple hashtags just on Instagram alone!
#ShowUs
The Project #ShowUs campaign by hygiene brand Dove is a stroke of genius when it comes to knowing your audience. Focused on promoting inclusivity when it comes to our perception of beauty, over 600,000 posts have been shared on Instagram containing the hashtag #ShowUs.
Final Thoughts on How to Improve Social Media Campaigns
It’s not surprising that intuitive marketers are using social media to drive their business forward these days. What is surprising is the scarcity of information out there for companies to use when improving their social media campaigns.
As you can see, there are a variety of tools at your disposal to boost your next social media campaign. It’s just a question of sourcing the correct information. Incorporate the points raised above and you will be well on your way to improving engagement, awareness and revenue via your next social media campaign.