How To Create a Social Media Campaign, Step by Step

A social media campaign involves using one or more social media channels to promote your business or other marketing goals. Popular social media platforms include Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram. Combined, these social media platforms reach about 3.96 billion users worldwide. Think of these users as potential customers or target audiences—if you aren’t taking full advantage of social media advertising, you are missing out.

The benefits of social media campaigns are immense. For starters, businesses use social media to create brand awareness. Marketers post pictures or comments about their existing or new products on social sites like Facebook, where millions of users view them. Second, social media campaigns are useful when it comes to customer engagement. You can collect user feedback about your product and use it to make decisions. Third, you can use social media campaigns to promote loyalty. Use social sites like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram to create a massive following for your brand.

This article provides a step-by-step guide to creating an effective social media campaign.

• Preparing for your campaign
• Step 1. Define the campaign goal
• Step 2. Study the goal
• Step 3. Define which social media platforms you’ll target
• Step 4. Study the competition
• Step 5. Publish your content
• Step 6. Track posts and measure results
• Step 7. Learn, improve, grow

Preparing for your campaign

You need to prepare adequately to run a successful social media campaign. Here are some things to consider when preparing.

First, define your target audience. What people or groups are you targeting with your social media campaign? What attributes or behavioral traits make this target group unique? You should also determine the most popular social media platform that your target group uses.

Second, perform an intensive competitor analysis. Evaluating your competitors allows you to identify the social media campaigns they’re using and gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns. You can also learn about your competitors’ weaknesses and strengths to strengthen your own social media marketing strategy.

Third, determine your campaign budget. Handling financial issues before starting a social media campaign is important. Since some social sites require payment for ad campaigns, use this stage to identify the perfect platform for your needs.

Fourth, determine how you will collect and analyze data. Analyzing data is vital because it helps identify trends and factors that can influence your social media campaign.

Implementing these steps is much easier if you have social media management tools in place. Next, we will review three of the most popular social media campaigns used today.

Popular social media campaign tools

Buffer

Buffer allows you to create and publish content, analyze social posts and generate reports, engage your target audience, and build customized landing pages. Furthermore, you can use Buffer to add and monitor several social media accounts.

You can access Buffer’s basic features in the free version. You need one of the paid pricing plans to access more advanced options.

Hootsuite

Use Hootsuite to target customers on multiple social platforms. You can also collect and analyze data easily using the incorporated analytics tool. As a result, measuring your social campaign’s return on investment (ROI) is easy. Hootsuite also acts as a scheduling tool so you can write posts and specify the time you’d like them to go live.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social seeks to simplify your social media campaign by providing marketing tools for scheduling and publishing content. Sprout Social also provides insights and reports about your social media activities. The software’s user-friendly dashboard lets you monitor the different aspects of your campaign on a real-time basis.

Step 1. Define the campaign goal

A campaign goal allows you to define what you want to achieve in a particular period. Social media campaign goals also ensure that you focus on completing the task at hand.

A good campaign goal should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based).

• Specific. Your goal should clearly outline what you wish to achieve in your campaign. It should also address how you will accomplish the objective, as well as the resources and personnel required. For instance, a specific goal will be to use on- and off-page SEO to generate more website traffic.
• Measurable. You should be able to use qualitative or quantitative techniques to measure your progress. For example, you might want to generate 5% more traffic within the next six months.
• Attainable. Always ensure that your campaign or business goals are realistic. You can analyze your workforce, budget, and other resources to determine if they are enough to achieve your goals. In our example, increasing web traffic by 5% in the next six months seems achievable.
• Relevant. The campaign goal should solve the real-world problem you are experiencing. A problem can be something like low website traffic.
• Time-based. Specify when you expect to accomplish your campaign goal, as having clear deadlines helps create a sense of urgency. Your team members may strive to complete their tasks within a specific time frame, which boosts productivity. In our example, we want to increase web traffic within the next six months.

Step 2. Study the goal

After setting your goal, you need to take time to analyze it. You should ensure that the goal aligns with the SMART model discussed in step one.

In this phase, highlight some measures you will take to ensure your success. Furthermore, consider if you have enough resources and personnel to help you accomplish the goal. For example, if your campaign goal is to use SEO to increase web traffic by 5% within the next six months, start by analyzing and selecting the best SEO practices, hiring SEO experts if you lack the required marketing knowledge, and creating an SEO budget.

If you have several goals, you should determine those areas or objectives that you want to prioritize. Classifying your goals can help avoid confusion and other unnecessary distractions.

Step 3. Define which social media platforms you’ll target

Choosing a social media platform for your marketing campaign is essential. Today, you can incorporate a number of social media platforms into your campaign. However, these platforms differ in terms of the number of users, usability, ad structure, and other aspects. The popular social channels are mainly Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

You should select a social platform that suits your needs. A social platform like Facebook allows individuals to connect with friends, relatives, and even different brands. Twitter helps users stay updated with the latest trends, while LinkedIn is mainly for professionals and organizations.

If you have lengthy messages, you may prefer Facebook over Twitter (the platform has a 280-character limit, which may force you to break down the message into smaller bits). Nevertheless, you can still use Twitter to create hashtags and other smaller messages. You can also use Instagram to share pictures, or use TikTok to share videos of your brand.

Always ensure that the platform you choose has demographics that reach your target audience. For example, Facebook’s largest age group is 25-34 year olds, TikTok’s is 10-19, and Twitter’s is 18-29. Using information like this in your campaign can help you focus your messaging on your target audience.

Step 4. Study the competition

Performing a competitive analysis helps you understand how your rivals are running their social campaigns. Here are some questions to ask:

• What social media platforms are they using?
• How did they create content for their social media channels?
• How regularly did they run their social media marketing campaign?
• What specific activities did these rivals engage in to attract users to the campaign?
• Was their social media campaign successful?
• Did they achieve their intended goals?
• What social media strategy did they use to measure success?

Answering these questions will help you prepare, and will boost your chances of success. Building on this information will also put you ahead of your rivals because you can avoid some of the mistakes they committed in their social media campaigns.

Step 5. Publish your content

Take a step back and double-check everything before publishing your content. Ask yourself if the selected type of content will resonate with the intended audience. Make adjustments to areas of concern. If needed, leverage help from marketing professionals to create high-quality content.

If you are satisfied with your content, you should proceed to publishing. Here are some best practices to follow when publishing content on social media.

Only publish content that fits well on the selected social platform. What works on Facebook might fail on Twitter. For example, Instagram is more visual-based and may require multimedia content. Take advantage of Instagram stories to showcase your brand by posting content in video format.

On the other hand, Twitter has a limit of 280 characters; you have to be choosy with your words to communicate your message in a single tweet. You should also engage in social listening to keep track of popular hashtags on Twitter.

Always ensure that your content is consistent when using multiple social platforms, especially in terms of style and tone. Using content that differs greatly may negatively affect your brand.

You should use native analytics tools included in social platforms or other third-party applications (like Buffer) to collect information about your audience’s online behavior. You can use this information to determine the right time to publish content, especially when your followers are most active. This campaign strategy ensures that your message reaches a wider audience.

Reposting user-generated content that relates to your brand is also smart. Such content can help convince social media users that your brand is trustworthy.

Embrace automation if you experience challenges with publishing content. Use third-party tools to create a social media content calendar that you can use to write content and schedule when it should be published. These tools can then publish the content automatically, saving you a lot of time and marketing efforts.

Step 6. Track posts and measure results

Tracking your social media posts and measuring results allows you to gauge your level of success. For instance, you can determine the number of followers that interacted with your content, as well as how they reacted to it. Such information is useful when making decisions in your campaign.

Popular social networks have tools that you can use to measure results. For instance, Facebook Analytics provides key metrics such as page likes, post reactions, post shares, link clicks, post interactions, and photo views. Twitter also allows you to check the demographics, locations, and interests of your followers. You can also see your social media post retweets. Once again, these tracking functionalities are also available in third-party applications.

Step 7. Learn, improve, grow

As discussed in step six, monitoring social media posts allows you to collect valuable information that you can use to improve your digital marketing.

Post likes and reactions, retweets, and photo views can tell how your content and infographics appeal to your audience. You may need to review your content and publishing frequency if your social media posts are not receiving enough attention.

If you are a small business owner, you can boost your campaign by creating partnerships with influencers. Such individuals already have an established social media presence and can assist in achieving marketing goals (e.g., boosting website traffic). You can also host a giveaway on a social platform to attract new followers.

Get help from a social media expert

Due to the popularity of social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, a social media campaign is one of the best ways to reach out to your target audience. You can deliver your message to thousands of social media users in a short time and at littlecost. You can also use various analytics to track your progress and make adjustments.

Creating a social media campaign can be a fun and interactive process. You must engage in activities like defining social media campaign goals, choosing the right social channels, developing and publishing content, and tracking progress.

If you are searching for social media experts to help kickstart your campaign, or if you are a social media professional looking for work, you can easily get started by finding talent or work on Upwork today.

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Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.