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holiday social media campaign Keeping seasonality in mind for your marketing campaigns and social media efforts is always a good idea – but with the inundation of holiday related marketing, advertisements and retailer push to get people in the door and spending money, it can be difficult to design a campaign that sticks out and gains attention this time of year.

That being said, the holidays are all about connecting with people, sharing traditions, and building memories so it’s only natural that social media has become an integral part of the holiday season, and is even enhanced this time of year. As I wrote earlier this year, Thanksgiving recently became a record breaking event on Instagram, and the upcoming holiday season is sure to bust that previous set record.

Here are a few examples of memorable holiday social media campaigns:

Sephora Claus

sephora holiday social mediaSephora has long been among the leading brands willing to get creative with their digital and social campaigns. In 2009, Sephora launched their Twitter and Facebook based Sephora Claus campaign The popular beauty emporium enticed fans to tweet their holiday beauty wish list (up to $150 for the Sephora.com website) on Twitter with the #sephoraclaus hashtag.

The beauty company then granted one wish per day for 30 days. The campaign garnered 50,839 tweets over the course of the month.

Sephora created a dedicated microsite that turned tweets into falling gift tags and kept track of both the number of wishes and the number of wishes granted. The use of @messages as a form of entry helped make the campaign visible.

The Sephora campaign was successful because the method of entry was super simple and the awarding of wishes was fun and whimsical. It also was successful in that it got lots of people talking about what they wanted from Sephora right around the holiday buying season – allowing their consumers to tweet product names and help drive marketing efforts.

Old Spice MANta Claus


Old Spice has had man social media wins in the past couple of years (they made our list last year as one of 2011’s best social media campaigns, ads, websites and videos), and 2011’s MANta Claus campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa was no exception.

The concept of the campaign was that Isaiah would promise to buy gifts for all 7 billion people on earth—one at a time. The campaign kicked off with videos posted to YouTube addresses to specific Twitter accounts (@beautyjunkies, 25 of his closest internet friends, city of Baltimore, and Australia)

The campaign also included social media outreach on Facebook and Twitter and even a print ad component and local television spots.

The cross platform campaign was a huge success, with the YouTube videos garnering millions of views, high social media engagement and sharing rates and even exposure in the mainstream media.

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In a recent article published on the Sales Force blog, over 70% of the Internet population use social networks, and 42% of those social media users have had a conversation with a brand via social networks.

Obviously, the marketing opportunity for brands and businesses to reach current and potential customers has not been lost, as more and more and more businesses have brought on social media and community managers (or entire departments) to man the growing need for this marketing channel.

But, with the field of social media management still fairly new, and budgets often still small (social media is, after all, “free”), the onus has been put on social media managers to find creative ways to maximize their time and efforts without spending big dollars.

This is especially true at many small and medium sized businesses, where the person in charge of social media also has a lot of other tasks and responsibilities on their plate (I myself am in this boat). Here are some of the tips, tricks and resources I’ve used to help become an efficient one-woman social media machine.

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Building Brands, Integrating User-Generated ContentWith the number of people on social networks continuing to explode (according to eMarketer, there will be 114.5 million user-generated content creators online by 2013), the opportunity for brands to leverage content created by consumers in marketing efforts will continue to grow.

Especially when backed by the evidence that millennials are more likely to both share brand experiences online and are more likely to have purchasing decisions influenced by both anonymous user-generated content and word of mouth from people they know, the importance of integrating user-generated and social content into marketing campaigns and websites is going to be paramount in the coming years.

>>See which brands are getting it right in 5 Best Social Media Campaigns with User-Generated Content

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you are probably well aware that Instagram has exploded onto the market. After a $1 billion acquisition from Facebook, the photo sharing social network now has 80 million users and many brands have adopted Instagram as a marketing channel for visually telling their brands’ story.

This Friday we’re doing a twist on Twitter’s Follow Friday, but instead of finding the best people to follow on Twitter, we’ve made a list of the best brands to follow on Instagram. (We have also written about who to follow on Pinterest).

 >>Also read about 8 Great Instagram Brand Campaigns

Here are 12 brands that are using Instagram to their advantage, and posting engaging and interesting images you’ll actually want to see:

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How Universities Are Using Social MediaTrying to capture the attention of target audiences and consumers is becoming exceptionally challenging with the rate of technological and digital growth. Social media isn’t the answer for every digital marketing conundrum; but if adapted and structured strategically, you might be able to persuade your consumer audience to stay and engage a while.

With social media being a fairly new marketing medium and rapidly changing and growing, schools are evolving their admissions campaigns and to involve innovative social media marketing components.

Universities and Social Media

In a recent University of Massachusetts study, almost 100% of universities are actively using social media and more than 49% of colleges and universities have written and enforced social media policies.

This contrasts sharply with corporate America where 62% of Fortune 500 companies have an active Twitter account and 58% have an active Facebook page. In comparison to these large corporations, universities are leading the way in developing and establishing solid social media strategies as part of their overall marketing efforts.

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We gathered some interesting information on reality versus perception for Facebook brand pages. There are some surprises in here, including how few people have actually gone to the trouble of “unliking” a page, as well the differences between why customers actually like brands on Facebook versus why marketers think they do.

facebook + infographic >>Have an idea for an infographic or social media data you’d like to see visualized? Contact us, and we may just make your idea come to life.

 

 

 

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In recent months, there has been a huge rise in the use of hashtags for Twitter marketing purposes. In “The Twitter Hashtag is the New Neon Sign” by Blue Focus Marketing, author Mark Burgess writes that “hashtags function like a lighthouse to attract Twitter users to content that may be of interest.”

However, before you embark on a Twitter hashtag campaign, it’s important to figure out the best use of hashtags for your business and what you hope to achieve by using them. Here are 12 tips for effective Twitter hashtag marketing.

1.    Determine what kind of hashtag makes sense for your brand and objectives

Your brand is what people say about you when you aren’t around (i.e. your brand is not your marketing messages or how you present yourself, but rather how people perceive you).

Before implementing your own branded hashtag, you’ll want to think about being transparent without necessarily including your brand name, as this can discourage people from participating, as well as give brand haters more motivation to upend the hashtag’s meaning (see #2 below).

Generic hashtags like Nike’s #makeitcount have more creative potential both for the brand and for consumers. Either way, the hashtag should be informative and concise rather than conceptual. You only have a few characters; make them count, and don’t make consumers think too hard.

2.    Assess possible risk and have a plan in place in case a hashtag campaign backfires

Of all the hashtag marketing disaster stories, the #McDStories is probably the most notorious. Back in January, McDonald’s launched a campaign, first with the hashtag #meetthefarmers, and then later rolled out the dangerously vague #McDStories hashtag, hoping it would inspire heart-warming stories about Happy Meals.

What happened was just the opposite, and the Twitterverse quickly commandeered the hashtag and used it to share horror stories about the fast food chain.

Before you roll out a branded hashtag campaign, make sure you assess the possible risk of people using it to detract you or your brand and have a PR response plan in place for what happens when your branded hashtag is suddenly trending for all of the wrong reasons.

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5 social media mistakes and how to avoid them The success or failure of online marketing and social media strategy rests in correct execution. Small missing factors have a huge impact on the value and return from any social media campaign.

The question will always be: “How could we get more out of the same effort?”

Are you making mistakes that are ensuring failure in you social media and digital marketing efforts? Here’s a run down of 5 common social media mistakes, and how making  minor adjustments could result in exponential results.

 1. It’s not about which social networks you like, it’s about where your customers are

Unless you are a corporation with a large staff dedicated to social media, it is almost impossible to be successful on all of the social networks. As Brian Solis writes, “you can’t be everywhere, nor should you.”

Rather than having a mediocre presence on five different networks, you are much better off figuring where your customers, prospects and those who influence them are and focusing your strategy on those networks. It should never be about choosing which networks you know and like the best and then trying to implement a strategy. Instead, do your due diligence, figure out where your customers spend time online and then focus your time, efforts and energy in those places.
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For those who want to catch up on all the social media happenings from this week’s Search Marketing Expo Advanced (whether you’re there or want to follow along remotely), we’ve created a Postano aggregating all of the official SMX social media profiles, Twitter hashtags and Instagram photos in one place. It’s almost like being there in person.

If you are attending SMX this year, make sure you hunt down Julie Blakley, who will be representing the Postano team in Seattle. Send her a tweet at @jetsettingjulie.

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follow sasquatch on social media As Pacific Northwesterners and music fans around Postano Headquarters, it brings great sadness to our hearts to not be at Sasquatch Music Festival this week at the Gorge Amphitheater.

Since we can’t be there in person, we’re following along with all the Sasquatch happenings and highlights via social media. Using Postano, we’ve aggregated all the social media updates from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – all in one place, and all updating in real-time. Check it out: