It’s close to impossible to find a company without a social media presence. Large corporations, small businesses, and freelancers alike have Twitter and Instagram pages, official accounts on Reddit, as well as websites, blogs, and much more. As consumers turn more and more often to the Internet or social media for recommendations, help articles, and pure entertainment, companies feel growing pressure to stand out. However, with so much competition all around, truly standing out and creating a memorable social campaign is tricky. To make it simple for you, we’ve broken down the five components of a successful social campaign.

1) Purpose

Before you get revved up about pushing your company or brand on social media, it’s essential to understand that good social campaigns begin with a clear goal or vision. Do you want to announce a new product release? Or perhaps your company has recently rebranded itself? Is your company launching in a corporate responsibility initiative?

Your motivation can be as simple as wanting to boost brand visibility. However, broader goals require more substantial coordination efforts, as disjointed or unconnected posts are unlikely to make a social media user pay attention.

2) Platforms

Another crucial component of a successful social campaign is where you choose to launch it. The golden rule is: go where your audience is. Without a doubt, spending precious time and effort on a platform without an interested audience will give you little to no returns. Before you begin mapping out your social campaign, first identify the preferred platform(s) of (1) your existing clients and fans and (2) prospective clients with potential needs you can fulfill.

We do not recommend manual research or guesswork to unearth this information. Fortunately, technology, like social listening tools, allows companies to understand their consumers’ digital behaviors, such as platform usage and website. Correctly pinpointing these seemingly basic statistics builds a strong foundation for social campaigns and a higher rate of return.

Nonetheless, no matter where you choose to focus your campaign, perfecting each of the following components is also necessary.

3) Messaging

Formulating the messaging of your campaign may be the determining factor of a win or a flop. When we say messaging, we’re referring to the meat of what you’re trying to say. If you’re preparing for a product launch, what is it that makes your product or service unique? How does it stand out among your competitors? In other words, why should people be paying attention?

The messaging of your social campaign ties directly to our first step: purpose. If your purpose is what you want to share or say, your message is how you say it. Social media users scroll through content in seconds, so developing a succinct and memorable tagline is critical. Regardless of whether your social campaign uses images or videos (which we will discuss next), a short slogan or explanation gives people context.

We recommend jotting down the main points of your message in a bulleted list. Then, try to strip it down and put a fun twist on it, especially if it’s a relevant twist that gets conversations going. However, if you take a stand on a current social issue, make sure that it’s part of your company’s long-term vision. What goes on social media stays on social media.

4) Visuals

Social media is all about pictures and videos. Without these visual components, news feeds wouldn’t be as fun or addictive as they are. Investing time and resources into high-quality visuals, such as a short video, an infographic, or a photo, is vital to capturing user attention. However, it’s not just about production quality.

A stunning image or video may capture someone’s attention for a few seconds, but it can easily get lost among millions of other videos and pictures. Visuals need to tell a story – specifically your product’s story – in seconds. We’ve seen that adding humor keeps audiences intrigued, amused, and engaged for longer.

Also, consider the images, hobbies, or topics that interest your target audience. Again, guesswork will lead to uneven results, or even poor results, and lead to wasted budget for the team. An audience insights tool makes finding specific interests simple and targeted. Synthesio’s Profiler tool uses Facebook data, which gathers information on liked pages, watched videos, app usage, check-ins, and more. This helps teams to build robust profiles to target the different tribes within their audience.

5) Hashtags and Interactive Components

Finally, consider the use of hashtags or other interactive components. Almost all successful campaigns incorporate hashtags of some kind. First and foremost, they make conversations about your campaign easier to track and analyze. Moreover, concise hashtags help audiences to remember your brand or search for you later on.

In addition to hashtags, interactive components, such as polls on Twitter or Instagram stories, are massively appealing precisely because people get to contribute. You can ask social media users to submit photos or videos for a chance to be featured on your company’s profiles or website. In the marketing world, this is called user-generated content, which is popular among young adults and teenagers. For B2C companies, in particular, social campaigns with competitions or giveaways are a tried-and-true method of boosting engagement and visibility.

Using Social Intelligence In Your Social Campaign Planning

We believe that social intelligence is more than just measuring results after a campaign is over. A well-rounded platform should give you the data you need before crafting your social campaigns, such as the themes, concerns, and images that are important to your audience. Social media insights enable you to build out the five components of a strong campaign with ease and confidence. See a real-life example of a successful social campaign in our newest case study on a cosmetics company and why it worked.