Page 91 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Knowing how to reach these influencers without coming across as heavy-handed,
commercial, and ignorant is critical. Before you reach out to them, be sure to fol-
low them in social media so that you know how they cover your brand or category;
scan the comments on their channels so that you get a feel for the readers and
how they participate; understand their policies with regard to brands engaging
with them (some prefer to go through representatives, for example); and, ideally,
try to develop a personal relationship based on the content that they publish and
the topics that they cover before approaching them with an idea.

These are all common-sense ideas that would apply even if you were attempting
to engage with traditional reporters who are doing a story for a print publication.
But as the saying goes, common sense is often uncommon, and many a company
has done exactly the opposite.

UGC contests

Contests in all their various forms have always been a big hit in the marketing
campaign arena. But now contests structured around user-generated content
(UGC) are all the rage. And with good reason: They are invariably extremely popu-
lar, engaging, and fun. You structure a contest built on participants who contrib-
ute something in return for rewards. This can be something as simple as
crowdsourcing a TV advertisement, as General Motors did in the early days of
social media with its Tahoe campaign in 2006, to asking users to contribute video
clips of their funniest moment with a product. The best clip (by the predetermined
criteria) gets a prize, with all the other participants getting some sort of
recognition.

As Wired magazine reported, in the case of the Tahoe campaign, the microsite
attracted 629,000 visitors, with each user spending more than nine minutes on
the site and a third of them going on to visit the main Chevy.com website. Sales
took off from that point, even though environmentalists tried to sabotage the UGC
campaign by creating video clips that highlighted their views on the impact the
vehicles had on the environment.

Another successful contest was run by Applebee’s in the summer of 2014.
Applebee’s asked its customers to snap pics of their meals or themselves chowing.
The best photos were then published by Applebee’s on its Instagram feed using
the hashtag #fantographer and were cross-promoted on Facebook and Twitter
with posts and ads. When the campaign ended in the fall of 2014, engagement had
risen 25 percent and tweets tagged with #fantographer appeared in 78 million
users’ timelines (users would submit their photos to Applebee’s via Twitter and
used the hashtag when doing so).

CHAPTER 4 Launching SMM Campaigns 75