Speed Summary: CUTIES – The Secret to Effective Social Media Campaigns [Web App]

So how do you implement successful social media campaigns?  At SYZYGY, we’ve distilled some of the best practice into a simple walkthrough web app to help you deploy social media marketing campaigns that count (accompanying presentation).  Yes, marketing with social media is distinct from selling with social media – but marketing insight is crucial to successful selling. So here’s the skinny – a two-minute speed summary on running effective social media campaigns:

Successful social media marketing campaigns are built on answering five key questions:

1. What’s our shareable concept?  People only share stuff that they find remarkable – that provide ‘wow reactions’. Remarkable wow-inducing stuff that gets shared are called ‘social objects’ (aka memes) and typically fall into one of four buckets – remarkable offers, remarkable utility (solutions to real problems), remarkable entertainment and remarkable causes.

2. How will we drive participation?  Participation, from sharing to contribution, requires incentivisation – and there are three key incentives for driving social media participation according to MIT – money (financial rewards), love (personal enjoyment, communal socialisation, cause), and glory. Pick one or a combination, and decide how you will deliver it.

3. What’s our content?  What are people actually going to share – a picture, a video, an app?  You need to turn your concept into a shareable social object.  Shareable social objects – whether video, images, text, sound or tools (apps) are CUTIES; they offer social Currency, Unique, Tangible, Innovative, Exclusive and Simple.

4. Who will we partner?  Social media is people media, and the critical success driver is to develop and deploy your campaign with a social media star who has a big social media footprint – think designers, photographers, thought-leaders and celebrities.

5. How will we propagate?  Successful social media campaigns propagate – a social media eyeball is just the means to getting another eyeball.  Ensure that you make it easy for people to share, not only with social media sharing tools, but by promoting and integrating your campaign with other channels.  Think of social media as the runway for social objects – when they take off they get shared by the most powerful media of all – people media.