The Best Social Media Campaigns Of 2015
Whether you like rhubarb or blueberry, there's something for everyone in this social media cornucopia.
There’s no doubt that in 2015, social media has taken up a large slice of the digital marketing pie for businesses, and it’s not hard to see why.
This heaping slice of rhubarb is the key to augmenting your campaigns and the chance to bring something truly personable to your brand.
Gone are the days of your top 8 on Myspace, or where Facebook meant only college students (do some of you even remember that…?). Social media is now an all-inclusive, all-connected environment, and it has diversified to tackle everyone from millennials to tech-gurus.
It’s become commonplace, and dare I say necessary, for businesses to have social media accounts and blogs, and diversified content for each.
In this blog we are going to outline some poignant social media campaigns that have happened thus far, and also show highlights from each different platform. So whether you like rhubarb or blueberry, there’s something for everyone in this social media cornucopia.
Twitter Campaigns That Have Truly “Carpe diem-ed!"
-
What’s America without pizza? Better yet, when combining emojis with instant online ordering on any device, or “Any Ware,” this has made a recipe for a truly successful campaign. In fact, they’ve seamlessly integrated emojis in their tweets and truly capitalized on the pizza emoji. No, seriously, you can order pizza by sending a tweet with a pizza emoji to Domino’s. As expected, this has generated some serious buzz and 938,000 followers. The Any Ware campaign is a perfect example on what happens when you can reach and engage with your target audience(s).
-
Be still my oatmeal. I mean, who doesn’t like free oatmeal? Quaker Oats’s Twitter had a campaign hashtag for #NationalOatmealDay by giving away free cups of a new flavor—instant oatmeal cranberry almond. By going to their link, you could get a cup for a friend, and this set off a series of about 349 total retweets. They also supplemented these efforts by utilizing video to highlight teachers with the #OffYouGo hashtag. All in all, Quaker uses video very effectively in their tweets and knows how to reach out to their 171,000+ followers.
A Supportive Facebook Campaign (ish)
-
Paris Attacks
Although this isn’t what we’d consider a full-blown campaign, I wanted to highlight Facebook’s lightning-quick response time to the Paris attacks that we’ve all seen unfold recently.
Undoubtedly, this is a terrible tragedy and all of our hearts go out to the victims. In light of this, Facebook raised awareness by having the option to change your profile picture to a French flag overlay. I’ve placed a screenshot of what it looks like on the side. Sure, changing your profile picture doesn’t change legislation, but it’s social media’s way of having your voice heard and your condolences known. All in all, good move, Facebook.
(Also, as a sidenote, I used my current profile picture as an example. Me on aerial silks, being a nerd. Moving on!)
A “Voila Worthy” Vine Campaign
-
I got some help from the Shorty Awards, in which Oreo got silver standing in the “Vine” category. The week leading up to Halloween, Oreo released a campaign called the “Oreo Laboratorium,” in which every day they unleashed a Tim Burton style Vine of a new “nomster” for viewers to name. Impressively, the team at Oreo used over 100 props, and fabricated over 40 stages of models to accomplish this feat.
Their hard work was rewarded, however, and generated 14 million PR impressions in only five days. The video series is very well done, but don’t just take my word for it—check it out here.
Clever All-Around Campaigns
-
With all of the success Marvel has had this year, how could I not spotlight this insanely clever campaign? Although this mostly cropped up in Australia, there were tiny versions of billboards spread around to highlight the movie (to bring those of you up to speed, Ant-Man’s superpower allows him to shrink into the size of an ant).
It wasn’t directly uploaded to social media; instead, Marvel relied on the passionate fans to scavenge and do the dirty work for them, so to speak.
This campaign was creative, much cheaper and personal than buying actual billboard space, and effective: the images have been uploaded all over, and drew more attention to the movie. Mission success.
-
Expedia’s #ThrowMeBack on Instagram
Expedia won the Shorty award for Best Instagram for its effective use of people hashtagging #ThrowMeBack for a contest promotion to “be thrown back to the place in their pic to recreate the memory.” This unique spin on the popular #tbt hashtag garnered a ton of engagement and interaction from users. From the 10 week campaign, Expedia nearly doubled its Instagram following and 300,000 total engagements, a large majority of them positive.
-
I wanted to offer major kudos to Always for making a frequently used expression with a bad connotation and spinning it into a good one. The #LikeAGirl hashtag campaign after 2 months received 4.4 billion impressions and it had a great message behind it. In such a harshly critical society, it’s enlightening to see positive campaigns aimed at young girls who may be experiencing a drop in confidence or self-esteem.
As you can see, implementing a fun and creative campaign has boundless opportunities for getting your business noticed. What’s your favorite social media campaign from this year?
Original Article
Read More About Social Media