As we have the basic knowledge of the importance of social media, digital indentity and the types of social media users, it’s time to move on towards the business related side: Social media planning. What are important aspects to take into account and how to implement them successfully?

There are 8 factors which contribute to the strategic use of social media, these are:

• Communication management
• Sales and idea generation
• Insights and research
• Advertising and awareness
• Communicate and outreach
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Reputation management
• Support and customer service

These are a lot of factors, aren’t they? All these factors can have an impact on your business regarding on which platform you operate. This can be the more social platform, e.g Facebook, Instagram, a more business related platform, like LinkedIn, or a combination of both (Twitter, Youtube). All these platforms have their own advantages, approaches and pricing plans.

 But what if no one cares? Make sure that you interact, where your customers are. They should be happy to hear from you.

Your social media objectives should not be falling out of the blue. They should be in line with your overall business strategy. The most important part is planning. Ought is to create an Action plan and implement it. Optimization will be achieved when asked relevant questions to your target group, alongside with the recognition of your ambassadors. An ambassador is someone who is very positive towards your brand and shows that throughout social media. Considering the action plan, don’t forget to track, analyse and optimise.

These things might come out handy:

• Web analytics (Google analytics)
• Url Shorteners (.me)
• ORM software
• Social media dashboards (Hootsuite)

Obviously, a planning needs to be made. Which days will you dedicate to answer your (potential) customers? Will you have a standard reply? What if you will have a lot of negative comments? For all the answers I’d love to refer to the blog of my tutor. Read further below, to see some great social media campaigns by known brands. 

Some inspiration

As we may know, a lot of businesses put a lot of effort into creating an exciting, differentiating and memorable experience towards their customers on social media. Good social strategies are these, which are being remembered in a positive way. I’d like to refer to …

Lego’s Fill The Gap

Lego set out a contest on instagram, which allowed users to make their own creation and fill the gap in the picture. This is an amazing way to enhance customer engagement. This is the video with some of the most iconic builds.

Ride on the Iron Throne with Uber

Uber, the platform on which almost all regular cab drivers get furious, has another brilliant social media campaign. On twitter, they have shown the Iron Throne, from Game of Thrones, and people had a chance to win a ride when participating in the contest. With NYC as the location, this had to be a huge hit.

Heineken

This being one of my favourite companies throughout social media, because of their alertness, alongside with their creativity and passion for football. Here’s a campaign on a micro phenomenon, which you definitely didn’t miss, about #TheDress.  With the text saying: No Doubt.

I had another amazing experience with Heineken and I would love to share it with you. 

Personal Heineken Social Media experience

Being on twitter and with all the information formed in tweets coming through, I don’t feel obligated to read all of them. Most of the time I just find myself browsing around and retweeting relevant content to me. Another interesting aspect of the platform is that you have the ability to interact and engage with companies for which you have a question or a remark. The response rate is a lot faster compared to email, and you will get things done faster. The only thing that may be problematic, is that your aimed company has not implemented twitter as their important factor of SM strategy, or does not have a SM strategy at all. Anyhow, as I have known that companies tend to keep their reputation positive by responding fast. giving politically correct answers, and providing faster customer service, I gave it a go.

With my travel towards my family in Poland in the back of my head, I kindly engaged with Heineken Netherlands with the question whether the had a nice gift idea for my soon to celebrate his birthday brother. They replied with an image of a nicely filled bucked of beers. Unfortunately, I was not able to carry that on plane. So I asked them whether they had something different . They proposed me a backpack. The cooling backpack looked really cool. Alongside with the thought that I had to stick to a student budget, I replied with my interest and my budget situation. At last, they proposed me this: “If you’ll buy the beers and fill it, we’ll give you the backpack, is that a good idea?”  Wow! What an amazing way to surprise customers. At the end of the day, the sent me the wrong backpack, but still, they sent me two of them. How cool is that?