The 10 Best Social Media Campaigns

Since social media has become an integral part of our lives, marketers have used their creative talents to develop social media campaigns with various degrees of success which can be measured in a variety of ways, says blogger Jeff Bullas.

One very successful social media marketing campaign that was run in 2009 was the competition for the “Best Job in the World” which was based on the simple concept of posting a one-minute video application on Tourism Queensland’s Web site explaining why you should be chosen as caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef and you might get to blog and cam your way through a six-month gig that paid about $100K U.S.

The results included 400,000 new visitors to the website in the first 30 hours and 1 million hits the second day the competition was launched.

Success for social media marketing campaigns can mean many things and can include

• More brand awareness
• Increased sales
• The number of Youtube views

or whatever measurement that is deemed important for the brand in achieving its goals

Forbes recently engaged three experts to rank the world’s best-ever social media campaigns.
The judges were

• David Berkowitz of the New York City agency 360i
• Brandon Evans of the social marketing agency Mr Youth in New York City
• Michael Lebowitz of Big Spaceship, a digital ad shop in Brooklyn

They were asked to take into account the success of the campaigns as well as the quality of the execution and creativity of each one.

Here are the top 10 social media campaigns

1. The Blair Witch Project

This was a low budget horror movie that used a viral social media campaign that used web sites and message boards to incite anticipation and interest months before the its release in 1999. The anticipation was created by spreading rumors about the fate of the movie’s main characters with fake newspaper clippings and police photos of their missing car being spread on what was then the 1999 version of what we now call social media.

The result for a movie that cost $22,000 to make, at last count it has grossed over $240 million, making it the worlds most profitable movie ever.

2. Blendtec: Will It Blend

This well known series of online videos first burst on the scene in 2006 (not long after YouTube was launched). It shows the Blendtec ‘Total Blender destroying anything from a baseball to an iPhone.

Result: Home sales of blenders has increased by more than 700%

3. Old Spice: “Smell Like a Man, Man”

Isaiah Mustafa was already popular in TV commercial but when a campaign was created that allowed him to respond to questions via online videos(180 in fact) and Twitter the buzz that it generated spread around the world. The results are still being counted.

4. Burger King: “Subservient Chicken”

This social media campaign centers around a person dressed in a chicken suit on a website that responds to commands like “make a sandwich” or “moonwalk”. It was created for Burger King by the advertising agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky for the chain’s TenderCrisp Sandwich.

Result: Website received 15 million hits in 5 days

5. Pepsi Refresh

This was aimed at people’s charitable gene which gave people the chance to get funding for their charity. Its goal was to create a new identity while maintaining its youthful image.

6. VW: Fun Theory

This was a social experiment using humor to drive engagement and influence customer behavior. It involved Volkswagen transforming a Swedish subway staircase into a giant functioning piano. The result, 66% more people choosing the steps rather than the escalator. This won t the 2010 Cyber Grand Prix Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival.

7. Office Max: “Elf Yourself”

The office supply retailer encouraged people during the 2006 holiday campaign to upload pictures of themselves. Technology was then applied to the images which would transform them into dancing elves. The creative genius behind this campaign was the San Francisco based agency Toy and San. The result 122 million elves, more brand awareness and increased sales.







8. Evian: “Roller Babies”

This YouTube blockbuster showing babies break dancing and busting moves ended up being (according to the Guinness Book of Records) the most watched online ad in viewing history with over 60 million views and 54,000 comments.

9. Ikea: “Facebook Showroom”

This Facebook marketing campaign involved the store manager of the Malmo Ikea store posting pictures of the new showrooms where people who tagged the items first, won that product. The result was a viral word of mouth campaign that quickly spread to people’s Facebook friends and created huge product awareness.

10. Hotmail

This was maybe the first integration of social media and email which involved Hotmail running ads in 1996 at the bottom of every email which said “get your free email at hotmail”. Apparently the judges were a bit divided on this with one rating it as the best and the other the worst and also whether it constituted a social media campaign.

What are some of the core elements that were in these campaigns that made them such a success? For Jeff it includes these elements: Humor, Competition, and Curiosity.

7 Simple Ways to Turn Your Website into an Effective Sales Tool

Nowadays everyone is in a crazy hurry—especially on the Web, says marketer Stacy Karacostas. As a result, your Website
has less than one second to capture your visitors’ attention once they land on it. Plus maybe a couple more seconds to show them you have what they’re after.    
Then, even once they’re hooked, visitors have to be able to:   

• Find what they want quickly and easily
• Know exactly how to take action
• And have all the info they need to take action confidently

Fail to do any of these things and you know what happens next, right? They click away. Because there are millions of other sites they can go to instead.
Sadly, most small business Websites are still nothing more than electronic brochures. They might look nice, but they aren’t really designed to grab visitors by the eyeballs and convince them to call or buy.
If your Website isn’t growing your business, here are seven simple tips to amp up its sales-making power...

1. Banish Fancy Landing Pages

If you can’t navigate back to your opening page from the rest of your site, or it has an “enter here” or “skip intro” option, it clearly isn’t important. So dump it. Web designers love to build these, but most Web users hate them. Who has time to wait for them to load??? Besides, visitors should be able to find what they need within two clicks of your home page, and landing pages just add another click.

2. Don't Make 'Em Guess

Put a big, bold, benefits-oriented headline front and center that lets visitors know exactly what they can find on your site (“Welcome to our site” is NOT an effective headline). Also make sure your navigation is consistent on every page, and easy-as-pie to locate and understand. Get too creative here, and people won’t know why they should click or even that they should click at all.

3. Axe Snoozer Content

Advertising
great David Ogilvy once said “You can never bore someone into doing business with you.” Whether you sell B2B or B2C, your Web copy should sound like you’re having a friendly, informative conversation with one other person (i.e., your reader). So write like you speak and don’t be afraid to sound human.

4. It's Not About You

This might come as a shock, but site visitors don’t want to know all about you, what you do, and how you do it—at least not right away. First they want to know what you can do for them! Because if you don’t have what they need, they could care less about your experience, processes and so forth. Focus on the benefits of what you offer up front. The rest can come later.

5. Give 'Em What They Need

The more expensive your products and services, the more information people need to make a confident buying decision. If all you have are pictures, and/or less than 250 words of text per page, it’s not enough. Your site should answer all your prospects’ questions and deal with their objections right then and there. And always include your complete contact info (not just an email
form) so they know you’re a legit business.

6. Let 'Em Skim

Before they start reading on the Web, most people skim or scan to see if you have what they’re after. Few things are more difficult to skim than large blocks of text. So keep sentences short (ideally 20 words or less) and paragraphs less than five lines long. And use subheads and bullets whenever possible.

7. Tell 'Em What to Do

It’s not enough to put your contact info on your site then expect people to call. If you don’t tell prospects what to do next, there’s no telling what they might do. But chances are good it’ll involve clicking away from your site.
Want them to call you? Say so AND put the phone number right there. Want them to go to a specific page, sign up for a newsletter, or buy something? Tell them and include a super obvious link or big, bright button.