SocialSweeps - Integrating Interactive Promotions with Social Media For a Winning Combination
July 01, 2009
By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk
The use of social media marketing by businesses and organizations has been exploding. Today more and more marketers are utilizing these platforms as innovative and effective ways to reach their targeted audiences while also achieving their branding and marketing communications goals.
I have been working lately on several proposals for prospective clients that want to get started with social media. This usually takes some education first that includes an overview of where the industry is currently at, a brief description of the main social media platforms and an explanation of the services that I could provide for them. So, I thought I'd share with you here some of what I've been saying and thinking and ask for your input and ideas.
Now the first step for any social media strategy is to set clear objectives. Goal setting a social marketing program should be no different than with any other brand communications plan. The goals that work best are traditional brand-health objectives, however my experience in this new marketing environment shows that most campaigns may involve the following:
- Increased brand awareness
- Brand engagement (pages viewed, time on site)
- Publicity, positive buzz and word of mouth (often uncovering brand evangelists)
- Relationship building
- Driving traffic to a website
- Sales conversions for products and services
- Strong inbound link generation, which benefits organic search engine rankings
- Positive ROI when maximum exposure is reached
The social media audience in the U.S. currently totals 122 million, or 64% of the total Internet audience, according to the research firm comScore, Inc., and social network usage globally exceeds Web-based email usage, says Nielsen. Big brands are engaging with their customers through these channels and well as local firms and retailers.
The amount of time people spend on social networking and blog sites also continues to climb, with the total minutes jumping 82% year-over-year in May 2009. Per person, that time increased 67% over the same period, according to Nielsen.
Recent stats released by comScore for May, 2009 show that Facebook is currently the fastest growing social network on the Internet and has finally surpassed MySpace in the number of active members in the U.S. with over 70 million and close to 250 million worldwide. Facebook recently let members choose their own “vanity URL’s” and had 5.75
million usernames grabbed up in the first two days. I grabbed mine, did you?
Twitter topped the list as the fastest growing Web brand in May, increasing 1448%, from 1.2 million unique visitors in May 2008 to 18.2 million in 2009. The growth, however, is beginning to slow, increasing only 7% from April. Twitter is a great tool that businesses can use to connect with customers both by posting info and by monitoring what is being said about them and their competitors.
Now since I come from a promotional background, I've been writing about the integration of interactive promotions, those that contain sweepstakes, games, and contests, with social media. These promotional tactics are powerful ways to motivate interaction on the Internet. They are highly measurable and most of the time can be very effective when integrated with the right incentive, however they certainly can't achieve defined objectives if proper awareness of the promotion is not created.
Now by integrating a promotion with the viral features of social media you can spread the word about your promotion and your company far more widely and cost effectively than ever before. I believe it is this type of marketing that can create positive brand awareness that is a perfect fit with many types of social media, especially social networks. So I've coined this phrase before and I'm planning on beginning to market the service that I'm referring to as SocialSweeps...An interactive promotion that integrates with at least one social media platform to help create awareness and buzz.
The benefits to consumers are strong. People love the chance to win! Fifty percent of online users enter sweepstakes at least once a month, 25% enter weekly and only 20% of internet users never enter sweepstakes. In fact, entering promotions such as sweepstakes and contests is one of the most popular online activities, second only to activities like search and email.
When you integrate them into social media it enables consumers to easily inform their friends about your promotion and these friends can in turn inform their friends. On social network sites like Facebook, newsfeeds are generated when consumers interact with a promotion, so for every person that enters, potentially hundreds more will also see it and have the opportunity to interact.
For marketers and business owners, a SocialSweeps promotion can be a highly cost effective way to build your database and start a dialog with your customers. It is also a great way to drive traffic to a social network "fan" page, a blog, or a website. According to Forrester Research, companies that run sweepstakes have 50% more fans on their social network pages than those that don’t.
You can read about some interesting examples of interactive promotions that have integrated social media into their plans on my blog, Donna's Promo Talk, especially one of my latest posts regarding an AT&T promotion that combined an promotional website, Facebook page and a mobile text messaging campaign all as ways to enter for a chance to win.
So now I'm in the process of finalizing this overview and the description of my services as I work to relaunch my website. If you're interested in learning more please contact me. Would love to hear any thoughts and suggestions while I'm still in my "beta" stage. Thank-you.
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