If Elon Musk was expecting many verified Twitter users to pay to keep their checkmarks, the reality is bound to be disappointing, new data has revealed.
On April 1, Twitter is set to strip away the legacy verification checkmarks from the platform in favor of the paid checkmarks associated with Twitter Blue subscriptions. Then starting April 15, the platform apparently will no longer promote non-paying Twitter Blue subscribers via its recommendation algorithm on the For You feed.
One of Elon Musk's biggest changes since taking over Twitter has been launching Twitter Blue, which gives any account a verification badge just for paying $8 per month (or $11 per month via mobile purchase).
Twitter power users have often criticized Twitter Blue subscribers. After all, they say, who pays for a free website? Well, thanks to some new data, we now know a little more about the accounts that subscribe to Twitter Blue.
Researcher Travis Brown, who has been tracking Twitter Blue subscriptions since January, recently revealed around half of all users subscribed to Twitter Blue have less than 1,000 followers. That's approximately 220,132 paying subscribers.
Furthermore, 78,059 paying Twitter Blue subscribers have less than 100 users following their account. That's 17.6 percent of all Twitter Blue subscribers.
Breaking down follower counts even further, there are 2,270 paying Twitter Blue subscribers who have zero followers.
That's a significant chunk of Twitter Blue subscribers being unable to crack even four-digits worth of followers, even though some have subscribed believing it would help boost the growth of their Twitter account.
While Brown does not have access to internal Twitter information, his methodology has been proven to be very accurate when Twitter Blue subscriber numbers have been leaked from Twitter before. Brown says that he's able to pull around 85 to 90 percent of Twitter Blue subscribers.
According to his data, Twitter Blue currently has a total of 444,435 paying subscribers. Accounting for the limitations of pulling this data using the Twitter API, Brown tells Mashable that he estimates that Twitter likely has around 475,000 paying subscribers.
This means that less than 0.2 percent of Twitter's 254 million daily active users, a metric previously shared by Musk, are paying for Twitter Blue.
Twitter Blue has very few legacy verified accounts subscribed
While the verified checkmark is seemingly the main draw of the subscription, Twitter does tout other features that come with the subscription service, although most of the advertised benefits have yet to launch. Users can edit certain tweets, add more than 280 characters to a post, and attach longer videos.
If these added Twitter Blue benefits were to be enticing to anyone, it would be Twitter's power users. However, according to Brown's data, only 6,482 legacy verified accounts have paid to subscribe to Twitter Blue.
There are approximately 420,000 legacy verified accounts in total, which are mostly celebrities, pro athletes, journalists, influencers, and other notable users that received the checkmark badge for free under Twitter's old verification system.
However, those legacy verified accounts appear to soon be no more. Elon Musk is planning some big changes to Twitter over the next few days in order to highlight Twitter Blue subscribers.
First, Musk announced that Twitter would be removing the blue checkmark badge from legacy verified users, i.e. the celebrities, journalists, and other notable account holders, on the platform. This would mean that only people paying now would be verified on Twitter.
And then, on Monday, Musk shared that in a few weeks only Twitter Blue subscribers would be recommended to users in the platform's For You feed.
Twitter has already been struggling to grow Twitter Blue's paid subscriber base. Will legacy verified accounts sign up for Twitter Blue to keep their blue checkmark? Judging by the sentiment on Twitter, it doesn't appear that many are willing to do so. As even Twitter itself has reportedly noticed, users verified with the paid checkmark are often shunned by other users on the platform. And taking away legacy verification is likely to further cement the blue checkmark as scarlet letter on the platform.
Actor William Shatner caught Musk's attention when he criticized the decision to remove his blue checkmark. Actor Jason Alexander got to the crux of the issue: That the blue checkmarks' real purpose was always to prevent fake accounts from impersonating users and now Musk is doing away with its utility. The reason so many celebrities chose to stay active on Twitter over other social media platforms was originally due to the legacy verification system. Alexander said he doesn't plan on even staying on Twitter after the legacy verification badges are removed.
Many Twitter power users who have interacted with Twitter Blue subscribers note that they are most often far right wing accounts, cryptocurrency scammers, and hardcore Elon Musk supporters. We will soon find out if filling users' feeds with some of the least influential accounts on the platform, as Musk plans to do, is a good business strategy.
Social media skills have evolved dramatically over the past few years. Social network fragmentation, dynamic search engine optimization (SEO) changes, ever-growing content trends, emerging technologies and other complexities in the field have made it necessary for social media managers (SMMs) to sharpen and diversify their skills to keep up their game and be future-ready.
In this article, we’ll explore how the role has changed over time and what social media skills need to be in your toolkit for success.
How have social media manager skills evolved?
A social media manager has to be a marketer, strategist, copywriter and a customer service rep—and excel at each of them.Managing all these diverse responsibilities requires youto be agile and adept atnew skills that are becoming more critical by the day.
ALinkedIn report shows that social media manager skills requirements in the US have changed an average of 24.9% since 2015. Some of the top new skills mentioned include social media outreach, social strategy, social media communications and platform expertise like Instagram.
Other pertinent skills include project management and the ability to conduct nuanced audience research with AI-driven technology to create more data-driven social strategies.
Whether you are planning tobecome a social media manageror want to sharpen your skills for 2023 and beyond, here is a thoughtfully compiled list of the top skills every social media manager must have to thrive.
Level up your social media skills with the right social tools
As you master the skills in this article, start leveraging a social media management tool to further your social success.
Of all the social media skills, I believe effective communication skills are by far the most important.Fromwriting a brief to compiling a social listening analysis for leadership,social media managers have to communicate ideas effectively to a wide range of stakeholders.
Communications skills areeven more indispensable when you consider the breadth of internal and external audiences SMMs collaboratewith on a regular basis, from teams as diverse as the legal and creative departments, to your followers and even social platform partners.
There are two crucial things to keep in mind here:
When communicating externally on social media, ensureyou’re consistent. For example, employ a consistent brand voice when communicating with followers on social media. This holds truewhether you’re publishing a planned post, droppingwhat you’re doing to hop on a trending topic or handling a customer complaint. You also need to be consistent in your communication with external stakeholders such as creators or influencers. Clearly define expectations and campaign goals, and how you’ll collaborate with them.
When communicating internally,articulate your ideas and plans to decision-makers and cross-functional partners. This could beabout yoursocial media strategy,content distribution planortherevenue impact you expect from a campaign.
Resources to build your communication skills
Presentation template: Use this social media strategy deck template to effectively communicate your social strategy to the leadership team.
TED Talks on communication:Hear from some of the world’s most inspiring speakers on improving your social conversations, digital communications and storytelling abilities.
2. Writing
Social media managershave to beexcellent copywriters who embody and enhance theirbrand’s voice on social. From witty, attention-grabbing ad copy to timely commentary, you should know how to write concise copy thatspeaks to your audience.
Whichever social networks you use, effective writers know how to tailor their writing for different audiences and platforms.
For example, while you can use up to 2,200 characters in your Instagram captions, data has shown that themost engaging lengthis between 1-50 characters.
While writing is an important social media skill for creating engaging content and conversations, it’s also important forbuilding your social media career.The ability to express yourself clearly inreports,emails and presentations will help your ideas make an impression.
Don’t hesitate to use AI-based content tools and other helpful apps that can assist you in ideating a topic or providing inspiration when you need it. If you do use AI tools to generate content, you will need editing skills to review and proofread the copy to ensure that it is aligned to your expectations and brand voice.
Resources to help with writing
Grammarly: This free tool checks your grammar and proof reads your content while giving you prompts to make your copy more compelling.
Copy AI:This free AI-driven tool can generate creative Instagram captions.
Hemingway Editor: Use this website and app to make your writing more concise and readable. While it is geared more for long-form writing, you can also use it for creating impactful social media posts.
Merriam-Webster’s Twitter feed: Broaden your vocabulary with words of the day, learn the difference between similar terms and enjoy a little snark when this dictionary Tweets about misused or made-up words in the news cycle.
3. Creativity
Differentiation is one of the biggest challenges for brands in the saturated social media space.That’s why it’s critical tocreate content that’s exciting, valuable and relevant. It takes creativity to:
Consider every aesthetic detail of a social post, from images to links to copy formatting
Lead productive brainstorms that bring out teammates’ best ideas
Hone and expand your brand’s voice and persona
Infusing creativity across multiple projects can seem daunting to even the most seasoned social media manager. That’s where technology becomes your best friend. There are several AI-based creative apps for design and copy that can be your sparring partner to kick start your creative process.
On par with being creative is having a sense of humor and the ability to improvise in any given situation.
Resources to flex your creativity
Creative Mornings events:Creative Mornings is a global breakfast event series for the creative community. Join a local event or the online community to connect with other curious, creative leaders in marketing, design and social.
Vidyo:This easy-to-use AI tool helps time- and resource-strapped teamscreate social-ready short-form videos from longer content.
Illustroke: Use this tool to create quick AI-generated illustrations from text prompts to provide your design teams with more tangible direction.
Fast CompanyandCampaign: These two publications offer thoughtful commentary and criticism on the creative ad world. Read for insight into brand and creative strategy, industry-leading campaigns and thought leadership.
Sprout Insights Blog: You can find curated articles on content ideas for a variety of social platforms on our blog. Also check out this greatvideoon how you can generate clever content and never run out of ideas.
Improvisation classes: Taking improv classes can teach you how to problem-solve in a different way and give you more confidence in managing customer responses on the fly.
4. Efficiency andproject management
As a social media manager, not only do you have to conceptualize campaigns and distribution rhythms, but you also have to lead and execute these plans from start to finish. To do this at scale, project management is arequired social media skill.Becoming efficient at project management can also pave the road for future leadership roles in social.
Among the many time and project management tools available, such as Asana or Monday.com, asocial media calendar(like the one in Sprout) can be super helpful inmanaging your different social tasks. You can use it to manage your campaigns more efficiently, keep all your collaborators on the same page, track your progress with different filters and more.
Resources to improveyour project management skills:
Pomodoro Techniqueand time-boxing:Sometimes you’ve got 50 messages to write and schedule all at once. Setting aside a limited block of time to work on a task helps keep things moving.
Social Media Campaign Brief Template:Use thiscustomizable social campaign brief template to organize campaign details, creative direction and other important directives.
5. Marketing strategy
Social sits at the intersection of marketing, customer experience and sales. It is also a source of valuable business intelligence. According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2022 social teams rank “proving ROI” as the third biggest challenge when it comes to strategy building. Marketing acumen combined with social intelligence can fill this gap to inform a more successful marketing strategy that is data-driven and customer-centric.
Tocreate a social strategy that drives the most business impact, it’s important toincorporate bothtraditionalanddigital marketing approaches. This could mean documenting how your social efforts intersect with other tacticssuch as email nurtures, paid campaigns,corporateevents,webinarsandmore.
Marketing influencers:Leaders likeJoe PulizziandSeth Godinhave stood the test of time with marketing wisdom all social pros can use.
Textbooks and marketing courses:I find myself referring to my old sociology and marketing research textbooks all the time. If you’re learning on the job, check outLinkedIn Learning courseson marketing and strategy.
Books by Malcolm Gladwell: Read “The Tipping Point” or “Outliers” to strengthen your understanding of human behavior and marketing.
6. Customer care
Customer care isone of thosesocial media skills that combines customer service, people skills and an eye for uncovering opportunities.That’s whydeveloping asocial customer care strategyis an integral part of a social media manager’sjob description.
Our Index shows that 44% of marketers use social data to inform customer experience. Brands also report that 53% of their social strategy is driven by insights from the customer service team. To truly be customer-centric, you must put the voice of the customer (VoC) at the core of your strategy.
Studies also suggest more than three-quarters of consumers expect a response on social within 24 hours. This means,not only do you have to listen to and understand the concerns of your customers, but also be proactivein your approach to handling emergencies.
For example, when a frustrated customer reached out to Delta Airlines on Twitter, the company responded immediately in a respectful manner, validating the customer’s feelings while offering the needed assistance.
As a social media manager, you are the brand’s biggest champion. Understanding customersand their perspectivesenables you to make a positive impact in the hearts and minds of your community.
Additionally,personalizing your interactions by referencing conversation history can help take an everyday interaction and turn it into an extra special moment.
Resources to enhance your customer care skills
Zendesk’s Relate blog and events:Check out Relate for consistently great content on relationships, customer service and leadership.
Podcasts: Customer care starts with customer understanding. Some of our favorite podcasts on this topic include Hidden Brain, Invisibilia and What It Means. You can check out our full list of favorite podcasts here.
7.Audience research and making connections
Researching your audience for brand experience (BX) intelligence is a critical part of a successful social strategy. These insights are even more vital when derived from social listening through machine learning (ML) processes like Sprout’s social listening solution, which uses natural language processing (NLP) to extract rich brand and voice of the customer insights.
This is because audience insights can inform everything, from the content formats you choose and trends you jump on, to thebest times to postfor your brand.
Establishing and building relationships with your audience is core to social media skills you must have in your arsenal. According to theQ1 2023 Sprout pulse survey,77% of consumers are more likely to increase their spending with brands if they feel connected to them, up from 57% in 2018.
That’s why social media managers need to be comfortable using AI-enabled tools to gather and act on VoC insights. This powerful, customer-driven,data-backed guidance can help you understand trends in audience behavior at scale but also fine-tune your brand’s social presence.
These AI algorithms can also scan audience sentiment to discover which influencers are the best fit for your brand, so you can make strategic partnerships based on audience insights.
You can also measure brand sentiment through AI-based sentiment analysis. Proactively keep track of how audiences feel about your brand at any given time and also dig deeper to investigate why audience sentiment is dipping or spiking.
As a social media manager, your quantitative and qualitative audience insights give you a holistic understanding of what your audience wants and needs.
Resources for understanding & connecting with your audience
Step-by-step social listening workbook:This workbook can help youget clear insights into what audiences think about your brand and how you can optimize your strategy accordingly.
The Sprout Social Index™: Our annual report on the state of social contains data and insights on what consumers really want on social and what marketers are doing.
8. Agility
Thesocial landscape moves fast and even best laid plans can become irrelevant.This is why theability to quickly pivot and react to new trends, opportunities or crises isafundamental social media skill.
Being flexible can help you decisively respond to a frustrated customer (or an appreciative fan) in equally empathetic and personalized ways.Butit’s also important to be agile when it comes to your long-termsocialstrategy.
Social strategies have to be as dynamic as the platforms theyare executedon. As a social media manager, it’s important to experiment with different tactics, or even shake up your strategy entirelyto adapt to new trends or competitive forces.
Learning from your databylistening to customer feedback and keeping a pulse on your competitors in a timely manner can make you a more nimble and hands-on social marketer.
Resources
Know Your Meme: This site can be helpful in keeping up with daily development of new memes.
The Twitter Trends sidebaris a useful resource to keep an eye on when looking for emerging trends and new content.
Google Alerts: Enter keyword alerts for a variety of reasons: keep up on company mentions on the internet, industry news and world news.
9. Data analysis
We’re all familiar with end-of-month reporting, but skillful social media managersregularly look atdata andapply it in their strategies to accomplish goals.
The impact is even more significant when your metrics include quantitative and AI-enabled qualitative data derived through social listening, such as sentiment mining of comments and posts.
This gives you an accurate picture of your engagement levels and the “why” behind them. It alsogives you tangible customer experience (CX) data to share with your stakeholders andcross-functionalcollaborators.
As theimportance ofsocial listeninggrows and brands feverishly compete foraudience interactions,analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data will help you make a lasting impact on social.It will help you identify emerging trends and develop recommendations based on the voice of the customer to build a successful plan of action personalized to your audience and brand.
Resources for building your data analysis skills
Marketer’s Ultimate Data-Powered Toolkit: This powerful toolkit is full of advice on how to use analytics to your advantage, from industry leaders including HubSpot, Litmus, Unbounce, Vidyard and ZoomInfo.
Data storytelling: This article shows you how to build effective data storytelling so that you can communicate your data-driven strategy in a way that resonates with members in and around the marketing team.
10. Budget Management
As a social media manager, you have to expertly plan and manage funds for various programs including organic andpaid media spending.
This includes managing the budget for content especially if influencers or brand amabassadors are involved in your project, or if you need to hire freelance professionals. These costs may vary based on where you are located, the size of the influencer’s following and how freelance writers or editors charge their fees. You may have to decide which creator partnerships to prioritize based on available resources and production costs.
To plan and allocate your spending wisely, you need to first thoroughly understand the goals of the project and conduct a social spend audit to compare the expenses from previous months or quarters. This will give you a better idea of which expenses are a one-time spend and which are ongoing.
Resources to enrich your social media skills for budgeting
Annual Social Media Budget Template:Use this handy template to plan your annual social media spend so you canallocate your finances wisely, measure ROI and justify more investments in the future.
Organic vs paid media: This article highlights everything you need to keep in mind when planning a hybrid social media strategy.
Pattern89 AI Social Ad Budgeting Tool: This clever AI-powered social media budgeting tool helps you manage your paid social ads. You can optimize bids, plan spend and choose from the channels it recommends based on your audience. The tool is now part of ShutterStock.
Build your social media skills to transform your career
Social is a career path of lifelong learning,whether it’s your first social media manager role or you’re already a pro.
Continuing to hone your social media skills will benefit you at every stage of your career. For example, if you’re already highly organized and efficient, you can spend time developingother skills such asbuilding your personal brand, or preparing to move into people management.
Mastery within an area of social media might open the door to your next career move. If you’re phenomenal at data analysis, perhaps you’d make a great social strategist. Or ifaudience research andconnection are yourforte, you might be an incredible community manager.Whatever your social media skills are, there is always room to grow.
Creating a social media campaign is an intricate process that requires deeply understanding your audience, brand, products and competitors. From start to finish, it’s imperative to stay focused on your brand’s goals and your audience’s needs.
And the campaign doesn’t end when your team hits “publish.” Tracking, monitoring, listening and analyzing campaign results is crucial to refining your social media marketing strategy and proving the far-reaching impacts your team has on company goals.
In this guide, we’re sharing the essential steps to running a social media campaign, seven of our favorite recent campaigns and 25 tips for building your own unforgettable campaign.
A social media campaign is a coordinated set of marketing actions across one or many social channels. The tactics share a common purpose and are designed to reach your company’s goals. Components of a social media campaign include:
Organic posts
Paid promotions
Contests and giveaways
Branded hashtags
User-generated content
Creator partnerships
Social media campaigns are often part of an omnichannel strategy. For example, Sprout Social’s annual Year in Social campaign starts with the creation of a special end-of-year recap report in our platform. The report’s high impact data and sleek, on-trend design make it shareworthy, which prompts our customers to post it on their personal accounts. Then we repost this user-generated content on our brand’s page, which is how we source social content for the campaign.
How to run a successful social media campaign
To run your high impact social media campaign from start to finish, use this three-step process.
1. Brainstorm social campaign themes
Start with generating social media campaignideas by asking your team (and teams outside of social) these questions:
What are your target audience’s challenges?
How does your brand help overcome them?
For instance, the inspiration for the Year in Social campaign mentioned above started with the customer marketing insight that social marketers often feel the pressure to do more—without acknowledging how far their brand has come.
According to Sprout’s Senior Customer Marketing Strategist, Justin Woods, “We wanted to surface all the good social media managers do in a year. They can get down on themselves, or feel like they’re never doing enough. Seeing all they accomplished allows them to zoom out and relish their accomplishments.” By helping our customers see the value they bring to their organizations, we reminded them how our partnership enables their best work.
During the ideation stage of your social media campaign, it’s imperative to consult with teams from other business functions to ensure you have a complete understanding of your customers, your products and your competitive landscape. The Sprout Social Index™ 2022 revealed that many organizations’ social strategies are already informed by teams outside of social—including customer service, corporate communications, product development, HR, R&D and sales.
2. Build out your creative and content
Once you ground yourself in the “why” behind your campaign, it’s time to build out the content. Here are five sources of creative inspiration that will help make your next social campaign truly memorable.
1. Leverage influencers and creators
Social media stars increase your brand awareness, and their digital word-of-mouth tactics help build trust and increase sales.
Influencers and creators are already masters of creating content that resonates. They’ve built their followings based on the engaging content they share on social. With their expertise, they can produce unique content for your brand that strikes a cord with their community.
Influencer and creator-generated content infuses a fresh perspective into your social strategy—with relatively minimal effort required on your end. Just be sure to find creators who have real experience with your product and appear authentic, otherwise you risk your campaign falling flat.
2. Align with the customer journey
Not every piece of content you produce should align with all members of your target audience across the sales funnel. Instead, shift your focus to create content specific to where your campaign audience is in their buying journey.
For example, in the awareness stage, your goal is to increase the number of people who know about your brand, services and offerings. The content you produce within this stage needs to be eye-catching, but doesn’t necessarily have to speak directly to what your brand has to offer. The focus here is to grab your audience’s attention. “Edutainment” content—social posts that entertain and educate—is perfect for this journey stage. Think infographics and how-to videos.
3. Share user-generated content (UGC)
About 39% of consumers want brands to post real customer demos or testimonials, according to 2022 Index data. By reposting UGC, you fulfill your audience’s expectations, while saving your own team time and creative resources. And your brand advocates would be delighted to be featured by your brand and have a chance to grow their own following. So, tapping into UGC is a win-win-win.
4. Post content formats your audience wants to engage with
Index data reveals that short-form video, images and live video are the top three most engaging types of in-feed social media content according to consumers. When dreaming up your campaign strategy and content, keep this in mind. Use popular formats and trends to shape your creative development.
But remember that your audience’s preferences might differ slightly from the general population, so it’s important to factor in your most successful content types and themes using your past data.
5. Size up the competition
If you’re running out of content ideas to fuel your social campaigns, turn to your competitors for inspiration. Your brand and your competitors may be targeting similar ideal customer personas, so zero-in on where their social efforts are winning share of voice. What are they doing that works? Where are they missing the mark?
Be careful not to mimic your competitors’ content, but instead use their social strategies as a catalyst for your creative ideas.
3. Choose your metrics and measure success
Choosing the appropriate metrics to track and analyze is vital to properly gauge the success of your social media campaigns, and how well your campaign translates to reaching business goals. With the tremendous amount of social data now available, be sure to choose metrics that align with your objectives. For a complete deep-dive, check out this video that walks you through the 17 most important metrics.
When it comes to tracking campaigns, engagement metrics—such as the number of unique people who have clicked, liked, commented on or shared your posts—typically provide the most compelling data to determine your campaign’s overall effectiveness.
There are three engagement metrics that are universal among the major social networks:
Clicks: Users are only going to click on content that interests them. If you experience high clickthrough rates, your content is intriguing enough for users to want to see more, meaning that your content is effective.
Likes: If your content resonates with an audience and is receiving a high number of likes, it will naturally gain popularity (and hopefully collect more clicks).
Shares: Clicks and likes are good indicators of audience interest. However, when users like your content enough to share it, you’ve achieved the holy grail of relevancy and will increase your visibility.
Once you determine the metrics that matter most to your campaign, start measuring your success and reporting on your social media analytics. Measuring your performance throughout your campaign enables you to make adjustments to your strategy and content as you gain real-time insights from your audience.
Build and manage your campaign from start to finish
To keep your campaign organized—from ideation to content creation to making sense of your metrics—use a social media management platform like Sprout. With Sprout’s Campaign Planner features, you can create everything you need to run a successful campaign in one place, including briefs, creative assets and analytics reports.
7 extraordinary social media campaign examples
One of the best ways to jumpstart your own campaign development is by looking at shining social media marketingexamples. Here’s a roundup of seven of our favorite recent campaigns.
1. Lil Nas X named “president” of “League of Legends”
Ahead of the 2022 League World Championship, video game developer, Riot Games named Lil Nas X as the “president” of its “League of Legends”. The campaign included a hilarious, whimsical announcement video on YouTube and a realistic press release, both naming the two-time Grammy winner responsible for “explosive” musical moments, special League champion skins and a live Worlds performance. The video was also a teaser for Lil Nas X’s new song “STAR WALKIN’.”
The announcement video alone gained 3.1 million views and 156,000 likes, not to mention the 5.15 million people who viewed the World Championship live.
In the more than 5,000 comments on the initial video, fans expressed their surprise and delight in response to the seemingly odd partnership between the gaming company and the star. Hats off to Riot Games and “Lil Nas X-ecutive” for their ace awareness efforts, and knowing how to deliver just the right kind of weird.
2. Flock Freight defines a f***load
Speaking of unexpected partnerships, Steve Burns—best known for his role of Steve in Blue’s Clues—teamed up with Flock Freight to quantify how much a f***load is. In their standout campaign, the former children’s television star interviews the team at Flock Freight to determine the size of f***loads, s***loads and other loads.
The shock value of this campaign made waves with audiences. What was especially remarkable was how Flock Freight, a freight shipping company, proved that even brands in unexpected industries can create innovative social media campaigns. The campaign received 57,000 views on YouTube and was recognized as one of the best campaigns of 2022 by AdWeek.
3. Heinz revived Tomato Blood ketchup for vegetarian vamps
Just when the vampire cultural explosion seemed to be over, Heinz rolled out their “Tomato Blood” campaign in 2021, and set the internet ablaze. The condiment connoisseurs revived the campaign in 2022 by teaming up with TikTok creator and comedian EJ Marcus to stake their claim on winning Halloween marketing.
In the campaign, Marcus stars as the main character, a 280 year-old vampire who decided to give up “draining humans of their life force” in favor of drinking Heinz’s new Tomato Blood. The primary campaign video is shot in a PSA-style, and aired during the new “Interview With a Vampire” series on AMC—dropping on social media at the same time.
During October, consumers could grab their own bottle of Tomato Blood at their local supermarket. Demand grew so high after the drop, many users commented on Heinz’s posts that the special edition bottles were already sold out.
Heinz parlayed the success of Tomato Blood into other Halloween-inspired content and omnichannel experiences, like these costume ideas and a pop-up Heinz Halloween store.
Heinz expertly demonstrated how to turn an unexpected use of your product (i.e. using ketchup as fake blood) into a fun, insights-driven campaign.
4. McDonald’s tuned into popular menu hacks
McDonald’s also used an audience insight to drive super sized success. On TikTok, creators were already sharing their favorite McDonald’s menu hacks with their followers, which prompted the brand to lean into the momentum.
The fast food icon started leveraging influencer marketing to generate awareness of their “National Menu Hacks” social media campaign—which included highlighting how to order some of the internet’s most popular hacks in stores and through their app.
They teamed up with creators who aligned with different segments of their audience, and used paid spend to ensure they targeted specific demographics with the right content.
#McDonaldsHacks has over 10 billion views to date, and delivered a cost per click ($0.03–$0.09) that far exceeded quick serve restaurant industry averages. McDonald’s use of educational, entertaining UGC is masterful, and a good reminder of why it’s so essential to track the conversations happening about your brand online.
5. The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservations celebrated Gar Week
Sharks aren’t the only apex predators who deserve their own week. Thanks to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conversations, the internet’s new favorite fish are gars—the big toothy freshwater creatures once known only as “trash fish.” In their Gar Week campaign, the conservation agency shined the spotlight on this underappreciated fish, leading to a comeback millions of years in the making.
If you're into limited-edition never to be printed again stickers, quizzes, and ancient fish you'll want to be around Nov. 1-4 while we're hanging out with @SolomonRDavid for our very first #GarWeekpic.twitter.com/dgR3hxJqr4
— Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (@OKWildlifeDept) October 28, 2022
Gar Week engagement surged to levels of pandemonium that helped the OK Wildlife Department reach 100,000 followers. It also inspired fans to create their own Gar Week content—which ranged from memes to changing their twitter names to getting gar tattoos. Yes, really.
— Sh4rkH4ts ⭐🐺 Future Wildife Biologist (@Sh4rkH4ts) November 1, 2022
The Gar Week campaign illustrated what can happen when social media marketers know their audience and internet culture well enough to carve out their own cultural moment.
6. Adidas asserted “Support Is Everything”
You probably remember where you were the moment Adidas’ “Support Is Everything” campaign dropped on social media. Its stunning imagery led to almost instantaneous viral success.
In the campaign visuals, the sports retailer featured 25 sets of bare breasts of all shapes and sizes to promote their new line of sports bras.
We believe women’s breasts in all shapes and sizes deserve support and comfort. Which is why our new sports bra range contains 43 styles, so everyone can find the right fit for them.
The idea behind the campaign is simple: Different bodies require unique support. But the response on social media was much more nuanced. While some applauded the campaign for sparking a greater conversation about body positivity, others found it distasteful and worthy of censorship.
While creating provocative campaigns isn’t worth the risk for every brand, it did pay off for Adidas. The launch on Twitter alone gained over 34,000 likes, 10,000 Quote Tweets and 5,000 Retweets, according to Sprout Social Listening data.
7. Levi’s weaved together “The Greatest Stories Ever Worn”
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of their 501® jeans, Levi’s created a three-part film series to tell the true tales of how their jeans played a pivotal role in people’s lives around the globe—from a Georgian man who traded his family cow for a pair of Levi’s to the man who requested all of his funeral attendees don a pair of 501s to the story of how Jamaica’s embrace of Levi jeans changed denim culture worldwide.
The cinematic brilliance of these short films paired with the on-brand storytelling capture the mood that Levi’s embodies, and reminds audiences of the power these classic pants hold. With over 8 million combined views on YouTube, the campaign seems to have resonated.
More social media campaigns by network
Like these examples, many of the most successful social media campaigns span multiple networks simultaneously—with most translating to channels outside of social. But if you’re looking to create a network-specific campaign or tailor your campaign to different network specifications, consult these resources.
25 tips for building unforgettable social media campaigns
As you prepare to run your own campaign, keep our top 25 rapid fire takeaways in mind.
1. Make social listening a priority
When you don’t begin by listening to our audiences and build campaigns around what they actually care about, you might end up pushing out content that just isn’t quite right.
To design the strongest campaigns possible, start by listening to what your audience is saying on social, like the example from McDonald’s demonstrates.
How to do this: Use an AI-powered tool like Sprout to analyze conversations across all social networks and extract the topics that matter to your target audience.
2. Talk to customers
In addition to employing social listening tactics, jump on a customer call or run a survey as you ideate on campaign ideas. Gather insights to learn what customers think about your products and your industry at large.
If you’re not in a position where you can talk to your customers directly, try and schedule some time with your customer success team. These are the folks who have consistent conversations with your audience and can tell you exactly what pain points they need help solving. Then you can create tailored social media campaign strategies that address specific challenges.
How to do this: Partner with your sales and success teams for help learning about your customers. Whether you join a call, send out a survey or consult with your internal team, stress how customer intel will help you create better campaigns (and more sales).
3. Learn from people outside your business segment
Some of the best creative ideas you’ll find for social media campaigns come from outside the marketing department. Remember to consult internal teams like sales, R&D, product development and HR when crafting your campaigns.
How to do this: Regularly convene with teams outside of social media to boost your strategy and further your impact. Consider hosting a “social media council” for key stakeholders to bring ideas to the table.
4. Give it a sustained effort
Being able to pivot quickly according to data findings is important. But abandoning a campaign messaging angle or visual approach within the first week or month doesn’t give your content enough time to saturate the market.
By pivoting too quickly, you risk diluting your brand story and recognition with too many different messages. This confuses your audience and ultimately gives your competitors an advantage.
We recommend making campaigns at least three months long, and breaking your campaign plan into multiple phases. At the end of each, formally evaluate the data and come up with actionable steps to modify your plan if needed.
How to do this: By using Sprout’s analytics tools, you can efficiently provide regular reporting updates to your team.
5. Lean into cultural issues that align with your brand’s values
According to 2022 Index data, most consumers (71%) think it’s important for brands to raise awareness and take a stand on social issues. While addressing sensitive events can be a tough balance to strike, almost half of marketers agree that brands need to speak on social issues to stay relevant on social media.
If you’re debating whether or not a cultural moment is right for your brand to act on, rely on social data as your north star. Is this issue in line with your audience’s values? Will your contribution to this issue make a meaningful difference? Social will help you answer these questions.
How to do this: Sprout’s listening tools enable you to track sentiment, so you always have a clear read on where your audience stands on a cultural topic.
6. Bring in the music (and trending sounds)
Music (and trending sounds) can be a source of inspiration for your social media campaign. In some cases, you can even build campaigns around the perfect song (like in the Levi’s campaign). For others, content made with trending sounds makes the perfect timely complement to an ongoing campaign.
How to do this: Use resources like the TikTok Creative Center to stay in the know and browse sounds currently trending in your country.
7. Collaborate closely with internal content creators
Turn to internal content creators—like your content and email teams—for help bolstering the impact of your social campaigns. For example, when your content team is regularly informed about what’s performing well on social, they can write better content for your brand’s blog.
And vice versa. When your social team is regularly updated about which content should be promoted to support larger marketing initiatives, they will be more strategic about how they post.
How to do this: Bake collaboration into your content development strategy by scheduling recurring brainstorming sessions with representatives from your content and email marketing teams.
8. Think beyond social
Like many of our favorite social media campaigns demonstrated, the most effective campaigns have an omnichannel component. Where else would your audience want to interact with your content or your product?
How to do this: Consult with teams in charge of event planning, advertising and product design during your campaign brainstorm to make a business-wide impact.
9. Inspire on social, close in store
Even if your audience is made up of digital natives, there are no replacements for the in-person experience.
How to do this: Whether you have a brick-and-mortar location, pop-up shop or you’re sponsoring a booth at a conference, make an aspect of your campaign face-to-face wherever possible.
10. Maximize opportunities to create content
Use real-life experiences as a chance to fuel your campaign content pipeline.
How to do this: Capture content of people interacting with your products, team members and spaces. You could even create a meet the team series, if it fits the goals of your campaign.
11. Make conversions a focus
Stay zeroed-in on your conversion strategy to fill the gaps between building brand awareness and driving purchasing decisions. Design campaigns built to have a tangible impact on your bottom line by optimizing your content and distribution strategy for conversion.
Regular competitive analysis helps you create benchmarks for your campaign performances. Remember the brands you benchmark against don’t necessarily have to be direct competitors, or even within your industry. They can be competitors for a certain brand voice or visual association you are trying to foster with your target audience. Look to their performance benchmarks to contextualize in your reporting.
How to do this: With Sprout’s suite of competitor reports and listening tools, you’re enabled to compare your performance side-by-side with your competitors.
13. Experiment with ephemeral content
Think beyond your primary feed when designing your campaigns. Today, almost every platform has their own version of ephemeral content. Use these capabilities to infuse your campaign with personality and less-polished, more personalized content.
When looking for influencers and creators to star in your campaigns, keep three things in mind: reach, resonance and relevance. The people you feature should understand each one.
How to do this: Read more about how you can find and vet creators for your next campaign. And remember, influencers and creators aren’t always external. Internal influencers and employee brand advocacy efforts can supercharge your campaign.
15. Put UGC at the heart of your creative
Like the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservations’ Gar Week campaign demonstrates, UGC has the power to put your campaign on the map. Find creative ways to invite your audience to engage with your campaign to fuel brand evangelism and support your content strategy.
If you’re struggling to design high-impact campaigns, take a marketer you know and admire out to lunch, or approach them on social and ask for a quick chat. Come prepared with a set of questions and be as specific as possible. We recommend choosing the marketer(s) behind a particular campaign you were floored by, and digging deep to find out what you can learn for your brand.
How to do this: We have some social media experts on our staff who are always happy to talk about how Sprout’s full suite of social media tools can help you leverage data to come up with new campaign ideas.
17. Look to innovators
Research how top brands and marketing executives (including yours) operate. Stay alert to top campaigns (like the ones shared earlier in this article) and read interviews with CMO’s from best-in-class brands.
How to do this: Subscribe to blogs and newsletters that feature interviews and advice from leading execs.
18. Partner up
Can you think of any brands that would make good partners during your next social media campaign? These should be brands that:
The @elfyeah x @Dunkin’ collab is the collab of my DREAMS!! Available on elfcosmetics.com for Beauty Squad Members March 31! Or @Ulta Beauty April 3! #elfxdunkin#AD
How to do this: Build out a co-marketing strategy to expand your awareness with your target audience.
19. Plan for retention and acquisition
Retention and acquisition should be two different tracks in your social media marketing campaigns.
On the one hand, you’re trying to keep and engage with the customers you already have. On the other hand, you want to acquire more customers.
Some content might appeal to both customers and prospective customers, but you should also be creating unique content to target each of these segments.
How to do this: In your content calendar, make sure you have posts and mini-campaigns devoted to each of these categories. Use a tool like Sprout’s internal tagging feature to group and categorize your posts based on retention and acquisition objectives. That way you can strike the right balance, while keeping an eye on performance.
20. Understand the digital customer journey
As a social media marketer, you need to understand the unique digital customer journey your followers are taking through the marketing funnel. Make sure you know how your content is being interacted with at every stage in the journey and across all your social channels.
How to do this: Create a customer journey map to guide your campaign’s content creation.
21. Think big, zoom in
For awareness-generating campaigns, your social strategy doesn’t have to be as micro-focused on your value prop and brand as you think. Once you know who your audience is on social, you can build campaigns that appeal to other aspects of their lives and perspectives.
For instance, you might be a hotel chain hyper-focused on medium-budget travelers between the ages of 21–30. If you’re trying to grow awareness of your brand, you could create an entire campaign based around budgeting for travel.
The most important thing to remember is that with this kind of engagement-generating campaign, you must provide value unrelated to closing a deal.
If people feel they are being blatantly sold to, they will likely distrust the content you’re surfacing.
How to do this: Treat your customer journey map from tip #20 as a single source of truth when you create content for different audiences and journey stages.
22. Better understand social cultural norms
Take time to learn about the unique culture of social media. By being immersed in the culture, you will create campaigns that are better attuned to audience expectations and norms.
How to do this: Subscribe to industry newsletters and blogs, spend time on the platforms and learn to speak the language fluently.
23. Use SEO to inform content themes
The words and terms you want your brand to rank for on Google are the same you want to be associated with on social. Connect with your SEO team to find out which search terms your brand is focused on and weave them into your social media campaign strategies.
How to do this: Read our guide to YouTube SEO strategy to learn how to use SEO best practices in your content development.
24. Stay on-brand
Maintain a consistent brand voice across channels, and stay true to who you are. Even if the internet is talking about the Oscars or the latest TikTok challenge, you should only jump on those trending conversations if they make sense for your brand and are relevant to your campaign.
How to do this: Define your brand’s core values, and keep them in mind whenever you create social content.
25. Take care of yourself
Social media burnout is real. It can be easy to get caught up in campaign prep, but working yourself too hard will lead to creative blocks. Instead, take a break.
How to do this: Move around your space. Take a walk around the block. Try a yoga class. Do whatever it takes to reinvigorate your brain so you can create your most successful campaign yet.
Design an industry-leading social media campaign
Running outstanding social media campaigns requires incorporating insights from across your organization. Then, applying those learnings to build compelling, attention-grabbing creative.
With this guide, you will be prepared to conduct meaningful research, design creative content and report on metrics that demonstrate impact—the essential steps for building a successful campaign.
For an extra leg up, we designed a social media campaign brief template to help you stay organized, launch on time, keep your brand on budget and align with stakeholders.
