To make sure your social media campaign is as successful as possible, follow our 7 steps to plan and structure your campaign strategy

If you have an upcoming marketing campaign for a new product feature, or a holiday promotion that you want to capitalize on, or maybe you’re releasing a brand-new product, you will want to plan a social media marketing campaign to help spread the word. But in order to make sure your social media campaign strategy is as successful as possible, you need to plan in advance and consider how it integrates with other strategies.

How to structure an integrated social media campaign plan

Ideally, the social elements of the campaign will be part of a broader marketing campaign plan - our companion post and members' marketing campaign plan template recommend you structure your campaign using these key campaign elements: Campaign goals and tracking. Campaign insight and targeting. Key campaign…

Our compilation of the latest social media statistics of consumer adoption and usage of social networking platforms

Social networks have transformed marketing and, as this post shows, their popularity is still growing in our latest global social media statistics research summary for 2024. Networks vary in popularity with different demographics and they're still evolving. Research by Global WebIndex that we reference in this article shows that globally, 62.3% of the world's population uses social media. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 23 minutes (April 2024). We'll keep this post updated during 2024 as the latest statistics are published drawing on our recommended top 10 digital marketing statistics sources. We'll be pointing to new data on the popularity of social media from Global Web Index (worldwide), Pew Internet Surveys (US) and OfCom (UK), and, most recently, the Datareportal January 2024 global overview, with the January review…

What do marketers need to know and do?

Exciting times for marketers who enjoy following how digital platforms evolve... It feels like 2008, as I said in my first post on Threads... Since I'll be talking about it, amongst other trends, at a Digital marketing conference in Cambridge next week, I thought, I'd better understand it, so I can predict how important it will be compared to other social networks. So I was on the invite list and this post gives my impressions and recommendations.

Ten things you need to know about Instagram Threads

1. Threads is part of Instagram, so it's easy to set up an account from your Instagram page and import the bio and links. So brand protection is less of an issue than with o other Networks. I suggest every business does this as soon…

Paid vs organic social media strategy: Your planning essentials

Both organic and paid social media landscapes are constantly evolving. New networks rise to prominence (e.g. TikTok), new technology increases user participation and real-time content (e.g. Periscope) and existing networks enhance their platform and product (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram launching ‘buy’ buttons). In 2022, organic reach is also continuing to shrink as the leading networks ramp up their paid social media channels to monetize platform investment. Now more than ever, marketers need to research and optimize the right organic and paid media options to achieve their goals. [si_guide_block id="49146" title="Digital media options cheatsheet" description="Our Digital media cheatsheet is aimed at helping Smart Insights members to keep track of the free and paid media options so that they're not missing out on any of the latest developments."] If the first era of social was engagement, the new era is acquisition and conversion. Social commerce…

Use the honeycomb model to help inform your social media strategy

Back in 2011, a group of professors from Canada; Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens and Ian McCarthy created the Honeycomb Model to review social media effectiveness, looking at reasons why users engage with social media. The idea behind the honeycomb model is that of the 7 key building blocks delineated by the model, companies can select the ones most relevant to their business, and focus their attention on the key functionalities. [si_blog_banner_cta] We created this simple table to help you evaluate each of the seven blocks, so you can decide which ones, and how many, your organization should focus on.

Social media building blocks:

Identity: Data privacy controls and tools for user self-promotion Presence: Creating and managing the reality, intimacy and immediacy of the context Relationships: Managing the structural and flow properties in a network…

How do you know whether social media is working for you? How do you translate comments and likes into ROI

Social media marketing has become the norm for businesses across industries and niches. It’s often hailed as one of the best digital marketing strategies – but how do you know whether it’s working for you? How do you translate comments and likes into social media ROI (return on investment)? In this blog post, I will show you how to measure your social media ROI.

Why do you need to measure your social media ROI?

Like with any marketing practice, you’re investing time, money, and effort into your social media marketing strategy. So naturally, you want to know whether your efforts are paying off. That’s not to say that if you’re not getting any clear ROI from social media that means you should quit it altogether; rather, measuring your social media success helps you understand what…

Frameworks for managing social media marketing

When I first read Groundswell by Forrester, I really liked their social media management acronym POST. It gave you a simple framework to digest their approach to social, don’t just jump to the technology, look at your People, Objectives, then develop your Strategy and finally implement the Technology. This inspired me to create my own acronym TALKING, a social media management framework to help shape and champion social media plans. I've used it with many different types of business since and it seems to give rise to good discussions around the main social media strategy and management issues.

7 elements of the TALKING framework to manage your social media marketing

1. Tribes

Define and build your segments and personas. Linking to Seth Godins reference to people being part of tribes of…

We predicted social media would continue to grow in 2021, and it did. Back in January, we collated your top 6 social media marketing (SMM) trends to reach and convert more customers, but how's it going so far?

Social media has proven itself to be a valuable channel for marketers to reach and convert customers. Renowned for an agile approach, social media marketing requires channel managers to keep up to date with the latest SMM trends in technical and social developments to make sure they are exploiting all the opportunities available. It's no surprise that this year has seen unprecedented change in social media usage, alongside a whole host of other customer behavioral factors. Planning for 2021, we already knew from Datareportal's July 2020 Digital snapshot that nearly half of respondents have spent more time on social media due to COVID-19, evidenced by a 10% YOY increase in…

Today, tech marketers and managers advocate for IT and high tech both internally in their businesses and externally to their target markets. We've got the marketing tools and training you need.

Looking to strengthen your technology company's marketing strategy? As marketers, we are all striving to apply data and customer insights to our marketing activities. But in the IT and high tech sector, with competition at an all-time high, this approach is absolutely critical. Our tried and tested tech marketing solutions support IT and high tech marketing professionals to plan, manage, and optimize their marketing strategy, and win more customers.

Why invest in strategic marketing for your tech company?

If you haven't already got an omnichannel marketing strategy in place, now is the time to develop your marketing to compete in the competitive, growing, IT and high tech marketplace. As McKinsey found in their UK B2B COVID-19 survey, the technology, media…

The Silicon Valley Unicorn. When a platform that isn’t even out of beta has a valuation of a Billion dollars, as marketers we need to take note right? Absolutely

In May 2020 shortly after the world was thrown into disarray by the Coronavirus Pandemic, Clubhouse, a new social media site, focusing on an audio experience, entered Beta with around 1500 members. It was already being valued at $100 million dollars and it didn’t even have a website. Members trickled in through the year and then in December, it experienced hockey stick style growth. According to Backlinko, Clubhouse now has 6 million users at the time of writing (Feb 21), that’s up from 600k just two months ago.

Clubhouse marketing stats

Searches for “clubhouse app” have increased by 99x over the last 6 months according to Exploding Topics (below). They are up over 3250% over the last 90 days. …