4.5 Social Media Campaigns Proven To Work For Small Businesses

You don’t have to be one of the big guys on Facebook to create a successful social media campaign. After extensive research and going through our own trial and error, we’ve compiled a list of our 4.5 favorite social media campaigns that actually work.

These campaigns require different degrees of work behind the scenes. But many can easily be done with the help of third-party Facebook app building software like Shortstack. So don’t let tech fear stand in your way. It may be easier and much more affordable than you think.

1 Coupons

These have been around forever but they’re still a fantastic way to market your business, especially online. Offer your social media followers exclusive coupons for your products/services in exchange for liking your Facebook page, following you on Twitter, retweeting, sharing your page with friends, or signing up for your newsletter.

2 Sweepstakes

If you’re new to social media campaigns this can be a fantastic place to start. It works by allowing fans to enter to win something cool. All you have to do is collect their name and email address and randomly pick a winner. It’s straightforward and can be done with a simple set up or template campaign. You can give away something like one of your products or services, but the bigger the giveaway the better the response will be.

3 Instant Win Contests

Think of this as a fast paced mash-up of coupons and sweepstakes. Visitors become fans and enter their name and info, just like the sweepstakes campaign. But instead of waiting for a set amount of time, then announcing 1 winner, participants get to see if they’re a winner right away, like with coupons. These types of campaigns spit out prizes right away so the coolness factor of the campaign doesn’t have the time to fade like with sweepstakes. You can have a lot of small prizes, discounts and other freebies being randomly given out, or opt to give out only 1 big prize. This exciting campaign can leave quite the impression, which makes it easier for fans to share with their friends.

4 Fan Competitions

Create a friendly competition between Facebook fans to keep them coming back and bringing their friends as well. With this campaign, fans can submit photos, text, videos, ect. but instead of a random winner being chosen, they enlist the help of friends and family to vote for their submission. You can make it so anyone who votes or submits needs to be a fan, so in no time flat you can see your fan count skyrocket. The trick to this campaign is to make sure that the prize is super valuable and that you’re constantly marketing it. If not, participation will suffer.

4.5 Follow The Leader

With your next social media contest try adding a leaderboard so participants can see how they’re doing. Explore ways you can add to the leaderboard to get some extra exposure, such as bonus points for each time fans share the contest. This is more of an add-on to the other campaigns mentioned, but it’s still an effective element you should consider adding to your next social media campaign.

Long Story Short

It took a lot of debate to narrow this list down to only 4.5 campaigns! Thanks to third-party apps like Badgeville, Gigya, Shortstack and the dozens of others out there, it’s easier than ever before to build campaigns like a pro. Just remember, all successful social media campaigns start with fun, creative and unique ideas. You don’t want to do exactly what everyone else is doing. Take those ideas and add your own special flair to create something new and fresh fans will love.