As a solopreneur, you want to promote your business effectively on social media. But, how is the best way to do it? While consistently posting a variety of quality content on your channels is a great way to establish a presence and a following, a social media campaign can provide a boost to your brand. Campaigns attract attention and connect users with your brand, message, services, and products.
But how to choose just the right campaign that will strike a resounding chord? Very likely, your audience has different interests. If you have conducted any type of research to determine follower trends and popular audience engagement topics, an entire host of subjects will become apparent. Although these users may follow your brand, they hold these additional interests as well. The point where user interests and your brand intersect can provide numerous ideas for engaging social campaigns.

How Do I Start?

Begin by identifying an interest that is common with a majority of your audience. Then, think about how that common interest overlaps with your services, products, or business opportunity. For example, if you offer writing and editing services, everyone knows writers derive their best copy from a great cup of coffee. This fact could offer several possibilities:

• Conduct a social media survey asking users to respond by sharing their favorite brand of coffee or specialty coffee drink.
• Build a campaign around a giveaway offering bags of specialty coffee as a prize, and include a free consultation for your services.
• Reach out to a local coffee brand or coffee house and collaborate on a campaign to combine your services and their offerings. Consider offering a free consultation hosted in their location with coffee provided.
• Post some clever photos featuring the brand or coffee house with your writing (or perhaps you working inside in a comfy place with a cup of coffee nearby).

These are just a few random ideas to spark your creativity. More social media campaign ideas follow below.

Create a Social Media Channel Strategy

As you generate cool campaign ideas, it will be evident that not all campaigns will fit well with all your social media channels. Some may be best oriented toward a single platform, while others may provide an easier cross-platform integration. Focus your channel selection for each campaign by asking some important questions:

• On which channel is my brand the strongest? Play to your strengths and begin on your strongest channel. You could possibly leverage the engagement you foster onto other channels where your brand is currently weak.
• On which channel is my brand the weakest? The channels where your brand representation or engagement is weak could benefit from a campaign to grow both.
• Is this campaign idea best suited for a particular social media channel? Which one? Why?
  • How is my product/service/opportunity best shared? Video? Audio? Photos? Text?
  • What artistic elements could be connected to my product/service/opportunity?
• How will I set up a sharing schedule for my content? What tools can I use that work well with the media I have chosen for this campaign?
• Could my campaign benefit from a custom hashtag?

Here are More Social Media Campaign Ideas

1. Promote a Social Cause – Produce engagement with your brand by identifying with and promoting a current social cause. Run a contest coupled with funding a charity or non-profit organization that closely relates to your business. REI’s popular #OptOutside campaign urged customers to skip shopping on Black Friday and spend time outside with family and friends.

2. Offer Incredible Discounts and Sales – This is especially effective if coupled with a seasonal emphasis such as popular holidays. Everyone loves a good discounted deal, especially at prime shopping seasons (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Back-to-School, etc.).

3. Video-based Campaigns – Video is currently the most-shared media format. Consider a video coupling your brand or products/services/opportunity with an interesting story to engage users and even attract responses. Begin an inspiring story and ask users to submit an appropriate ending. Or offer a challenge and ask users to video their response and share it using a special hashtag. This campaign could also be combined with a social engagement focus, like the ALS #IceBucketChallenge.

4. Conduct a Comment Giveaway Contest – Offer a giveaway to selected winners chosen from those who answer a simple question in the comments of your campaign post. To find the correct answers, users must visit your website. This will increase traffic and awareness of your website and brand offerings as well.

5. Holiday-themed Campaigns – Thank your audience for making your brand a success and share a heart-warming story connected with your products/services/opportunity. Emphasize thankfulness, love, goodwill, generosity, and success. A simple photo and caption is a good start, but a video detailing a brief story would rock.

6. Match a Campaign to a Specific Channel – What theme can you think of that would be a perfect match for a particular social media channel? The World Wildlife Fund leveraged Snapchat using ads that were only visible for a few seconds to highlight endangered animals that may disappear for good, mimicking the disappearing feature of snapchat photos. They reached their monthly donation goal in only 3 days.

7. Host Quizzes or Polls – Interactive media is always a great way to boost engagement with your brand. Connect a current trend with your products/services/opportunity by creating a quiz about what they have in common, or conduct a poll on a current event or trend connected to your brand offerings.

8. The Sneak Peek Campaign – Capture the attention of your audience with suspense and anticipation. Tease users with excerpts from an upcoming blog post, pictures showing only parts of a new product, or hints about something totally new in development. This type of campaign can keep users coming back to see the reveal or to receive more clues.

9. The Feedback Campaign – Many users like being asked to share their feedback or opinions. Present a proposed product/service/opportunity and ask for user feedback. Or perhaps you could list your current offerings and ask for opinions regarding the most beneficial package combinations.

10. The How-To Campaign – Offer free information of value in the form of a how-to for a popular service or need. Provide simple and clear instructions on how to best use products, little-known ‘cheats’ for utilizing services or tools, etc. While these are best done on video, you may also consider a colorful list or infographic.

11. A Quotes Campaign – Everyone loves a powerful quote and these posts are some of the most shared across social media. Consider an on-going campaign like #MondayQuotes with an appropriate hashtag. Feature photos of notable figures from history or business with their statements superimposed. These can also be translated into video with a voiceover.

12. A Fill-in-the-Blank Campaign – Boost engagement with a fill-in-the-blank question related to your opportunity or services. (“If I owned my own business I would choose to work from__________.” “If I could plan a dream vacation, I would go to ______________.” “If I could improve one skill, it would be _____________.”)

13. A-Day-in-the-Life Campaign – This campaign can promote awareness for your brand as well as inform your audience about what it takes to produce your products/services/opportunity for others. Combine goodwill with business promotion in these interesting snippets of real life.

14. Random Tips Campaign – Share random tips (numbered ones increase chances of viewers searching for the others, i.e.: Tip #234 – ) connected with your business niche or even random things of interest. Refer to the list of audience interests we discussed at the beginning of this post for ideas.

15. Customer Testimonials Campaign – Testimonials from satisfied customers always garner attention. Ask followers to submit their own written or video testimonials. Then contact them to secure permission for using them in your promotion.

With the different forms of social media, we are only limited by our own creativity. What ideas have you used successfully in the past? Share them with the community in the comments!
Enter by September 30th