Having Fun with Social Media

Coming from an online marketing agency, I was really curious to see what kinds of social media techniques and ideas I would be hearing about at the American Advertising Federation (AAF) conference.  Before joining the Get You Found team, I worked for a more traditional marketing agency.  I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about social media and online marketing until I started learning from our resident web gurus, Peter and Jess.  Everyone hears about Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but no one really goes into detail about why it’s so important to be active on these sites, or how to get the most return on your investment.  Many companies are just setting up their accounts and then never posting, tweeting or blogging.  They aren’t using the full potential of the online social media world.

I came across some really interesting and innovative ways to use social media as a promotional tool at the conference.  For instance, one region of the AAF promoted their annual Addy Awards by creating a FlutterBy theme.  All of their marketing materials contained a butterfly image, including actual die-cut butterflies that they posted all over town, which became the spokesperson of their campaign.  They then tied in social media by creating an actual Twitter and Facebook persona for the Flutterby.  The Flutterby would post silly messages, hints about the Addy awards, and kept public interest by maintaining an online dialogue about the event in the months leading up to the award ceremony.

Another fun social media campaign I saw was a region that created a YouTube channel and made short fun videos where “traditional advertising” went to war with “social media advertising.”   The videos were engaging, humorous, mildly educational and poked fun at the tug-of-war that has been going on between the two advertising mediums since the emergence of social media.  Within days, the YouTube Channel had thousands of followers and was a huge promotional tool for that region’s AAF club.

They key to social media is consistency, relevancy and creativity!  Have fun with it!  If you can engage your consumers in new, fun ways, you’re efforts will be well worth the time.