If you think social media is nothing more than people sharing pictures and videos, then you need to take a step back and rethink your marketing strategy. These platforms have emerged to become one of the most marketing powerful tools for a brand, and that is why I have selected some social media strategy examples to showcase this power.
Social media allows you to engage with your audience, inspire them, influence them and make sure that your products are sold. All that said, not every brand succeeds with their social media presence. If you are looking for creative ways to revive your social media strategy, here are some social media strategy examples that should inspire you.
1. Gillette: The Best Men Can Be
You need not always market your products in a social media strategy. Instead, you might want to take a lesson from how Gillette devised their campaign in 2019. The Best Men Can Be was an advertisement video that was posted exclusively on YouTube.
The ad depicted the cases of men struggling with and questioning conventional masculinity. The film ended by encouraging men to hold other men responsible and set good examples for the next generations. It did not fail to acknowledge that not every man is the same.
Clearly inspired by the #metoo movement, the brand took advantage of the trend and used it in a positive manner to use its power in society to send a thought-provoking message. Not so surprisingly, the video got over 30 million uses and was an incredible success.
Further Reading: 15 Social Media Marketing Benefits Your Business Might Not Be Thankful Enough For
2. Apple: #ShotoniPhone
The #ShotoniPhone tag has become so popular on social media that you can now find one for almost every mobile company out there. But this was first introduced as a social media campaign by none other than Apple, as a way to not only generate user content but also use it to their advantage.
The hashtag continues to be a big part of all Apple phone launches. It is featured to discuss camera improvements, showcase different functions of the camera app, and even encourage customers to add more content across the different social media platforms. In many ways, this campaign provides Apple with long-term stellar results and with minimal effort.
3. Loot Crate: Align Your Content with Your Audience Needs
Loot Crate is a subscription service that sends a box to you. And needless to say, the brand knows exactly who its audience is. The Instagram feed of this business might come across as too scattered, but the customer targeting is on point.
And, this is the first thing you need to get right when launching any social media marketing strategy. You need to know who are the potential customers who will be interested in buying from you to adjust your strategies accordingly.
For instance, if you want to target students, then you can consider incorporating lifestyle content into your social media strategy that matches their current experiences and helps them with their pain points. After all, many students are on a tight budget and often end up asking can I pay someone to write my paper in order to stay ahead of their classes while pursuing other opportunities on campus. And as such, one way to attract this young population is to make sure that you offer some solution to their pain points, and make their situation easier. And Loot Crate uses humor successfully to do the same.
4. Spotify: Year Wrapped
You might have taken the hint by now; that most successful social media strategies come with a familiar hashtag. In 2019, Spotify launched the #yearwrapped campaign, which has become a standard practice for most brands. This included the most important highlights on their website, based on popularity.
The Spotify website featured artists, genres, and songs that were most listened to in the course of the year. It even had fun insights and data that users might find interesting. In fact, it even went one step further to show how the music you listened to fit into the important dates and even your life events, such as birthdays.
Since it was personalized, Spotify also encouraged its users to share these highlights on social media. This way, it generated user content and even gained traffic and mentions across different social media platforms. The campaign was mentioned in around 1.2 million posts, within a month.
Further Reading: 4 Reasons Why Holiday Social Media Posts are Crucial to Your Social Marketing Plan
5. KnowYourLemons: Using Imagery to Convey Your Message
You do not always have to look at other brands to find inspiration, Worldwide Breast Cancer launched their campaign #KnowYourLemons to encourage early detection of cancer. In fact, the strategy was so successful that the website changed its name to KnowYourLemons.
By 2020, the campaign helped reach over 1 billion people online. It continues to help women discover any changes in their breasts that could potentially signal breast cancer and hence, save their lives. The platform wants to empower women and men with the knowledge and help them build confidence to report changes and participate in screening.
Through imagery, the platform uses lemons to educate the various signs of breast cancer, 12 in total. This campaign managed to divert from the censoring rules and used lemons to educate people.
6. Snickers: An Exciting Contest
Another example of successful implementation of popular marketing strategies is the case of Snickers. The brand designed a contest, encouraging users to share their rookie mistakes on Instagram. And if luck is on your side, you could win tickets to the upcoming Super Bowl.
This is an excellent example of how you can use contests to boost your traffic. Not only did Snickers engage audiences, but it also timed the campaign with one of the coveted events. So, it is likely that whenever SuperBowl is mentioned online, Snickers might also be promoted by users. This strategy helps create more buzz, and boost your visibility online.
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Further Reading: 6 Benefits of Running Social Media Contests
7. BuzzFeed Tasty: Giving Fans What They are Hungry For
Now, coming back to how you can use your feed to lure customers in, BuzzFeed Tasty seems to have nailed the task. Their social media pages are full of delicious and drool-worthy content that will make you want to follow the page, even if you are not interested in cooking.
Importantly, instead of developing long videos of recipes, BuzzFeed focused on generating short clips, giving the users a glimpse of all the good stuff and just the essential information. So, instead of coming across as a traditional cooking show, these one or two-minute videos were fun for everyone and even helped to spread full recipes within them.
BuzzFeed Tasty’s video content is mostly found on Facebook, where the platform has built a fanbase of over 100 million and posted thousands of food recipes. They are also set to play while you scroll, meaning, you don’t even have to press play to watch the content.
8. Starbucks: #WhatsYourName
Starbucks UK’s #WhatsYourName campaign is one that got a lot of attention across social media platforms. It focused on how people want to be called, creating awareness that everyone has the right to choose how they are identified in society. The brand collaborated with Mermaids, an organization that offers support to and empowers gender-diverse youth and transgenders.
That became hugely popular not only for the authentic goodwill behind it but also since Starbucks is famous for getting the customers’ names wrong. There were videos, images, and promotional content. The brand even had a Mermaid tail cookie sold on its outlets and encouraged people to post on social media platforms pictures of their cookies. This was also used as a means to help raise funds for the cause of Mermaids.
The cookie was also limited edition, which further created a sense of urgency among customers. Starbucks cleverly acquired a TV spot. It helped to spread the message across a wider audience, not only those who used social media.
9. GoPro: Inspire a Lifestyle
The Facebook page of GoPro has over 10 million likes and with good reason. If you are to visit this page, you will be met with tons of videos of people having the most exciting adventures. Filled with action and adrenaline, the page is designed to encourage and inspire others to do the same, and preferably with a GoPro so it can catch all the precious moments.
Whether you are hiking, skydiving, surfing, or doing a backflip, GoPro can capture it all with a camera strapped to your head. Now, the Facebook page of the brand is saturated with similar content, but it never gets boring for the audience.
One thing to note here is that these videos are not exactly showcasing the product, but what it can do. Or rather, it promotes the lifestyle the typical GoPro users can have, or wants to have, Not to mention, the majority of this is user-generated and goes with the GoPro hashtags as well.
10. Guinness: Promoted Ads
Marketing has always been about promotions, and with social media platforms, a large percentage of it was dedicated to generating organic traffic. However, there is still space for buying ads on the internet’s real estate. It is never a bad idea to leverage the ‘promotional’ features available on networks such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
Guinness has managed to use their promoted advertisements to reach a larger audience on Facebook. These come with targeting features, allowing brands to make sure that only their potential customers see their ad.
The campaign that Guinness created was used to promote the Guinness Six Nations international rugby tournament in the UK using Facebook was so successful that the social media giant even conducted a case study on how the strategy was implemented.
Guinness also took advantage of the promotional ads feature on Twitter as well, to reach a wider audience.
The brand used the opportunity to also educate its customers about the art of brewing and garnered likes, views, and an increase in sales as a result.
11. Beardbrand: No Product is Too Niche
Beardbrand is another company that is selling a lifestyle online. The products of this brand cater to only one specific niche, men with beards, and do its best work by focusing on the targeted audience.
This one here is a great example for small businesses that hesitate to establish a social media presence because they think their niche is too narrow. Beardbrand, on the other hand, has managed to amass a cult following among its target audience. The brand uses both professional models, as well as stunning product images for promotion.
In addition to this, Beardbrand also often conducts giveaway campaigns to create hype around its products. It helps to surge the traffic and upkeep the interest in the brand, and get the conversation surrounding the band going.
12. FitBit: Support Your Community
Fitbit has managed to build a reputation in the market in a short time and via its powerful marketing strategies. This company manufactures trackers and smartwatches that track activities and health measurements.
As FitBit predicted, wearable tech has become one of the hottest products in the market, and the company’s strategy, rooted in fitness-related goals, has become hugely successful. If you visit the FitBit page, you feel like you are joining a fitness support group. You will find not only products but a combination of inspirational quotes and other resources that will help you keep on track.
Their social media presence has helped build a large community where you can support others and share your achievements. The lesson to take from this is how you can use your social media pages to evoke a sense of belonging between the users.
You are not only providing value to your customers via the products and lifestyle, you also get to meet new people. Most importantly, you do not even have to be a FitBit user or interested in what they sell to benefit from the content. This is a perfect example of offering value to your audience.
How to Develop Your Social Media Strategy?
As you can see from the dozen examples we have included here, a successful social media marketing strategy always caters to the audience. Know who you are selling to, understand how you can improve their lives, and you can devise campaigns along that narrative.
Once you have this basic foundation to develop content on, you can then incorporate campaigns and contests that capitalize on trends or current events to drive up the engagement. It will also bode well for your brand to encourage users to share their content and feature it.
However, these are strategies that work for most brands and have stood the test of time. You can always come up with and should try to introduce new creative elements that will make your brand stand out.
Further Reading: How to Create a Rock-Solid Social Media Marketing Strategy for 2025 in 9 Steps
This is a post contributed from one of my marketing partners.
Hero photo by Adem AY on Unsplash
