This article has been contributed by Michelle Deery.

A great social media campaign has the power to raise awareness of your brand, strengthen connections between you and your audience and increase sales. In the US alone, there are some 233 million social media users, which is about 75% of the population.

However, social media can be a minefield. If you don’t plan, execute and measure your campaign strategically, you can waste a lot of time, and sometimes money. If you make a wrong move, you could even damage your brand irreparably if you make a wrong move.

To help you create better campaigns that meet your specific goals, we’re going to take a look at 6 of the best social media campaigns we’ve seen – what they did and why they worked.

Let’s dive in.

1. Starbucks

Some would argue that Starbucks plucked up a lot of courage when they launched their #WhatsYourName campaign on social media. The brand launched the campaign on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and television.

What really struck a chord with people was the fact that the campaign was launched to promote inclusivity among all genders, specifically focusing on gender-diverse and transgender youth who feel marginalized.

Image source: @MrJohnNicolson on Twitter

It was a bold campaign that built on Starbucks’ famous coffee shop experience of writing your name on the side of your cup. Via the #WhatsYourName hashtag, Starbucks wanted to honor and respect the name that each customer wanted to be referred to as.

What else can we learn from Starbucks?

Starbucks made a huge commitment when they got involved with transgender rights. It was an assertive move that, though it provoked a storm of controversy among some sectors of society, reaffirmed their values.

And this is really important. By showing its core customer base exactly where they stood on major issues, Starbucks might have lost a few customers, but they gained more – and they also gained respect.

Naturally, wading into the murky waters of political and social issues is never easy, and all brands must tread carefully on this one. But if there is a cause that’s close to your heart, and which you just know will resonate with your target audience, then it can be a cause worth fighting for on social media.

The world isn’t always a nice place. But by doing what they did, Starbucks made it a brighter place for some. They also reminded us all that, though it doesn’t always seem like it, big companies and corporations do care. In a world where customers are increasingly selective about which brands they shop with, this is really important for future sales.

2. Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble is the huge corporation behind many household brands, from Pampers and Gillette to Head & Shoulders and Tide.

Massive corporation + TikTok = silly dance videos?

It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but that’s precisely what happened in March 2020, when most of the world entered lockdown.

Yup, Procter & Gamble used TikTok to create a social campaign called #DistanceDance. The idea was simple: Procter & Gamble would partner with TikTok influencer, Charli D’Amelio, to encourage user-generated content from quarantined folk who videoed themselves doing a dance at home.

The end result was millions of videos, with Procter & Gamble committing to donate to Feeding America and Matthew25 for every single one of the first 3,000,000 vids.

The campaign was a massive success. As well as regular users at home connecting with the campaign, celebrities and sports stars joined in, too.

What else can we learn from Procter & Gamble?

Procter & Gamble had the vision to leverage two really important trends:

• Dance videos and original choreography
• TikTok

When you put them together, you can’t help but win and make more sales.

There was absolutely nothing complicated about the challenge, either. Users just had to record a video of themselves dancing on TikTok using the campaign hashtag and they could be as creative as they wanted.

Image source: charlidamelio on TikTok

Procter & Gamble understood TikTok, influencers and why they work. Indeed, it was 2019’s third most downloaded app. They also understood the power of leveraging influencers to take a social media campaign to the next level. If you can join forces with a relevant influencer (or even an up and coming platform), your next social media campaign could take off into the stratosphere.

That said, you don’t always need to aim for such amazing heights. As long the campaign is relevant to your audience, you can do great things.

3. Coors Light

Having shipped 14 million barrels in 2019, Coors Light is the second most popular beer in America. It was first introduced in 1978, way before social media. But the company has moved with the times, and with their #CouldUseABeer marketing campaign during the Coronavirus lockdown, they really nailed social media.

Essentially, Coors Light took to Twitter to tell their stressed, worried and anxious customers who were stuck in quarantine to tweet them using the hashtag #CouldUseABeer. Anyone who did so would be sent a six-pack. Nice.

Image source: @CoorsLight on Twitter

Also, while Twitter only allows for a minimum number of characters per tweet, Coors Light’s copywriting was excellent. The first paragraph states exactly what the deal is with some snazzy copy, while the final line states the terms and conditions and the deadline. Perfect.

Image source: @CoorsLight on Twitter

Naturally, not every brand can afford to give away products to every single customer who tweets them.

What else can we learn from Coors Light?

For one thing, the campaign was inspired by a previous tweet, when a 93-year-old woman in quarantine made a request on Twitter that she needs “more beer!” Coors Light got involved, sent her some beer – and a whole campaign was born. The fact that Coors Light came to the rescue on social media was a massive win for the brand because it demonstrated goodwill. This is really important.

Secondly, what Coors Light was doing was running a giveaway. Giveaway contests take different forms, and you don’t need to give products away to every single customer who tweets you like Coors Light did. Giveaways are great ways to generate leads and boost more sales.

Thirdly, Coors Light created a unique hashtag. Why use a unique hashtag? Because it makes your brand more discoverable since no one else is using it.

Also, to help you generate more leads (and manage them) via your social media marketing campaign, it helps to use an all-in-one marketing suite, so you can generate leads, track them and nurture them.

4. Charmin

Charmin is a brand of toilet paper that’s produced by Procter & Gamble (see above).

Charmin might just be a humble ol’ toilet paper company, and you might be wondering how on earth a toilet paper company can manage to position themselves as “the sassiest brand on Twitter” according to Time Magazine.

Well, they do it by:

• Maintaining a consistent voice and
• Having a humorous presentation of everything related to the toilet experience

Have a look at this cheeky example:

Image source: Charmin on Twitter

Charmin shows that they’re not afraid to engage in a bit of old-fashioned toilet humor.

Why?

Because they know that their audience will love it.

They are also responsible for creating the hashtag #tweetfromtheseat, which encourages their followers to tweet their thoughts while they are in the bathroom. Considering 74.5% of Americans admit to using their phone while on the toilet, it’s no surprise that this campaign gathered the brand a huge pool of engagement.

What else can we learn from Charmin?

Charmin proves that you don’t need to be glamorous in order to create a stellar social media campaign that improves sales. You also don’t have to get involved with social issues if you don’t think it will benefit your business. All you need is to understand your brand and your target audience, as well as add a dose of humor and wit now and then to your social media campaigns.

5. Bitter Pops

Bitter Pops is an original beer shop that sells alcohol, specifically craft beer.

But they’re much more than that. In fact, they run numerous events-based campaigns each month, such as an in-store yoga class. Proceeds from each event are donated to local causes and charities.

Image source: bitterpops on Instagram

After a while, some bright spark at Bitter Pops realized that Bitter Pups could pave the way for a cool new marketing campaign that encouraged their followers to submit user-generated content of their dogs.

Like this:

How cute is that?

User-generated content is, of course, a fab way to improve engagement on social media. Instead of you working tirelessly to create fresh content all the time, your customers can do it for you.

What else can we learn from Bitter Pops?

Dogs, of course, have absolutely nothing to do with beer. But by extending their brand from mere alcohol to something we all love and find adorable, Bitter Pops gained a whole new audience and made new connections, while at the same time forming a vibrant online community. This is a great way to use social media to increase conversions.

6. Spotify

Spotify is arguably the most popular music streaming service in the world right now. And it’s thanks to campaigns like 2019’s #Wrapped2019 that it continues to reign.

This is a campaign that actually started back in 2017 when Spotify shared year-end data with its customers. This data showcased what songs people were listening to the most, as well as their favorite artists.

It was compelling stuff that Spotify made even more compelling by visualizing the data.

Image source: @sacca on Twitter

The best thing? Spotify encouraged users to share their data across social media, thus in turn helping to create a mass of user-generated content that got people talking about music and Spotify.

If you want to raise more awareness of your brand and make sales by showing people exactly how they’ll benefit from using your service, this is exactly how to do it. Spotify personalized data (and people just love personalization in 2020), visualized it and got people to share it.

What else can we learn from Spotify?

There’s so much that worked about this social media marketing campaign from Spotify that it’s hard to cover everything. The personalized data is awesome because people literally use social media to showcase their tastes and personality.

The best aspect of the campaign is that Spotify made the data super shareable in the form of user-generated content. As we mentioned above, user-generated content is an excellent marketing tactic that essentially means your customers are doing half the work for you. Spotify lit a match, and their users took it from there.

Also, because Spotify created summaries for their artists as well, they were able to leverage bands who have millions of followers on social media to spread the word even more.

Lastly, Spotify times their campaign so that it comes at the end of each year. In this way, they’re able to build anticipation. It’s become an event that people look forward to, and it can only grow each year.

Naturally, whether Spotify’s campaign inspires you to create a similar one really depends on the type of business you’ve got. But if you sell a service, personalizing data at the end of the year and making it visual and shareable can be a smart way to raise brand awareness while in turn boosting sales.

Wrapping up

Hopefully these examples of brands winning on social media can inspire you to come up with your own sales-boosting campaigns.

Just make sure to choose a campaign that will resonate with your audience, and to use the right social media tools to help you generate more leads, as well as nurture them before turning them into buying customers.

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About the author: Michelle Deery is a content writer for Wishpond, specializing in eCommerce and SaaS.