Creativity In Social Engagement

If you’re like me, you probably look on with frustration as one company after another slaps YouTube, Facebook and Twitter logos on their websites and expects droves of fans and followers to sign up. Just like any other channel, marketing through social media requires a compelling reason for your audience to take action. And from a business perspective, connecting with this audience should ultimately and measurably impact goals.  Tall order? Well, it can be - and is being - done.

A great example I came across recently is “The Bucky Challenge” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In a short time span it’s already accomplished two objectives: expand UW’s social media audience and, more importantly, increase donations. Will and Jenny Hsu - a recently married alumni couple - and their parents decided to use their cash wedding gifts to help fund the Great People Scholarship. For a specified timeframe, they offered up $1 for every Facebook “Like” and Twitter “Follow” for both the University and the Alumni Association accounts. Spread across each account, the school had the potential to pick up $4 toward the endowment fund for every person who took a very simple, but openly shared, social action.

The result? In the days that followed, the University and Alumni Association enjoyed thousands of Likes and Follows. When the campaign ended earlier this month, they’d raised $19,432 for the Scholarship and made well over 20,000 new social media connections. The University fan page alone has well over 100,000 likes when I last checked.

Not only is this an inspiring story, it demonstrates without a doubt that business goals can be reached through social media. While working in such a crowded but underutilized space as social media does require some creativity, the fundamentals of marketing will always be the key: strategy that supports the vision, goals that are clearly defined, creative execution that inspires and measurement that really matters!

As head of Client Services & Strategy in McMurry's Phoenix office, Andrea Parsons' role is to help clients solve their marketing challenges through creative custom media and content marketing strategies. At the heart of each strategy is a way to gauge customer engagement, earn-out ROI on the campaign and support the organization's overall marketing goals.