Social Media Campaigns that work

Yesterday, while doing my normal routine, I stumbled across a HARO that asked about social media strategies that work.  I forwarded it to Eric, hoping that his brain would shoot to the exact thought mine did.

I guess it all started about two weeks ago, on my first day, Eric and I decided it was about time to get organized with our social media strategy forStageofLife.com.  Here's a little insider scoop...

CAMPAIGN TITLE: "Our Life Calendar"

GOALS: Get organized, tie our social media posts to a hard schedule, get our blogger members (we have over 3,000 bloggers writing and involved with our global Stage of Life writing project) more engaged, and have a reason/purpose behind what we're posting.

DESCRIPTION of SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN: Our site, StageofLife.com, features 10 different life stages. Our new social media campaign, which is planned out through the end of the year, now highlights one individual life stage on both our Facebook and Twitter accounts each day.

For instance, yesterday's was the "Raising a Family" feature day on "Our Life Calendar" so I tweeted a national statistic about families via our Twitter account (According to 46% of #Americans, 2 is the ideal number of #children for a #familywww.stageoflife.com) and then plugged one of our blogger stories about Raising a Family on our Facebook page.

Speaking of Facebook, whenever we feature one of our bloggers posts/stories, we now also personally notify the person that their StageofLife essay/story made it into our social media announcement for the day. This increases the opportunity for that blogger/writer to "share" the news of being featured with their network.

With this plan in place, "Our Life Calendar" campaign puts us on a 10-day cycle to rotate through all 10 life stages, with the weekends left for potpourri posts. This gives us an opportunity to share life statistics and feature blogs from each life stage twice a month during the working work and feature misc. posts on the weekends. It also gives us a chance to personally involve 20 of our high profile bloggers/writers each month (240 per year) via highlighting their blog in our social media campaign. And finally, every Tuesday and Thursday, we feature a second Facebook post in the afternoons that calls out one of our special My Life Rewardsmerchant offers helping people save money no matter what stage of life they may be in.

SUCCESS METRICS: By simply getting organized, syncing our vast website to a hard social media calendar rotation and then involving our members/bloggers in the social media plugs each day, our Facebook insights are off the charts for the last month:

• 271% increase "Likes"
• 46% increase in "Active Users"
• 149% increase in "Post Views"
• 214% increase in "Post Feedback"

WHAT MADE THE CAMPAIGN UNIQUE: While not flashy or sexy, we used a concept that people understand most: Time.

We sat down and worked out a six month schedule so that like clockwork, our social media post go out each day (in the morning) and highlight content following the defined "Our Life Calendar." Monday is High School. Tuesday is College. And so on through a 10 day cycle.

Every life stage gets equal coverage this way and we now allow a chance for our super star bloggers to get some extra attention. By simply getting organized and putting our mission into a calendar, "Our Life Calendar" social media effort is proving out wonders for StageofLife.com.

Interested in today's posts, check Facebook and Twitter.