By John Kultgen
You've spent what seems like forty days and forty nights wandering around the details of a social media marketing campaign launch, and now you're ready to set forth a plan. Marketers all dream of getting major attention from their hard work, but consider taking a screenshot of this list on your tablet and heeding these warnings. Otherwise, your campaign will not live the full life it deserves once set in motion.
1. Post It Live
Let’s face it: Things go wrong. Don’t have all of your social media posts pre-scheduled if you can avoid it. This allows you to triple check that things are ready to go (and that the other channels have announced the launch without any problems or delays).
2. Avoid Public Launch Dates
This isn't always the case. However, back in 2011, I was working on a launch, and some of my team members were obsessed with launching on 11-11-11. That was a mistake. For this particular topic, it really didn't matter when we launched, and no one in the public would have cared about the date being the same numeral. The rush almost made us put out a product that wasn’t ready. When dealing with buildup to a campaign, avoid specifying dates when possible.
3. Try Surprising Them
If Beyonce’s "Lemonade" taught us anything, it’s that pre-launch build up is not always necessary. Sometimes consumers love the thrill of being shocked, not knowing something was coming. Play this to your advantage.
4. Explain Your Campaign Outright
Before rolling out a ton of CTAs, make sure you explain the details of your campaign in a digestible way, like with a video. This not only makes the concept clear to your audience, it also allows you to target those who watched your video with follow-up posts. This is huge when thinking about motivating an already captivated audience.
5. Have Community Management Ready
As mentioned in the first commandment, things can go wrong. Do you have a plan in place if something does? Who should be alerted, and what content will need to be pulled? Even if things do go smoothly, you should still monitor and respond to consumers’ actions and comments. After all, it's a great place to gather initial feedback.
This post originally appeared on the Likeable Media blog.