After spending the summer recovering from a massive 2015, the start to 2016 became hectic very early on as I signed up to handle the social media marketing and PR for the new Roar Music Festival in Dubbo. Little did I realise that a casual agreement around a board table one Monday morning would see me working on a 10 week campaign, thinking and breathing all things Roar from the early hours of the morning into the late hours of night…at times 7 days a week. It was incredibly intense.
In less than 10 weeks we almost quadrupled our Facebook following. Our creative team – including talented graphic designers, photographers, and me working on copy and video – fed this interest through producing a huge amount of content from scratch in the form of graphics, photos and short videos (10-15 seconds each). A dozen videos were produced all up, not including several live streams using Facebook Live. Two of those videos, shot on an iPhone, reached in excess of 45 thousand views – and we could see exactly who was watching them.
We crafted a very targeted audience for this event and engagement with posts such as our volunteer callouts, garnering an incredible number of comments, shares and tagging, was testament to the work we put into building our audience profiles. The highly targeted promoted post spend was modest compared to other forms of advertising with the benefit of having tangible results that meant we could tweak, stop or boost posts depending on how they were performing.
As well as traditional media, a website, blog and e-bulletin, we had other social media platforms as well, that we persisted with even though on the surface of it, it appeared they weren’t performing as we’ll as Facebook. Having a presence on more than one social media platform is about carving out space for the brand and planning ahead regardless of what’s happening here and now. It’s also about knowing what segment of your audience is where…and they aren’t all going to be in the one place.
The use of readily available social media analytics combined with Google Analytics meant we could track our audience’s movements from social media to the website – many of our social media posts were designed to lead people to the website, particularly the videos. However, this wasn’t without its challenges. Trying to get inside the heads of our target market consumed a great deal of our midnight hours.
The experience of working on the Roar Festival campaign, combined with the years of experience of managing and assisting with other social media accounts goes into the mix when putting together the content for our Social Media Matters workshops, offering real, hands-on experience about what does and doesn’t work. Yes, there are things that don’t work – but they’re all part of the learning experience that makes social media so dynamic and exciting.
Information on 2016 Social Media Matters workshops can be found on the Workshops page. Updates will happen as workshop dates are finalised. Or email Kim for more information.
Kim V. Goldsmith 