Likes, tweets, followers, fans or friends; no matter the forum, cultivating and engaging your social media audience can be a daunting task. Starting a conversation with customers and generating valuable content is no small feat, as simple as it sounds. There must be an easier way, right??
TOMS Shoes and AOL certainly made it look easy. To kick off their 2012 One Day Without Shoes campaign, they asked their followers to keep tabs on the metrics. That’s right, instead of bombarding them with content and tactics, they used just one. “Help us distribute the #withoutshoes messages to over 100,000 
people before April 10th.” Tracked by Simply Measured, the campaign was such a success that they reset their goal to 1,000,000 after reaching their original goal in just 18 hours.
Throughout the campaign, AOL used realtime social media analytics to track and adjust its efforts–and to keep supporters updated and motivated. As AOL Social Media Director Matthew Knell told Simply Measured, “AOL was able to measure the real-time potential audience for our social campaign activity… [This] allowed us to understand how our message was being spread and to optimize our tactics.” (Courtesy of The Realtime Report).
Lessons for Others:
1. Keep the message simple and easy to share. AOL and TOMS used a few different avenues. About.me encouraged consumers to change their profile page, MapQuest donated advertising space on the top of each map and it doesn’t hurt that a few celebrities lent a hand. You may not have a rock star in your rolodex, but community figures can be just as influential and if the message is worthy and simple they’ll likely be glad to pitch in.
2. Know what you intend to track and be sure to have the proper tools in place to measure the success of your campaign. And even more importantly, know how to use them to their full potential.
3. Build a post campaign plan. You’ve achieved success, shared a message and grown your following. Now comes the hard part, keeping them. Plan ahead on how to keep the conversation going and don’t forget what brought them to you in the first place.
Web Resources:
Simply Measured
AOL
About.me
The Realtime Report
Submitted by: Vicky Ngeth, SMBP Student University of Waterloo.
To contact the author of this entry please email vngeth@gmail.com
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.