When developing a social media campaign, it’s essential to first understand the core challenge you’re trying to solve: Is the issue a lack of awareness about your product or service, or are people aware but not interested? This distinction shapes the entire strategy, from messaging to platform selection to content style. Awareness campaigns must capture attention and spark curiosity, while interest-based campaigns must provide value, relevance, and deeper engagement to move people toward action.
A useful way to think about this is through the lens of past viral social media phenomena. For example, the widely shared Facebook breast cancer awareness memes—where women were asked to post the color of the bra they were wearing as their status (“Name, Color”) or update their status with a playful, seemingly out-of-context phrase like where they like to put their purse—were intentionally designed to generate curiosity. These campaigns leveraged mystery, sparked fun and were engaging. A worthy cause gave the campaign massive reach; it went viral and proved that awareness can be driven by emotional connection. But the problem is there is great awareness of breast cancer, for women. But not so great awareness for men. Would a similar, fun, and playful campaign targeting men work as well? The goal was not to promote a product but to get people talking, to spark questions, and ultimately to direct attention back to an important cause. Would a campaign for women’s breast cancer be more meaningful or impactful if it was focused on raising awareness for financial support?
Outlining the goals of the campaign is the first step to planning. Identifying your audience, in detail is important to understand where they can be reached. Are you interested in reaching women, men or both? What age is your target audience, what is their socio-economic status? All of these build your audience profiles. What is the goal of the campaign? Is your product or service new to the market and you are trying to gain awareness? Are you trying to change the image of an established product? Are you in a crowded market space and trying to gain more awareness of your presence? All of these are important to the campaign design. They help to direct you to the right platform. For example, if you are trying to establish your company as a thought leader in your industry, targeting other businesses, you want to focus on LinkedIn. If you are trying to reach women of a varied age group and are focused on both video and pictures Facebook is probably the right social site for you. A successful social media campaign is something that needs planning for proper execution. Planning of the who, the what, the where, and how. Clear goals, what you want to achieve, they should be measurable. What is often not said is there must be room for change. With all the planning we all hope we get it right but sometimes there is a need to realign. Don’t wait, do it when you realize your campaign is not meeting the goals.
In your own campaign approach, take the time to consider how understanding the audience’s current mindset—unaware, curious, or already familiar—can determine whether you use tactics that generate interest or intrigue (like the breast cancer memes), educate an unaware audience, highlight differentiation in a crowded space, or drive action by your audience. Knowing your audience and where they are in the journey, what if any gap exists between awareness and interest will help you craft your messaging and ensure it aligns with what your audience needs to move them forward in the customer journey.
Gritty Marketing “Helping Small Businesses Tell Big Stories.” 