Case Study: Social Media Campaign
CLIENT: Spirit Telecom
Spirit Telecom is a telecommunications company, offering phone, Internet and video conferencing services to businesses.
GOALS:
- Increase awareness about Spirit Telecom in North and South Carolina, their primary markets, online and on social media.
- Provide them a conversational, fun personality not typically associated with telecommunications companies.
- Drive traffic to their website in the hopes of exposing business people to their services.
OVERVIEW:
Social media tools have distinct purposes but combining them effectively is what makes a truly great social media campaign. In summer 2009, we began working with Spirit Telecom to create and manage their social media presence.
The social media tools we selected were Twitter, YouTube and a blog (updated a twice a week). Each tool would serve a distinct function but we needed to tie them together and leverage the audiences built on each tool. The result was a branded social media campaign we called “No Static” with the tagline “Clearing the lines about what businesses need to communicate in the 21st century.” We hoped people would be more inclined to follow “No Static” than the name of the company.
All accounts had “No Static” within them, ie on Twitter @NoStaticST, and shared a separate logo designed just for this campaign.
While we wanted to promote the company’s products and services, we know most people don’t want to get. But we do know people are interested in improving their business and how best to use technology.
APPROACH:
To avoid bogging people down in the details of fiber optic cables and servers, we broadened our scope, generating blog posts, videos and tweets on a variety of business topics. We dropped in information about Spirit Telecom, but in a way that wasn’t sales-driven. We showcased the company’s expertise in data and voice services, positioning them as a knowledgeable resource. We also kept the writing and videos light, giving them a sense of humor and personality.
On the YouTube channel, we developed a series of videos, some that highlighted various aspects of the company – the data center, the network operations center and reasons to select business quality video conferencing – via the No Static Show. But we mixed those with fun, light-hearted videos that touched on topics pretty much everyone in business could relate to: people’s annoying voice mail greetings; the awful (and awfully embarrassing) things people do during a video conference; the aggravation of playing phone tag; and poor telephone manners.
PROMOTIONS:
We also coordinated special promotions for Spirit Telecom to build awareness via social media.
Magic Phone
For the Magic Phone promotion, held in February 2010, people were asked to tweet the following: If I had a #magicphone, I’d call ____. Who would you call @______ @________? Win a [PRIZE]: [Link to Blog Post with rules]. We gave away three Kindles to people who had tweeted using #magicphone at random times we selected.
We ultimately gained more than 100 new Twitter followers in a few days and sent more than 4000 people to the Spirit Telecom website.
OVERALL CAMPAIGN RESULTS:
- 660 followers on Twitter
- On 32 Twitter lists, a mark of the quality of content
- YouTube videos have been viewed more than 4,000 times
- Blog posts have been viewed thousands of times and the blog is the top referrer to the main website.
- Spirit Telecom holds the top 4 positions on Google when you search for the company name (1. Website, 2. Blog, 3. Twitter, 4. YouTube)
