Objective
- 100 Imgur views
- 5 Twitter likes
- 10 Facebook likes
Imgur Meme
Twitter Web Card
its #FinalsSZN…..time to get crackin'! https://t.co/BbPz8hpq28
— Sasha Allison (@sashaallisong) April 5, 2017
Twitter Ad Engagement & Spend
Analysis
This challenge presented many new obstacles for me including creating a media plan, adapting to new platforms, and setting goals that were attainable yet ambitious. Hindsight is 20/20, and, in looking back on this campaign, while there are many things I did well, there are just as many that I would do differently in the future.
First, in setting the benchmarks for my objectives, there were areas where I was able to achieve my goals, areas where my goals were too conservative, and areas where my goals were too ambitious. In setting my Imgur benchmark of 100 views, I was way too conservative and received over 600 views. This can mostly be attributed to my lack of familiarity with Imgur and what a “normal” view count is. In order to combat this, it would have been a good idea for me to look at other memes to see what kind of numbers they were bringing in before setting my goal rather than arbitrarily setting a number. My Facebook benchmark, however, was a little too ambitious. While memes and similar content do well on Facebook, I think linking out versus just embedding the meme into the native site hurt me as the linked meme may have been seen as spam. Although I had some issues with goal setting in Imgur and Facebook, with my Twitter benchmark, I hit my goal exactly; over two AB test web cards, I was able to meet my goal of 5 likes. I can mostly attribute this to my thorough knowledge of Twitter.
In creating my Twitter cards and TwitterAd, there were some successes and some things I would change. One thing I’m happy I did was an AB test of the Twitter card. Although I did not run it for an extended period of time, in doing this I was able to see which copy and presentation were most attractive to my follower base, most of whom were amongst my target audience of college students. Although I am happy I did the AB test, I’m conflicted with the timing I set for my TwitterAd. I had the TwitterAd set for the middle of my campaign as to accommodate the $5 budget, figuring that $1 a day for five days would be sufficient. Although I definitely attracted an audience and got some engagement, I would be interested to see if the ad would have had more engagement had I put it out earlier.
In regards to engagement, I found that I saw the most engagement through Imgur directly. As part of my plan for Twitter, I retweeted the meme then retracted the tweet twice. Once I learned that there was an analogous way to do this on Imgur, I implemented that into my plan as well; as I un-retweeted the Twitter card, I would send out the Imgur post into the community again. It was after this that my Imgur views jump by the hundred. I think the reason this was as successful as it was is because it was posted natively to a much larger community versus to my smaller audiences on the other two platforms through a link.
The one area of this challenge I struggled with the most was figuring out how new and engaging ways to drive traffic to the Imgur link. When I was crafting my media plan, I thought I had enough content. By the end of the challenge, I found that, after a while, all of my pre-planed tweets that were “different” and “original” were actually all very similar. For the future, I’m realizing that it may be a good idea to have some extra “emergency” content on the side to use in cases such as this one.
Overall, for my first try at executing a campaign from start to finish, I think I did a pretty good job; for the most part, my plan was solid and the things I would change are smaller details. Additionally, a lot of the obstacles I faced had a to do with my own learning curve as I was figuring out the ins and outs of Imgur, media planning, and TwitterAds as I was going. In the end, there are always things that come to light after the fact or thing we wish we did differently. The only way to find and fix these problems is through continued trial and error.
Final Engagement Number (as of 9 pm 4/10)
- Imgur: 604
- Twitter Likes: 5 (cumulative over 2 posts)
- Facebook likes: 3
It’s nice to see someone else had similar results with the viral content challenge. What’s interesting to me is that we both had similar results with starting our paid Twitter card in the middle of the week. While we both achieved our objectives, I wonder had we started our Twitter card in the beginning of the campaign would we have had more success with it. For me, I found my Twitter followers became bored/annoyed with the content by the middle of the week, so I wonder if the Twitter card just became another post for them to scroll past unacknowledged. I think we can both agree next time to try different strategies for promoted content and I definitely learned from your success with A/B testing and hope to carry it over with me in newer social media ventures.