Does your company want to roll out a new product or service? You can use social media to help launch that, with a weeklong online campaign. FGIA does this each year during Window Safety Week, an important annual industry initiative. Companies like PGT use it to promote their tips about hurricane protection and preparedness each June during the start of hurricane season. Creating a campaign around a single issue or product takes some work up front, but it can be satisfying to watch that upfront investment pay off during the big week itself. Here are some tips for creating a social media campaign week.

1. Understand Your Goal. In FGIA’s case, we wanted to inform the public, homeowners and companies in the industry about the importance of window safety. The pre-written tips we had, along with a bank of relevant graphics and images, helped tell this story.
2. Assess Your Materials. If you don’t already have written materials about what you want to promote, make them now. Invest in art to accompany your written points, whether that means planning an in-house photo shoot with an iPhone, buying stock photography or getting professional photos taken, now is the time.
3. Make a Plan. When will be the ideal time for you target your campaign? What else is going on that could interfere or draw away attention? Mark your calendar.
4. Schedule Posts in Advance. I love using Hootsuite to schedule FGIA’s social media content, and that comes in even more handy during Window Safety Week. Well in advance of the event, I was able to save scheduled posts in Hootsuite, dragging and dropping posts on a calendar where I wanted them. I spaced them out accordingly over the course of Window Safety Week, across four different social media platforms.
5. Monitor Posts. Once your campaign posts begin to launch, keep any eye on them to moderate comments, answer questions and help drive excitement with live engagement. This is your time to convert customers and advocates, while you have their attention. You have this time to monitor because you don’t need to use this time generating last-minute content!

What would you want to center an online campaign around? Let me know in the comments below!