There is an extremely fine line when it comes to self-promotion on social networks. Push for sales too much and people are quickly turned off, with negativity spreading quickly through a platform such as Facebook or Twitter; however, engage in the right way and boosts to both branding and sales can be noted. For those using a social media marketing strategy to increase profits or online article views, it is a good idea to look at proven case studies.
Now and then Twitter shares some insights into social marketing strategies that have gone down particularly well with users on its platform. The company recently shared one case study where engagement and sales were significantly boosted.
Chegg, a company that is focused on providing scholarships, textbooks and other resources to students, knew it had to start the back-to-school season in a big way. This meant that as students began preparing for the end of their school break, the organization wanted to connect and engage with individuals via eye-catching messages and promoted tweets. The firm took an unusual approach to the marketing strategy, which proved very popular.
With many states across America being hit by the "polar vortex", Chegg’s social media specialist, Leviticus Williams, decided to take advantage of that situation. He said: “We basically looked at a weather map of the storms to see which states were being hit. Then we geo-targeted Tweets to those areas and used interest categories like "college life" and "life stage-college" to make sure we reached the relevant users.” The geo-targeting was adjusted as storms moved from state to state thereby helping Chegg to remain relevant to the consumers it was trying to gain attention from.
Though some might think that trying to sell student resources by talking about the weather would be doomed to fail, the opposite occurred. Over the course of the strategy, 13,000 post-Twitter engagement purchases were noted. Meanwhile, by using promoted tweets, the average engagement was 9% and rose to a peak level of 23%.
