Establishing a strong PLN before creating a social media campaign is crucial for success. In plain terms, what’s the point in giving a presentation if you have no one to come listen to you speak? The same principle can be applied to social media. Creating an online community invested in your brand, product, or idea will make or break your campaign. Creating a passionate, engaged PLN requires networking. In September, I was hired by a local liquor company to represent them to the UVic student community. My first order of business was to establish my PLN and gauge my audience’s interest by posting a series of Instagram story posts. Having already developed my personal Instagram account to almost 1,000 followers, my social media PLN at UVic was well underway, granting me an excellent head start. Upon the first series of story posts, I was able to gain a strong understanding of my PLN’s engagement using Instagram’s provided analytics and insight tools. This data in turn would allow me to predict how my PLN and community would react to this content moving forward.
Based on the data I collected from my story posts, I was able to recognize the following:
Instagram followers: 955
Story post #1 views: 512
Story post #2 views: 493
Story likes: 73
Story Replies: 58
This overwhelming amount of engagement on my story posts allowed me to follow up with over 50 people about the brand and campaign. Using this PLN, I created an incentivized purchasing campaign at local liquor stores, featuring bi-weekly story posts to continue engagement. After the first week of a buy two twelve packs in return for one free 12 pack, I was able to sell out one liquor store.
To reiterate, using my PLN and a student-targeted social media marketing campaign, I was able to sell out a liquor store in one week.
Not only have I used my PLN to help drive sales directly, but I have also utilized strong connections of mine with a large following of UVic students to help with the campaign. Over a two-week period, I was able to reach a total of ~7,500 Instagram views using 10 people. I provided these 10 connections of mine with product in exchange for story posts. This tactic helped create a strong buzz around campus. These connections of mine are influential students with large followings and engaged audiences. They understand our target demographic and post content accordingly, helping drive and build the brand on campus.
Being able to quickly reach out to individuals within my PLN has reminded me of how important it is to continually expand and develop my PLN.
Hi fritz,
aboslotly great experiance to share of your PLN and your interaction with selling using it. I have learned from you that it is great foundation of Social networking capital that you build up before finalizating it into a PLN to make your campaign successfull. A good building comes from first building great founding base, that is true to the PLN social networking campaigns as well, therefore i absolotely agree with you that if you don’t build a well organized social media page, it willhave minimal affect on creating a PLN for social media campaign.