Case Studies

The Guardian – Enjoy England

Clear goals

At Smesh, we believe it’s vital to deliver a blend of focused consultancy and tool-based analytics. Simply providing raw access to tools can leave clients swamped in data. Relating this data back to established goals and instantly feeding back into campaign activity is essential for making the most of the interactive and real-time nature of social media.

An important starting point for the GNM campaign work was agreeing clear goals. In this case, they were around encouraging people to add content to the campaign’s visually striking interactive map. This covers two key building blocks of a successful social media campaign – something of high perceived value to build activity around, and success metrics that are in tune with the strengths of social media.

Visual communication

Social media is a white-hot communications medium that offers almost untold potential for marketeers, mixing up aspects of broadcast (your tweets can be read by everyone who follows you) with interactivity (you can have conversations with individuals or groups).

But having a fantastic channel isn’t much use if you don’t have anything to say that means something to your target market. With the GNM campaign, the heart of this content is the interactive map, appealing both as an informative resource and as a chance for people to share their knowledge and promote their favourite local destinations.

Success metrics

Success metrics for individual campaigns should be tailored directly to those campaigns, based on clearly identified aims. For example, increasing traffic, driving conversion or building positive brand awareness. Similarly, goals have to be sensitive to the nature of social media content. The GNM and VisitEngland teams understood that there was no point looking for search terms like ‘England city breaks’, because people don’t post online about their activities, interests and holidays in the same language as they use when searching on Google.

If you’re going to connect with people, it’s vital that you know who you’ll be talking to and what their online lives involve – where they go, what they like, and just as important, what they really don’t like.

Having worked with GNM and VisitEngland to establish the Enjoy England campaign’s overall identity and to define social media goals, the Smesh team started mapping the social media landscape for the campaign. We took on a range of activities, from spotting broad themes (‘What kind of activities are people tweeting about in Brighton this month?’), to finding and talking to people creating great blog content about their local area. This wasn’t just a brief splash of research to get the campaign rolling, though – these activities were designed to be ongoing for the life of the campaign.

Social media monitoring and analysis must be treated as an active resource to get the most out of it, so information gathered is fed back directly into ongoing campaign activity. Knowledge about trends, upcoming events and influential online voices support content generation, with the aim of encouraging visits and contributions to the campaign’s interactive map and building a loyal following.

A number of key metrics continue to play a vital supporting role, feeding into campaign activity. These include:

• Changes in volume of chatter on specific topics across blogs and social networks
• Monitoring campaign reach — how many eyeballs could have seen this campaign content?
• Tracking changes in follower numbers over time, taking account of influence

Bringing it all together

These are just some of the activities that have contributed to this campaign, but they represent universal considerations that can achieve remarkable success if addressed. They include creating well-defined goals and metrics that fit with social media’s strengths, as well as thinking about what’s in it for the people you want to engage with. It is also vital to recognise needs that are unique for each campaign, and use monitoring and analytics for constant feedback and improvement.

For further info, please read the Guardian’s official press release on our work for the ‘Enjoy England’ campaign.