Facebook awards top social campaigns – five lessons for SMEs

Many businesses have been criticised for not using social media properly, so here are five lessons we can learn from the Facebook Studio winners.

Emphasise the community

A health insurance company in Slovakia ran into difficulties when it became a blood donation program partner. Finding proper donors was an issue, with most people not even knowing their blood type.

To combat this, Zaraguza Digital created a website and eight separate Facebook communities for each blood type. Users were encouraged to join whichever community represented them.

This is a clever way to make something boring seem interesting and fun. If you’re in an industry that seems a little dry, think of ways to make it more inclusive – everyone loves to belong to a community.

Sharing is caring

The KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland wanted to provoke discussion about the value of art in relation to its price tag.

So Hasan & Partners took it to the people, telling them to “make a better one yourself, then” in a cheeky way to get people involved. Nearly 600 pieces of art were submitted by Facebook users.

Keeping your tongue firmly in cheek is necessary for such an endeavour – artists wouldn’t respond if they felt insulted. The key here is that artists were invited to share their work. After all, Facebook is a sharing platform, and encouraging users to be creative helps grow a sense of community.

Participation through humour

Skittles hasn’t always achieved social media success, with a website and Twitter campaign going awry a couple of years ago. But this campaign designed by Evolution Bureau allowed users to share valentines with someone who doesn’t get a lot of love – a meter maid.

An event delivering the valentines was distributed on Facebook. The campaign went further, allowing fans to collect 100,000 Likes to award a student a scholarship.

Skittles already had a Facebook community; it just needed to engage with them. And getting them to partake in a bit of humour keeping with the brand’s theme ensures they’ll stick around.

Get running

The Nike+ GPS app gives runners access to a community by allowing them to share data on their runs, helping everyone to stay accountable and measure their success.

R/GA brought in a social element by enabling runners to keep in contact with other runners anywhere in the world. They can let their friends know if they start a run, and then others can post or comment on that update.

Get to the grass-roots

Early in 2011, Commonwealth Bank set an interesting challenge: it wanted to amplify the work it does with community organisations in a PR-friendly, preferably digital way. So the ‘Community Seeds’ campaign was developed to leverage this work in social media and help the bank involve customers in its commitment to charitable grass-roots initiatives.

The bank chose twelve candidates that didn’t typically attract big corporate support, and asked its staff which six they felt were most in need. Following an incredible level of internal support, the campaign then went public, with the bank pledging to donate $1 for each vote cast on Facebook.

The campaign showed how a company could integrate its philanthropic work with community initiatives and social media branding – all for a great PR return.