I manage several social media accounts for various clients. From time to time, I get to help promote different products, events, and campaigns in order to get the word out.
In addition to my client’s social media accounts, I have my own Twitter and Facebook account for EntreCatholic, my personal blog.
While my Twitter account is generally very active, my Facebook page traffic is generally pretty slow. That’s for two reasons: I don’t post regularly, and I don’t engage. As such, I’ve decided to take the upcoming holiday of Pentecost (which I will explain in a minute) as an opportunity to increase my Facebook presence online.
Three reasons I know this will work:
- In my experience, photos and info-graphics on Facebook get more organic reach than non-photo status updates, or status updates with just links
- More folks engage with photos and info-graphics
- Catholic people love Pentecost, so I’m banking on higher engagement, more likes, and more shares
This is one of those times when I’m also going to be posting the same content on my client pages and social media accounts. It’s a win for everybody!
As I do this campaign, though, I wanted to take the opportunity to give a behind-the-scenes look at how this is done, and how you can create your own mini social media campaign.
Follow my Facebook page if you’re interested in watching the campaign roll out! No, really, go follow it. I’d appreciate the support!
Creating A Facebook Campaign in 5 Simple Steps
Creating a campaign on Facebook will help you get more engagement and awareness of your project, an event, or a product launch. Knowing how and when to do these are essential.
The key to running a successful campaign, though, is to know your audience. Running a religious-themed campaign is pointless if your audience isn’t interested.
The steps which I’m about to show you, though, are universal. I’m just being transparent for the sake of showing you a real-life example.
Step 1. Choose a topic
For this campaign, the topic is the Pentecost Novena. You might be asking, what is Pentecost, and what is a Novena?
Pentecost is a Jewish and Christian Holiday, celebrated 50 days after Passover or Easter, respectively.
For Christians, the holiday celebrates the day as told in Acts (a book in the Bible) when God the Holy Spirit descended from Heaven on the first apostles and those with them in Jerusalem. From that day, they were able to heal, perform miracles, speak in foreign languages with ease, and do all sorts of crazy things. The purpose? To tell people about Jesus and about how much God loves them.
A novena is a nine-day prayer (nove in Latin = nine). The reason for nine days is because nine days prior to the feast of Pentecost, a Jewish holiday that the Jewish disciples celebrated, the disciples were praying and waiting for the Holy Spirit to come. They knew He was coming because Jesus told them nine days prior, as it’s recorded in the Bible:
“And behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24
We still celebrate that first novena every year, as well as Pentecost. Very cool!
Step 2. Choose Base Content to Pull From
Dividing the content into three parts is key:
- The Meat: The meat is the content from which everything will be pulled. In this case, it’s the novena itself. I found a fantastic novena online to use (there are several). I will use the daily prayers from that paper for the daily posts.
- The Campaign Slogan: With any campaign, you want a general ‘theme’. I find it’s always helpful to think about twitter and hashtags when thinking about the theme. In another words, it’s your one-liner if you’re trying to explain to somebody what you’re doing. I’ve chosen the hashtag, #ComeHolySpirit. Fairly straightforward for Pentecost.
- The Media: Media will help with the campaign. I’m going to play with the Pentecost painting by Jean Restout, pictured here:
Step 3. Create and Edit the Content
Using my photo editing skills, I’ve divided up the main picture into nine smaller pictures, (one for each day), performed some BA editing, added words, and voila! Nine days of content:
So each Facebook post will have:
- An edited picture
- The prayer for the novena as the status update
Example:
Twitter posts will have:
- Pentecost Novena, Day 1. #ComeHolySpirit
- Attached edited picture from FB.
Pro-Tip: I try to make all of my visual content SQUARE these days. Why? Because more people will be viewing the content on their mobile-phones, which is designed for square content, then on a computer. This is ESSENTIAL to know if you’re creating visual content professionally. Even if you don’t implement a square-based strategy, you should be aware of it:
Step 4. Schedule The Content
If you own a Facebook business or organization page, you can schedule content to post ahead of time. This works out handy if you’re busy during the rest of the week!
Step 5. Keep Track of Engagement
The final thing you have to do is just keep an eye on the engagement. See how many likes, comments, and shares your content receives. The more engagement your content receives, the more effective your campaign was.
