Digital campaigns have taken on a new importance in the current COVID-19 climate. With social distancing measures and lockdowns, organising any on-site event is proving to be difficult (not to mention irresponsible). Going digital is the only way for businesses to stay connected with consumers. If you don’t know how to run an Instagram campaign, time to learn from one of the best.
tentree, a Canadian clothing brand that plants trees for every product sold, ran an incredibly successful tree-planting Instagram campaign last year. Dubbed “The Most Sustainable Post”, tentree used Instagram to encourage people to support their tree-planting initiative through likes.
The post now has over 15 million likes and increased the traffic to their U.S. site by 200%. Last year, it was the 5th most-liked post on Instagram.
Want to learn how to run a successful campaign? Take a leaf from tentree’s book.
1. Keep things simple, Encourage interaction
The key to getting audience participation is to make it easy for them to do so. Keep the process as simple as possible, and provide them with an incentive to take part. In tentree’s case, all Instagram users needed to do was double tap their phone screens to like their post. For every 10 likes the post garnered, tentree would work with Eden Reforestation Projects to plant a tree. The idea was to accumulate as many likes as possible so that they could plant as many trees as possible. Now, think of it from an Instagram user’s point of view, if you could do good just by the simple act of liking a post, wouldn’t you participate?
2. Make your content shareable
One of the main goals of any campaign is to get people to notice your brand – the more the merrier. Besides forking out money to buy ad space, another way you could get your content viral is to make it shareable. For content to be shareable, you’ll need two things – nice visuals and an in-depth knowledge of user behaviour.
tentree’s typography-led visual immediately catches the eye and relays its message.
Via tentree
Apart from posting on their own timeline, tentree also used Instagram Story to reach out to followers. Recognising that users may have highly-curated feeds they didn’t want to disrupt, tentree encouraged users to share their post to Stories instead. The result was thousands of shares, which helped it to go viral and amass a massive number of likes.
3. Amplify with influencers and other media outlets
tentree also worked with influencers in nature, photography and outdoor fields to raise awareness for the campaign. Press kits were sent before the campaign kicked off, and influencers were encouraged to share the post once it went live.
You can always use other media outlets to spread the word about your online campaign. Apart from influencers, tentree also sent biodegradable press kits to reporters detailing their campaign. They encouraged these reporters to write about what they were doing, to help the campaign gain traction.
Last but not least, enlist your fans to help spread the word. tentree sent messages to their ambassadors before the launch, hinting that something big was coming. This created hype and anticipation amongst their fans. They also provided them with tips and tricks on how they could help them get the word out.
The takeaway: even though your campaign might be digital, you can still use other offline platforms to help amplify your message and raise awareness.
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The next time you’re organising a digital campaign, keep these three lessons in mind. For more information about tentree’s Most Sustainable Post campaign, you can read this article on Buffer and listen to the podcast.