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Taco filters, banana solar eclipses, and pussy hats, oh my. Welcome, friends, to Adhere Creatives Top 10 Most Influential Social Media Marketing Campaigns for 2017!

Its been one wild year in the world of social media marketing campaigns. We saw marketing teams coming up with some of the most creativeand humorouscampaigns yet, some of which rival what we saw in 2013's,2015s and 2016s Top 10 Influential Social Media Marketing Campaign lists. In addition to these advertising feats of strength, youll notice a continued focus to promote social causes on social media platforms. Some of these campaigns were true grass-root movements, while others were driven by companies.

But enough with the introduction. Lets jump straight into our 2017 most influential social media campaigns, starting with number one on our list, GEs Balance the Equation campaign.

Its a bold, ambitious goal. But it wont be easy. According to research out by the annual Women in Tech report, women hold at most 25% of all computing jobs. And GEs own research paints an even harsher picture, with IT and engineering programs worldwide comprised of just 13%-24% women. To ensure they meet their objective, GE is pulling out all the stops with their marketing efforts. And one of their most creative campaigns to date is their Balance the Equation campaign, featuring National Medal of Science in Engineering winner, Millie Dresselhaus.

While there is no data quite yet on how many women GE has hired, the campaign should still be considered a success. Between GEs #BalanceTheEquation hashtag and its GE-girls.com website, the company has secured thousands of retweets and comments, all while making inroads with younger girls who could one day become the STEM experts of tomorrow.

Timing is everything when it comes to influential marketing campaigns. I meanwhen the power went out in the Superdome during Superbowl XLVII, and Oreo brought down the house with its single well-timed dunk-in-the-dark tweet? I cry every time I see it. It was my screen saver for, like, years. This year, it was Chiquita that took advantage of the dark, only this time it was due to the much anticipated solar eclipse which made its way across the U.S. on August 21st of this year.

On the path of totality, you will see two distinct banana suns. The total eclipse occurs in between the two banana suns as a sort of lackluster intermission.

In a moment of marketing brilliance, which was almost too bright to stare at directly, Chiquita took full credit for the 2017 solar eclipse, dubbing the suns crescent shape the Banana Sun. For three weeks, starting on August 7th, the company went straight up bananas, creating gifs, a website, and a massive glowing banana which they unveiled on August 20th near the Flatiron Building in NYC.

Thanks to the Banana Sun, Chiquita managed to garner thousands of new Twitter followers, hundreds of comments on its Banana Sun GIFs, and tens of thousands of retweets. At least two of the companys solar eclipse videos were viewed over a million times.

What can I say? Weve come a long way from corporate dictatorships run by banana companies my friends. This is what I call progress.

Hurricane Harvey was the costliest Atlantic hurricane to ever hit the United States, with damages estimated at almost $200 billion dollars. Many homes were unsalvageable, forcing millions of American families onto the streets. But in the peak of the crisis, some individuals and organizations rallied behind Harveys victims, in what has become one of the strongest showings of charity fundraising in American history. Embed from Getty Images

Enter J.J. Watt, defense star for the Texans. Watt set up his own Houston Flood Relief Fund on his personal website, then took to social media to announce the effort. The results were immediate. His original goal of $200,000 was blown apart as millions of donations poured in thanks to the efforts of social heavy hitters like Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres, along with others such as hip-hop star Drake and Tennessee Titans owner, Amy Adams Strunk.

There are not enough words to thank you all for your generosity. If there is one thing I have taken away from these last few weeks, it is the reassurance of how much good is out there in our world. J.J. Watt

In total, some $37 million was donated in just three weeks! It just goes to that social can be a force for good, and not just for selfies, lolcats, and well-timed salt bae memes.

Can the promotion of a new slogan lead a major league baseball team to victory? Even one which has not once clutched a World Series in the 112 years of the leagues existence? As unlikely as that sounds, it may have played a role in the Houston Astros stunning and triumphant 4-3 win over the L.A. Dodgers in 2017s World Series finals.

Earn It first appeared in off-season, before the team had even set foot on a spring training field. It galvanized the teams supporters, who took to social media to promote the pithy and ambitious new mantra. And who can blame them for being excited? If your last slogan was Root! Root! Root!, you can only get better from there.

And get better they did. As the season progressed, the number of Google searches for the Astros continued to skyrocket.

Earn It is one of those divinely inspired slogans that hits you harder than a Chapman fast ball. Not since Just Do It has a mantra worked so effectively to command attentionand maybe win a team a World Series.

I was so depressed over Norm MacDonalds exit as the KFC colonel, I couldnt eat fried chicken for months. Months. But then the company goes and creates one of the best social stunts of 2017?

Lets just say I see a drumstick in my near future.

In September of this yearunbeknownst to fried chicken lovers everywhereKFCs creative shop, Weiden+Kennedy, started following 11 people on Twitter: the five original Spice Girls, and six dudes named Herb. Now, that isnt exactly noteworthy by itself. But when you connect the dots to KFCs secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices, you suddenly see where KFCs marketing team was going with this.

It took about a month, but one Twitter sleuth finally figured it out:

Mike Edgette, a social media manager for TallGrass Public Relations, had without knowing it struck twitter gold. His single comment generated hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets, creating an explosion of activity for KFCs twitter feed. KFC, capitalizing even more on the publicity, painted Edgette a portrait of him riding on Colonel Sanders back with a chicken drumstick in his hand. Which he again shared for tens of thousands more views and retweets!

This is where some patience, and maybe a little luck, can go a long way toward creating a viral social movement. We planted this on Twitter over a month ago, said Freddie Powell, creative director at Wieden+Kennedy. Frankly, we werent sure if anybody was going to find it. Sometimes you just have to put stuff out into the universe and cross your fingers that the internet will work its magic.

Its that time of the year again. Everybody is dusting off their gym memberships and smoking their last pack of cigarettes before the New Year. And much like last year and the year before, companies will create marketing campaigns around this New Years theme.

But very few of them will come close to making those resolutions as enjoyable as Spotify.

For a few years running, the company has departed from its digital roots to take to the streets with a creative end-of-year OOH marketing campaign. The campaign shares some of the companys most humorous user data, which it then turns into next years resolutions. And this years Its Been Weird theme will be larger than ever, encompassing 14 markets around the world, and requiring the assistance of 70+ artists to create over 100 billboards assets. According to Spotify CMO Seth Farbman, the company is better served with an end-of-year campaign featuring billboards than, say, banner ads. We are using out-of-home in a way that is less traditional, he said. Out-of-home gives that hyperlocality that gives those aha moments to people. And it allows a digital community to feel connected in a physical way. This is happening here. Were all seeing this and remembering this moment together.

This years campaign will feature artists like Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Niall Horan, and Big Shaq, and will run both here in the States and across the pond in the UK.

Hope youve all got your pussy hats on hand. Because #7 on our list of top 10 influential social media events for 2017 is the womens march, a protest movement that exploded onto the scene thanks to viral social media hype.

In early 2017, a number of Facebook pages protesting the inauguration of President Donald Trump began to receive wide attention. As the pages increased from a few hundred to tens of thousands of followers, it became apparent to many that consolidation, and then mobilization, was an absolute must.

Leaders of the movement focused their attention on a march on Washington D.C., and used the twitter hash #womensmarch to spread the word. Within days, the grass-roots movement had exploded to hundreds of thousands of followers. Not only did it lead to a march of nearly half a million people in D.C., it created dozens of sister protests around the country.

The cult hit Stranger Things released a brand new second season just a few months back, and it has everything an obsessed fan could want. The whole gang back together? Check. Synthesizers? Check. Samwise Gamgee? Check. Eggos? Check.Eggos?

Ah yes, Elevens favorite snack makes more appearances than ever in Season 2. And the marketing team over at Kelloggsto their credittook advantage of the free plug, by creating a fresh, buttery new campaign called Eggos to capitalize on all the delicious publicity.

Kelloggs began talks with Netflix before the airing of the second season. The result of the partnership was a small series of advertisements which appeared during the premier of Stranger Things 2. Best of all, Kelloggs social team was ready to capitalize on the hype. Armed with humorous GIFs, the #StrangerThings hashtag, and more images of Eleven scarfing down the iconic 80s waffle than they knew what to do with, the social team managed to come up with some weapons grade tweeting that earned them thousands of new online followers.

Unconventional, I know. Number 9 on our list kinda reminds me of how back in 2006 Time Magazine made You their Person of The Year. A little vague, sure. I still tell people I was on the cover of Time magazine. Nobody ever believes me.

This year, local businesses have taken on social media like never before, many times outshining even the cleverest 5th Avenue ad agencies with some of the stuff they come up with. Goliath companies which can spend large sums on massive ad buys and sleek commercials do not have the same leverage when it comes to social media, which is more about authenticity and consistent messaging.

Even more important, social media is about getting a message out quickly to customers interested in your business. Smaller companies are often significantly more agile than their larger counterparts, which gives them the advantage when it comes to fighting off negative reviews or, delivering incredibly good news, like how you were on the cover of Time magazine.

Why have so many local businesses turned to Facebook and the like for their local advertising? Because of the cost, the simplicity, and the incredible targeting capabilities of course! We are seeing many of our local business clients find double, triple, the ROI from Facebook advertising in 2017. Now go get some of that!

The networking and technology conglomerate Cisco Systems makes it onto our list this year, and for good reason. The companys use of influencer marketing to drive sales is paying off in a big way in 2017. And at the forefront of this effort is their Cisco Champions Program, a marketing campaign which offers incentives for its community of IT advocates and experts.

By giving back to the people who run its technology and networking platforms on a daily basis, Cisco can use the experience and advocacy of these individuals to harness powerful promotional content for its brand. The company provides free education, access to new products, recognition to engineers and more. All they ask in return is for these Cisco Champions to share their stories and experiences with Cisco Systems over social media.

The results have been incredible. To date, Cisco Champions has generated tens of thousands of new tweets and thousands of social media mentions across platforms such as Facebook and elsewhere.

And thats a wrap for 2017s Top 10 Influential Social Media Marketing Campaigns. If one of these campaigns stuck out to you, dont hesitate to let us know! And keep an eye out for next years Top 10 Most Influential list, which is sure to be as colorfulor even more sothan this years!

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Top 10 Influential Social Media Marketing Campaigns of 2017

Off Limits Event Professionals are the only company in the world which owns and operates all the authentic props, costumes and inflatables used in the original It's a Knockout TV show.

It's a Knockout is Britain's best team building tournament. You can't beat it for mad moments, belly laughs and nostalgia. Looking for an unforgettable experience? You've struck gold. This incomparable event hits the right note for all sorts of special occasions. From charity and corporate events to stag and hen parties.

It's a Knockout is all about losing inhibitions and embracing new experiences. It's a Knockout took TV by storm during the 70s and 80s. Grab the golden opportunity to experience the fun for real. With games and costumes from the TV series. Including the Kings from the Royal It's a Knockout and the classic Penguin Pursuit.

Safe, fun and incredibly entertaining, Anyone can take part, regardless of age or fitness levels. Join forces with friends, family or colleagues to complete wacky and wonderful challenges. A 'let's go for it' attitude and a sense of humour is all you need.

Have you also seen our Its a Knockout-inspired inflatable assault course Totally Wiped Out? Check out our big red balls, punch wall and sweeper arm, will your team manage the course or get Totally Wiped Out?

The rest is here:
It's a Knockout

Social networkmarketing is a way for businesses to interact with their target markets over the internet via various social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram (to name just a few).

Social media marketing is used for all the traditional marketing goals - to reach customers and:

The most popular social networking sites for business are:

That doesn't mean that your small business should start trying to use some of them to promote your products and/or services. Even if your business had the money to hire a marketing firm or develop an in-house social media team to do that, it wouldn't be a good idea because different customer segments frequent different social media. Just as with any other type of marketing, small businesses need to focus their social network marketing efforts and their dollars on reaching their potential customers.

The Advantages of Social NetworkMarketing

Still, social networkmarketing is a type of marketing that many small businesses could benefit from if only to find out more about what their customers are thinking - and saying - about their brand and their products.

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Social Network Marketing Definition - thebalancesmb.com

Social Marketing: Meaning, Applications and Advantages of Social Marketing!

Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals for a social good. For example, this may include asking people not to smoke in public areas, asking them to use seat belts or prompting to make them follow speed limits.

The primary aim of social marketing is social good, whereas in commercial marketing the aim is primarily financial. This does not mean that commercial marketers cannot contribute to achievement of social good.

1. Health promotion campaigns in India, especially in Kerala and AIDS awareness programmes are largely using social marketing, and social workers are largely working for it. Most of the social workers are professionally trained for this particular task.

2. Anti-tobacco campaigns.

3. Anti-drug campaigns.

4. Anti-pollution campaigns.

5. Road safety campaigns.

6. Anti-dowry campaigns.

7. Protection of girl child campaign.

8. Campaign against the use of plastic bags.

9. Green marketing campaign.

Social marketing applies a customer-oriented approach, and uses the concepts and tools used by commercial marketers in pursuit of social goals such as anti-smoking campaigns or fund raising for NGOs.

Social marketinga new marketing toolcan be a great asset if used properly. The beneficial effects of social marketing for a business can be tremendous, but one must remember that it must be used in the most efficient possible way.

Social marketing allows businesses and web sites to gain popularity over the Internet by using different types of social media available, such as blogs, video and photo sharing sites, social networking sites and social bookmarking web sites.

There are six distinct advantages of social marketing that make it a vital tool to any marketing campaign:

1. Promotes consumption of socially desirable products.

2. Promotes health consciousness in people and helps them adopt a healthier lifestyle.

3. It helps in green marketing initiatives.

4. It helps to eradicate social evils that affect the society and quality of life.

5. Social marketing is one of the cheapest ways of marketing.

6. One of the best advantages of social marketing is that anyone can take advantage of it, even from their own home.

Read more here:
Social Marketing: Meaning, Applications and Advantages of ...

Click the target in the lower left-hand corner and begin selecting the demographics that you want your intended audience to be filtered by:

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Save your target audience to use on future posts by selecting+Save Current As Preset. Title your target audience sample and click apply:

CoSchedule will take care of the rest.

Hashtags make it easier for your audience to find your content and since Twitter is the birthplace of hashtags, you'll want to use them correctly.

Hashtags fall into three categories:

Our advice? Mix up the types of hashtags you use in your posts and stick to using 12 hashtagsper tweet.

If you're looking to do some hashtag research check out these sources:

Twitter may have just extended the length of a tweet to 280 characters but just because you have that space doesn't mean you should use it.

According to our research, the best length for a tweet is 103 characters. However, this research was conducted before Twitter expanded its character limit. That means that your posts should be:

Here are some other tips to follow when you're crafting your Twitter messages:

My biggest pet peeve is when I follow someone on Twitter, and almost immediately my inbox goes off, and a canned message appears thanking me for following said person.

Automated direct messages come across as impersonal, annoying and lazy. You don't want your organization to be any of those things.

If you want to reach out to a new Twitter follower, be sincere about it. Try using this template to start:

"Hi, [Username]. We noticed that you just started following us on Twitter. We wanted to say thank you. If you need anything, reach out and let us know."

The latest "thing" that companies are creating to get people to interact with them is to write a random relatable quote and slap a GIF on it.

While that may have worked the first five times, now every company out there is trying it and when you're already trying to stand out in a crowded feed, following what everyone else is doing will get you nowhere.

If your team decides that GIFs will be a part of your Twitter strategy do the following:

The lifespan of a tweet is about 18 minutes. That means you have an 18-minute window to gather the most views on your content. How do you do that?

You want to post at the times when your followers are on.

Here is when to tweet in general to increase retweets and click-throughs:

Want to know one of the hacks to keeping up a steady stream of Twitter content? Curate content from your Twitter lists.

A Twitter list is a list of users that a person has added into a specific group that will generate a feed of content from only those selected accounts.

These are great for when you're following a bunch of thought leaders in your industry and need some awesome content to share in a hurry.

If you want to learn how to create a Twitter list check out this video:

Once you've created your lists you can scroll through those select feeds and begin to curate content. However, don't just read a headline and add the article or video to your publishing schedule.

Follow these three steps before you add any content to your publishing schedule:

Adding images and graphics to your tweets will get you 18% more clicks.

When tweeting a link to your latest blog post, use one of the images from the post to help drive more clicks on the shared link. The image should relate directly to the subject of your blog post, which should help incentivize people to click.

Here are some general guidelines for using images on Twitter:

The more users notice your Google+ posts, the more likely they are to engage.

Not only does adding a headline help your post stand out, but Google uses the first words of your Google + post tohelp it stand out in the Google searches.

Adding the right headline can help your post stand out in search results, and can greatly influence the number of people who both notice and click through to your content. Cyrus Shepard, formerly of Moz

Here is an example of a Google+ headline:

Over at Quicksprout, Neil Patel said this about images:

The bigger, the better! Take advantage of the technology in web design and monitors and use big and bold images.

That's one great thing about Google +. You can take advantage of those big pictures.

Here are a couple of general tips for using images effectively on Google+:

You are completely missing out on traffic to your content if you aren't posting at the best times for click-throughs.

Here is when to post on Google+ for more click-throughs:

Blogger Tips Trickssaid, "Google Plus has highly active, close-knit communities which can give you massive exposure.Some of these groups have more than 100K members and have high chances of getting significant traffic if you post valuable posts."

So, if you aren't on Google+ Communities with a significant amount of members, you're missing out.

This thorough step-by-step video will help when looking for Google+ Communities:

Creating Circles with other people is a super easy way to grow your Google+ following base and bring traffic to your content. You can create circles for your work, groups you are a part of, location, industry, and even for your niche.

Say you want to add someone to a circle. Press follow:

You'll be able to pick which circle you want to add them to:

Having connections in your circles will help you grow trafficby creating relationships.

Having collections makes it easy to organize all your content. You can share your collections publicly, or you can keep them private.

When you create your first few collections, you'll see this:

Click Create a collection. Name your collection here.

After naming your collection,press Create:

Then you will be brought here:

When you click on the pen icon, you willbe able to write up your collection post, add a link, image, and even a video.

Collections give your audience an excellent way to find more content on the topics they love.

If your organization's Instagram profile isn't a business profile yet, you are missing out on potential data.

Instagram business profiles allow your team to optimize your profile, add contact information and your website into the bio section making it much easier for your audience to interact and connect with you.

To switch over to a business profile, click the setting on your Instagram page:

Scroll down toSwitch to Business Profile:

Flip the switch, and you're done.

Keep your Instagram profile uniform by keeping your photos within one color scheme. Not only does keeping them in this palette make it easier for fans to recognize your photos it creates a more cohesive profile.

From my own experiences, I can tell you that your photo IS important but so is the look of your Instagram feed as a whole. Creating a cohesive feed helps bring the tone of your brand across without having to say a word (literally).

How do you know what type of color scheme to use?

Use the color scheme that is consistent with your brand. That means that you can pull colors from your logo or other branding materials.

You may need to pull out your branding book or talk with your designers to find out what those colors are.

If you don't have your branding developed yet think about the tone that you want your brand to convey. If you're a fashion and style brand use bold bright colors like Instagram user @rclayton:

Her fashion-forward feed is full of bright, electric colors that complement bold fashion choices. Together those colors convey a sense of confidence which is on point with her personal brand.

Like we've already mentioned, consistency in your content is key to a successful Instagram feed. Another way to keep your feed consistent is picking one filter and sticking with it.

If you have a design team at your disposal, you may not even need a filter.

If you do decide to choose a filter the first thing that you need to do is determine the aesthetic of your brand.

Do you want your photos to have more of a grunge feel or a light and airy feel?

Using your branding guide, look for the keywords that describe your brand.

Bundle them into a group of three and experiment with different filters to find the one that you and your team believe best convey's the intended aesthetic.

Hashtags are a big part of Instagram's posts because it allows photos and video content to become searchable on the channel.

Unlike Twitter, your Instagram post has a lot more room to breath, but that doesn't mean you should go hashtag happy on every post.

Too much of something is not always a good thing.

Our research found that 11 is the optimum number of hashtags that you should add to a post to help encourage people to interact with it:

If you're struggling to figure out what types of hashtags to add to your post try a different mix of industry, branded and trending (when applicable) hashtags.

Ask anyone about the best times to post on Instagram, and you'll probably get a variety of answers from 2 in the morning to later in the evening around 5 pm.

What if we told you it was all of them? Active hours for your audience will vary so experiment with your posting times to see when you can garner the most reactions.

Our research suggests trying:

As of February 2017, Instagram added: "Instagram Albums" or the ability to upload more than one photo to a post. Why is adding more than one photo such a game changer?

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40 Social Media Marketing Tips Every Marketer Should Know