The Long Tail of Social Media PR
In PR 2.0, you don’t have to push product placement on cooking shows. You don’t even have to woo influential mom bloggers. No, social media success can be found further down the long tail of content creation.
In the depths of the Internet, there exists an active community of coupon blogs and message boards. Many of these sites draw niche audiences in the dozens or hundreds rather than thousands. However, because of their size (or lack thereof), coupon bloggers are easy to approach and eager to distribute your content. No fancy PR pitch or relationship-building required.
In aggregate, bloggers can drive considerable traffic to a web property featuring a coupon giveaway. $1 OFF savings and buy one get one free offers (BOGOs) are tremendously popular.
Recently, El Monterey frozen Mexican food brand, kicked off a Cinco de Mayo-inspired Facebook promotion with a long tail PR push into the coupon blogosphere.
The “Save on Cinco” campaign asked Facebook fans to share their family savings tips within a branded, game-like Facebook app. Other fans interacted with savings tips (by rating, commenting and sharing) to earn points redeemable for BOGOs, branded merchandise and other prizes.
The company’s objectives were threefold:
- Increase fan count and engagement on Facebook
- Raise awareness of their brand leading up to Cinco de Mayo
- Reinforce market perception as value- and family-oriented brand
The promotion was supported by a low-intensity PR push to key coupon bloggers via Twitter and e-mail. The word spread rapidly from blog to blog and from forum to forum.
In 48 hours, the brand’s fan page grew by 1,500+ fans and hundreds of coupons were distributed based solely on coupon blogger outreach and virality components within the application itself. This was achieved after only a few hours of searching for coupon blogs and sending out a quick mass email.
So, when you’re promoting your next big event or new product, don’t forget about the little guys because they deliver BIG results.
View more metrics and learn more about this Facebook campaign on the Bulbstorm blog.
