Promoting "One, Ten, One Hundred" on Social Media—The Perks of Repurposing

Have you ever been tasked with promoting one of your company’s biggest investments to date on social media? If you asked me two months ago, I would’ve told you, “No way!” but fast-forward to today, and I’m proud to share that I’ve officially run my first large-scale campaign and have lived to tell the tale.

If you’ve been keeping your eye on Wistia lately, then you may have guessed that I’m referring to promoting One, Ten, One Hundred — our new four-part docuseries. For some context, we challenged Sandwich Video to make three ads promoting our webcam and screen-recording tool, Soapbox. They created the ads for three very different price points: one for $1,000, one for $10,000, and one for $100,000. Hence, One, Ten, One Hundred.

Promoting this type of episodic, long-form video was something we’ve never done before here at Wistia. Throughout this process, I learned a ton about cross-promotion, taking creative risks, and experimenting with new tactics. Read on to learn how you can employ some of these tactics in your next big social media campaign!

Keep feeding the content engine

Here at Wistia, we’re really big on content marketing. In other words, our blog is always popping! We love to create content that showcases everything from big product updates and fun company events like Storytelling Night, to helpful tricks we learned in Adobe Premiere and more. So naturally, it made sense for us to start thinking about how we could promote One, Ten, One Hundred with content on the blog.

Whether you’re responsible for setting your blog strategy at your company or just promoting your content on social media, it’s always smart to collaborate closely with the content creators at your company. When it comes to promoting something as big as a video series, you want to ensure that you have fresh content to share on a daily basis. After all, nothing’s worse than checking out a business' social feed only to find that they keep sharing the same link over and over again. Sure, you should promote the project itself (in this case, the series page for One, Ten, One Hundred), but by creating and sharing new, related content on social media, you open up the opportunity for folks to discover your content in new ways.

“When it comes to promoting something as big as a video series, you want to ensure that you have fresh content to share on a daily basis.”

For example, a few months ago our CEO and co-founder Chris Savage penned a piece on why it’s important for companies to invest in creativity. Because One, Ten, One Hundred is all about taking risks, thinking outside the box, and working with what you’ve got, it made sense for us to then promote this content and drive folks back to the bigger campaign with CTAs within the post and on social. Here’s an example of a tweet we shared that connects the blog post to the series itself:

And remember, if you’re not sure what content is coming down the pike or aren’t super familiar with past posts, don’t be afraid to ask your team for their insight! They might make a content connection that you wouldn’t normally make on your own. Plus, getting the team involved can help build excitement around what’s going down on your company’s social media.

Don’t reinvent the wheel (work with what you’ve got!)

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel in order to create a successful social media campaign. Remember that repurposing tip we just shared? Well, it works in other ways, too! Not only can you use fresh content to promote your campaign, but you can also repurpose content that already exists by pulling from your videos, stills, or other design assets that already exist for a particular project.

Lucky for us, we had a lot to work with for One, Ten, One Hundred. (Thanks, team!) The series clocked-in at around an one hour and forty minutes of total viewing time, and was chock-full of interesting stills and pertinent quotes. So naturally, I wanted to use those as much as I could throughout the campaign.

Posting beautifully designed text images on Instagram is a pretty popular, widespread trend — and for good reason! This is a simple way for your team to promote multiple aspects of your brand in one fell swoop. You get to express your brand both visually and verbally. This is not always easy to do, but if you’re going to try it out anywhere, Instagram is the place!

Don’t have a design team? No worries. You can use handy tools like Adobe Express or Canva to bring your quotes to life.

Since this campaign was all about promoting a video series, we also thought it made sense to share some actual clips from the videos themselves. Here’s an example of something we posted on Instagram:

This is essentially just a video version of a pull quote. While your producers are editing your content, encourage them to keep social media top of mind by scouting out some bite-sized, sharable moments that will work well on their own. With some video assets in hand, you’ll easily be able to drum up excitement about your upcoming campaign!

Lean on current events for inspiration

Social media is all about staying current with what’s happening in the world. From Election Day to National Hotdog Day, there’s always something to post about. To get more eyes on your next campaign, try combining your project promotion with current events!

“To get more eyes on your next campaign, try combining your project promotion with current events!”

For instance, we were in the thick of One, Ten, One Hundred promotion when October rolled around. So, to keep the content relevant, we incorporated Halloween into one of our Instagram posts. It might seem obvious, but it was a simple and delightful way to keep the One, Ten, One Hundred promotion relevant without feeling redundant.

If you’ve got Photoshop–and a willing coworker–you could easily make something simple like this happen for your next big social campaign.

We shared these images on Instagram using the “select multiple” feature so viewers could swipe through and see them in sequence! One pumpkin, ten pumpkins, one hundred pumpkins. Now, that’s a lot of pumpkins.

Cross-promote on other social channels

Is anyone else here a big fan of memes? I bet I’m not the only one (I hope)! But just to make sure we’re all on the same page, a meme is an image, video, or set of text that becomes popular and spreads rapidly online. A lot of times, memes are simply a tweet that’s been screenshotted and shared on Instagram or other social channels. The most successful ones make people laugh and allow them to bond over a shared experience. They make people say “I get that!” or “You noticed that too?”

With memes in mind, when promoting One, Ten, One Hundred, I thought it would be interesting to tap into this phenomenon and see if we could engage our audience with some meme-like content! To start, I went through our Twitter account and found tweets from our followers that were funny, relatable, and had to do with One, Ten, One Hundred. I came across a few gems, but one in particular really hit the mark:

For this post, I made sure to pick a tweet that I thought best fit in with our own brand voice and and then posted it on our Instagram. And just like that, voila! Fresh content. Want to hear the real kicker? This post actually ended up performing super well for us — it racked up a total of 174 likes, which is our highest liked picture to date … second to one of Lenny. But really, who can compete with him?

If you’re up for taking a small risk with your content, then you should give this tactic a try for your next campaign. All it takes is an engaged audience member and some dexterity for the screenshot, and you’ll be on your way to making your followers pretty pleased. Plus, showing others in your audience that people are excited about what you’re doing lends credibility to your campaign. Let your fans do the talking for you!

“All it takes is an engaged audience member and some dexterity for the screenshot, and you’ll be on your way to making your followers pretty pleased.”

Go on, get out there!

So there you have it, folks! Some attainable and effective ways to get more out of your next social media campaign. Remember, don’t be afraid to work closely with other folks on your team, repurpose relevant content, and think creatively about how you can convey your message in new ways.

We hope you found these tips helpful and that they kick-start some creative inspiration for you as you think about your next social media initiative. Don’t sweat it — you’ve got this!

Think you’re going to give any of these suggestions a whirl? Have any tips and tricks of your own? Let us know in the comments below!