What exactly is a Social Marketing "Campaign?"

One of the things we're most excited about with our latest update to Roost.com is our new "Campaign Creator."

And when we take people through it, you can almost see the lightbulb go off about how this awesome feature can help a small business owner or professional with too much to do and too little time.

But we'll be the first ones to admit that the notion of Campaigns in Social Marketing is kind of a new concept, and in some ways a counter-intuitive one.  After all, the Social web is all about real-time right?  Aren't campaigns advertising?  How can Social and campaign make sense together?

Well here's how…and we think when you grasp this you will have taken the first step in figuring out how to generate real ROI from your social efforts.

A campaign on Roost is a planned schedule of different types of posts, geared to making sure that you have a regular cadence of messages, of different types…all geared to generate engagement.  And just as importantly it's a plan that you create ahead of time that allows you to get the benefit of social marketing without living in Facebook and Twitter all day long.  Let's face it, you don't just have a day job – you have 5 of them.  So this tool is about helping you be efficient AND generate engagement.

So for example:

• Alex is the GM of a great local restaurant in SF
• He takes 20 minutes on a Sunday night to use Roost's campaign creator to generate and schedule a quality mix of messages to the restaurant's Business Page on Facebook and its Twitter account
• The posts are a mix of things.  One day a mention of that night's specials.  The next a special Happy Hour offer, the next a particularly interesting article about Wine from a food blog.  And so on
• Once Alex has created that campaign.  It just runs on his behalf, allowing him to just react and engage with folks who "Like", share, comment etc as it happens
• Does this take the place of a real time comment about what's going on in the restaurant that night?  Of course not.  It's a way to start the conversation

And the coolest thing about Campaign Creator in our mind is that we've done a ton of the thinking for you in the product itself.

Roost suggests a campaign structure for you (# of posts, times of day, types of posts).  And to save you even more time the Roost Campaign Creator offers you Suggested Content to leverage that is customized for you based on your industry and interests.  And of course, you can always add your own links, feeds, etc.

What all this means is you can do as much customization and thinking as you like, but you can also just run with our default settings, leverage our content suggestions and so on – again, it's all about saving you time!

Give it a try!  It's easy, free and incredibly powerful.

Next up…What are those Roost Circles I keep hearing about?