Behind the Scenes of a Campaign
Behind the Scenes of a Campaign
Mark A. Alvarez II – May 3, 2017
SAN MARCOS, Texas – Contests promoted through social media platforms are an excellent tactic to increase engagement and, ultimately, to drive customers to a business.
Bobcat Promotions, a student-led PR firm at Texas State University, has used a contest strategy to help The Hitch, a food truck park near the Square and the Texas State University campus.
Account executives for The Hitch plan new events seasonally. Recent contests were built around Valentine’s Day and Easter and involved photographs. Who doesn’t want to share a cute photograph, right?
Kaley Hanson, public relations senior, has worked as an account executive on the Hitch account for more than two years. “Whether the campaign is an already established photo contest that we do every year or a brand new one, we take the time to make sure it is up-to-date with what’s current and eliminate any challenges we have had in previous years or that we can foresee,” Hanson said. “The whole goal of our campaigns is to get more people engaged with The Hitch on social media, as well as physically going to The Hitch.”
Hanson has worked with assistants on brainstorming contests that entice community participation and encourage people to eat locally at The Hitch. Kaley Consford, a PR junior, joined the account this year and worked on the Easter Egg Hunt contest.
“When we proposed the idea for an Easter egg hunt to the Bobcat Promotions team, there were a lot of questions about how exactly we’d carry out the event and execute everything properly,” Consford said. “But once the questions were addressed we could go back and revise the campaign. We had to work out some kinks, but this whole campaign was about community engagement and participation. Our primary focus is that we want to get people in San Marcos out to The Hitch and eating locally.”
The Valentine’s Day “14 Days of Love” campaign was so successful the first year, BPR brought it back this spring. It was the first exposure to a campaign for sophomore Katie Stone. And, well, she loved it.
“It was entirely a learning experience.” Stone said. “Communicating with the followers and keeping track of the social engagement is a big part of maintaining the message. The analytics of the event is very important. There is a lot of information to take in especially when you are working from three different platforms.” BPR handles the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account for the Hitch.
All three team members agree that the posting and sharing of images boost engagement. In addition, the use of various hashtags and emojis are equally important, but what really boosts audience is the use of graphics and other visuals.
Hanson also worked on the first “14 Days of Love” and cheered its repeated success. “It is our longest running annual campaign and it always brings in many new followers and engagements,” Hanson said. “A few tactics that we did to improve this is was taping the flier [announcing the campaign] on the tables at The Hitch and we also experimented with boosting/promoting the announcement graphic on Facebook. Our engagement increased significantly, we definitely plan to do this for almost every campaign in the future.”
For more information contact Bobcat Promotions at www.bobcatpromotions.com.
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Mark Alvarez II is a senior public relations student.
Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
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Meetings Every Tuesday in OM 102C
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Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
Join BPR
Meetings Every Tuesday in OM 102C
ck17@txstate.edu
Facebook-f
Instagram
© 2020 Bobcat Promotions
OceanWP Theme by Nick