An example of Instagram and Pinterest awareness campaigns

A case study of how a family-run business gets an edge by using the latest social media tools

I love this recent campaign pointed out to me by Pritesh Patel. It shows you don’t have to be a big business to run big campaigns in social media. You just need to think big!

McKay Flooring are a family business established for 40 years. I think they give a great example of how smaller businesses can be creative in using social media marketing to expand their reach.

What caught my interest was the way that they use some of the newer social media marketing platforms like Pinterest and Instagram for competitions. These are all promoted through their blog, which is also a great example of how a specialist blog can act as a social hub for campaigns, while also building the credibility of a company by using testimonials and linking to product categories on the main site.

This is a recent post announcing their Instagram competition:

The competition mechanic is straightforward:

• Offer: A prize draw to win an £100 Amazon Voucher
• Entry: Take a picture of the floor on Instagram (the iPhone and iPad app for easily sharing to Facebook or Twitter)
• Campaign name: A hashtag of #mckayflooring and #mywoodfloor has to be added to post, which helps with branding

The McKay Pinterest competition

McKay Flooring have also been active in using Pinterest - read the Pinterest case study by Ayaan Mohamud on the Pauley Creative blog for more background on this. This is how their profile page Pins look:

“We have found Pinterest has driven a high amount of traffic to our website and blog. Pinterest is like a large catalogue of our products, creative ideas and DIY tips (these do not all have to be about flooring, but finding a common ground with your audience is a must). The great thing about Pinterest is that people can store their interests into different categories and go back and forward to them when needed. Through links on Pinterest we have come across other websites and blogs (which we probably would never have come across before) giving us great content to blog about and generate interest in our company”.

The Pauley case study also advises on different types of content and promotions you can run on Pinterest, here’s my summary.

1. Case studies – demonstrate your expertise is by showing previous work and how you solved a specific problem, perhaps using a customer testimonial video.
2. Sell products – you do this through showcasing products and potentially adding pricing to the Pin description.
3. Develop brand personality - use Pinterest to show company culture, the type of people who work for you, what your brand stands for and simply put a friendly face to your brand.
4. Events/trade shows – if you take part in lots of events and trade shows why not entice your audience with sneak previews of your stand, let them know where you will be and when. .
5. Competitions - Run a contest to encourage visitors to create pins of your projects/products/designs that they like and then choose the finalists and get others to vote for what they like. User generated content is a powerful way to get your audience and involved, encourages them to talk about you and your company and even link to them on other social sites like Twitter.

Let us know of any other small-medium business social media marketing cases you recommend.