The Power of Facebook Marketing is amazing. Think about it: it’s a social media tool that a gazillion people use daily. Why wouldn’t your brand or company be on there?

That’s like…total.branding.suicide.

Not sure if you checked out my client work page, but i’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m a social media marketing consultant for this company; which means i’m in charge of their online consumer engagement and increasing their revenue through social media interaction.

As such, I spent a lot of my time today researching and brainstorming ideas on how to share creative content and get those “like” numbers up. Then it dawned on me, well actually, it dawned on my supervisor. Photo Contests!

Everyone is sharing their lives via instagram anyway. Why not make it beneficial for both of us?

She came across this great site for Offerpop; which is a third-party fan marketing platform (if you didn’t know, Facebook basically forces you to remove their name from all contesting and giveaways) that will allow you to effectively run viral marketing campaigns. Awesome right?! I think so.

I’ve been reading notes on a few of their past retail campaigns and I came across a case study for one of my favorite national clothing retailers. Forever 21. I’ve recently become a local boutique-hopping chic…yes, I know you care 😉

The national retailer has already created a lot of viral campaigns through Offerpop but this is one that stuck out to me:

From Offerpop’s website: “Forever 21 ran their “Heart2Art Contest” using Offerpop’s Photo Contest app. Young fans submitted t-shirt designs explaining why their school is cool. The winner received $1000 for their school and had their t-shirt available for sale exclusively on forever21.com.”

We all love validation.

The great thing about a viral campaign is simply that…it’s viral. Meaning the hardwork (ie. the power of the ‘like’ ‘RT’ and ‘share’ button) is in the hand of the consumer but the return on investment (ROI) is given strictly to the company.

Have you shared and/or entered any viral campaigns?