The trends and best strategies for social media campaigns seem to change faster than our Facebook feed, but that’s an exciting challenge for us at Clairemont Communications. We’ve received 20 awards over the years in social media –eight Sir Walter Raleigh awards from the Raleigh Public Relations Society and an even dozen InSpire awards from the North Carolina chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (NCPRSA).

The InSpire Social Media awards we’ve received every year since 2011 include four Best in Category or Best in Show awards for one of our first social media clients, Thomasville Furniture. We began managing the company’s Facebook page in July 2010 at a time when social media for business was relatively new, after confirming Facebook’s potential as a customer engagement channel.

Established in 1904, Thomasville Furniture is a leading name in the home furnishings industry. We helped the company honor its long history by visually documenting its milestones with historic photos on its About page.

At the same time, we developed strategies to help younger customers understand Thomasville Furniture as a fashionable brand as well as a venerable one. Videos featuring younger actors and a more relaxed feel, and creative content about interior design increased the company’s 18 to 34-year old Facebook fans from 20 percent to 30 percent of the total fan base.

Our work with Thomasville Furniture exemplifies the passion that helped start Clairemont Communications — developing strategies that use both traditional and emerging forms of communications. One campaign for the company and its sister company Drexel Heritage combined local media and trade magazines with blog posts and Facebook content to boost brand recognition among consumers.

At Clairemont, we stay on top of new social media tools and their potential to help our clients. In 2015 we built and managed a customer application using the social engagement platform Shoutlet to host a special giveaway promotion for Thomasville. The company asked us to help it build brand awareness during its annual Memorial Day Sale; the resulting giveaway campaign increased its Facebook fan count by nearly 11,000 likes, created at least one million total daily impressions, and captured more than 100,000 new consumer leads.

A key to using social media effectively is understanding that it is not a broadcast medium; success comes from creating interaction and active engagement. We had confidence in our Memorial Day campaign because our previous experience managing Thomasville’s Facebook page had shown giveaways to be effective traffic-driving tools. In 2011 we promoted special giveaways throughout the year to build and sustain fan engagement. We also designed our interior design posts to get fans talking about their own design ideas. As a result, weekly interactions increased 155 percent, and the total Facebook fan base increased almost 178 percent from the previous year.

Since our work with Thomasville in Clairemont’s early history, we have had the pleasure to work with several other clients to develop social media strategies and support the day-to-day management of social media tactics. Examples of other client campaigns and our thoughts on emerging digital communications tools can be found on our blog under the social media category.

Maybe you love social media as much as we do. Or maybe keeping up with its  constant evolution feels daunting or too time-consuming. Either way, we’d love to help you put social media to work for your business! Email me at d@clairemontcommunications.com to schedule a call.