Social Media Challenges for Brand Awareness: A Complete Guide

In this article, we will explore some of the most eccentric social media marketing campaigns of all time. 

We all know social media is a funny place as it hosts all kinds of creative, witty, beautiful, hard-hitting, emotional, and every other kind of content as we see it today. 

As the barriers between the worlds have reduced to almost nothing thanks to social media, many people have come up with various challenges over the course of years that went absolutely viral for all the right reasons. Click To Tweet

You can call it funny, stupid, awesome, creative, etc.

These challenges have made your feed interesting and have kept you hooked for a little while if not much.

As they say, love it or hate it but you simply can’t ignore it, right?

So we are here with some of the most eccentric social media challenges of all time. 

These few listed below are my favorites. However, before that, let’s understand what social media challenges are. So, let’s begin. 

 

What Are Social Media Challenges?

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Social media is called to be the most effective and significant platform for brand growth. It has broken all the communication barriers and allowed people to communicate effectively and in a seamless manner.

It is a way to engage with the target audiences. The challenges on social media not only help brands to get viral but also help evoke emotions to garner greater engagement. 

Social media challenges with positive emotions create excitement among the people thus encouraging them to participate in it. 

The main motive of such challenges is to encourage participation thus making brands go viral. So, your brand can also organize such challenges to gain greater attrention.

 

 

Are Social Media Challenges Effective in Raising Brand Awareness?

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Yes, social media challenges are a great way to raise brand awareness. 

It makes your target audiences try those challenges and recognize the brand.

For instance, you can take the example of the ice-bucket challenge. This challenge had gone so viral that everyone was talking about it. Till now, this challenge is in the memory of all people. 

Whenever such challenges are initiated by brands, it has a clear-cut motive of generating greater awareness. When your audience understands you well, it makes them choose you over others.

So, conducting these challenges on social media is an awesome technique to raise brand awareness and influence your target audiences.

 

How Can You Run a Social Media Challenge? 4 Steps

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You might have seen numerous posts on social media channels where celebrities take part in viral challenges. This makes your video go viral which encourages all people to try out that particular challenge.

Here are a few steps which will help you run your social media challenge easily and effectively.

 

Create a Catchy Topic

To start with a social media challenge, you need to come up with a catchy topic. It should directly hit the minds of your target audiences.

Remember, a viral challenge topic should address some fundamental concerns. For instance, if it is for entertainment purposes, you should tell your audiences what your brand aims to offer them through these challenges.

 

Incorporate the ‘Ask’ Option

The next step to run a challenge successfully is entailing details of what your customers need to do in the challenge.

This aspect lets your audiences know why they should take part in the challenge. So you must incorporate an ‘ask’ option in your challenge. Also, make it clear what are the benefits of trying these challenges.

 

Keep Your Eye on Emotions

Challenges go far with emotional appeal and help increase virality. There are two types of emotions that make you go viral.

Positive emotion arousal in a challenge makes audiences generate excitement and also amusement which makes it go viral. 

Negative emotion arousal can elicit feelings of anger and anxiety that can even make you go viral in a different manner.

So keep noticing the chord of emotions as it encourages sharing, participation, and virality of any challenge.

 

Invite a Celebrity to Take Part in Your Challenge

Another important step to successfully launch your social media challenge is to invite any popular celebrity and be the face of it. The success of the Ice Bucket challenge is owed to celebrity participation voluntarily. 

Popular personalities like Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and others created videos on this. Also, you can add a call to action to promote it.

This is also an essential step to successfully run a social media challenge.

 

6 Tips for Running Social Media Challenge

Most of the brands these days are engaged in running social media challenges. We have brought a few tips for you to run your social media challenge successfully.

Have a look at the points below.

 

Keep Your Prompts Simple

Simple prompts help your customers to easily understand your challenge. Do not make it descriptive that confuses your audience. 

I am sure that you don’t want to portray yourself as confusing making it hard for people to understand who you are and what you aim to offer. Also, keep your prompts open-minded. It allows creative thinking. 

 

Select Good Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to go viral. So, select some good and effective hashtags that stay in the memory of your audience. 

Hashtags are something that people are going to use to tag their photos and be a part of the challenge. So, use them wisely.

You can choose something unique and easy to remember. You can also use your blog name or brand name in your hashtag. This allows your followers to connect to your brand easily.

 

Interact With Participants

This is the most important tip for successfully running a social media challenge. After all, you are doing all this to garner engagement. So keep interacting with your audiences.

It makes your audiences feel connected to you. Whenever they comment on your challenge, respond actively.

 

Partner With Instagrammers

You can also partner with other popular Instagrammers to kickstart a challenge. Instagram is a very popular social media platform. 

The Younger generation is highly active on this platform and gives you a great chance to increase your popularity.

It will help you gain more followers from the challenge.

 

Invite People Directly to Join Your Challenge Before Starting It

If you want to run your challenge successfully, you can invite people before you start the challenge. You can invite them by sending personalized emails and messages and creating a buzz around them.

You can also offer them giveaways for participating in the challenge. 

 

Tag Other People

Once you are done with uploading your challenge, you can invite all your friends and relatives by tagging them. 

As said, you can also tag celebrities and other content creators to get greater engagements.

 

 

5 Brilliant Social Media Challenges

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge 

 

No social media challenge is complete without the mention of this famous ice bucket challenge that took place in 2014.

Raising awareness for ALS, this simple challenge involved pouring a bucket of ice water over yourself.

It was such a global phenomenon that celebrities as huge as Benedict Cumberbatch took part in it. 

Moreover, it not only raised awareness and funds for people fighting ALS.

It brought the world just a little closer. 

 

The Mannequin Challenge 

Another viral sensation that took social media by storm was this mannequin challenge.

Here, a bunch of people had to remain frozen like a mannequin while a moving camera took their shot.

And there was a piece of music playing that was mostly “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd.

Needless to say, it broke the internet in 2016. And remains one of the most eccentric social media challenges of all time.

 

The Chewbacca Challenge 

This was another masterpiece in the social media challenge world. 

To promote star wars, Disney along with Todd Perelmuter of Bizadmark came up with the Chewbacca challenge where people had to do their best Chewbacca impression. 

Hilarious, funny, and eccentric social media challenge. This one won people VIP passes to Disneyland. 

Win-win, right? 

 

The KIKI Challenge 

Now, this one is a little out there but it can’t be ignored. 

It all started with Drake’s song “In My Feelings” and soon, people were jumping out of a moving car pretending to make a love heart and driving a car.

Sounds crazy, right? Well, not to many people apparently.

It was another viral sensation that took the Internet by storm.

 

The Bottle Flip Challenge

2016 was the year of many amazing social media challenges, this one was another gold that it gave us.

It was simple, sweet, and incredibly awesome.

It involved throwing a plastic bottle filled with liquid up in the air in an attempt to land it upright on the surface. 

Needless to say, it hit social media and everyone wanted to get it right.

Even Ellen Degeneres can you imagine? 

Full points again!

 

Key Takeaway 

So these were some of the most eccentric social media challenges that I personally enjoyed a lot.

As social media impact grows more and more, many more challenges will come in the future. Click To Tweet

Are you ready to be a part of those?

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