They couldn’t get Friendlier than their Social-media F.R.I.E.N.D.S. version |Best things in life are FREE! What do you associate with it? Friendship fits in, right? Be it in the real or virtual world. What all do you associate with Social-media that is BEST as well as FREE? Valuable Customer-experience, customer-interaction, and emotional-connections are the best things about online marketing (social media marketing is a subset of online marketing). They permeate directly into the feelings of the audience and eventually catapult brands into the spotlight during all the illustrious days. Check out this number: ‘71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand is likely to recommend it to others’. And it all comes FREE as well! *sigh* Splendid social-media marketing sneezers are rolled-out by the marketing-mavericks on the Friendship Day. From being wild and whacky to great storytelling, brands have taken the ‘friendship concept’ to another edge of being truly remarkable and memorable in their digital stints on this day. Defining – dots of these social media campaigns of Friendship Day Brands boil in the heat of festive -warmth, which in turn also, guarantee the melting of the audience through the kind of engagement that touches the audience-behaviour. Friendship gets overloaded with texts, tweets, snaps, insta-pics, insta-filters, selfies, pins and much spate of this kind. Words, pictures, videos become the LegitScript of communication (communication long or short-distance). Festive joy & wishes get shared on profiles, milestones are published on timelines, and things -of-friends no longer just remain between-the-friends. In a nutshell, as the life passes us by through this date, social-media helps us memorializing our moments-of-friendship. Caveat Is friendship celebrated or just cracked at the altar of these technological ways? Friendship magnified or friendship mitigated? –Let’s save this debate for some other premise– Irrespective of everything, the bigger perspective is in the fact that our lovable brands are being robust on leveraging such parameters, especially during this occasion. Read the crisp cases below to find out how a brand can establish records to increase traffic, social reach, empower audience and boost brand-awareness. Here’s to friendship and some amazing campaigns in the social media engagement space: i) Cadbury is that one brand that has always been outstanding in its marketing endeavors on all occasions. On Friendship Day last year, the brand launched 4 flavors of the chocolate. They also announced a social media contest, which urged the followers to click a ‘Madfie’ with their friends and win the chance to be featured as Cadbury Celebrities. The campaign was a huge success. ii) Indiamart, the well-known online marketplace in the country, shared an album of creative and humorous images showcasing different types of friends we all have. #OfficeWalaFriend was indeed an engaging campaign. iii) Wonderla, the amusement park from South India launched a contest and offered a chance to win prizes by sharing videos of playing pranks on their friends. #RoastYourDost campaign proved to an awesome engaging activity which generated a whopping response. iv) Red FM, India’s most popular radio stations announced a quirky fun to Friendship Day and urged to prank people and got their followers involved by asking them for a ‘Dare’. v) Colors Infinity, organized a contest asking fans to share their ‘Frienfies’ with reasons why their friendship was important and win a chance of getting exciting gift hampers. #Frienfie campaign got really popular with an unimaginable response from the public. vi) Vadilal Ice-creams invited friends to enjoy the special treat of ice-creams that were rolled-out in a different package for the different set of groups. SHOW it and don’t just TELL it Friendship is cool and the cool thing today is all getting loaded in heaps on the Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other siblings of this digital clan. The bouts of craziness are quite sunk in deep amidst the social media savvy showers surrounding us all. Who are we to disagree with this- “Friendship is where the squad is and the squad is all over the Social Media.” Hence, savor the friendship scoop soon and you know it better how and where! Bottom of the blog: this go-to message All relationships are friendships, personal or professional. And in the social media space, the only thing that will ignite your audience is by immersing this beautiful relationship form on social-platforms. No other way is the valid way to delight your loyal FRIENDS, your fans and followers. On a friendly note Do comment and share with us your friendliest choice in terms of social-media campaigns. We would love your friendly gesture☺ Best thing in the last HAPPY FRIENDSHIP DAY, actually do have the HAPPIEST FRIENDSHIP DAY ever! PS: We are happy to help you in doing a friendship-reach to your audience on the behalf of your brand. Hitesh Kothari Has played some key Digital Marketing roles when at IBM-Australia and New Zealand, Infosys, Sonata Software. Also worked with the world's best Digital marketer, Neil Patel as Internet marketing consultant helping startups to billion $ companies with their Digital Marketing. Has worked on 100+ marketing campaigns and a few of them are IBM Australian Open, SAPPHIRE, Oracle Open World, etc. He's currently leading Marketo Labz and giving digital marketing strategies to various companies and individuals alike.