Good content marketing involves the creation of engaging content that your target market finds interesting, useful or entertaining. Ideally, your audience will like the content so much that they’ll share it via social media. The goal of content marketing is to strengthen the bond between your target market and your brand, driving enquiries and sales. The Ice Bucket Challenge may not have been created by a brand, but it’s since gone on to generate an estimated $14 million for the ALS Association. It’s video content that markets the charity – so that counts as content marketing as far as we’re concerned.
The Ice Bucket Challenge showed that social media is a powerful tool for sharing content. Social media was the primary channel through which news of the challenge spread – not TV, film, radio, or email. Social media provides a very public platform for the public and celebrities alike to show their participation in the challenge, and thus publicise their charitable nature.
The Ice Bucket Challenge really began in June 2014. No charity was attached to it. Motocross competitor Jeremy McGrath completed the challenge on June 22nd, challenging three others to complete it or donate $100 to charity. By mid-July, the challenge was performed on the Today show, the popular US morning news and chat show. On July 25th, an ALS charity, Quinn for the Win, posted the ‘rules’ for the challenge on their Facebook group. The founder of the charity, Pat Quinn, challenged another ALS sufferer, Pete Frates, to take part. Frates, a former Boston college baseball player, soon had the Boston community joining in. By August, it was a phenomenon. When it made its way to the UK, Macmillan launched the ‘Macmillan Ice Bucket Challenge,’ using the original hashtag. The Motor Neurone Disease Association in the UK has also got involved.
Clearly no-one owns a hashtag, but there is some unease over the fact that Macmillan adopted the hashtag when the original challenge was first adopted by a motor neurone disease charity. Macmillan is clearly a much larger charity than the MND Association, and certainly gained donations that might otherwise have been given to the MND Association and other, smaller, motor neurone disease charities.
Whatever your view on the situation, it’s clear that hashtags and social media can be very valuable to brands. If you’d like to increase your digital marketing efforts with a mix of content marketing and social media, give Crowdbait a call.