What is SELFIE? In simple words “a self-shot photo”.

Enter the age of selfie….

The selfie phenomenon is not something new. People have been taking selfies since ages. However the recognition to the word happened by Myspace in 2005 a big social networking site. In 2009 however, facebook took over myspace traffic and encouraged higher quality pictures. Iphone 4 gave another boost by introducing the front camera phones, where one can control its frame and the ones selfie. In 2011, Instagram released hashtag filters and allowed one to edit the pictures by brightness, color contrast and stuff. Since then the selfie trend has not looked back and has become an official word in oxford dictionary.

Well if something is as popular as a selfie …. How can the marketers not use it as a part of its campaigns?

Intsagram is the home for #selfie and is very popular as it allows users to edit and share their photos, creating works of phone art. We now live in a time where sharing your own photo online is not only common but an accepted pillar of our digital identities.

Brands, celebrities and even charities have been jumping on board the selfie bandwagon. The popularity of the selfie is growing dominance in the world of social media and photo sharing.

Marketers need to think outside the bounds of the traditional advertising relationship to be successful in social media. A selfie campaign has the potential to be a unique and relevant tactic for businesses to encourage their audience to engage with their brand.

So how can you leverage the interest around the selfie in your marketing?

There are many ways to integrate selfie in your campaign. For example, Trade a selfie for a coupon. When customers post a selfie wearing Urban Degree clothing and touting the #urbanselfie hashtag, the South Africa-based fashion brand offers them a $10 off coupon in return, according to Marketing Profs. As part of its selfie campaign, the customer with the most retweeted selfie will win $1,000 shopping spree. The selfie campaign boosted awareness of Urban Degree’s social media presence and had a goal of increasing footfalls to its brick-and-mortar stores.

There are several ways to encourage fans and followers take a selfie with their products and run a contest for the same. People then post these selfies with hashtags which boosts the reach in social media environment. The audience is such that it posts selfies as a means of fun and self-expression. Thus designing campaigns around the fun element that suits the user’s needs, wants and interests, is important for it to be successful.

The main object of the campaign should revolve around people’s interests and also one needs to understand what should be the outcome of such a selfie campaign- is to build more traffic for the website or gain more followers or engaging the existing fans and followers.

A good start would be by first engaging your current followers and engage them to take selfie’s to elicit greater levels of emotional attachment and consumer-cum-financial commitment. Branding campaigns are necessary to build awareness among prospects you haven’t yet touched. If you want your content to be successful on the internet, you need to create a hashtag for your campaign. This will help build a ripple effect for your campaign by increasing the reach of posts on social media channels and help your business see how many users are actually engaging with your product or brand.

Here’s my take on #selfie…

A great way to engage and connect users with your brand and products.