Self photograph taken by one own self through a Smartphone or web camera, posted on social media is regarded as Selfie. It is the most fashionable trend on social media today. Selfie fever is spread all over the world, even celebrities who are exposed to cameras all the time could not spare themselves from selfie madness. According to a blog published on The Selfy Store, everyday one million selfies are taken. In 2013, Selfie was declared as word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries in UK and USA. The selfie phenomena has become so much popular these days that we find selfies on social media accounts of everyone from President Barack Obama to tennis player Rafael Nadal to pope Francis. Importance of selfie can also be realized from the fact that some selfies became the most tweeted or posted item on social media. For example, Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar selfie was the most tweeted post of 2014.

The growing popularity of selfie made marketers realized that selfie can act as a great way to spread positive message about a brand on social media and to connect a brand with its customers. Therefore, they suggested that brands should run a social media selfie campaign for increasing customer engagement on their social media accounts.

Today, we find many examples of successful social media selfie campaigns ran by brands. For example AXE, Deodrant ran a selfie campaign in association with peace one day to promote their AXE Peace . It asked it followers to post selfies of couples kissing with hashtag #kissforpeace. Fans of AXE showed their support for Axe campaign by posting 10,000 tweets on Twitter and 8,000 posts on Instagram.

Let’s take another example. Turkish Airlines ran selfie shootout contest on social media and asked its customers to post their selfies to win free airline tickets. Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi were featured in this selfie campaign . This campaign became so much popular that it became the one of the most viral campaigns of travel industry in 2013.

You too can launch a successful social media selfie campaign with the help of tips discussed below.

According to behavioral research, purchasing decisions of people depend on how the product or service will influence their image. If you brand is targeting people with words like slimming, fair complexion and glow then you can tryout a selfie campaign. People want to feel good about themselves and product such as jewelry, clothes, cosmetics, etc help boost self esteem and confidence of people. In short, if your brand or products or services are related to appearance or look such as jewelry, clothes, cosmetics, gym and fashion accessories then social media selfie campaign is ideal for you.

Selfie campaign can help you increase your followers on social media. It can help you increase customer engagement on social media. Decide, when you want to run a social media selfie campaign.

First of all, you should understand your target audience carefully. We know that social media users post selfies for a number of reasons such as for self expression, self acceptance, showing off and for boosting confidence and self esteem. For making your selfie campaign successful, design your campaign in the light of interests of your target audience. Carry out research and monitor trends to understand what will get attention of your followers and will engage them on social media.

Developing a special hashtag for your campaign will help you boost your post reach on social media channels as well as enable you to keep record of number of customers engaging with your brand.

There are number of ways you can run a social media selfie campaign such as:

Run a selfie contest on Facebook or Intagram or Twitter. Ask your followers to take selfie with your products and then post those selfies with contest hashtag and share it with their friends.

Ask your followers to take selfie at your business location and then post with contest hashtag on your social media account. Select best selfie and give winner some reward. This sort of contest is best for local businesses

For getting attention of your customers online, you can develop a selfie App related to your audience and business.

Ask your customers to post a selfie with company hashtag and get discount as a reward.

You can expand your reach and spread awareness about a cause with the help of a selfie campaign

Ask your followers to post selfie with your product or logo for becoming fan of the week.

Brands must make sure that their social media selfie campaign should be full of excitement and fun so that it encourages more and more people to participate.