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20 Best Social Media Marketing Case Study Examples

How would you like to read the best social media marketing case studies ever published?

More importantly, how would you like to copy the best practices in social media marketing that are based on real-world examples and not just theory?

Below, you’ll find a list of the top 20 social media case study examples along with the results and key findings. By studying these social media marketing studies and applying the lessons learned on your own accounts, you can hopefully achieve similar results.

Table of Contents

Social Media Case Study Examples

793,500+ impressions for semrush on twitter  – walker sands social media case study.

The case study shows how Walker Sands implemented a premium Twitter microcontent program for Semrush, a global leader in digital marketing software. Semrush needed a strategic social media marketing partner to help distinguish its brand from competitors, drive a higher engagement rate among its target audience, and build brand loyalty. In this case study, you’ll find out how the social strategy focused on three things: using humor, embedding the brand in trending conversations, and focusing on the audience’s interests over marketing messages. The result was an increase of more than 793,500 impressions, 34,800 engagements, and a 4.4% average engagement rate.

Viral Oreo Super Bowl Tweet  – Social Media Case Study

This is a popular case study to learn valuable insights for B2C marketing. During Super Bowl XLVII, the lights went out in the football stadium and the Oreo brand went viral with a single tweet that said “Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark.” Read the historical account of that famous social media marketing moment from the people who lived through it so you can gather ideas on how to be better prepared for future social media campaigns that you can take advantage of in real-time.

Facebook Posting Strategy That Lead to 3X Reach & Engagement  – Buffer Social Media Case Study

In this social media case study example, you’ll find out how Buffer cut its Facebook posting frequency by 50% but increased the average weekly reach and engagement by 3X. Hint: The strategy had to do with creating fewer, better-quality posts, that were aimed at gaining higher engagement.

Achieving a 9 Million Audience by Automating Pinterest SEO  – Social Media Case Study

This is a good social media marketing case study for marketers who use Pinterest. Discover how Chillital went from 0 to 9 million engaged audience members and 268 million impressions. You’ll learn about the step-by-step research process of finding where your audience lives and breathes content, get a detailed analysis of how the author used Pinterest to generate brand awareness, and learn about using community-driven content promotion to scale social media results.

5X Increase In App Installs from TikTok  – Bumble Social Media Case Study

With the use of TikTok on the rise, social media case studies are now being shared about how to get the most value out of marketing on this platform. This one, in particular, is good to read because it explains how Bumble, a dating app, used TikTok more effectively by following the mantra, “Don’t Make Ads, Make TikToks”. This case study in social media marketing resulted in a 5X increase in app installs and a 64% decrease in cost-per-registration.

330% Increase In Reach for the Make a Wish Foundation – Disney Social Media Case Study

Check out this case study to find out how the Make-A-Wish Foundation increased its social media reach, audience, and engagement by partnering with Disney in a Share Your Ears campaign. The strategy was simple: ask people to take a photo of themselves wearing Mickey Mouse ears, post it on social media with the hashtag #ShareYouEars, and a $5 donation would be made to Make-A-Wish. The results were unbelievable with over 1.7 million posted photos and 420 million social media impressions. This led to a 15% audience increase on Facebook and a 13% audience increase on Instagram with a total increase of 330% in social media reach and a 554% increase in engagement during the campaign.

How 3 Schools Used Social Media Advertising to Increase Website Traffic & Applications – Social Media Case Study

This example includes three of the best social media case studies from Finalsite, a marketing agency for educational institutions. It shows the power of social media advertising to increase website traffic and enrollment. One case study, in particular, shows how a limited budget of $350 per month increased website sessions by 515%, more than 2,200 clicks on the apply button for a study abroad application, 2,419 views on the request information page, and 575 views on the application process page.

Client Case Studies – LYFE Marketing Social Media Case Study

LYFE Marketing is a social media management company that helps clients gain new customers, generate sales, and increase brand exposure online. This page includes several of its top social media marketing case studies along with the approach and key results from each campaign. It’s packed with screenshots of the social media posts and engagement metrics so you can understand how each strategy worked for success, and get inspiration for your own campaigns.

3X Leads for a Local Business – Vertex Marketing Social Media Case Study

This is a good case study about finding the right balance between organic reach with social media posts and paid reach with social media marketing ads. You’ll find out how Vertex Marketing helped a local kitchen and bath remodeling business increase the number of leads by 3X. As for the return on investment (ROI) for this campaign, each lead for the client was worth about $10,000. The result was 6,628 audience reach, $12.43 average cost per conversion, and 18 conversions.

235% Increase In Conversions with Facebook Ads Funnel – Marketing 360 Social Media Case Study

This is one of Marketing 360’s case study examples that demonstrates the effectiveness of a Facebook ads sales funnel for B2B marketing. An ads funnel is a series of social media advertisements that target a specific audience at each stage of the buyer’s journey. By mapping out the buyer’s journey and creating a social media marketing ad campaign for each stage, you can guide new leads through the sales funnel and turn them into paying customers. This case study resulted in a 235% increase in conversions for a truck lift manufacturer.

15% Increase In Social Media Followers In 6 Months – Hootsuite Social Media Case Study

This is one of the best social media marketing case studies available online for businesses in the hospitality industry. Find out how Meliá Hotels International incorporated social media directly into its business model, both as a channel for client communication and as a platform to listen and learn about client needs and preferences. As a result, Meliá Hotel’s social media following grew from 5 million to 6 million in six months; an increase of more than 15%.

The Impact of Social Signals On SEO – Fat Stacks Social Media Case Study

This is a good case study for understanding the effect social media can have on SEO. By building links for a web page on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc, the rankings for long tail keywords improved in Google’s search engine.

96 Link Clicks for a Vacation Rental – Maria Peagler Social Media Case Study

As the title of this social media case study example suggests, you’ll learn how Maria Peagler helped a vacation rental get 96 clicks out of 3,274 audience reach on a single Facebook ad; about a 2.9% click-through rate (CTR). What’s most important about this B2C example is those clicks were of the highest quality the client could receive because Maria dug into the analytics to find out the best time during the day to post the ad and the perfect age groups to target while also using specific language to only drive clicks that would more likely convert.

Vienna Tourist Board Uses an Instagram Wall to Attract Tourists – Walls.io Social Media Case Study

Inside this case study, you’ll find out how the City of Vienna uses a simple social media content aggregator to display its Instagram feed on the website. This basic marketing strategy harnesses the power of user-generated content to gain more followers and keep in touch with previous visitors to increase brand awareness and repeat visits.

Complete Instagram Marketing Strategy for Sixthreezero – Vulpine Interactive Social Media Case Study

This is an in-depth case study on social media marketing with Instagram. You’ll discover how Vulpine Interactive was able to turn an existing, unmanaged account into a strong company asset for Sixthreezero, a bicycling company that uses ecommerce to drive sales. There was a lot of strategy and planning that went into growing the account by 39%, increasing website traffic from Instagram by over 300%, and achieving 77,659 total engagements. Inside, you’ll get the complete social strategy, tactics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and results

Twitter Marketing Success Stories – Social Media Case Study

If you’re looking for social media case study examples for Twitter using both organic and paid ads, then this page has everything you need. It includes Twitter’s top marketing success stories for you to get new ideas for your own B2C and B2B marketing campaigns.

How 3 Big Brands Use Pinterest for Marketing – SmartInsights Social Media Case Study

This is a case study page by SmartInsights with an overview of how 3 big brands use Pinterest for marketing. Although it’s a quick read, you can learn some valuable tactics that Nordstrom, Sephora, and Petplan are using to market their brands on this social media platform.

25+ TikTok Social Campaign Results – Chatdesk Social Media Case Study

If you’re looking for the best social media case studies for TikTok, then this list by Chatdesk is an excellent resource. It includes more than 25 examples from big brands like Starbucks, Redbull, Spikeball, Crocs, Guess Jeans, and Gym Shark. Give it a read to find out exactly how these brands use TikTok effectively to scale their businesses.

Reddit for Business: Meet Your Maker – Social Media Case Study

Want to learn how to use Reddit to market your business online? This new social media marketing case study page by Reddit called “Meet Your Maker” showcases the people behind some of the most innovative and creative brand activations on our platform. Examples include campaigns by Adobe, Capcom, and noosa Yoghurt.

How Boston University Uses Snapchat to Engage with Students – Social Media Case Study

With more than 75% of college students using Snapchat on a daily basis, it became clear that Boston University had to make this platform a primary marketing channel. This social media case study outlines all of the top strategies Boston University uses to connect with prospective and current students.

Now, if you’re looking for more digital marketing ideas, then make sure to check out these other related guides:  SEO case studies with data on improving organic search engine optimization, PPC case studies  for paid search examples, email marketing case studies , affiliate marketing case studies , content marketing case studies , and general digital marketing case studies .

What Is a Social Media Case Study?

A social media case study is an in-depth study of social media marketing in a real-world context. It can focus on one social media tactic or a group of social media strategies to find out what works in social media marketing to promote a product or service.

Are Case Studies Good for Social Media Marketing?

Case studies are good for social media because you can learn about how to do social media marketing in an effective way. Instead of just studying the theory of social media, you can learn from real examples that applied social media marketing methods to achieve success.

Summary for Social Media Marketing Case Studies

I hope you enjoyed this list of the best social media marketing case study examples that are based on real-world results and not just theory.

As you discovered, the social media case studies above demonstrated many different ways to perform well on social platforms. By studying the key findings from these case study examples, and applying the methods learned to your own accounts, you can hopefully achieve the same positive outcome. New social media case studies are being published every month and I’ll continue to update this list as they become available. So keep checking back to read the current sources of information on social media.

Top 3 Social Media Case Studies in 2024

Discover three successful social media case studies from top brands and learn how to create one. Benefit from their strategies, and mistakes to assure success of your next campaign.

Social Media Case Study 1: Starbucks

Starbucks in numbers.

Key Takeaways

Social Media Case Study 2: Ogilvy & Mather

Ogilvy & mather in numbers.

Social Media Case Study 3: PewDiePie

Pewdiepie in numbers.

How to Write a Social Media Marketing Case Study

Building your brag book.

• Pick Your Perfect Project:  Did a specific social media campaign drive a surge in sales? Highlight a product launch that went viral. Choose a project with impressive results you can showcase.
• DIY Interview:  Don’t have a fancy marketing team? No worries! Record yourself talking about your challenges, goals, and the strategies that made a difference.
• Data Dive:  Track down social media analytics! Look for growth in followers, website traffic driven by social media, or engagement metrics that show your efforts are working.

Crafting Your Case Study

• Headline Hunt:  Grab attention with a clear and concise headline. Mention your business name and a key achievement (e.g., “From 100 to 10,000 Followers: How We Grew Our Bakery’s Social Buzz”).
• Subheading Scoop:  Briefly summarize your success story in a subheading, piquing the reader’s interest and highlighting key takeaways.
• The Business Struggle:  Be honest about the challenges you faced before tackling social media. This will build trust and allow other small businesses to connect.
• DIY Social Strategies:  Share the social media tactics you used, such as engaging content formats, community-building strategies, or influencer collaborations.
• Numbers Don’t Lie:  Integrate data and visuals to support your story. Include charts showcasing follower growth or screenshots of top-performing posts.
• Simple & Straightforward:  Use clear, concise language that’s easy to understand. Bullet points and short paragraphs make your case study digestible and showcase your professionalism.

Frequently Asked Questions

🌟 How do I start a social media campaign idea?

Here’s how you can start a social media campaign:

• Finalize your campaign goals
• Brainstorm personas
• Pick a social media channel
• Research your competitors and audience
• Finalize an idea that’s in trend
• Promote the campaign
• Start the campaign
• Track the performance

🌟 What are the different types of social media campaigns?

Different types of social media campaigns are:

• Influencer Campaigns
• Hashtag Challenges

🌟 Why is social media campaign important?

Social media campaigns have various benefits:

• Boost traffic
• Better Conversions
• Cost-effective Marketing
• Lead Generation
• PR & Branding
• Loyal Followers

🌟 What are some of the best social media campaign tools?

Some of the best social media campaign tools are:

• SocialPilot

🌟 What are the top social media sites?

The top social media sites are:

About the Author

Sparsh Sadhu

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How to write a social media case study (with template)

Written by by Jenn Chen

Published on  October 10, 2019

Reading time  8 minutes

You’ve got a good number of social media clients under your belt and you feel fairly confident in your own service or product content marketing strategy. To attract new clients, you’ll tell them how you’ve tripled someone else’s engagement rates but how do they know this is true? Enter the case study.

Social media case studies are often used as part of a sales funnel: the potential client sees themselves in the case study and signs up because they want the same or better results. At Sprout, we use this strategy with our own case studies highlighting our customer’s successes.

Writing and publishing case studies is time intensive but straight forward. This guide will walk through how to create a social media case study for your business and highlight some examples.

What is a social media case study?

A case study is basically a long testimonial or review. Case studies commonly highlight what a business has achieved by using a social media service or strategy, and they illustrate how your company’s offerings help clients in a specific situation. Some case studies are written just to examine how a problem was solved or performance was improved from a general perspective. For this guide, we’ll be examining case studies that are focused on highlighting a company’s own products and services.

Case studies come in all content formats: long-form article, downloadable PDF, video and infographic. A single case study can be recycled into different formats as long as the information is still relevant.

At their core, case studies serve to inform a current or potential customer about a real-life scenario where your service or product was applied. There’s often a set date range for the campaign and accompanying, real-life statistics. The idea is to help the reader get a clearer understanding of how to use your product and why it could help.

Broad selling points like “our service will cut down your response time” are nice but a sentence like “After three months of using the software for responses, the company decreased their response time by 52%” works even better. It’s no longer a dream that you’ll help them decrease the response time because you already have with another company.

So now that you understand what a case study is, let’s get started on how to create one that’s effective and will help attract new clients.

How to write a social marketing case study

Writing an effective case study is all about the prep work. You’ve got to get all of the questions and set up ready so you can minimize lots of back and forth between you and the client.

1. Prepare your questions

Depending on how the case study will be presented and how familiar you are with the client to be featured, you may want to send some preliminary questions before the interview. It’s important to not only get permission from the company to use their logo, quotes and graphs but also to make sure they know they’ll be going into a public case study.

Your preliminary questions should cover background information about the company and ask about campaigns they are interested in discussing. Be sure to also identify which of your products and services they used. You can go into the details in the interview.

Once you receive the preliminary answers back, it’s time to prepare your questions for the interview. This is where you’ll get more information about how they used your products and how they contributed to the campaign’s success.

2. Interview

When you conduct your interview, think ahead on how you want it to be done. Whether it’s a phone call, video meeting or in-person meeting, you want to make sure it’s recorded. You can use tools like Google Meet, Zoom or UberConference to host and record calls (with your client’s permission, of course). This ensures that your quotes are accurate and you can play it back in case you miss any information. Tip: test out your recording device and process before the interview. You don’t want to go through the interview only to find out the recording didn’t save.

Ask open-ended questions to invite good quotes. You may need to use follow-up questions if the answers are too vague. Here are some examples.

• Explain how you use (your product or service) in general and for the campaign. Please name specific features.
• Describe how the feature helped your campaign achieve success.
• What were the campaign outcomes?
• What did you learn from the campaign?

Since we’re focused on creating a social media case study in this case, you can dive more deeply into social strategies and tactics too:

• Tell me about your approach to social media. How has it changed over time, if at all? What role does it play for the organization? How do you use it? What are you hoping to achieve?
• Are there specific social channels you prioritize? If so, why?
• How do you make sure your social efforts are reaching the right audience?
• What specific challenges do organizations like yours face when it comes to social?
• How do you measure the ROI of using social ? Are there certain outcomes that prove the value of social for your organization? What metrics are you using to determine how effective social is for you?

As the conversation continues, you can ask more leading questions if you need to to make sure you get quotes that tie these strategic insights directly back to the services, products or strategies your company has delivered to the client to help them achieve success. Here are just a couple of examples.

• Are there specific features that stick out to you as particularly helpful or especially beneficial for you and your objectives?
• How are you using (product/service) to support your social strategy? What’s a typical day like for your team using it?

The above quote was inserted into the Sprout Lake Metroparks case study . It’s an example of identifying a quote from an interview that helps make the impact of the product tangible in a client’s day to day.

At the end of the interview, be sure to thank the company and request relevant assets.

Afterwards, you may want to transcribe the interview to increase the ease of reviewing the material and writing the case study. You can DIY or use a paid service like Rev to speed up this part of the process.

3. Request assets and graphics

This is another important prep step because you want to make sure you get everything you need out of one request and avoid back and forth that takes up both you and your customer’s time. Be very clear on what you need and the file formats you need them in.

Some common assets include:

• Logo in .png format
• Logo guidelines so you know how to use them correctly
• Links to social media posts that were used during the campaign
• Headshots of people you interviewed
• Social media analytics reports. Make sure you name them and provide the requested date range, so that if you’re using a tool like Sprout, clients know which one to export.

4. Write the copy

Now that the information has been collected, it’s time to dissect it all and assemble it. At the end of this guide, we have an example outline template for you to follow. When writing a case study, you want to write to the audience that you’re trying to attract . In this case, it’ll be a potential customer that’s similar to the one you’re highlighting.

Use a mix of sentences and bullet points to attract different kinds of readers. The tone should be uplifting because you’re highlighting a success story. When identifying quotes to use, remove any fillers (“um”) and cut out unnecessary info.

5. Pay attention to formatting

And finally, depending on the content type, enlist the help of a graphic designer to make it look presentable. You may also want to include call-to-action buttons or links inside of your article. If you offer free trials, case studies are a great place to promote them.

Social media case study template

Writing a case study is a lot like writing a story or presenting a research paper (but less dry). This is a general outline to follow but you are welcome to enhance to fit your needs.

Headline Attention-grabbing and effective. Example: “ How Benefit turns cosmetics into connection using Sprout Social ” Summary A few sentences long with a basic overview of the brand’s story. Give the who, what, where, why and how. Which service and/or product did they use? Introduce the company Give background on who you’re highlighting. Include pertinent information like how big their social media team is, information about who you interviewed and how they run their social media. Describe the problem or campaign What were they trying to solve? Why was this a problem for them? What were the goals of the campaign? Present the solution and end results Describe what was done to achieve success. Include relevant social media statistics (graphics are encouraged). Conclusion Wrap it up with a reflection from the company spokesperson. How did they think the campaign went? What would they change to build on this success for the future? How did using the service compare to other services used in a similar situation?

Case studies are essential marketing and sales tools for any business that offer robust services or products. They help the customer reading them to picture their own company using the product in a similar fashion. Like a testimonial, words from the case study’s company carry more weight than sales points from the company.

When creating your first case study, keep in mind that preparation is the key to success. You want to find a company that is more than happy to sing your praises and share details about their social media campaign.

Once you’ve started developing case studies, find out the best ways to promote them alongside all your other content with our free social media content mix tool .

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How to Write a Social Media Case Study: A Handy Template for Agencies

When you’re talking to prospective clients during the sales process, they may want to see proof that you can achieve the results you’re promising them. So why not show them an example of your past achievements?

A social media marketing case study that’s full of persuasive data and client quotes is the perfect way to demonstrate the success customers can expect if they enlist your services.

Though it may take some time to produce, a well-put-together case study is worth the effort. In this article, we’ll explain how to create a social media success story, with some key things to include. And to help you get started, we’ll provide you with an example based on one of our own case studies.

Using quintly, you can automate the whole process of social media data collection , and use the data you’ve collected to create compelling marketing reports and case studies. Learn more about how to collect and analyze your clients’ social media data in a single platform.

What is a social media case study?

A social media case study is an in-depth exploration of one of your biggest client success stories. It describes how you helped them solve their problems and reach their goals.

Often, case studies focus on a specific campaign designed to achieve a certain result. Perhaps your clients wanted to improve ROI on social media by 20%. Or, maybe they were struggling to make an impact on Facebook and looking to improve performance on that channel.

The case study should be based on conversations with your clients and include lots of quotes from them throughout. It should also include evidence and data to back up the claims.

You can publish case studies on your company’s website or blog, and share them with leads as part of your sales funnel.

How to write a social media success story

A customer success story must be relatable, persuasive, and interesting enough to make sure that prospective leads will actually read it. Every marketing case study is different and will follow your client’s unique business and story. While there’s no one-size fits-all approach, there are some elements we think are important to include. If you’re not sure where to begin, here’s a few ideas to get you started.

1. Reach out to your client

First, you need to ask the right clients to participate in your case study. Choose a company that came to you with a specific problem or goal, and with your help has been able to overcome challenges and achieve great results.

Ideally, the featured business should be similar to the ideal clients you are hoping to attract , so that potential clients can relate to their problems and desires.

You’ll need to reach out and make sure they’re happy for you to feature them in the case study, and don’t mind investing some of their time. It may take a while for all the decision-makers to agree and sign off on the project, so allow plenty of time for this process. Once you have their agreement, you can start preparing to interview them.

2. Conduct an interview for your case study

The client interview is one of the most important steps because their feedback will become the backbone of the case study. 

You could send your client over a list of questions and ask them to respond by email. However, it’s better to set up a conversation with one or two representatives from the company , either by phone or video call, so you can have a more natural conversation and get deeper insights.

It’s important that you don’t go into a client interview cold. Being prepared means doing your research so that you won’t waste your or your client’s time.

Before the call, send over your questions so that they can start thinking about their answers. You should also request any assets or information you might need for the case study, such as the company logo and images you’ll want to use.

Ask lots of open-ended questions that elicit detailed responses. Try to cover every angle so you won’t have to go back and forth later for further clarification.

Here are a few example questions:

• Why does social media matter for your brand?
• What were your biggest challenges regarding social media marketing?
• How have our services helped you overcome those challenges?
• What’s changed in your social media and marketing strategy since we began working together?

Check that it’s ok to record the call so you can focus on the conversation and not have to worry about taking notes. A transcription software such as Otter.ai (available with a free plan) can help you record audio and transcribe it.

3. Compile data from social media analytics

Along with customer quotes, backing up your good work with social media data will go a long way. 

When it comes to persuading new clients that you’ve got what it takes to help them overcome their challenges and reach their objectives, there’s nothing more convincing than hard data.

It shows that your past campaigns have objectively performed well, and you’re not just interpreting your results as positive. And, it builds trust with prospective customers because it shows that you’re committed to tracking your own progress and keeping yourself accountable. 

Graphs and screenshots also help to make your case study more engaging. You can use them to break up big chunks of text with visuals.

Select the most eye-catching and impressive metrics to include in your case study. If you are using a social media platform such as quintly, you can take screenshots from your dashboards to illustrate the points you’re talking about.

You can include some data comparing your client’s performance with their competitors. 

For example, the graph below shows that even though Barcelona FC and Real Madrid shared roughly the same number of posts on Facebook in the selected period, the Catalan football club had a higher Interaction Rate than its rival:

You can also contrast the client’s current numbers against past results to show the improvement. 

For example, the following graphs show a month-to-month increase in FC Barcelona’s Interaction Rate on Instagram. 

Retrieving high-quality data and presenting it in an easy-to-understand format is essential for creating an effective case study. And, it can shape the way your case study is going to look, depending on what specific data points you decide to focus on. So make sure you have all the necessary metrics and dashboards set up before you begin writing your content. 

4. Write your case study

When you’ve got your client’s responses to your questions and you’ve picked out some key data points to include, it’s time to focus on the content of your case study.

To write an engaging case study, you must first grab the reader’s attention with a great headline that’s brief and clear. It can also mention the company name and a specific result they achieved.

Your headline could be something like: “Company A achieves X% increase in social media conversions with help from Y campaign”.

As a subheading, summarize the contents of the case study in a single sentence so that even those who don’t read the full article will get an idea of what you achieved.

Format your case study as a story with your customer  as the protagonist. This can help to grab the reader’s attention and take them on a journey with you.

When telling the story, remember to: 

• Describe where they began – the problems they were facing and the goals they wanted to achieve.
• Explain what tactics you used to help them, and why you decided on this strategy.
• Talk about how these tactics began to improve their results and bring them closer to hitting their social media KPIs and increasing ROI.
• Keep the focus on your customer , using their own words to describe the situation.

Style and formatting matter . Your case study should be informative yet easy-to-read. So use conversational language and make sure the tone of voice is in keeping with your brand and appealing to your target customer.

Bullet points, short paragraphs, and images are good to break up the text. Make sure quotes and impressive statistics stand out, and cut down unnecessary words from quotes to keep them on-topic.

Case study example

At quintly, we use case studies to highlight the outstanding results that our customers have achieved. 

For inspiration, you can read our social media case study on Benefit Cosmetics and how they increased their engagement by 50% using our platform.

Let’s go through this case study step by step so you can use it for creating your own.

1. Write a headline and a summary

The headline must attract people’s attention straight away. We did this by mentioning the company name, and a specific result achieved: 50% increase in engagement.

We’ve then summarized the case study in one sentence providing a key takeaway of what our client was able to achieve.

2. Provide background on the company

Who is your client? What do they do, and who is their target customer? Giving some background on your client will help readers relate to them.

Here, you can see that we provide some basic stats relating to the company and what the brand believes in.

3. Highlight key results

Select a few of your most impressive metrics and make them stand out. We’ve chosen three metrics here that clearly demonstrate the success of our campaign.

4. Describe the problem or challenge

What wasn’t working well for your client before they contracted your services?

In our case study, we used quotes from Toto Haba, Senior Vice President of Global Digital at Benefit to highlight the critical need for the company to produce great content and engage its audience through social channels.

We explained the problems they were facing, and how using quintly helped them overcome them.

In your case, it could be that your clients don’t have enough expertise in data tracking to effectively analyze their social media campaigns and create new strategies.

There may be various ways in which you've helped your client get better results, so don’t be afraid to talk about them here, using direct quotes as much as possible.

5. Conclusion

You can close your report by summarizing once again the benefit that your clients has achieved. 

Or, you can use another quote from your client’s team, as we have done in our case study:

Collect and track data for your success stories

Collecting and analyzing data for case studies doesn’t have to be a hassle.

With quintly, you can automate the whole process and access a wealth of high-quality metrics and dashboards. 

Our tailor-made analytics solution for agencies can help you get amazing results for your clients on social media and have everything you need to put together your client testimonials. 

So start automating your social media analytics now!

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28 Case Study Examples Every Marketer Should See

Published: March 08, 2023

Putting together a compelling case study is one of the most powerful strategies for showcasing your product and attracting future customers. But it's not easy to create case studies that your audience can’t wait to read.

In this post, we’ll go over the definition of a case study and the best examples to inspire you.

What is a case study?

A case study is a detailed story of something your company did. It includes a beginning — often discussing a conflict, an explanation of what happened next, and a resolution that explains how the company solved or improved on something.

A case study proves how your product has helped other companies by demonstrating real-life results. Not only that, but marketing case studies with solutions typically contain quotes from the customer. This means that they’re not just ads where you praise your own product. Rather, other companies are praising your company — and there’s no stronger marketing material than a verbal recommendation or testimonial. A great case study is also filled with research and stats to back up points made about a project's results.

There are myriad ways to use case studies in your marketing strategy . From featuring them on your website to including them in a sales presentation, a case study is a strong, persuasive tool that shows customers why they should work with you — straight from another customer. Writing one from scratch is hard, though, which is why we’ve created a collection of case study templates for you to get started.

Fill out the form below to access the free case study templates.

Free Case Study Templates

Showcase your company's success using these three free case study templates.

• Data-Driven Case Study Template
• Product-Specific Case Study Template
• General Case Study Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

There’s no better way to generate more leads than by writing case studies . But without case study examples to draw inspiration from, it can be difficult to write impactful studies that convince visitors to submit a form.

Marketing Case Study Examples

To help you create an attractive and high-converting case study, we've put together a list of some of our favorites. This list includes famous case studies in marketing, technology, and business.

These studies can show you how to frame your company offers in a way that is both meaningful and useful to your audience. So, take a look, and let these examples inspire your next brilliant case study design.

These marketing case studies with solutions show the value proposition of each product. They also show how each company benefited in both the short and long term using quantitative data. In other words, you don’t get just nice statements, like "This company helped us a lot." You see actual change within the firm through numbers and figures.

You can put your learnings into action with HubSpot's Free Case Study Templates . Available as custom designs and text-based documents, you can upload these templates to your CMS or send them to prospects as you see fit.

1. " How Handled Scaled from Zero to 121 Locations with the Help of HubSpot ," by HubSpot

What's interesting about this case study is the way it leads with the customer. That reflects a major HubSpot cornerstone, which is to always solve for the customer first. The copy leads with a brief description of why the CEO of Handled founded the company and why he thought Handled could benefit from adopting a CRM. The case study also opens up with one key data point about Handled’s success using HubSpot, namely that it grew to 121 locations.

Notice that this case study uses mixed media. Yes, there is a short video, but it's elaborated upon in the other text on the page. So while your case studies can use one or the other, don't be afraid to combine written copy with visuals to emphasize the project's success.

Key Learnings from the HubSpot Case Study Example

• Give the case study a personal touch by focusing on the CEO rather than the company itself.
• Use multimedia to engage website visitors as they read the case study.

2. " The Whole Package ," by IDEO

Here's a design company that knows how to lead with simplicity in its case studies. As soon as the visitor arrives at the page, they’re greeted with a big, bold photo and the title of the case study — which just so happens to summarize how IDEO helped its client. It summarizes the case study in three snippets: The challenge, the impact, and the outcome.

Immediately, IDEO communicates its impact — the company partnered with H&M to remove plastic from its packaging — but it doesn't stop there. As the user scrolls down, the challenge, impact, and progress are elaborated upon with comprehensive (but not overwhelming) copy that outlines what that process looked like, replete with quotes and intriguing visuals.

Key Learnings from the IDEO Case Study Example

• Split up the takeaways of your case studies into bite-sized sections.
• Always use visuals and images to enrich the case study experience, especially if it’s a comprehensive case study.

3. " Rozum Robotics intensifies its PR game with Awario ," by Awario

In this case study, Awario greets the user with a summary straight away — so if you’re feeling up to reading the entire case study, you can scan the snapshot and understand how the company serves its customers. The case study then includes jump links to several sections, such as "Company Profile," "Rozum Robotics' Pains," "Challenge," "Solution," and "Results and Improvements."

The sparse copy and prominent headings show that you don’t need a lot of elaborate information to show the value of your products and services. Like the other case study examples on this list, it includes visuals and quotes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the company’s efforts. The case study ends with a bulleted list that shows the results.

Key Learnings from the Awario Robotics Case Study Example

• Create a table of contents to make your case study easier to navigate.
• Include a bulleted list of the results you achieved for your client.

4. " Chevrolet DTU ," by Carol H. Williams

If you’ve worked with a company that’s well-known, use only the name in the title — like Carol H. Williams, one of the nation’s top advertising agencies, does here. The "DTU," stands for "Discover the Unexpected." It generates interest because you want to find out what the initials mean.

They keep your interest in this case study by using a mixture of headings, images, and videos to describe the challenges, objectives, and solutions of the project. The case study closes with a summary of the key achievements that Chevrolet’s DTU Journalism Fellows reached during the project.

Key Learnings from the Carol H. Williams Case Study Example

• If you’ve worked with a big brand before, consider only using the name in the title — just enough to pique interest.
• Use a mixture of headings and subheadings to guide users through the case study.

5. " How Fractl Earned Links from 931 Unique Domains for Porch.com in a Single Year ," by Fractl

Fractl uses both text and graphic design in their Porch.com case study to immerse the viewer in a more interesting user experience. For instance, as you scroll, you'll see the results are illustrated in an infographic-design form as well as the text itself.

Further down the page, they use icons like a heart and a circle to illustrate their pitch angles, and graphs to showcase their results. Rather than writing which publications have mentioned Porch.com during Fractl’s campaign, they incorporated the media outlets’ icons for further visual diversity.

Key Learnings from the Fractl Case Study Example

• Let pictures speak for you by incorporating graphs, logos, and icons all throughout the case study.
• Start the case study by right away stating the key results, like Fractl does, instead of putting the results all the way at the bottom.

6. " The Met ," by Fantasy

What's the best way to showcase the responsiveness and user interface of a website? Probably by diving right into it with a series of simple showcases— which is exactly what Fantasy does on their case study page for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They keep the page simple and clean, inviting you to review their redesign of the Met’s website feature-by-feature.

Each section is simple, showing a single piece of the new website's interface so that users aren’t overwhelmed with information and can focus on what matters most.

If you're more interested in text, you can read the objective for each feature. Fantasy understands that, as a potential customer, this is all you need to know. Scrolling further, you're greeted with a simple "Contact Us" CTA.

Key Learnings from the Fantasy Case Study Example

• You don’t have to write a ton of text to create a great case study. Focus on the solution you delivered itself.
• Include a CTA at the bottom inviting visitors to contact you.

7. " Rovio: How Rovio Grew Into a Gaming Superpower ," by App Annie

If your client had a lot of positive things to say about you, take a note from App Annie’s Rovio case study and open up with a quote from your client. The case study also closes with a quote, so that the case study doesn’t seem like a promotion written by your marketing team but a story that’s taken straight from your client’s mouth. It includes a photo of a Rovio employee, too.

Another thing this example does well? It immediately includes a link to the product that Rovio used (namely, App Annie Intelligence) at the top of the case study. The case study closes with a call-to-action button prompting users to book a demo.

Key Learnings from the App Annie Case Study Example

• Feature quotes from your client at the beginning and end of the case study.
• Include a mention of the product right at the beginning and prompt users to learn more about the product.

8. " Embracing first-party data: 3 success stories from HubSpot ," by Think with Google

Google takes a different approach to text-focused case studies by choosing three different companies to highlight.

The case study is clean and easily scannable. It has sections for each company, with quotes and headers that clarify the way these three distinct stories connect. The simple format also uses colors and text that align with the Google brand.

Another differentiator is the focus on data. This case study is less than a thousand words, but it's packed with useful data points. Data-driven insights quickly and clearly show how the value of leveraging first-party data while prioritizing consumer privacy.

Key Learnings from the Think with Google Case Study Example

• A case study doesn’t need to be long or complex to be powerful.
• Clear data points are a quick and effective way to prove value.

9. " In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study ," by Switch

Switch is an international marketing agency based in Malta that knocks it out of the park with this case study. Its biggest challenge is effectively communicating what it did for its client without ever revealing the client’s name. It also effectively keeps non-marketers in the loop by including a glossary of terms on page 4.

The PDF case study reads like a compelling research article, including titles like "In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study," "Scenario," and "Approach," so that readers get a high-level overview of what the client needed and why they approached Switch. It also includes a different page for each strategy. For instance, if you’d only be interested in hiring Switch for optimizing your Facebook ads, you can skip to page 10 to see how they did it.

The PDF is fourteen pages long but features big fonts and plenty of white space, so viewers can easily skim it in only a few minutes.

Key Learnings from the Switch Case Study Example

• If you want to go into specialized information, include a glossary of terms so that non-specialists can easily understand.
• Close with a CTA page in your case study PDF and include contact information for prospective clients.

10. " Gila River ," by OH Partners

Let pictures speak for you, like OH Partners did in this case study. While you’ll quickly come across a heading and some text when you land on this case study page, you’ll get the bulk of the case study through examples of actual work OH Partners did for its client. You will see OH Partners’ work in a billboard, magazine, and video. This communicates to website visitors that if they work with OH Partners, their business will be visible everywhere.

And like the other case studies here, it closes with a summary of what the firm achieved for its client in an eye-catching way.

Key Learnings from the OH Partners Case Study Example

• Let the visuals speak by including examples of the actual work you did for your client — which is especially useful for branding and marketing agencies.
• Always close out with your achievements and how they impacted your client.

11. " Facing a Hater ," by Digitas

Digitas' case study page for Sprite’s #ILOVEYOUHATER campaign keeps it brief while communicating the key facts of Digitas’ work for the popular soda brand. The page opens with an impactful image of a hundred people facing a single man. It turns out, that man is the biggest "bully" in Argentina, and the people facing him are those whom he’s bullied before.

Scrolling down, it's obvious that Digitas kept Sprite at the forefront of their strategy, but more than that, they used real people as their focal point. They leveraged the Twitter API to pull data from Tweets that people had actually tweeted to find the identity of the biggest "hater" in the country. That turned out to be @AguanteElCofler, a Twitter user who has since been suspended.

Key Learnings from the Digitas Case Study Example

• If a video was part of your work for your client, be sure to include the most impactful screenshot as the heading.
• Don’t be afraid to provide details on how you helped your client achieve their goals, including the tools you leveraged.

12. " Better Experiences for All ," by HermanMiller

HermanMiller sells sleek, utilitarian furniture with no frills and extreme functionality, and that ethos extends to its case study page for a hospital in Dubai.

What first attracted me to this case study was the beautiful video at the top and the clean user experience. User experience matters a lot in a case study. It determines whether users will keep reading or leave. Another notable aspect of this case study is that the video includes closed-captioning for greater accessibility, and users have the option of expanding the CC and searching through the text.

HermanMiller’s case study also offers an impressive amount of information packed in just a few short paragraphs for those wanting to understand the nuances of their strategy. It closes out with a quote from their client and, most importantly, the list of furniture products that the hospital purchased from the brand.

Key Learnings from the HermanMiller Case Study Example

• Close out with a list of products that users can buy after reading the case study.
• Include accessibility features such as closed captioning and night mode to make your case study more user-friendly.

13. " Capital One on AWS ," by Amazon

Do you work continuously with your clients? Consider structuring your case study page like Amazon did in this stellar case study example. Instead of just featuring one article about Capital One and how it benefited from using AWS, Amazon features a series of articles that you can then access if you’re interested in reading more. It goes all the way back to 2016, all with different stories that feature Capital One’s achievements using AWS.

This may look unattainable for a small firm, but you don’t have to go to extreme measures and do it for every single one of your clients. You could choose the one you most wish to focus on and establish a contact both on your side and your client’s for coming up with the content. Check in every year and write a new piece. These don’t have to be long, either — five hundred to eight hundred words will do.

Key Learnings from the Amazon AWS Case Study Example

• Write a new article each year featuring one of your clients, then include links to those articles in one big case study page.
• Consider including external articles as well that emphasize your client’s success in their industry.

14. " HackReactor teaches the world to code #withAsana ," by Asana

While Asana's case study design looks text-heavy, there's a good reason. It reads like a creative story, told entirely from the customer's perspective.

For instance, Asana knows you won't trust its word alone on why this product is useful. So, they let Tony Phillips, HackReactor CEO, tell you instead: "We take in a lot of information. Our brains are awful at storage but very good at thinking; you really start to want some third party to store your information so you can do something with it."

Asana features frequent quotes from Phillips to break up the wall of text and humanize the case study. It reads like an in-depth interview and captivates the reader through creative storytelling. Even more, Asana includes in-depth detail about how HackReactor uses Asana. This includes how they build templates and workflows:

"There's a huge differentiator between Asana and other tools, and that’s the very easy API access. Even if Asana isn’t the perfect fit for a workflow, someone like me— a relatively mediocre software engineer—can add functionality via the API to build a custom solution that helps a team get more done."

Key Learnings from the Asana Example

• Include quotes from your client throughout the case study.
• Provide extensive detail on how your client worked with you or used your product.

15. " Rips Sewed, Brand Love Reaped ," by Amp Agency

Amp Agency's Patagonia marketing strategy aimed to appeal to a new audience through guerrilla marketing efforts and a coast-to-coast road trip. Their case study page effectively conveys a voyager theme, complete with real photos of Patagonia customers from across the U.S., and a map of the expedition. I liked Amp Agency's storytelling approach best. It captures viewers' attention from start to finish simply because it's an intriguing and unique approach to marketing.

Key Learnings from the Amp Agency Example

• Open up with a summary that communicates who your client is and why they reached out to you.
• Like in the other case study examples, you’ll want to close out with a quantitative list of your achievements.

16. " NetApp ," by Evisort

Evisort opens up its NetApp case study with an at-a-glance overview of the client. It’s imperative to always focus on the client in your case study — not on your amazing product and equally amazing team. By opening up with a snapshot of the client’s company, Evisort places the focus on the client.

This case study example checks all the boxes for a great case study that’s informative, thorough, and compelling. It includes quotes from the client and details about the challenges NetApp faced during the COVID pandemic. It closes out with a quote from the client and with a link to download the case study in PDF format, which is incredibly important if you want your case study to be accessible in a wider variety of formats.

Key Learnings from the Evisort Example

• Place the focus immediately on your client by including a snapshot of their company.
• Mention challenging eras, such as a pandemic or recession, to show how your company can help your client succeed even during difficult times.

17. " Copernicus Land Monitoring – CLC+ Core ," by Cloudflight

Including highly specialized information in your case study is an effective way to show prospects that you’re not just trying to get their business. You’re deep within their industry, too, and willing to learn everything you need to learn to create a solution that works specifically for them.

Cloudflight does a splendid job at that in its Copernicus Land Monitoring case study. While the information may be difficult to read at first glance, it will capture the interest of prospects who are in the environmental industry. It thus shows Cloudflight’s value as a partner much more effectively than a general case study would.

The page is comprehensive and ends with a compelling call-to-action — "Looking for a solution that automates, and enhances your Big Data system? Are you struggling with large datasets and accessibility? We would be happy to advise and support you!" The clean, whitespace-heavy page is an effective example of using a case study to capture future leads.

Key Learnings from the Cloudflight Case Study Example

• Don’t be afraid to get technical in your explanation of what you did for your client.
• Include a snapshot of the sales representative prospects should contact, especially if you have different sales reps for different industries, like Cloudflight does.

18. " Valvoline Increases Coupon Send Rate by 76% with Textel’s MMS Picture Texting ," by Textel

If you’re targeting large enterprises with a long purchasing cycle, you’ll want to include a wealth of information in an easily transferable format. That’s what Textel does here in its PDF case study for Valvoline. It greets the user with an eye-catching headline that shows the value of using Textel. Valvoline saw a significant return on investment from using the platform.

Another smart decision in this case study is highlighting the client’s quote by putting it in green font and doing the same thing for the client’s results because it helps the reader quickly connect the two pieces of information. If you’re in a hurry, you can also take a look at the "At a Glance" column to get the key facts of the case study, starting with information about Valvoline.

Key Learnings from the Textel Case Study Example

• Include your client’s ROI right in the title of the case study.
• Add an "At a Glance" column to your case study PDF to make it easy to get insights without needing to read all the text.

19. " Hunt Club and Happeo — a tech-enabled love story ," by Happeo

In this blog-post-like case study, Happeo opens with a quote from the client, then dives into a compelling heading: "Technology at the forefront of Hunt Club's strategy." Say you’re investigating Happeo as a solution and consider your firm to be technology-driven. This approach would spark your curiosity about why the client chose to work with Happeo. It also effectively communicates the software’s value proposition without sounding like it’s coming from an in-house marketing team.

Every paragraph is a quote written from the customer’s perspective. Later down the page, the case study also dives into "the features that changed the game for Hunt Club," giving Happeo a chance to highlight some of the platform’s most salient features.

Key Learnings from the Happeo Case Study Example

• Consider writing the entirety of the case study from the perspective of the customer.
• Include a list of the features that convinced your client to go with you.

20. " Red Sox Season Campaign ," by CTP Boston

What's great about CTP's case study page for their Red Sox Season Campaign is their combination of video, images, and text. A video automatically begins playing when you visit the page, and as you scroll, you'll see more embedded videos of Red Sox players, a compilation of print ads, and social media images you can click to enlarge.

At the bottom, it says "Find out how we can do something similar for your brand." The page is clean, cohesive, and aesthetically pleasing. It invites viewers to appreciate the well-roundedness of CTP's campaign for Boston's beloved baseball team.

Key Learnings from the CTP Case Study Example

• Include a video in the heading of the case study.
• Close with a call-to-action that makes leads want to turn into prospects.

21. " Acoustic ," by Genuine

Sometimes, simple is key. Genuine's case study for Acoustic is straightforward and minimal, with just a few short paragraphs, including "Reimagining the B2B website experience," "Speaking to marketers 1:1," and "Inventing Together." After the core of the case study, we then see a quote from Acoustic’s CMO and the results Genuine achieved for the company.

The simplicity of the page allows the reader to focus on both the visual aspects and the copy. The page displays Genuine's brand personality while offering the viewer all the necessary information they need.

• You don’t need to write a lot to create a great case study. Keep it simple.
• Always include quantifiable data to illustrate the results you achieved for your client.

22. " Using Apptio Targetprocess Automated Rules in Wargaming ," by Apptio

Apptio’s case study for Wargaming summarizes three key pieces of information right at the beginning: The goals, the obstacles, and the results.

Readers then have the opportunity to continue reading — or they can walk away right then with the information they need. This case study also excels in keeping the human interest factor by formatting the information like an interview.

The piece is well-organized and uses compelling headers to keep the reader engaged. Despite its length, Apptio's case study is appealing enough to keep the viewer's attention. Every Apptio case study ends with a "recommendation for other companies" section, where the client can give advice for other companies that are looking for a similar solution but aren’t sure how to get started.

Key Learnings from the Apptio Case Study Example

• Put your client in an advisory role by giving them the opportunity to give recommendations to other companies that are reading the case study.
• Include the takeaways from the case study right at the beginning so prospects quickly get what they need.

23. " Airbnb + Zendesk: building a powerful solution together ," by Zendesk

Zendesk's Airbnb case study reads like a blog post, and focuses equally on Zendesk and Airbnb, highlighting a true partnership between the companies. To captivate readers, it begins like this: "Halfway around the globe is a place to stay with your name on it. At least for a weekend."

The piece focuses on telling a good story and provides photographs of beautiful Airbnb locations. In a case study meant to highlight Zendesk's helpfulness, nothing could be more authentic than their decision to focus on Airbnb's service in such great detail.

Key Learnings from the Zendesk Case Study Example

• Include images of your client’s offerings — not necessarily of the service or product you provided. Notice how Zendesk doesn’t include screenshots of its product.
• Include a call-to-action right at the beginning of the case study. Zendesk gives you two options: to find a solution or start a trial.

24. " Biobot Customer Success Story: Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida ," by Biobot

Like some of the other top examples in this list, Biobot opens its case study with a quote from its client, which captures the value proposition of working with Biobot. It mentions the COVID pandemic and goes into detail about the challenges the client faced during this time.

This case study is structured more like a news article than a traditional case study. This format can work in more formal industries where decision-makers need to see in-depth information about the case. Be sure to test different methods and measure engagement .

Key Learnings from the Biobot Case Study Example

• Mention environmental, public health, or economic emergencies and how you helped your client get past such difficult times.
• Feel free to write the case study like a normal blog post, but be sure to test different methods to find the one that best works for you.

25. " Discovering Cost Savings With Efficient Decision Making ," by Gartner

You don't always need a ton of text or a video to convey your message — sometimes, you just need a few paragraphs and bullet points. Gartner does a fantastic job of quickly providing the fundamental statistics a potential customer would need to know, without boggling down their readers with dense paragraphs. The case study closes with a shaded box that summarizes the impact that Gartner had on its client. It includes a quote and a call-to-action to "Learn More."

Key Learnings from the Gartner Case Study Example

• Feel free to keep the case study short.
• Include a call-to-action at the bottom that takes the reader to a page that most relates to them.

26. " Bringing an Operator to the Game ," by Redapt

This case study example by Redapt is another great demonstration of the power of summarizing your case study’s takeaways right at the start of the study. Redapt includes three easy-to-scan columns: "The problem," "the solution," and "the outcome." But its most notable feature is a section titled "Moment of clarity," which shows why this particular project was difficult or challenging.

The section is shaded in green, making it impossible to miss. Redapt does the same thing for each case study. In the same way, you should highlight the "turning point" for both you and your client when you were working toward a solution.

Key Learnings from the Redapt Case Study Example

• Highlight the turning point for both you and your client during the solution-seeking process.
• Use the same structure (including the same headings) for your case studies to make them easy to scan and read.

27. " Virtual Call Center Sees 300% Boost In Contact Rate ," by Convoso

Convoso’s PDF case study for Digital Market Media immediately mentions the results that the client achieved and takes advantage of white space. On the second page, the case study presents more influential results. It’s colorful and engaging and closes with a spread that prompts readers to request a demo.

Key Learnings from the Convoso Case Study Example

• List the results of your work right at the beginning of the case study.
• Use color to differentiate your case study from others. Convoso’s example is one of the most colorful ones on this list.

28. " Ensuring quality of service during a pandemic ," by Ericsson

Ericsson’s case study page for Orange Spain is an excellent example of using diverse written and visual media — such as videos, graphs, and quotes — to showcase the success a client experienced. Throughout the case study, Ericsson provides links to product and service pages users might find relevant as they’re reading the study.

For instance, under the heading "Preloaded with the power of automation," Ericsson mentions its Ericsson Operations Engine product, then links to that product page. It closes the case study with a link to another product page.

Key Learnings from the Ericsson Case Study Example

• Link to product pages throughout the case study so that readers can learn more about the solution you offer.
• Use multimedia to engage users as they read the case study.

Start creating your case study.

Now that you've got a great list of examples of case studies, think about a topic you'd like to write about that highlights your company or work you did with a customer.

A customer’s success story is the most persuasive marketing material you could ever create. With a strong portfolio of case studies, you can ensure prospects know why they should give you their business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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12 great case study examples (plus case study writing tips)

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This long-form content style is also becoming more common as more marketers discover its value. According to Hubspot’s 2021 State of Marketing report , more than 30% of marketers use case studies as a primary marketing media—up from 13% in 2020.

If you’re new to the world of case studies, we’ll be diving into what case studies are, why they’re important, and how to create your own. We’ll also highlight some compelling case study examples that you can learn from.

What is a case study?

A good case study highlights customer stories showing the following:

• The problems the business faced before using a product or service
• How the product or service proposed to solve the problems
• The before and after of using a product or service
• The measurable positive impact of the product or service on metrics such as click-through rate, website traffic, or sales

While case studies are most often product or service-focused, sometimes businesses use them to share their brand or founder story.

These types of case studies typically focus on organizational progress, such as how they grew their revenue or website traffic. One example is this Outfunnel case study on how the team saved over 80% of its time with user onboarding.

Why are case studies important?

They may not suit every business. But case studies are beneficial, for example, for helping SaaS brands reach future customers.

If they make sense for your industry, case studies should be an important part of your content marketing strategy for many reasons.

Three reasons you should incorporate them as soon as possible are:

• To provide value to your audience: At its core, the best marketing doesn’t just drive sales; it serves its audience. Case studies are a brilliant way to teach your audience tips they can incorporate into their businesses. It can also serve as research for industry experts to quote.
• To show off your expertise: A great case study is a perfect blend of data and storytelling. It showcases your expertise to your target audience, most likely dealing with similar issues. By telling a good story in your case studies, you’re essentially saying, “Look how we made everything better for X client—we can do that for you, too.”
• As social proof: Because case studies are available to the public, they’re undeniable social proof—better than hard-to-believe testimonials with client initials. This makes them extra valuable as MOFU and BOFU content ; they can drive sales at the click of a button.

Good to Know: Not sure how to use case studies? They work well as lead magnets, landing pages, repurposed blog posts, and, if you have the capacity, even video content!

12 real-life case study examples to bookmark

Reading about the mechanics of case studies is more straightforward than writing case studies from scratch.

That’s why we’ve gathered 12 real-life marketing case study examples you can review before you embark on creating yours.

1. GatherContent | University of Edinburgh

What works: In this great case study, GatherContent includes quotes from the client (the University of Edinburgh) about how their software has improved their content workflow. This adds a human element and will help readers with the same issues identify with the client.

View more GatherContent case studies .

2. Omniscient Digital | AppSumo

What works: Omniscient Digital includes client feedback in video format and shares the results they achieved in a digestible bullet point format.

3. Bit.ly | Vissla

What works: Besides hosting this case study on their website, Bit.ly provides a PDF link that can both be viewed online or downloaded. Plus, the PDF is visually appealing and easy to read.

4. Asana | Autodesk

What works: Asana leads with their impact and includes basic information about their client to the right of the page so the reader immediately gets bite-sized background information.

5. Shopify | Bombas

What works: Shopify includes a video in their case study, as well as multiple eye-catching images of Bombas products. This ensures that the case study serves both companies, possibly generating customer interest in Bombas socks.

6. Outfunnel | Alight Analytics

What works: Outfunnel has repurposed its case study into a blog post, which increases its visibility. The study is also full of client quotes, which adds valuable social proof.

7. Sapling | Zapier

What works: Sapling also shares quick preliminary information about Zapier on the left panel and includes several screenshots to show the impact of their product on the company’s processes.

8. BigCommerce | Skullcandy

What works: The quick metrics in bold hit readers quickly and highlight BigCommerce expertise to potential customers even before they read the entire case study.

9. Google Ads | L’Oreal

What works: Video format. Few things beat hearing the client praise the service and explain the process and results of the campaign in their own words.

10. ActiveCampaign | Your Therapy Source

What works: ActiveCampaign efficiently showcases the problems and solutions before delving into how they helped the client achieve desired results.

11. Intuit | Xenex Healthcare

What works: The main benefit is highlighted on the first page of the PDF and the rest of the study delves into the process and the nitty-gritty of the product’s impact.

12. Grayscale | Upwork

What works: This page features minimal text. It focuses on quotes from decision-makers at Upwork and ends with a call-to-action that will likely drive conversions.

How to write your own case study

How can you write engaging, effective case studies like the examples above? Here are six steps.

1. Identify a worthy case

Think of projects—either for yourself or for clients—that got outstanding results. Then, whittle it down to the cases that your target audience is most likely to relate to , perhaps because they experience the same problem or have the same goal as in the case.

2. Reflect on your chosen case

Once you’ve decided on the case you’ll start with, do some deeper reflection on the details. What was the project goal? What challenges did you encounter along the way? How did you overcome them to reach your goal?

3. Think about differentiation

Take the last step even further and think of anything you did differently than others might. Did you an experimental tactic or strategy or create a custom solution? If so, use those details to subtly show potential customers why they should be interested in what you have to offer.

4. Gather quotes

Next, get hard-hitting quotes from project stakeholders or clients. Having their thoughts on goals, project obstacles, the solutions provided, and the outcomes will make your description of the case more credible.

5. Draft your case study

Time to turn the details you’ve compiled into a case study draft. How? We’ll talk about the best format for case studies shortly.

6. Add visuals

Next, create visuals that will reinforce the main points of your case study. These could include:

• Charts or screenshots to show the change in metrics before and after the project
• An infographic to give a brief visual overview of the case
• Pictures of deliverables (e.g. a web design agency might show a picture of the new site it designed for a client)
• Product images such as screenshots from within your software that was used on the project

After any designated reviewers and approvers give their stamp of approval on the case study, it’s ready to be published and promoted!

What’s the best case study format?

We’ve seen A+ examples of case studies and gotten some more context on how to create them for your brand or organization. Now, it's time to get to work. As you do, remember to include the following vital sections in your case study format:

• Client name and profile
• The problem
• Your solution (and screenshots!)
• Before and after ( real results with data)
• Appealing visuals, photos, illustrations, infographics, charts, and graphs
• A memorable CTA

Ready to get started? Thankfully, you don’t have to go it alone.

GatherContent—a powerful tool for case study creation

GatherContent makes it possible to keep track of all your case study research —even while working with your marketing team. You don’t have to guess what stage the piece is at or consult another tool to know when your part is due or who to pass the torch to.

GatherContent is a content hub that helps you keep all your content creation in one place , whether you’re writing blog posts, email newsletters, social media posts, or case studies. With content modeling features like Components , you can effortlessly maintain brand identity throughout all your case studies.

Read more customer success stories here to learn more!

Techniques for collaboratively prioritising content

Learn six collaborative methods for prioritising content so your team can be aligned and have confidence in the content being published..

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132 Social Media Case Studies – Successes and Failures

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That is such a short-sighted and limiting point of view.

Social Media Marketing is not sales – but it can help to sell things. And personally, I have to admit that I have several times bought something, booked an event or took part in something because I saw people (friends and acquaintances OR strangers) talking about it on social media. At the same time, I have never bought anything a salesperson tried to sell me on the phone. So yes, you actually can sell me things on Social Media. And I am not the only person.

Click To Tweet

Before you read on - we have various resources that show you exactly how to use social networks to gain massive traffic and leads. For instance, check out the following:

But limiting Social Media Marketing success or failure to the statement: For sales, you need to pick up the phone is simply b%llshi$t. You can use social media for lead generation to fill your sales funnel – but you can also use Social Media for totally different aspects of business like customer management, brand awareness, reputation management, audience building, website traffic and many other things your business can profit from.

Many people do it. I do it and have done so for other projects in the past. The honest answer to “Social Media is not working” is: It is obviously not working the way you are doing it. Try different tactics, learn, adjust, measure, optimize, try something else, try harder, and never stop at “You cannot sell on Social Media!”

So the answer is, yes you can make money with Social Media, but it is not working the same way for each and every business or situation.

Most of the time, if you do not have success with getting ROI out of your Social Media activities, it is not Social Media, which is not working, it is you who are doing something wrong or have the wrong social media strategy.

Social Media cannot simply be done by following a recipe step by step.

That can only get you so far.

In Social Media often the best approaches are already cold coffee when they become common knowledge, and everyone tries to hop on the train. You need to make assumptions, test your assumption, measure success and adjust your marketing strategy according to your results.

Hey, before you read on - we have in various FREE in-depth guides on similar topics that you can download. For this post, check out:

Social media cannot be learned by the book.

But one thing is certain: To shout out sales messages in Social Media is most likely going to fail to give you any return.

What people want and expect from their Social Media activity is so diverse, and there are many Social Media case studies in multiple situations.

Join our  free Email Course  to learn how to start your social media marketing journey:

All the basics in 4 Days, 4 Emails

Instead of selecting a handful of case studies for this article, I decided to provide you with a list of resources with multiple case studies about how businesses are successfully using social media for their business success.

1.  15 B2B Case Studies for Proving Social Media ROI

Rob Petersen looks at the special situation of using social media platforms to market to businesses instead of consumers. He provides 15 examples ranging from CISCO and Demand Base to LinkedIn and SAP.

2.  50 Social Media Case Studies you Should Bookmark

SimplyZesty looks at a variety of use cases for the different social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram and more.

3.  IBM Turns its Sales Staff Social Media Savvy

I love this example as it shows how sales and Social Media Marketing can work hand in hand. Contrary to the above-mentioned comment on our blog, IBM realized that even sales can profit from Social Media with cost-effective leads.

4.  11 Examples of Killer B2B Content Marketing Campaigns Including ROI

Lee Odden of TopRank Marketing focuses more on the Content Marketing side and provides 11 B2B Content Marketing case studies.

5.  B2B Social Media Case Study: How I made $47 million from my B2B blog

This is a personal success story from AT&T’s experience and success with a content strategy.

6.  How ASOS Use Social Media [CASE STUDY]

The story of how the fashion and beauty store ASOS has become Britain’s largest online retailer with the aid of Social Media for ecommerce and online marketing.

7.  5 Outstanding Social Media Campaigns

The examples include the story from a hairdresser who increased sales by 400% without spending a penny. It is not only the big companies who can profit from Social Media.

8.  3 Small Businesses That Found Social Media Success

The examples range from customer service, brand perception to social engagement.

9.  The Best Social Media Campaigns of 2014

These marketing campaigns are more about creating more engagement, generate more fans and increase loyalty amongst audience members for the brand and not so much about direct ROI. Still, they explain how to get it right.

It is not only the social media success stories you can learn from. Sometimes you can learn from other peoples’ failures at least as much as from their successes. Here are some social media case studies on failed social media activities. The failures tend to be on a smaller scale, resulting from bad communication and reactions turning the Social Media conversation in an unwanted direction. It is rare that a company admits to a complete campaign and a ton of money gone down the drain. Still, even from these smaller examples, we all can learn our lessons for our behavior in Social Media:

1.  Social Media Fails: The Worst Case Studies of 2012

The examples are campaign focused and include examples from McDonald’s and Toyota.

2.  19 horrific social media fails from the first half of 2014

These are examples of how you should not communicate in Social Media and showcase some ways you should not copy on how to jump onto trending hashtags and events in Social Media.

3.  5 Big Social Media Fails of 2013 (and What We Learned)

4.  Top 12 Social Media Marketing Mishaps

These are examples of what can happen to you and how a social media Sh$tstorm can brew up. It makes sense to read some of these and talk about possible reactions before any of this kind happens to you. Simply be prepared.

Final Words

I hope you find some useful marketing tips in my little collection of Social Media case studies – or at least, have some fun browsing through these examples. I find them encouraging as they show the variety of cases where Social Media can help your business. And they show how many humans are in Social Media, making it a place where things can go wrong and go well. It is up to you to leverage the full power of social networks and turn the tide.

If you are looking for even more case studies here you go:

Digital Marketing Case Studies

Content Marketing Case Studies

Instagram Marketing Case Studies

Twitter Marketing Case Studies

Forget Failure. Get the simple process to success:

We show you the exact steps we took to grow our first business from 0 to 500k page views per month with social media and how we got 50k visitors per month from social media to this blog after 6 months. We show you the exact steps you need to take to see traffic success.

You get easy-to-follow step-by-step action plans and you will see the first results after a couple of days. Check out “ The Social Traffic Code ” – there is a special offer for you!

“The Social Ms blog and books have shown us great possibilities of growing on Twitter and via online media. In addition, they actually respond to email reactions. Practicing what they preach gives them the credibility edge.” Guy Pardon, Atomikos

Don’t miss out – make a decision for success! 

Susanna Gebauer

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A Comprehensive Dive Into Social Media Marketing Case Studies

Nowadays, social media goes far beyond chatting with friends on Facebook. Where we’re all connected online, it’s more than just a way to keep in touch with friends. Business owners all over the world are finding it to be an extremely useful tool.

Think about how social media has changed over the years. In the beginning, it was all about talking to your buddies online.

But as time passed, it became a big deal for companies too. Now, it’s a key part of integrated marketing campaigns for all sorts of businesses, no matter how big or small. It helps them connect with the people who might want to buy their stuff.

Social media marketing has grown into something really important for people who want to sell stuff. It’s a cool way to talk to potential customers and get them interested in what you’re selling.

To prove how powerful social media can be, we’ve put together some awesome social media case studies about how it has changed everything.

So, let’s know more about it!

Listen To The Podcast Now!

The significance of social media case studies.

Before we delve into the specifics of these social media case studies, it is imperative to underscore the vital role they play in the realm of digital marketing.

A Social media marketing case study serves as tangible, real-world evidence of successful strategies, offering invaluable insights and actionable takeaways applicable to businesses of all sizes.

Case studies are like beacons in the digital marketing world as they provide a clear path forward by showcasing what has worked for others.

These real-life success stories serve as a source of inspiration and guidance, offering a roadmap for businesses looking to harness the power of social media.

The Influence of Social Proof

As inherently social beings, we often find ourselves seeking assurance from the experiences and achievements of others when making decisions.

In the same way, social media case studies provide a compelling form of social proof, instilling confidence in potential clients by demonstrating the viability of specific strategies.

When consumers see concrete evidence of how a particular social media strategy led to success for a business, it not only validates the effectiveness of that strategy but also builds trust.

This trust is a critical element in the decision-making process for consumers, making them more likely to engage with and ultimately support a brand.

Decoding the Science Behind Successful Social Media Marketing

Airbnb’s spectacular ascent.

In the annals of business history, Airbnb’s meteoric rise from a struggling startup in 2008 to a global hospitality juggernaut is nothing short of remarkable.

This particular case study on social media serves as a quintessential illustration of how Airbnb harnessed the power of user-generated content and tapped into the emotional resonance of travel to create a viral sensation.

Airbnb’s journey is not just a success story; it’s a masterclass in the art of storytelling through social media.

By encouraging users to share their travel experiences through captivating photos and videos, Airbnb not only engaged its audience but also created a sense of community. This sense of community is a potent driver of brand loyalty and advocacy.

The lesson from these social media case studies is clear: storytelling is at the heart of effective social media marketing. It’s not just about promoting products or services; it’s about crafting narratives that resonate with your audience on a personal level.

Navigating Challenges through the Lens of Social Media Marketing

Mcdonald’s “our food, your questions” campaign.

Even titans like McDonald’s, one of the world’s most iconic brands, encounter public skepticism. Facing questions about the quality of their food, McDonald’s responded with the “Our Food, Your Questions” campaign.

This insight, among other social media case studies, delves into how the fast-food giant used transparency and active social media engagement to rebuild trust with consumers.

McDonald’s recognized that addressing consumer concerns head-on was not just a PR move but a strategic decision. By openly addressing questions and concerns about their food, they demonstrated transparency and a commitment to quality.

This level of transparency resonated with consumers, fostering a renewed sense of trust.

Well! In the quest for social media success, having the right tools at your disposal is paramount. Socinator offers a comprehensive solution for automating, managing, and optimizing your social media campaigns. With Socinator, you can!

Let’s know how Socinator can help marketers to create a powerful impact on multiple social media platforms in just a few clicks!

Socinator: Your Social Media Partner

While we’re on the topic of effective social media strategies, it’s essential to mention Socinator—a powerful tool that can enhance your social media marketing efforts.

Socinator is your partner in optimizing and automating social media campaigns across various platforms.

Here is what Socinator offers to its users:

• You can schedule posts to be published automatically on a specific date, so you don’t have to post them yourself, especially when you’re busy.
• Socinator offers automation capabilities for a variety of tasks, including commenting, liking, following, unfollowing, following back, and reposting.
• Additionally, the tool assists you in discovering and extracting hashtags, identifying target audiences, and with the posting of profile pictures.
• With Socinator, you can efficiently handle numerous accounts, remove posts, block followers, send out broadcast messages, and engage in live chats.

Now, let’s continue exploring more insightful social media case studies that showcase the potential of social media marketing.

Small Enterprises, Monumental Successes

Blendjet’s ingenious instagram-first strategy.

BlendJet, a portable blender company, captured the imagination of Instagram users worldwide with their creative and engaging content.

This social media case study highlights the potential for even modest-sized enterprises to flourish in the digital arena when armed with a well-crafted social media strategy.

BlendJet’s success story underscores the importance of understanding your audience and choosing the right platform for your brand. Instagram, with its visually appealing format, was the perfect canvas for BlendJet’s marketing efforts.

This strategy helped them reach a global audience and fostered a vibrant and engaged community of users.

The Metrics of Social Media Triumph

Hubspot’s data-driven odyssey.

HubSpot, a recognized leader in inbound marketing, embarked on their social media journey with data and analytics as their guiding stars.

This particular case study on social media elucidates how HubSpot meticulously employed metrics such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value to fine-tune and optimize their social media campaigns.

HubSpot’s approach is a testament to the power of data-driven decision-making in social media marketing. In a world flooded with data, it’s crucial for you to know which metrics matter most to your business.

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and analyzing the data can provide invaluable insights into what’s working and what needs improvement.

Also Read 11 Social Media Marketing Ideas for Non-Profit Charity Organization 5 Remarkable Marketing Campaigns for Your Brand Schedule Instagram Posts For Consistent Success

Unveiling Trends and Innovations in Social Media Marketing

Tiktok’s explosive evolution.

TikTok, the trailblazing short-form video platform, took the world by storm with its innovative approach to content creation. In this social media case study, we embark on a journey to understand the meteoric rise of  TikTok and contemplate its profound implications for the future of social media marketing.

TikTok’s success is a testament to the power of embracing emerging trends. In an ever-evolving digital landscape, staying ahead of the curve is essential.

TikTok’s emphasis on short, engaging videos tapped into the changing preferences of a younger audience. Businesses that adapt to new platforms and formats can gain a competitive edge in the market.

Extracting Insights from Social Media Case Studies

Key takeaways to supercharge your social media strategy.

After immersing ourselves in the captivating narratives of these social media case studies, it is essential to distill the key insights that can invigorate and enhance your own social media marketing efforts.

From the art of storytelling to the science of data-driven decisions, these case studies offer an abundance of actionable wisdom.

As we wrap up our exploration of these social media case studies, let’s summarize the key takeaways that can elevate your social media strategy:

• Storytelling Matters: Craft compelling narratives that resonate with your audience.
• Transparency Builds Trust: To foster trust, it is important to address any concerns in an open and transparent manner.
• Platform Fit: Choose the right social media platform for your brand and audience.
• Data-Driven Decisions: Use metrics and analytics to refine your strategies continuously.
•  Embrace Trends: Stay adaptable and explore emerging trends to remain relevant.

Having a strong online presence is crucial for business success in digital world. Social media case studies are like success stories and guides that can inspire and help you navigate the ever-changing world of social media.

As you embark on your own social media journey, remember that these case studies aren’t just tales of success; they’re like maps showing you the strategies to succeed in the exciting and always-changing world of social media marketing.

Social media is a big, ever-changing place. To do well here, it’s not about luck; it’s about making smart choices, being creative, and staying flexible as trends shift. So, get ready for your social media adventure.

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A Guide How to Create Social Media Case Studies that Convert (with Template)

As you already know, moving leads through the sales pipeline is no easy feat. In the world of digital marketing, it takes an average of 18-21 touchpoints to convert a lead. If you want any chance of pushing prospects down the funnel, you have to directly communicate the value of your product or service and one of the best ways to do this is with case studies. 

Putting together a compelling social media marketing case study is one of the most powerful strategies for attracting future customers or digital agency clients. But it’s not easy. In this article, we’ll go over the ingredients of a winning case study and how to deliver said case study in the most effective way. We’ll also include a template that you can go by. 

Let’s dive right in.

The importance of social media case studies 

There’s a lot of content out there. Your potential customers are constantly bombarded with whitepapers, e-books, 10-step guides, newsletters and unpalatable sales hype. To get the attention of prospects today you have to demonstrate your product or service’s value, not just talk about it. 

B2B buyers today don’t have time to interpret marketing messages that aren’t concise and relevant. That means that instead of aimlessly beating around the bush about how great your company is and how terrific your products are, you have to share the real-life experiences customers are having with you and your products. 

Traditional marketing tactics don’t work anymore. We already know that. People nowadays drive their own buying decisions through online research and the importance of social proof cannot be understated. 

About 57% of the customers will only use or buy a business service if it has at least 4 or five-star ratings. It should be noted however that reviews aren’t enough. In fact,  88% of consumers view ratings and reviews as a personal suggestion, not definitive proof of a product’s efficacy. 

Reviews are all well and good but if you’re marketing B2B software or agency services, creating in-depth, data-driven case studies is the way to go. Case studies are extremely effective in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey when they are actively comparing solutions and providers to solve a problem they’re experiencing. 

As we already mentioned, your prospects are actively researching your products and there’s a 100% chance that they will stumble upon content from your competitors. Having relevant resources like case studies can cement your brand as an authority figure. 

Now that you know why case studies are important it’s time to tackle the creation process. 

The ingredients for a perfect case study 

1. detailed and full of data .

Have you ever read a case study where a business states they “doubled traffic” for the customer in their case study, and wondered if that meant they went from 50 to 100 visits or 5,000 to 10,000 visits?

The point of a case study is to highlight the exact ways your product or service has helped a customer. The most compelling case studies hit prospects in the face with how amazing your customers’ results were, meaning you need to include numbers. Lots of them. Here’s an example: 

Instead of saying “How client X got more sales thanks to us”, use “How client X increased their sales by X% in X days thanks to us” 

This step may sound like a no-brainer but it’s absolutely essential to use relevant data when crafting your social media case study, especially if you run a digital agency. Include statistics like a decrease in ad spend, an improvement in engagement or increase in organic followers.

It’s important to remember that not everyone is as familiar with analytics and KPIs as you are, so break down the complicated sections into digestible bits that anyone can understand. Provide context as you go along so the data flows with the overall narrative of the case study. 

Include some eye-catching visuals like picture proof or real-time dashboards so the reader can envision the positive potential of your product or service. 

2. A complete, compelling story 

Storytelling is a powerful marketing strategy that has stood the test of time. A great social media case study uses narrative techniques to put readers in the subject’s shoes. 

When crafting your subject’s persona, be sure to include: 

• Who is the sample customer, what do they do and why do they do it?
• What were the customer’s goals?
• What were the customer’s needs?
• How did you satisfy those needs and help the customer meet their goals?

As a rule of thumb, structure your case study by splitting up the main takeaways into three easy snippets: The challenge, the impact you had, and the outcome. This way you make sure that your case study isn’t all over the place and concludes with the reader being wowed. 

Furthermore, you want to carry the story through and show how your business helps your customers long-term. You want your product or service to become a cornerstone of your customers’ workflow, something they simply can’t live without.  When you conclude the “outcome” section of your case study, include ways customers can use your business further down the line. 

When it comes to creating a compelling story, throwing in some emotional benefits alongside the hard numbers is absolutely necessary. Did your solution improve workplace morale, free up time or overall take a load off of your subject’s shoulders? Ask for a quote from the case study subject to make things more personal and relatable. 

To really drive the narrative home, use quotes from your team as well. Any potential prospects will love discovering how your team overcame certain hurdles and delivered the end result. Interview your graphic designer or content manager and get them to break down the project into steps. This will help prospects further familiarize themselves with your organization and how your team thinks and operates, a connection that can help keep you top-of-mind when leads are ready to convert. 

3. Compelling visuals 

Using visuals and images to enrich the case study experience is a key element of a comprehensive marketing case study. But cramming in screenshots and haphazard designs is sure to have an adverse effect to what you were hoping for. 

You want your case study to be a joy to read and as such it’s important to keep a few key rules in mind:       – Write a catchy headline that gives a clear idea of what the case study is about 

• Leave plenty of negative space when arranging your visual elements. You don’t want a busy mess of visuals that’s hard on the eyes 
• Ensure that your visual elements compliment the data and written content of your case study. 
• Keep your target audience in mind. What kind of creatives would they be drawn to? What fonts, visual cues and tones would keep them hooked? It goes without saying to add your company’s unique branding as well. 
• The information you present should flow like a story. The graphic elements, along with the text should guide the reader’s eye through the study from beginning to end. 

To spice things up, consider adding multimedia elements such as videos, PDFs, and images to make the case study more engaging. 

When getting together the creative assets for your case study, be sure to include headshots of the actual customer, dashboards of results (graphs are great for visual storytelling) and screenshots of any social media posts that were created during the campaign (if relevant). 

You can use tools like Kontentino’s social media a n a l y t i c s tool to implement custom metrics and create stunning reports. 

Relatable to your target audience 

If you’re at the point where you’re sharing success stories, chances are that you know who your ideal customer is. When crafting a case study, you want to write to the audience that you’re trying to attract. The readers of your study will most likely be very similar to the customers you’re writing about.

People who will read your case study most likely have a decent understanding of what your business is and what you can offer. They’re already somewhere in the middle of your funnel and as such it’s time to take advantage of personalization . Now you may need to create multiple case studies tailored toward different audiences, but it’s sure to pay off in the long run. 

Reflect on the project you’re highlighting in the case study and think about who the customer was. What industry were they in? What kind of client were they? Were they visually-oriented? Did they appreciate heavy-handed analytical reports, a good story or a combination of the two? 

These insights can help you nail down the written tone and show potential clients that you understand their specific needs, are comfortable in their niche and can apply strategies in accordance to their use-case.

Different ways to deliver a social media marketing case study

If you just created an amazing case study that’s sure to knock readers’ socks off, you want people to find it. This means populating every channel at your disposal with your content so your potential customers can’t miss it. 

 Youtube is the second-largest search engine in the world and the platform’s algorithm holds the potential to show your video to a whole new audience. While YouTube’s algorithm is often iffy, writing a catchy title, detailed description and creating an effective thumbnail are good ways to keep your video in the algorithm’s favor. 

In addition, you’ll want to link your full case study in the comments and get viewers to land on your website. 

• Social media 

If you’re creating a social media case study, using social media to share said case study should be a no-brainer.

 Break down the content of your case study into bite-sized chunks for Instagram or Facebook, post analytics dashboards from the study on Twitter and link the study in a LinkedIn post to spice up your profile. The shareable nature of social media may lead to your case study going further than just your own site.

• Embedded in other types of content  

Case studies can also be embedded in other types of content like blog posts, newsletters, guides or ebooks. Go through your current pieces of relevant content and link to your case study to provide extra value. 

3 winning social media marketing case study examples 

Now that we’ve gone over the components of a winning social media case study, let’s check out some real world examples. 

1. “How ERA Belgium Provides Great Content for Franchise Businesses with Kontentino,” by Kontentino 

A thing to note regarding this case study is how Kontentino not only highlighted the impressive data but also how the product helped solve a core pain point for ERA Belgium’s franchises .

Highlighted in the middle of the case study is a bold quote from the client that helps solidify Kontentino’s KontentBase product as a must-have tool for franchises. When creating your own case study, consider your product and who’s needs it addresses. Align your customer quotes and data and results reports to match exactly what your target audience is looking for. 

The Konetino case study also includes a CTA at the end so any potential prospects could directly contact the support team.

2. “How an SEO Agency Helped an Artisan Bakery Increase Organic Traffic by 214%,” is a very well written case study by Semrush

This comprehensive case study by Semrush is a perfect example of pinpoint narrative structure and proper formatting. The study flows like a well-written story and guides the reader through the subjects, conflicts and resolutions without a hitch. The tasteful addition of dashboards and bullet points ties the case study up perfectly. 

3. “How Good Dye Young Increased Their Monthly E-commerce Revenue by 305%,” an impressive storytelling case study by Mailchimp 

This case study by MailChimp is full of personality and storytelling. While MailChimp did include impressive numbers, the centerpiece of this case study is the people. The subjects in the case study are referenced casually by their first names, their journey is explored in-depth and there’s no shortage of quotes from them. The imaging MailChimp uses only emphasizes the human side of the relationship between them and the customer. 

Keeping you on track with your social media case study 

So now you’ve got a solid idea of what a comprehensive case study should include and you’ve seen the techniques we’ve covered in action. Now it’s time to go over a full template to ensure you stay on track when creating your awesome social media case study. 

Social media marketing case study template 

Outline: Case Study Title

Customer: Customer’s full name 

Company: Company’s name 

Industry: The industry the customer operates in (if applicable) 

Video: Link to a video version (if applicable)

Author: Author’s name 

Case study title

A short introduction of the customer. 

 Be sure to highlight:

• The customer’s name and a little bit about them.
• Why you and your customer were a perfect fit 
• The key successes your customer had after working with you 

Introduce your customer 

In this section, provide a more in-depth overview of your customer. If it’s an individual, explain the person’s background in the context of your product/service. If it’s a business, talk about the company’s background, industry and any recent successes or milestones they have had. 

Describe the problem 

Explain the challenge or opportunity your customer faced before they did business with you. This could be either a reactive reason (i.e. the customer had an issue that needed to be addressed) or a proactive reason (i.e. there was an untapped potential that was unleashed by working with your business).

Why (Customer Name) Chose (Your Company)

In this section, speak about the decision process of your customer. Speak about how they discovered you, your possible competition and what made them ultimately decide to do business with you.

How (Your Company) Responded 

Here, explain what happened once your business started working with your customer. What was addressed first, and why? How did your customer feel about working with you in the early days?

The Results

In closing, speak to the results your customer saw after working with you. This section can be supported by statements, quotes, visuals, graphs, and metrics. Whatever you decide to include, be sure it illustrates how much of an impact your company made on your customer. 

Call-to-Action

Use this section to move your readers down the funnel. Add a CTA that encourages readers to either join your newsletter or get in touch with your sales team.

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Measuring the Impact of Online Media on Consumers, Businesses and Society pp 147–168 Cite as

Case Studies on Media Reporting and Media Influence During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Kejo Starosta 5  
• First Online: 03 March 2022

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Part of the book series: Sustainable Management, Wertschöpfung und Effizienz ((SMWE))

The COVID-19 virus that has spread throughout the world since the beginning of 2020 brought disruptive changes at many levels, including demographic, economic, and social shifts. In the media environment, too, the pandemic brought unprecedented changes, with unprecedented media reporting on a single topic. The following case studies try to analyse how this infodemic spread throughout Europe and how it affected society as well as consumers and businesses.

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Starosta, K. (2022). Case Studies on Media Reporting and Media Influence During the COVID-19 Pandemic. In: Measuring the Impact of Online Media on Consumers, Businesses and Society. Sustainable Management, Wertschöpfung und Effizienz. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-36729-9_10

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Case Studies , Social Media Marketing

Case Study: A Social Media Marketing Success Story

July 22, 2021

Not that long ago, people mainly used social media to see the latest pictures of their nieces and nephews and stay up to date with what their friends were doing. But, more and more, it’s become a place where small business growth happens.

These days, people are spending a lot of their time online on social media. According to Forbes , in 2020, Americans spent an average of 1,300 hours on social media, with an average of 58 minutes per day on Facebook alone. And, since smart marketing is about being visible where your customer base spends their time, social media is the place to be.

From building brand awareness to driving sales, the right social media marketing strategy can be a powerful tool for small businesses.

Wholesale distributor drives visibility and conversions with social media marketing

One wholesale distributor, with the help of their Marketing Team , learned just how valuable the right social media marketing strategy can be.

Over a three-month period, their social media strategy led to more than 100k impressions, thousands of clicks and hundreds of conversions.

Although ads and content marketing also played a role in their success, their conversion paths show that many of their conversions originated on a social network.

Compared to the previous three-month period, their social strategy resulted in a21% increase in impressions, a 20% increase in clicks and engagements, and a massive increase in conversions of almost 153%.

How did they do it?

Their social media strategy consisted of two parts — social media advertising and social media management (organic social posts).

Social media advertising

They focused the majority of their ad budget on Facebook and Instagram advertising, with campaigns aimed at capturing new leads, driving conversions and reconnecting with users who had previously clicked their ads or visited their website with retargeting ads.

Social media management

They complemented their social advertising strategy by posting consistently on their Facebook and Instagram timelines.

Social media is more than just about staying connected with friends and family. It’s become one of the top places people go to discover new brands and businesses.

Not all social media marketing strategies are made equal, but the right social media strategy — with a potent mix of social ads and organic posts — can lead to big results.

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Top 5 Social Media Case Study Templates with Examples and Samples

Abhishek Tuteja

In the bustling digital cosmos, where fortunes are forged and brands rise like constellations, social media stands as the celestial stage for modern success stories. Harnessing the mercurial power of this boundless realm demands a masterful blend of artistry and data-driven strategy. Enter the world of social media case study PPT templates—the alchemical blueprint behind groundbreaking campaigns.

Picture this: A small artisanal chocolate company, nestled in a quaint corner of a bustling city, dared to dream beyond its brick-and-mortar confines. By harnessing the potential of the best social media presentations, they transcended geographical barriers and reached chocolate connoisseurs across the globe. Their mouthwatering visuals and tantalizing tales of cocoa craftsmanship set hearts aflutter, igniting a frenzy of shares and retweets that skyrocketed their humble brand into a worldwide sensation.

Needless to say, the power of a captivating presentation cannot be underestimated. A well-crafted case study PPT (PowerPoint) template serves as the storyteller's canvas—a medium that elevates a mundane marketing report into a captivating saga of triumph.

With 4.48 billion global social media users awaiting your company’s narrative, embark on a voyage of discovery with us in this piece of writing. 

Join us as we unlock the vault of the 5 best social media case studies PPT templates, empowering you to shape your odyssey of digital conquest.

Template 1- Business Case Study Summary on Social Media Marketing Template

Presenting our content-ready template designed to provide an alluring backdrop for any subject matter. Elevate your presentations and exude an air of professionalism, making you appear as a seasoned presentation virtuoso. Within this set of slides, you will find a comprehensive exploration of crucial topics, including the well-thought-out Approach, invaluable Recommendations, and prevailing Challenges faced in the realm of social media marketing. Instilled with versatility, this PowerPoint presentation is readily available for instant download, ensuring the utmost convenience and efficiency in customization, tailored to your specific needs.

Are you ready to seize the opportunity to impress and captivate with this remarkable PowerPoint template? Download now!

Download this template here

Template 2- Social Media Business Case Study Template

Here is another captivating and highly effective template to help you outline actionable strategies for your company. This well-crafted template strikes the perfect balance between clarity and concise expression, providing an explicit and visually engaging showcase for your transportation marketing case study. Tailored for entrepreneurs seeking to articulate their objectives to their esteemed employees, this professionally designed transportation marketing PPT one-pager acts as a guiding compass, enabling you to demonstrate the best value delivery to your cherished customers. You can illustrate crucial campaign details, celebrity branding metrics, target market insights, and the campaign's resounding success, exemplified by the desired percentage numbers. Incorporating essential testing content and transcending the boundaries of mobile optimization to also encompass desktop, this PPT template empowers you to deliver a gripping presentation that will undoubtedly captivate your audience's attention. Download this template now and make your mark in the world of transportation marketing.

Download here

Template 3- Case Study for Social Media Marketing Proposal Template

Introducing this premium PPT slide - a powerful and professionally designed presentation that is sure to leave a lasting impact on your audience. With a seamless one-stage process, this template covers critical aspects such as Technology, Communication, Planning, Strategy, and Marketing, all meticulously laid out to convey your proposal with utmost clarity and precision. This ready to use PowerPoint presentation offers unparalleled flexibility, empowering you to customize every element to match your unique requirements. Further, you can embrace creativity by replacing or removing icons, tailoring each slide to perfectly align with your message - a vast collection of icons awaits you to select the most fitting ones. Download this masterpiece now to captivate your audience and make a remarkable impression. Leave no room for mediocrity; instead, impress your stakeholders and win hearts with this actionable PowerPoint slide.

Template 4- Bi-fold Social Media Business Case Study Template 

Showcasing this remarkable PPT template to help you discover how successful brands strategize, engage, and convert their audience effectively. Dive into real-world examples, gaining valuable insights into content creation, posting schedules, and audience targeting using this PowerPoint slide. Uncover the secrets behind viral campaigns, follower growth, and brand loyalty. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or a budding entrepreneur, this template empowers you to fine-tune your social media approach and stay ahead of the competition. Elevate your digital presence, boost your ROI, and harness the full impact of social media through data-driven analysis and actionable takeaways provided in this invaluable resource.

Download the PPT Template here

Template 5- Case Study for Celebrity Template

Last, but not least, leverage the power of social media for celebrity branding with our specialized case study template. Gain exclusive access to real-world examples of successful collaborations between influencers and celebrities, exploring how they authentically connect with their audience and amplify brand reach. Uncover the strategies behind engaging content, influencer partnerships, and audience segmentation that elevate a celebrity's digital presence. This template offers in-depth analysis of campaigns that have driven massive follower growth, increased brand loyalty, and boosted product endorsements. Whether you're a brand looking to partner with a celebrity or a public figure aiming to optimize your social media impact, this template is your ultimate guide to effective celebrity branding.

Time to Elevate Your Presentation Game

Armed with the best social media case study PPT templates, your presentations are bound to transcend the norms of ordinary storytelling and ascend to captivating visual journeys that leave an indelible mark on your audience. Download any or all of these templates and harness the power of creativity and customization.

Step into the spotlight of presentation excellence and ignite curiosity, leaving your viewers yearning for more. The stage is set, and the templates await - unleash your creativity and captivate the world with the best social media case study PPT templates.

And if you are looking to rule the digital realm, then you may check out our comprehensive guide of 10 Best Digital Marketing Templates . These will help you elevate your online presence for sure.

For managers and entrepreneurs, we have resources that will help you cast away the work ethics myths and lead you toward enlightenment. Do take a look at our well-crafted list of Must-Have Corporate Ethics Case Study Examples with Templates and Samples .

FAQs on Social Media Case Study

What is a social media case study.

A social media case study is an in-depth analysis of a real-world social media marketing campaign or branding effort. It examines how brands, influencers, or individuals leveraged platforms to achieve specific objectives. These studies showcase strategies, challenges faced, and outcomes, encompassing goals, target audience, content, influencers, metrics, and impact on brand awareness, acquisition, and conversion rates. Valuable resources for marketers and businesses seeking social media optimization, case studies provide insights into effective tactics and best practices. By learning from successful campaigns, individuals can glean valuable knowledge to enhance their own social media endeavors and capitalize on the power of these platforms.

How do you introduce a case study on social media?

Introducing a case study on social media involves setting the stage, providing context, and outlining the purpose and objectives of the study. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to do it effectively:

• Start with a compelling title : Begin by giving your case study a clear and attention-grabbing title that highlights the key focus of the study.
• Provide a brief overview : In a few sentences, introduce the subject of the case study, whether it's brand, company, influencer, or celebrity involved in a social media campaign.
• State the objectives : Clearly outline the goals and objectives of the case study. What specific aspects of social media marketing or branding are being analyzed?
• Explain the importance : Highlight why this particular case study is relevant and significant in the context of social media marketing, industry trends, or specific challenges faced.
• Set the context : Briefly explain the background of the subject and the social media platforms they use. Mention any notable achievements or challenges they have encountered in their social media journey.
• Mention the methodology : Provide a brief overview of the research methodology used in the case study. This may include data sources, analysis tools, and any primary research conducted.
• Tease the results : Give a glimpse of the key findings or outcomes of the case study to generate interest and keep readers engaged.
• Discuss the structure : Briefly outline the sections or key areas covered in the case study, such as campaign strategies, content creation, influencer partnerships, etc.
• Emphasize actionable insights : Mention that the case study will offer valuable insights and actionable takeaways that can be applied to other social media strategies.
• Conclude with an invitation : Encourage readers to dive into the case study to learn more and explore the successful social media tactics employed by the subject.

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Effective Social Media Campaigns: Case Studies

• Key Takeaways

79% of marketers believe that social media is an effective marketing channel. (Source. Sprout Social)

Video content on social media generates 12 times more shares than text and images combined. (Source. SmallBizGenius)

71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. (Source. HubSpot)

Effective social media campaigns hinge on visual content, compelling narratives, and audience targeting.

Influencer marketing and data-driven decisions can significantly impact campaign success.

The world of digital marketing has undergone a profound transformation with the advent of social media platforms. In today’s landscape, social media campaigns have emerged as a driving force behind brand success. They have the potential to connect businesses with a global audience, foster engagement, and drive tangible results. However, the key to harnessing this potential lies in crafting and executing effective social media campaigns. This article serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding the intricacies of such campaigns, using real-world case studies as our compass.

In the following sections, we will delve deep into the strategies and tactics that underpin successful social media campaigns. We’ll explore the power of visual content, the art of crafting engaging narratives, audience targeting and segmentation, the role of paid advertising, influencer collaborations, data-driven decision-making, cross-platform integration, crisis management, and, most importantly, how to measure the success of your campaigns through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). We firmly believe that the integration of case studies into each section will provide actionable insights, allowing marketers and businesses to not only grasp these concepts but also apply them effectively in their own campaigns.

1. Introduction to Social Media Campaigns

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, social media has emerged as a pivotal platform for businesses and brands to connect with their target audiences. The term “social media campaign” refers to a structured marketing effort designed to achieve specific goals through various social media channels. This topic serves as the foundational point of our article, providing readers with a comprehensive understanding of the importance and relevance of social media campaigns in today’s business environment.

• 1.1 The Role of Social Media in Modern Marketing

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, have become integral components of marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes. They offer unique opportunities to engage with a global audience, build brand recognition, and drive customer loyalty. By establishing a presence on these platforms, companies can tap into the immense potential of social media marketing.

• 1.2 Importance of Effective Campaigns for Brand Success

The success of a brand often hinges on its ability to effectively utilize social media. The digital era has ushered in a paradigm shift in consumer behavior, with people increasingly turning to social platforms for product information, reviews, and recommendations. Therefore, brands that can craft and execute compelling social media campaigns have a competitive edge in the market. In this article, we delve into case studies to highlight the tangible impact of well-executed campaigns on brand success.

• 1.3 Overview of the Article’s Focus on Case Studies

To illustrate the principles and strategies behind effective social media campaigns, this article relies on real-world examples in the form of case studies. These case studies offer practical insights into how businesses have leveraged social media to achieve their marketing objectives. By examining specific instances of successful campaigns, readers can gain a deeper understanding of the strategies, tactics, and outcomes associated with social media marketing.

• 1.4 The Value of Real-World Examples in Learning

Case studies provide a unique educational experience by offering a bridge between theory and practice. They allow readers to witness the application of marketing concepts in real scenarios, providing valuable lessons that can be adapted to their own marketing efforts. Through the analysis of these case studies, readers can discern patterns, best practices, and pitfalls to avoid when embarking on their social media campaigns.

2. The Power of Visual Content

In today’s digital landscape, the role of visual content in social media campaigns cannot be overstated. Visual elements have the unique ability to capture the audience’s attention, convey messages quickly, and create a lasting impact. In this section, we will delve into the various aspects of visual content and explore how it contributes to the effectiveness of social media campaigns.

•  2.1. Utilizing Eye-Catching Images and Graphics

Visual content often starts with the use of captivating images and graphics. Whether it’s an eye-catching photograph, an intriguing illustration, or an attention-grabbing infographic, the right visuals can immediately pique the interest of your audience. Marketers need to understand the significance of choosing images and graphics that align with their brand and campaign objectives. We will discuss how selecting the right visuals can set the tone for the entire campaign and leave a memorable impression on viewers.

•  2.2. The Impact of Video Content

Videos have become a dominant force in the realm of social media. From short clips to longer-form content, videos offer a dynamic way to engage with audiences. This  explores the effectiveness of video content in social media campaigns. We will discuss the advantages of video marketing , such as its ability to convey complex messages, evoke emotions, and increase user engagement. Case studies will be presented to highlight successful video-centric campaigns that have achieved remarkable results.

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•  2.3. Infographics as a Storytelling Tool

Infographics are a powerful tool for storytelling on social media. They allow marketers to condense information into visually appealing and easily digestible formats. In this section, we will explore how infographics can be leveraged to convey data, statistics, and narratives effectively. We’ll discuss the design principles behind compelling infographics and provide examples of campaigns that have effectively used infographics to educate and engage their audiences.

•  2.4. User-Generated Content and Its Authenticity

User-generated content (UGC) has gained prominence as a means of building trust and authenticity. UGC involves content created by customers or fans of a brand, and it often showcases real-life experiences and testimonials. We will examine the impact of UGC in social media campaigns, emphasizing how it fosters authenticity and credibility. Case studies will demonstrate how brands have harnessed the power of UGC to build strong relationships with their audience.

• 2.5. Case Studies Showcasing Successful Visual Campaigns

To reinforce the concepts discussed in this section, we will present real-world case studies of social media campaigns that have excelled in utilizing visual content. These case studies will offer concrete examples of how businesses and organizations have leveraged eye-catching images, videos, infographics, and user-generated content to create compelling and effective social media campaigns. By analyzing these success stories, readers will gain insights into the strategies and tactics that drive engagement and deliver results in the world of visual content on social media.

3. Crafting Engaging Content

In the realm of social media campaigns, crafting engaging content is undeniably a cornerstone of success. Your content is the bridge that connects your brand with your audience, and it’s crucial to ensure that this connection is not only established but also strengthened. Here, we delve into the intricacies of creating content that captivates and resonates with your target audience.

•  3.1. Strategies for Creating Compelling Content
• Understanding Your Audience: Crafting engaging content begins with a deep understanding of your target audience. Take the time to research their preferences, interests, and pain points. Tailoring your content to address their specific needs is key to engagement.
• Storytelling Techniques: Storytelling is a powerful tool in the world of content creation. Learn how to weave narratives that not only convey your brand’s message but also evoke emotions and create a memorable impact.
•  3.2. Building Brand Personality Through Content
• Consistency in Branding: Effective content aligns with your brand’s identity. Explore how to maintain consistency in messaging, tone, and visuals across all your social media platforms to reinforce your brand’s personality.
• Showcasing Brand Values: Engaging content often reflects your brand’s values and mission. Discover strategies for infusing your content with your brand’s ethos, creating a deeper connection with your audience.
•  3.3. Interactive Content and Engagement Tactics
• The Power of Interactivity: Interactive content, such as polls, quizzes, and live sessions, can significantly boost engagement. Learn how to incorporate these elements into your social media campaigns to encourage participation.
• Engagement Tactics: Beyond the content itself, engagement tactics play a vital role. Explore techniques like responding promptly to comments, running contests, and encouraging user-generated content to keep your audience actively engaged.
•  3.4. Case Studies Exemplifying Effective Content Strategies

Real-World Examples: To solidify your understanding of crafting engaging content, we’ll delve into case studies from successful social media campaigns. These case studies will showcase how brands effectively applied the strategies mentioned above to achieve remarkable engagement and results.

Crafting engaging content is an ongoing process that requires creativity, a deep understanding of your audience, and adaptability. By following the strategies and principles outlined in this section, you can set the stage for creating content that not only captures your audience’s attention but also keeps them coming back for more, ultimately driving the success of your social media campaigns.

4. Targeting the Right Audience

In the world of social media campaigns, success hinges significantly on understanding and effectively targeting the right audience. Identifying your audience is akin to the foundation of a house; it’s the starting point upon which all your efforts will be built. Here, we delve into the critical aspects of audience targeting, providing you with valuable insights to ensure your social media campaigns hit the mark.

• 4.1 Importance of Understanding Your Audience

Before embarking on any social media campaign, it’s imperative to gain a deep understanding of your audience. This involves comprehensive market research to define demographic details such as age, gender, location, and interests. By knowing your audience inside and out, you can tailor your content and messaging to resonate with them. Case studies in this section will demonstrate how brands successfully researched and understood their target audience, leading to highly effective campaigns.

• 4.2 Segmenting Your Audience for Personalized Messaging

Once you’ve identified your broader audience, the next step is segmenting it into smaller, more specific groups. This segmentation allows you to craft personalized messages that cater to the unique needs and preferences of each group. We’ll explore various segmentation strategies, including psychographic, behavioral, and geographic segmentation. Real-world examples will showcase how brands effectively divided their audience and delivered tailored content for maximum impact.

• 4.3 Data-Driven Targeting Strategies

In today’s data-driven landscape, harnessing the power of analytics is paramount. We’ll discuss how data can inform your targeting strategies, enabling you to make informed decisions. By analyzing user behavior, engagement patterns, and conversion rates, you can refine your targeting to reach the right people at the right time. Case studies will highlight instances where data-driven targeting resulted in remarkable campaign success.

• 4.4 Case Studies Demonstrating Successful Audience Targeting

To solidify the concepts discussed in this section, we’ll present a series of case studies that exemplify the art of audience targeting. These real-world examples will showcase how renowned brands meticulously identified their audiences, segmented them effectively, and leveraged data-driven insights to create impactful social media campaigns. By examining these success stories, you’ll gain actionable insights to apply to your own campaigns, ensuring that you’re reaching the audience most likely to convert and engage with your brand.

5. Leveraging Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising has become an integral component of modern digital marketing strategies. To effectively utilize social media advertising, businesses need to understand the nuances of paid promotion, ad formats, budget allocation, and measuring return on investment (ROI). In this section, we will delve into key aspects of leveraging social media advertising for successful campaigns.

• 5.1 Paid vs. Organic Reach on Social Media

One of the fundamental decisions in social media advertising is whether to rely on organic reach or invest in paid promotion. Organic reach refers to the audience your content naturally reaches without paid promotion, while paid reach involves allocating a budget to boost content visibility. It’s crucial to strike the right balance between these two approaches. Organic reach is limited, and algorithms frequently change, making it challenging to reach a wider audience. Paid reach, on the other hand, offers more control over targeting and exposure but requires a financial investment. Businesses must assess their goals, target audience, and available resources to determine the optimal mix of paid and organic strategies.

• 5.2 Ad Formats and Placements

Social media platforms offer a diverse range of ad formats and placements to cater to different campaign objectives. Understanding these options is essential for crafting effective advertising strategies. For instance, Facebook provides options such as image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and more. Instagram offers sponsored posts and stories. LinkedIn specializes in B2B advertising, while Twitter has promoted tweets. Each platform has its strengths and audience demographics, so selecting the right ad format and placement aligning with campaign goals is critical. Creative and compelling ad content tailored to the chosen format further enhances the campaign’s effectiveness.

• 5.3 Budgeting and ROI Tracking

Allocating a budget for social media advertising is a strategic decision that impacts campaign reach and outcomes. It involves setting aside funds for ad spend, creative production, and campaign management. Establishing a clear budgeting strategy ensures that resources are utilized efficiently. Additionally, tracking ROI is essential to measure the effectiveness of advertising efforts. Tools like Google Analytics and social media platform insights provide data on ad performance, including click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition. Regularly monitoring these metrics allows businesses to make data-driven adjustments and optimize their advertising spend.

• 5.4 Case Studies Showcasing Successful Social Media Advertising Campaigns

To illustrate the concepts discussed in this section, we will delve into real-world case studies that exemplify successful social media advertising campaigns. These case studies will provide concrete examples of businesses that effectively leveraged paid promotion, selected the right ad formats, allocated budgets strategically, and achieved measurable ROI. By examining these success stories, readers can gain insights and inspiration for their own social media advertising endeavors.

6. Harnessing the Power of Influencers

In the realm of social media campaigns, influencers have emerged as key players capable of driving brand engagement and expanding reach. This section explores the dynamics of influencer marketing, providing valuable insights into how brands can effectively harness the power of influencers.

• 6.1 Identifying the Right Influencers for Your Brand

To embark on a successful influencer marketing journey, it’s crucial to identify influencers who align with your brand’s values, target audience, and objectives. This involves meticulous research to pinpoint individuals whose content resonates with your niche. The right influencer will not only bring authenticity to your campaigns but also enhance credibility.

• 6.2 Collaboration and Partnership Strategies

Once you’ve identified potential influencers, the next step is to initiate collaborations and partnerships. Successful influencer marketing hinges on building authentic relationships with influencers. Brands must craft compelling proposals, outlining the mutual benefits of the partnership. Effective communication, transparency, and negotiation skills are essential in establishing a fruitful collaboration.

• 6.3 Measuring the Impact of Influencer Campaigns

The effectiveness of influencer campaigns goes beyond mere follower counts. In this section, we delve into the metrics and tools required to measure the true impact of influencer marketing. Brands need to track engagement rates, click-through rates, conversions, and sentiment analysis to gauge the success of campaigns. Measuring ROI and aligning influencer efforts with business goals are vital aspects of this evaluation.

• 6.4 Navigating Potential Pitfalls

Influencer marketing is not without its challenges. Brands need to be prepared to navigate potential pitfalls such as influencer controversies, authenticity concerns, and changes in influencer algorithms. This section provides strategies for mitigating risks and ensuring the longevity of influencer partnerships.

• 6.5 Case Studies of Effective Influencer Marketing

To illustrate the effectiveness of influencer marketing, we present case studies showcasing brands that have leveraged influencers successfully. These real-world examples demonstrate how influencers can amplify brand messages, drive engagement, and contribute to campaign success. Each case study offers unique insights and lessons that can be applied to your influencer marketing efforts.

7. Data-Driven Decision Making

In today’s digital age, data plays a pivotal role in the success of social media campaigns. Marketers and businesses can no longer rely solely on intuition and creativity; they must harness the power of data to make informed decisions that drive results. This section explores the significance of data-driven decision making in social media campaigns and its s.

• 7.1 Importance of Data in Campaign Decisions

Data serves as the foundation upon which effective social media campaigns are built. It provides valuable insights into audience behavior, content performance, and campaign reach. Marketers can use data to identify trends, preferences, and opportunities, allowing them to tailor their strategies for maximum impact.

By analyzing data, businesses can determine which social media platforms are most effective for their target audience, the types of content that resonate best, and the optimal posting times. This information guides campaign decisions, ensuring that resources are allocated wisely and efforts are focused where they matter most.

• 7.2 Key Metrics to Monitor for Success

To make data-driven decisions, it’s crucial to identify and monitor key performance metrics. Metrics vary depending on campaign goals, but common ones include engagement rate, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and return on investment (ROI). Each metric provides unique insights into campaign performance.

For instance, a high engagement rate may indicate that your content is resonating with your audience, while a low conversion rate might signal the need for optimization in your conversion funnel. By tracking these metrics, marketers can assess the effectiveness of their campaigns in real-time and make necessary adjustments to improve outcomes.

• 7.3 Tools for Social Media Analytics

The availability of advanced analytics tools has made data analysis more accessible to businesses of all sizes. Social media platforms themselves offer insights and analytics dashboards, allowing marketers to track metrics within the platform. Additionally, third-party analytics tools provide more in-depth analysis and reporting capabilities.

Tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social enable marketers to measure the impact of their social media efforts comprehensively. These tools offer features such as audience segmentation, content performance tracking, and competitor analysis, empowering businesses to refine their strategies based on data-driven insights.

• 7.4 Case Studies: Highlighting Data-Driven Success

To illustrate the power of data-driven decision making, this section will present case studies of companies that have leveraged data effectively in their social media campaigns. These real-world examples will showcase how businesses used data analysis to refine their targeting, content, and overall strategies, resulting in significant improvements in campaign performance.

By examining these case studies, readers can gain actionable insights into the practical application of data-driven decision making. These success stories will serve as inspiration for businesses looking to maximize the impact of their social media campaigns through data-driven approaches.

8. Cross-Platform Integration

• 8.1 Coordinating Campaigns Across Multiple Platforms

In today’s digital landscape, it’s crucial for businesses to maintain a presence on various social media platforms to reach a diverse audience. Coordinating campaigns across multiple platforms is essential to ensure a consistent brand message and maximize the impact of your social media efforts. This involves strategizing how content and messaging will be adapted to fit the unique characteristics of each platform, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or others. Successful coordination ensures that your audience receives a unified and compelling brand experience, regardless of the platform they choose to engage with.

• 8.2 Consistency in Messaging and Branding

Consistency is the cornerstone of effective cross-platform integration. It means that your brand’s messaging, tone, and visual identity should remain cohesive across all social media channels. Consistency not only reinforces your brand’s identity but also fosters trust and recognition among your audience. Achieving this consistency involves creating brand guidelines that dictate how your brand should be represented across different platforms. This includes using the same color schemes, logos, fonts, and voice to maintain a coherent brand presence.

• 8.3 Maximizing Reach Through Integration

One of the primary advantages of cross-platform integration is the ability to maximize your reach. Each social media platform has its unique user base and strengths. By integrating your campaigns, you can leverage these strengths to reach a broader and more diverse audience. For example, you might use Instagram for visually appealing content, Twitter for real-time updates, and LinkedIn for professional networking. Integrating these platforms strategically allows you to tap into the strengths of each while maintaining a consistent brand identity.

• 8.4 Case Studies of Successful Cross-Platform Campaigns

To illustrate the effectiveness of cross-platform integration, let’s look at a few case studies. For instance, a clothing brand may use Instagram and Pinterest for visual inspiration, Facebook for community engagement, and Twitter for real-time promotions. This coordinated approach enables the brand to showcase its products, connect with customers, and drive sales seamlessly. Similarly, a tech company may use LinkedIn for professional outreach, Twitter for customer support, and YouTube for informative tutorials. These examples demonstrate how businesses can strategically integrate their social media efforts to achieve specific goals and engage with their target audience effectively.

Cross-platform integration isn’t just about being present on multiple social media platforms; it’s about orchestrating a harmonious and impactful brand presence across them. By coordinating campaigns, maintaining consistency, and strategically leveraging each platform’s strengths, businesses can maximize their reach and create a more engaging social media experience for their audience. The case studies further emphasize the real-world benefits of this approach, showcasing its potential for businesses of all sizes and industries.

9. Crisis Management on Social Media

• 9.1 Preparing for Potential Social Media Crises

In the world of social media, crises can arise unexpectedly, and it’s essential for brands to be prepared. This preparation involves developing a crisis management plan that outlines potential scenarios, roles and responsibilities, and communication strategies. Identifying the types of crises that can occur, such as negative customer feedback, product recalls, or social media scandals, is the first step. Once potential crises are identified, brands can create detailed response protocols, designate crisis team members, and establish a chain of command. Preparation also involves setting up monitoring tools to detect issues early, allowing for a swift response.

• 9.2 Handling Negative Feedback and PR Disasters

Negative feedback on social media can quickly escalate into a crisis if not handled properly. Brands must have clear guidelines for responding to negative comments, reviews, or mentions. This includes addressing concerns in a timely and empathetic manner, acknowledging mistakes when they occur, and offering solutions to rectify issues. Transparency is key in maintaining trust during crises. In the case of PR disasters, such as product recalls or public relations scandals, brands should have a crisis communication plan that includes messaging, media response, and a designated spokesperson. Effective crisis communication involves providing accurate information, taking responsibility, and outlining steps being taken to resolve the situation.

• 9.3 Case Studies Illustrating Effective Crisis Management

To better understand effective crisis management on social media, it’s valuable to examine real-world case studies. One notable example is how Johnson & Johnson managed the Tylenol crisis in the 1980s. When tampered Tylenol capsules resulted in several deaths, the company immediately recalled all products and engaged in open and transparent communication with the public. This swift and responsible action helped rebuild trust and safeguard the brand’s reputation. Another case study is how Starbucks responded to a racial bias incident in one of its stores. The company publicly apologized, closed stores for a day of anti-bias training, and continued to engage with stakeholders to address the issue. These case studies demonstrate the importance of proactive crisis management strategies.

• 10. Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced digital world, where the social media landscape is ever-evolving, the ability to craft and execute effective campaigns is more crucial than ever. This article has taken you on a journey through the various facets of social media marketing, using real-world case studies as our guiding stars. We’ve explored the impact of visual content, the art of storytelling, audience targeting, advertising strategies, influencer collaborations, data analytics, cross-platform integration, and crisis management. These are the building blocks of a successful social media campaign.

As we conclude this exploration, it’s vital to remember that the world of social media marketing is dynamic and requires adaptability. Strategies that work today may need adjustment tomorrow. However, armed with the knowledge, insights, and examples provided in this article, you are better equipped to navigate this ever-changing landscape. Your campaigns can be more than just posts and hashtags; they can be powerful tools for building brand identity, fostering engagement, and achieving your marketing goals. The path to effective social media campaigns is paved with creativity, data-driven decisions, and the willingness to learn from the successes of others. It’s time to embark on your own journey of social media success.

Connect with us at  EMB .

• Q. What’s the importance of visual content in social media campaigns?

Visual content grabs attention and boosts engagement, making it a key element in successful campaigns.

• Q. How can I measure the success of my social media campaigns?

Define KPIs, set benchmarks, use analytics tools, and analyze data to gauge performance.

• Q. Why are real-world case studies valuable for marketers?

Case studies provide practical insights and examples of effective campaign strategies.

• Q. What role does influencer marketing play in social media campaigns?

Influencers can amplify brand messages and connect with niche audiences authentically.

• Q. How do I handle a social media crisis effectively?

Preparedness, transparency, and swift response are vital in managing social media crises.

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Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four.  Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls,  Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

• Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
• Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
• The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
• Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
• A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
• Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1.   Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2.   Coffee 2016

3.   Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4.   Glory, Glory Man United!

5.   Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6.   The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7.   Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8.   Prodigy Finance

9.   Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

paperclip Higher Education How the University of Sydney Proves the Value of Social Media

The University of Sydney, Australia's first university, was founded in 1850 and today has over 8,100 faculty, 73,000 students, and 380,000 alumni in more than 170 countries.

• 31.5% Increase in brand sentiment score since the launch of #usydonline
• 4x Instagram campaign engagement rate 4x higher than platform benchmarks
• 41% year-over-year increase in social video views

What they did

The University of Sydney created a social media strategy that enables the Social Squad to align content, goals, and reporting across the core social media team and the 36 official channels owned by various faculties.

Let's do this

Products used in this study, aligning content strategy across the university.

Before Hootsuite, there was a lot of inconsistency across the university’s social media channels. The central team had no visibility into how the faculties were managing content or measuring its success.

The social media team had a vision for what they wanted to achieve and what success looked like—but they needed better alignment across the university to bring that vision to life.

With Hootsuite, the team has greater insight into what’s happening and can measure the individual and combined success of the Social Squad.

The Social Squad meets weekly to discuss upcoming content, determine its strategic importance, and decide which channels to share it on to ensure it reaches the right audience. They also collaborate on best practices, test different ways of working, align on content, and track their progress.

Mapping the student journey with Hootsuite and Adobe

The University of Sydney’s website is built, managed, and measured through Adobe Experience Manager. The preconfigured Hootsuite integration with Adobe enables the university to track the impact of social media across the entire student journey.

Using built-in tracking codes, the school can measure engagement from the first time an individual engages on social media to when they become a prospective student on the website.

This end-to-end visibility into the student journey enables the social media team to measure and prove the return on investment in social media.

Tracking sentiment and proactively managing brand reputation

The University of Sydney uses Talkwalker and Hootsuite to understand people’s perceptions of the brand in various online channels.  Sentiment tracking  has transformed the university’s ability to measure and manage its brand reputation.

By monitoring brand sentiment scores and engaging in social listening, the social media team gains helpful insights to inform campaign strategy. It can then take proactive steps to boost sentiment through social media communications as needed.

For example, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the team noticed negative sentiment around travel in Australia among international audiences. Following a thoughtful campaign called Stay Strong India, the team saw an incredible 30% increase in net sentiment score.

Measuring the impact and value of social media

In the past, the social team found it difficult to report on its progress in a meaningful way. There was so much content being shared across so many channels, it was hard to keep track of it all.

With the help of Hootsuite’s Business Value and Customer Success teams, the University of Sydney set benchmarks against other higher education institutions. The University can now demonstrate how it tracks higher than both industry and average platform benchmarks, mainly because it has a great understanding of its audiences.

With Hootsuite Advanced Analytics, the team can also clearly report on everything from engagement to campaign performance and return on investment without spending days or weeks analyzing data in spreadsheets.

The results

The University of Sydney is less than one year into its new social media strategy, and it is already using social media and tracking its performance in a way that raises the university to an entirely new level of social media best practice.

The team plans to continue executing its effective strategy, gathering more insights on student and academic audiences, and recruiting more influencers to help it continue to grow its social media presence and achieve its ambitious goals.

Put social media to work in every corner of your business

Trusted by 22+ million users in 175+ countries for managing social media.

The ability to show stakeholders how a social media post leads prospective students to the website and eventually to apply for a specific course helps us prove the value of social and justify more investment.

Related Case Studies

Enhancing the student experience with social media content

How Michael Graham uses social to unify brand messaging to become a digital-first organisation

Innovetive Petcare connects veterinary clinics with communities and melts hearts with pet-loving pics

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Violence, media effects, and criminology.

• Nickie D. Phillips Nickie D. Phillips Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, St. Francis College
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.189
• Published online: 27 July 2017

Debate surrounding the impact of media representations on violence and crime has raged for decades and shows no sign of abating. Over the years, the targets of concern have shifted from film to comic books to television to video games, but the central questions remain the same. What is the relationship between popular media and audience emotions, attitudes, and behaviors? While media effects research covers a vast range of topics—from the study of its persuasive effects in advertising to its positive impact on emotions and behaviors—of particular interest to criminologists is the relationship between violence in popular media and real-life aggression and violence. Does media violence cause aggression and/or violence?

The study of media effects is informed by a variety of theoretical perspectives and spans many disciplines including communications and media studies, psychology, medicine, sociology, and criminology. Decades of research have amassed on the topic, yet there is no clear agreement about the impact of media or about which methodologies are most appropriate. Instead, there continues to be disagreement about whether media portrayals of violence are a serious problem and, if so, how society should respond.

Conflicting interpretations of research findings inform and shape public debate around media effects. Although there seems to be a consensus among scholars that exposure to media violence impacts aggression, there is less agreement around its potential impact on violence and criminal behavior. While a few criminologists focus on the phenomenon of copycat crimes, most rarely engage with whether media directly causes violence. Instead, they explore broader considerations of the relationship between media, popular culture, and society.

• media exposure
• criminal behavior
• popular culture
• media violence
• media and crime
• copycat crimes

Media Exposure, Violence, and Aggression

On Friday July 22, 2016 , a gunman killed nine people at a mall in Munich, Germany. The 18-year-old shooter was subsequently characterized by the media as being under psychiatric care and harboring at least two obsessions. One, an obsession with mass shootings, including that of Anders Breivik who ultimately killed 77 people in Norway in 2011 , and the other an obsession with video games. A Los Angeles, California, news report stated that the gunman was “an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including ‘Counter-Strike,’” while another headline similarly declared, “Munich gunman, a fan of violent video games, rampage killers, had planned attack for a year”(CNN Wire, 2016 ; Reuters, 2016 ). This high-profile incident was hardly the first to link popular culture to violent crime. Notably, in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine shooting massacre, for example, media sources implicated and later discredited music, video games, and a gothic aesthetic as causal factors of the crime (Cullen, 2009 ; Yamato, 2016 ). Other, more recent, incidents have echoed similar claims suggesting that popular culture has a nefarious influence on consumers.

Media violence and its impact on audiences are among the most researched and examined topics in communications studies (Hetsroni, 2007 ). Yet, debate over whether media violence causes aggression and violence persists, particularly in response to high-profile criminal incidents. Blaming video games, and other forms of media and popular culture, as contributing to violence is not a new phenomenon. However, interpreting media effects can be difficult because commenters often seem to indicate a grand consensus that understates more contradictory and nuanced interpretations of the data.

In fact, there is a consensus among many media researchers that media violence has an impact on aggression although its impact on violence is less clear. For example, in response to the shooting in Munich, Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology, avoided pinning the incident solely on video games, but in the process supported the assertion that video gameplay is linked to aggression. He stated,

While there isn’t complete consensus in any scientific field, a study we conducted showed more than 90% of pediatricians and about two-thirds of media researchers surveyed agreed that violent video games increase aggression in children. (Bushman, 2016 )

Others, too, have reached similar conclusions with regard to other media. In 2008 , psychologist John Murray summarized decades of research stating, “Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors” (Murray, 2008 , p. 1212). Scholars Glenn Sparks and Cheri Sparks similarly declared that,

Despite the fact that controversy still exists about the impact of media violence, the research results reveal a dominant and consistent pattern in favor of the notion that exposure to violent media images does increase the risk of aggressive behavior. (Sparks & Sparks, 2002 , p. 273)

In 2014 , psychologist Wayne Warburton more broadly concluded that the vast majority of studies have found “that exposure to violent media increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in the short and longterm, increases hostile perceptions and attitudes, and desensitizes individuals to violent content” (Warburton, 2014 , p. 64).

Criminologists, too, are sensitive to the impact of media exposure. For example, Jacqueline Helfgott summarized the research:

There have been over 1000 studies on the effects of TV and film violence over the past 40 years. Research on the influence of TV violence on aggression has consistently shown that TV violence increases aggression and social anxiety, cultivates a “mean view” of the world, and negatively impacts real-world behavior. (Helfgott, 2015 , p. 50)

In his book, Media Coverage of Crime and Criminal Justice , criminologist Matthew Robinson stated, “Studies of the impact of media on violence are crystal clear in their findings and implications for society” (Robinson, 2011 , p. 135). He cited studies on childhood exposure to violent media leading to aggressive behavior as evidence. In his pioneering book Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice , criminologist Ray Surette concurred that media violence is linked to aggression, but offered a nuanced interpretation. He stated,

a small to modest but genuine causal role for media violence regarding viewer aggression has been established for most beyond a reasonable doubt . . . There is certainly a connection between violent media and social aggression, but its strength and configuration is simply not known at this time. (Surette, 2011 , p. 68)

The uncertainties about the strength of the relationship and the lack of evidence linking media violence to real-world violence is often lost in the news media accounts of high-profile violent crimes.

Media Exposure and Copycat Crimes

While many scholars do seem to agree that there is evidence that media violence—whether that of film, TV, or video games—increases aggression, they disagree about its impact on violent or criminal behavior (Ferguson, 2014 ; Gunter, 2008 ; Helfgott, 2015 ; Reiner, 2002 ; Savage, 2008 ). Nonetheless, it is violent incidents that most often prompt speculation that media causes violence. More specifically, violence that appears to mimic portrayals of violent media tends to ignite controversy. For example, the idea that films contribute to violent crime is not a new assertion. Films such as A Clockwork Orange , Menace II Society , Set it Off , and Child’s Play 3 , have been linked to crimes and at least eight murders have been linked to Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers (Bracci, 2010 ; Brooks, 2002 ; PBS, n.d. ). Nonetheless, pinpointing a direct, causal relationship between media and violent crime remains elusive.

Criminologist Jacqueline Helfgott defined copycat crime as a “crime that is inspired by another crime” (Helfgott, 2015 , p. 51). The idea is that offenders model their behavior on media representations of violence whether real or fictional. One case, in particular, illustrated how popular culture, media, and criminal violence converge. On July 20, 2012 , James Holmes entered the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises , the third film in the massively successful Batman trilogy, in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. He shot and killed 12 people and wounded 70 others. At the time, the New York Times described the incident,

Witnesses told the police that Mr. Holmes said something to the effect of “I am the Joker,” according to a federal law enforcement official, and that his hair had been dyed or he was wearing a wig. Then, as people began to rise from their seats in confusion or anxiety, he began to shoot. The gunman paused at least once, several witnesses said, perhaps to reload, and continued firing. (Frosch & Johnson, 2012 ).

The dyed hair, Holme’s alleged comment, and that the incident occurred at a popular screening led many to speculate that the shooter was influenced by the earlier film in the trilogy and reignited debate around the impact about media violence. The Daily Mail pointed out that Holmes may have been motivated by a 25-year-old Batman comic in which a gunman opens fire in a movie theater—thus further suggesting the iconic villain served as motivation for the attack (Graham & Gallagher, 2012 ). Perceptions of the “Joker connection” fed into the notion that popular media has a direct causal influence on violent behavior even as press reports later indicated that Holmes had not, in fact, made reference to the Joker (Meyer, 2015 ).

A week after the Aurora shooting, the New York Daily News published an article detailing a “possible copycat” crime. A suspect was arrested in his Maryland home after making threatening phone calls to his workplace. The article reported that the suspect stated, “I am a [sic] joker” and “I’m going to load my guns and blow everybody up.” In their search, police found “a lethal arsenal of 25 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition” in the suspect’s home (McShane, 2012 ).

Though criminologists are generally skeptical that those who commit violent crimes are motivated solely by media violence, there does seem to be some evidence that media may be influential in shaping how some offenders commit crime. In his study of serious and violent juvenile offenders, criminologist Ray Surette found “about one out of three juveniles reports having considered a copycat crime and about one out of four reports actually having attempted one.” He concluded that “those juveniles who are self-reported copycats are significantly more likely to credit the media as both a general and personal influence.” Surette contended that though violent offenses garner the most media attention, copycat criminals are more likely to be career criminals and to commit property crimes rather than violent crimes (Surette, 2002 , pp. 56, 63; Surette 2011 ).

Discerning what crimes may be classified as copycat crimes is a challenge. Jacqueline Helfgott suggested they occur on a “continuum of influence.” On one end, she said, media plays a relatively minor role in being a “component of the modus operandi” of the offender, while on the other end, she said, “personality disordered media junkies” have difficulty distinguishing reality from violent fantasy. According to Helfgott, various factors such as individual characteristics, characteristics of media sources, relationship to media, demographic factors, and cultural factors are influential. Overall, scholars suggest that rather than pushing unsuspecting viewers to commit crimes, media more often influences how , rather than why, someone commits a crime (Helfgott, 2015 ; Marsh & Melville, 2014 ).

Given the public interest, there is relatively little research devoted to exactly what copycat crimes are and how they occur. Part of the problem of studying these types of crimes is the difficulty defining and measuring the concept. In an effort to clarify and empirically measure the phenomenon, Surette offered a scale that included seven indicators of copycat crimes. He used the following factors to identify copycat crimes: time order (media exposure must occur before the crime); time proximity (a five-year cut-off point of exposure); theme consistency (“a pattern of thought, feeling or behavior in the offender which closely parallels the media model”); scene specificity (mimicking a specific scene); repetitive viewing; self-editing (repeated viewing of single scene while “the balance of the film is ignored”); and offender statements and second-party statements indicating the influence of media. Findings demonstrated that cases are often prematurely, if not erroneously, labeled as “copycat.” Surette suggested that use of the scale offers a more precise way for researchers to objectively measure trends and frequency of copycat crimes (Surette, 2016 , p. 8).

Media Exposure and Violent Crimes

Overall, a causal link between media exposure and violent criminal behavior has yet to be validated, and most researchers steer clear of making such causal assumptions. Instead, many emphasize that media does not directly cause aggression and violence so much as operate as a risk factor among other variables (Bushman & Anderson, 2015 ; Warburton, 2014 ). In their review of media effects, Brad Bushman and psychologist Craig Anderson concluded,

In sum, extant research shows that media violence is a causal risk factor not only for mild forms of aggression but also for more serious forms of aggression, including violent criminal behavior. That does not mean that violent media exposure by itself will turn a normal child or adolescent who has few or no other risk factors into a violent criminal or a school shooter. Such extreme violence is rare, and tends to occur only when multiple risk factors converge in time, space, and within an individual. (Bushman & Anderson, 2015 , p. 1817)

Surette, however, argued that there is no clear linkage between media exposure and criminal behavior—violent or otherwise. In other words, a link between media violence and aggression does not necessarily mean that exposure to violent media causes violent (or nonviolent) criminal behavior. Though there are thousands of articles addressing media effects, many of these consist of reviews or commentary about prior research findings rather than original studies (Brown, 2007 ; Murray, 2008 ; Savage, 2008 ; Surette, 2011 ). Fewer, still, are studies that specifically measure media violence and criminal behavior (Gunter, 2008 ; Strasburger & Donnerstein, 2014 ). In their meta-analysis investigating the link between media violence and criminal aggression, scholars Joanne Savage and Christina Yancey did not find support for the assertion. Instead, they concluded,

The study of most consequence for violent crime policy actually found that exposure to media violence was significantly negatively related to violent crime rates at the aggregate level . . . It is plain to us that the relationship between exposure to violent media and serious violence has yet to be established. (Savage & Yancey, 2008 , p. 786)

Researchers continue to measure the impact of media violence among various forms of media and generally stop short of drawing a direct causal link in favor of more indirect effects. For example, one study examined the increase of gun violence in films over the years and concluded that violent scenes provide scripts for youth that justify gun violence that, in turn, may amplify aggression (Bushman, Jamieson, Weitz, & Romer, 2013 ). But others report contradictory findings. Patrick Markey and colleagues studied the relationship between rates of homicide and aggravated assault and gun violence in films from 1960–2012 and found that over the years, violent content in films increased while crime rates declined . After controlling for age shifts, poverty, education, incarceration rates, and economic inequality, the relationships remained statistically non-significant (Markey, French, & Markey, 2015 , p. 165). Psychologist Christopher Ferguson also failed to find a relationship between media violence in films and video games and violence (Ferguson, 2014 ).

Another study, by Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna, examined violent films from 1995–2004 and found decreases in violent crimes coincided with violent blockbuster movie attendance. Here, it was not the content that was alleged to impact crime rates, but instead what the authors called “voluntary incapacitation,” or the shifting of daily activities from that of potential criminal behavior to movie attendance. The authors concluded, “For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9% and 2.1%. Nonviolent movies have no statistically significant impact” (Dahl & DellaVigna, p. 39).

High-profile cases over the last several years have shifted public concern toward the perceived danger of video games, but research demonstrating a link between video games and criminal violence remains scant. The American Psychiatric Association declared that “research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression . . .” but stopped short of claiming that video games impact criminal violence. According to Breuer and colleagues, “While all of the available meta-analyses . . . found a relationship between aggression and the use of (violent) video games, the size and interpretation of this connection differ largely between these studies . . .” (APA, 2015 ; Breuer et al., 2015 ; DeCamp, 2015 ). Further, psychologists Patrick Markey, Charlotte Markey, and Juliana French conducted four time-series analyses investigating the relationship between video game habits and assault and homicide rates. The studies measured rates of violent crime, the annual and monthly video game sales, Internet searches for video game walkthroughs, and rates of violent crime occurring after the release dates of popular games. The results showed that there was no relationship between video game habits and rates of aggravated assault and homicide. Instead, there was some indication of decreases in crime (Markey, Markey, & French, 2015 ).

Another longitudinal study failed to find video games as a predictor of aggression, instead finding support for the “selection hypothesis”—that physically aggressive individuals (aged 14–17) were more likely to choose media content that contained violence than those slightly older, aged 18–21. Additionally, the researchers concluded,

that violent media do not have a substantial impact on aggressive personality or behavior, at least in the phases of late adolescence and early adulthood that we focused on. (Breuer, Vogelgesang, Quandt, & Festl, 2015 , p. 324)

Overall, the lack of a consistent finding demonstrating that media exposure causes violent crime may not be particularly surprising given that studies linking media exposure, aggression, and violence suffer from a host of general criticisms. By way of explanation, social theorist David Gauntlett maintained that researchers frequently employ problematic definitions of aggression and violence, questionable methodologies, rely too much on fictional violence, neglect the social meaning of violence, and assume the third-person effect—that is, assume that other, vulnerable people are impacted by media, but “we” are not (Ferguson & Dyck, 2012 ; Gauntlett, 2001 ).

Others, such as scholars Martin Barker and Julian Petley, flatly reject the notion that violent media exposure is a causal factor for aggression and/or violence. In their book Ill Effects , the authors stated instead that it is simply “stupid” to query about “what are the effects of [media] violence” without taking context into account (p. 2). They counter what they describe as moral campaigners who advance the idea that media violence causes violence. Instead, Barker and Petley argue that audiences interpret media violence in a variety of ways based on their histories, experiences, and knowledge, and as such, it makes little sense to claim media “cause” violence (Barker & Petley, 2001 ).

Given the seemingly inconclusive and contradictory findings regarding media effects research, to say that the debate can, at times, be contentious is an understatement. One article published in European Psychologist queried “Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?” and lamented that the debate had devolved into an ideological one (Elson & Ferguson, 2013 ). Another academic journal published a special issue devoted to video games and youth and included a transcript of exchanges between two scholars to demonstrate that a “peaceful debate” was, in fact, possible (Ferguson & Konijn, 2015 ).

Nonetheless, in this debate, the stakes are high and the policy consequences profound. After examining over 900 published articles, publication patterns, prominent authors and coauthors, and disciplinary interest in the topic, scholar James Anderson argued that prominent media effects scholars, whom he deems the “causationists,” had developed a cottage industry dependent on funding by agencies focused primarily on the negative effects of media on children. Anderson argued that such a focus presents media as a threat to family values and ultimately operates as a zero-sum game. As a result, attention and resources are diverted toward media and away from other priorities that are essential to understanding aggression such as social disadvantage, substance abuse, and parental conflict (Anderson, 2008 , p. 1276).

Theoretical Perspectives on Media Effects

Understanding how media may impact attitudes and behavior has been the focus of media and communications studies for decades. Numerous theoretical perspectives offer insight into how and to what extent the media impacts the audience. As scholar Jenny Kitzinger documented in 2004 , there are generally two ways to approach the study of media effects. One is to foreground the power of media. That is, to suggest that the media holds powerful sway over viewers. Another perspective is to foreground the power and heterogeneity of the audience and to recognize that it is comprised of active agents (Kitzinger, 2004 ).

The notion of an all-powerful media can be traced to the influence of scholars affiliated with the Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, in the 1930–1940s and proponents of the mass society theory. The institute was originally founded in Germany but later moved to the United States. Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes outlined how mass society theory assumed that members of the public were susceptible to media messages. This, theorists argued, was a result of rapidly changing social conditions and industrialization that produced isolated, impressionable individuals “cut adrift from kinship and organic ties and lacking moral cohesion” (Jewkes, 2015 , p. 13). In this historical context, in the era of World War II, the impact of Nazi propaganda was particularly resonant. Here, the media was believed to exhibit a unidirectional flow, operating as a powerful force influencing the masses. The most useful metaphor for this perspective described the media as a “hypodermic syringe” that could “‘inject’ values, ideas and information directly into the passive receiver producing direct and unmediated ‘effects’” (Jewkes, 2015 , pp. 16, 34). Though the hypodermic syringe model seems simplistic today, the idea that the media is all-powerful continues to inform contemporary public discourse around media and violence.

Concern of the power of media captured the attention of researchers interested in its purported negative impact on children. In one of the earliest series of studies in the United States during the late 1920s–1930s, researchers attempted to quantitatively measure media effects with the Payne Fund Studies. For example, they investigated how film, a relatively new medium, impacted children’s attitudes and behaviors, including antisocial and violent behavior. At the time, the Payne Fund Studies’ findings fueled the notion that children were indeed negatively influenced by films. This prompted the film industry to adopt a self-imposed code regulating content (Sparks & Sparks, 2002 ; Surette, 2011 ). Not everyone agreed with the approach. In fact, the methodologies employed in the studies received much criticism, and ultimately, the movement was branded as a moral crusade to regulate film content. Scholars Garth Jowett, Ian Jarvie, and Kathryn Fuller wrote about the significance of the studies,

We have seen this same policy battle fought and refought over radio, television, rock and roll, music videos and video games. Their researchers looked to see if intuitive concerns could be given concrete, measurable expression in research. While they had partial success, as have all subsequent efforts, they also ran into intractable problems . . . Since that day, no way has yet been found to resolve the dilemma of cause and effect: do crime movies create more crime, or do the criminally inclined enjoy and perhaps imitate crime movies? (Jowett, Jarvie, & Fuller, 1996 , p. 12)

As the debate continued, more sophisticated theoretical perspectives emerged. Efforts to empirically measure the impact of media on aggression and violence continued, albeit with equivocal results. In the 1950s and 1960s, psychological behaviorism, or understanding psychological motivations through observable behavior, became a prominent lens through which to view the causal impact of media violence. This type of research was exemplified by Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll studies demonstrating that children exposed to aggressive behavior, either observed in real life or on film, behaved more aggressively than those in control groups who were not exposed to the behavior. The assumption derived was that children learn through exposure and imitate behavior (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963 ). Though influential, the Bandura experiments were nevertheless heavily criticized. Some argued the laboratory conditions under which children were exposed to media were not generalizable to real-life conditions. Others challenged the assumption that children absorb media content in an unsophisticated manner without being able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. In fact, later studies did find children to be more discerning consumers of media than popularly believed (Gauntlett, 2001 ).

Hugely influential in our understandings of human behavior, the concept of social learning has been at the core of more contemporary understandings of media effects. For example, scholar Christopher Ferguson noted that the General Aggression Model (GAM), rooted in social learning and cognitive theory, has for decades been a dominant model for understanding how media impacts aggression and violence. GAM is described as the idea that “aggression is learned by the activation and repetition of cognitive scripts coupled with the desensitization of emotional responses due to repeated exposure.” However, Ferguson noted that its usefulness has been debated and advocated for a paradigm shift (Ferguson, 2013 , pp. 65, 27; Krahé, 2014 ).

Though the methodologies of the Payne Fund Studies and Bandura studies were heavily criticized, concern over media effects continued to be tied to larger moral debates including the fear of moral decline and concern over the welfare of children. Most notably, in the 1950s, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham warned of the dangers of comic books, a hugely popular medium at the time, and their impact on juveniles. Based on anecdotes and his clinical experience with children, Wertham argued that images of graphic violence and sexual debauchery in comic books were linked to juvenile delinquency. Though he was far from the only critic of comic book content, his criticisms reached the masses and gained further notoriety with the publication of his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent . Wertham described the comic book content thusly,

The stories have a lot of crime and gunplay and, in addition, alluring advertisements of guns, some of them full-page and in bright colors, with four guns of various sizes and descriptions on a page . . . Here is the repetition of violence and sexiness which no Freud, Krafft-Ebing or Havelock Ellis ever dreamed could be offered to children, and in such profusion . . . I have come to the conclusion that this chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction by comic books, both their content and their alluring advertisements of knives and guns, are contributing factors to many children’s maladjustment. (Wertham, 1954 , p. 39)

Wertham’s work was instrumental in shaping public opinion and policies about the dangers of comic books. Concern about the impact of comics reached its apex in 1954 with the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Wertham testified before the committee, arguing that comics were a leading cause of juvenile delinquency. Ultimately, the protest of graphic content in comic books by various interest groups contributed to implementation of the publishers’ self-censorship code, the Comics Code Authority, which essentially designated select books that were deemed “safe” for children (Nyberg, 1998 ). The code remained in place for decades, though it was eventually relaxed and decades later phased out by the two most dominant publishers, DC and Marvel.

Wertham’s work, however influential in impacting the comic industry, was ultimately panned by academics. Although scholar Bart Beaty characterized Wertham’s position as more nuanced, if not progressive, than the mythology that followed him, Wertham was broadly dismissed as a moral reactionary (Beaty, 2005 ; Phillips & Strobl, 2013 ). The most damning criticism of Wertham’s work came decades later, from Carol Tilley’s examination of Wertham’s files. She concluded that in Seduction of the Innocent ,

Wertham manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence—especially that evidence he attributed to personal clinical research with young people—for rhetorical gain. (Tilley, 2012 , p. 386)

Tilley linked Wertham’s approach to that of the Frankfurt theorists who deemed popular culture a social threat and contended that Wertham was most interested in “cultural correction” rather than scientific inquiry (Tilley, 2012 , p. 404).

Over the decades, concern about the moral impact of media remained while theoretical and methodological approaches to media effects studies continued to evolve (Rich, Bickham, & Wartella, 2015 ). In what many consider a sophisticated development, theorists began to view the audience as more active and multifaceted than the mass society perspective allowed (Kitzinger, 2004 ). One perspective, based on a “uses and gratifications” model, assumes that rather than a passive audience being injected with values and information, a more active audience selects and “uses” media as a response to their needs and desires. Studies of uses and gratifications take into account how choice of media is influenced by one’s psychological and social circumstances. In this context, media provides a variety of functions for consumers who may engage with it for the purposes of gathering information, reducing boredom, seeking enjoyment, or facilitating communication (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973 ; Rubin, 2002 ). This approach differs from earlier views in that it privileges the perspective and agency of the audience.

Another approach, the cultivation theory, gained momentum among researchers in the 1970s and has been of particular interest to criminologists. It focuses on how television television viewing impacts viewers’ attitudes toward social reality. The theory was first introduced by communications scholar George Gerbner, who argued the importance of understanding messages that long-term viewers absorb. Rather than examine the effect of specific content within any given programming, cultivation theory,

looks at exposure to massive flows of messages over long periods of time. The cultivation process takes place in the interaction of the viewer with the message; neither the message nor the viewer are all-powerful. (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Singnorielli, & Shanahan, 2002 , p. 48)

In other words, he argued, television viewers are, over time, exposed to messages about the way the world works. As Gerbner and colleagues stated, “continued exposure to its messages is likely to reiterate, confirm, and nourish—that is, cultivate—its own values and perspectives” (p. 49).

One of the most well-known consequences of heavy media exposure is what Gerbner termed the “mean world” syndrome. He coined it based on studies that found that long-term exposure to media violence among heavy television viewers, “tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and dangerous world” (p. 52). Inherent in Gerbner’s view was that media representations are separate and distinct entities from “real life.” That is, it is the distorted representations of crime and violence that cultivate the notion that the world is a dangerous place. In this context, Gerbner found that heavy television viewers are more likely to be fearful of crime and to overestimate their chances of being a victim of violence (Gerbner, 1994 ).

Though there is evidence in support of cultivation theory, the strength of the relationship between media exposure and fear of crime is inconclusive. This is in part due to the recognition that audience members are not homogenous. Instead, researchers have found that there are many factors that impact the cultivating process. This includes, but is not limited to, “class, race, gender, place of residence, and actual experience of crime” (Reiner, 2002 ; Sparks, 1992 ). Or, as Ted Chiricos and colleagues remarked in their study of crime news and fear of crime, “The issue is not whether media accounts of crime increase fear, but which audiences, with which experiences and interests, construct which meanings from the messages received” (Chiricos, Eschholz, & Gertz, p. 354).

Other researchers found that exposure to media violence creates a desensitizing effect, that is, that as viewers consume more violent media, they become less empathetic as well as psychologically and emotionally numb when confronted with actual violence (Bartholow, Bushman, & Sestir, 2006 ; Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, 2007 ; Cline, Croft, & Courrier, 1973 ; Fanti, Vanman, Henrich, & Avraamides, 2009 ; Krahé et al., 2011 ). Other scholars such as Henry Giroux, however, point out that our contemporary culture is awash in violence and “everyone is infected.” From this perspective, the focus is not on certain individuals whose exposure to violent media leads to a desensitization of real-life violence, but rather on the notion that violence so permeates society that it has become normalized in ways that are divorced from ethical and moral implications. Giroux wrote,

While it would be wrong to suggest that the violence that saturates popular culture directly causes violence in the larger society, it is arguable that such violence serves not only to produce an insensitivity to real life violence but also functions to normalize violence as both a source of pleasure and as a practice for addressing social issues. When young people and others begin to believe that a world of extreme violence, vengeance, lawlessness, and revenge is the only world they inhabit, the culture and practice of real-life violence is more difficult to scrutinize, resist, and transform . . . (Giroux, 2015 )

For Giroux, the danger is that the normalization of violence has become a threat to democracy itself. In our culture of mass consumption shaped by neoliberal logics, depoliticized narratives of violence have become desired forms of entertainment and are presented in ways that express tolerance for some forms of violence while delegitimizing other forms of violence. In their book, Disposable Futures , Brad Evans and Henry Giroux argued that as the spectacle of violence perpetuates fear of inevitable catastrophe, it reinforces expansion of police powers, increased militarization and other forms of social control, and ultimately renders marginalized members of the populace disposable (Evans & Giroux, 2015 , p. 81).

Criminology and the “Media/Crime Nexus”

Most criminologists and sociologists who focus on media and crime are generally either dismissive of the notion that media violence directly causes violence or conclude that findings are more complex than traditional media effects models allow, preferring to focus attention on the impact of media violence on society rather than individual behavior (Carrabine, 2008 ; Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015 ; Jewkes, 2015 ; Kitzinger, 2004 ; Marsh & Melville, 2014 ; Rafter, 2006 ; Sternheimer, 2003 ; Sternheimer 2013 ; Surette, 2011 ). Sociologist Karen Sternheimer forcefully declared “media culture is not the root cause of American social problems, not the Big Bad Wolf, as our ongoing public discussion would suggest” (Sternheimer, 2003 , p. 3). Sternheimer rejected the idea that media causes violence and argued that a false connection has been forged between media, popular culture, and violence. Like others critical of a singular focus on media, Sternheimer posited that overemphasis on the perceived dangers of media violence serves as a red herring that directs attention away from the actual causes of violence rooted in factors such as poverty, family violence, abuse, and economic inequalities (Sternheimer, 2003 , 2013 ). Similarly, in her Media and Crime text, Yvonne Jewkes stated that U.K. scholars tend to reject findings of a causal link because the studies are too reductionist; criminal behavior cannot be reduced to a single causal factor such as media consumption. Echoing Gauntlett’s critiques of media effects research, Jewkes stated that simplistic causal assumptions ignore “the wider context of a lifetime of meaning-making” (Jewkes, 2015 , p. 17).

Although they most often reject a “violent media cause violence” relationship, criminologists do not dismiss the notion of media as influential. To the contrary, over the decades much criminological interest has focused on the construction of social problems, the ideological implications of media, and media’s potential impact on crime policies and social control. Eamonn Carrabine noted that the focus of concern is not whether media directly causes violence but on “how the media promote damaging stereotypes of social groups, especially the young, to uphold the status quo” (Carrabine, 2008 , p. 34). Theoretically, these foci have been traced to the influence of cultural and Marxist studies. For example, criminologists frequently focus on how social anxieties and class inequalities impact our understandings of the relationship between media violence and attitudes, values, and behaviors. Influential works in the 1970s, such as Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order by Stuart Hall et al. and Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics , shifted criminological critique toward understanding media as a hegemonic force that reinforces state power and social control (Brown, 2011 ; Carrabine, 2008 ; Cohen, 2005 ; Garland, 2008 ; Hall et al., 2013 /1973, 2013/1973 ). Since that time, moral panic has become a common framework applied to public discourse around a variety of social issues including road rage, child abuse, popular music, sex panics, and drug abuse among others.

Into the 21st century , advances in technology, including increased use of social media, shifted the ways that criminologists approach the study of media effects. Scholar Sheila Brown traced how research in criminology evolved from a focus on “media and crime” to what she calls the “media/crime nexus” that recognizes that “media experience is real experience” (Brown, 2011 , p. 413). In other words, many criminologists began to reject as fallacy what social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson deemed “digital dualism,” or the notion that we have an “online” existence that is separate and distinct from our “off-line” existence. Instead, we exist simultaneously both online and offline, an

augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online. It is wrong to say “IRL” [in real life] to mean offline: Facebook is real life. (Jurgenson, 2012 )

The changing media landscape has been of particular interest to cultural criminologists. Michelle Brown recognized the omnipresence of media as significant in terms of methodological preferences and urged a move away from a focus on causality and predictability toward a more fluid approach that embraces the complex, contemporary media-saturated social reality characterized by uncertainty and instability (Brown, 2007 ).

Cultural criminologists have indeed rejected direct, causal relationships in favor of the recognition that social meanings of aggression and violence are constantly in transition, flowing through the media landscape, where “bits of information reverberate and bend back on themselves, creating a fluid porosity of meaning that defines late-modern life, and the nature of crime and media within it.” In other words, there is no linear relationship between crime and its representation. Instead, crime is viewed as inseparable from the culture in which our everyday lives are constantly re-created in loops and spirals that “amplify, distort, and define the experience of crime and criminality itself” (Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015 , pp. 154–155). As an example of this shift in understanding media effects, criminologist Majid Yar proposed that we consider how the transition from being primarily consumers to primarily producers of content may serve as a motivating mechanism for criminal behavior. Here, Yar is suggesting that the proliferation of user-generated content via media technologies such as social media (i.e., the desire “to be seen” and to manage self-presentation) has a criminogenic component worthy of criminological inquiry (Yar, 2012 ). Shifting attention toward the media/crime nexus and away from traditional media effects analyses opens possibilities for a deeper understanding of the ways that media remains an integral part of our everyday lives and inseparable from our understandings of and engagement with crime and violence.

Over the years, from films to comic books to television to video games to social media, concerns over media effects have shifted along with changing technologies. While there seems to be some consensus that exposure to violent media impacts aggression, there is little evidence showing its impact on violent or criminal behavior. Nonetheless, high-profile violent crimes continue to reignite public interest in media effects, particularly with regard to copycat crimes.

At times, academic debate around media effects remains contentious and one’s academic discipline informs the study and interpretation of media effects. Criminologists and sociologists are generally reluctant to attribute violence and criminal behavior directly to exposure to violence media. They are, however, not dismissive of the impact of media on attitudes, social policies, and social control as evidenced by the myriad of studies on moral panics and other research that addresses the relationship between media, social anxieties, gender, race, and class inequalities. Scholars who study media effects are also sensitive to the historical context of the debates and ways that moral concerns shape public policies. The self-regulating codes of the film industry and the comic book industry have led scholars to be wary of hyperbole and policy overreach in response to claims of media effects. Future research will continue to explore ways that changing technologies, including increasing use of social media, will impact our understandings and perceptions of crime as well as criminal behavior.

Further Reading

• American Psychological Association . (2015). Resolution on violent video games . Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/about/policy/violent-video-games.aspx
• Anderson, J. A. , & Grimes, T. (2008). Special issue: Media violence. Introduction. American Behavioral Scientist , 51 (8), 1059–1060.
• Berlatsky, N. (Ed.). (2012). Media violence: Opposing viewpoints . Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven.
• Elson, M. , & Ferguson, C. J. (2014). Twenty-five years of research on violence in digital games and aggression. European Psychologist , 19 (1), 33–46.
• Ferguson, C. (Ed.). (2015). Special issue: Video games and youth. Psychology of Popular Media Culture , 4 (4).
• Ferguson, C. J. , Olson, C. K. , Kutner, L. A. , & Warner, D. E. (2014). Violent video games, catharsis seeking, bullying, and delinquency: A multivariate analysis of effects. Crime & Delinquency , 60 (5), 764–784.
• Gentile, D. (2013). Catharsis and media violence: A conceptual analysis. Societies , 3 (4), 491–510.
• Huesmann, L. R. (2007). The impact of electronic media violence: Scientific theory and research. Journal of Adolescent Health , 41 (6), S6–S13.
• Huesmann, L. R. , & Taylor, L. D. (2006). The role of media violence in violent behavior. Annual Review of Public Health , 27 (1), 393–415.
• Krahé, B. (Ed.). (2013). Special issue: Understanding media violence effects. Societies , 3 (3).
• Media Violence Commission, International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA) . (2012). Report of the Media Violence Commission. Aggressive Behavior , 38 (5), 335–341.
• Rich, M. , & Bickham, D. (Eds.). (2015). Special issue: Methodological advances in the field of media influences on children. Introduction. American Behavioral Scientist , 59 (14), 1731–1735.
• American Psychological Association (APA) . (2015, August 13). APA review confirms link between playing violent video games and aggression . Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/08/violent-video-games.aspx
• Anderson, J. A. (2008). The production of media violence and aggression research: A cultural analysis. American Behavioral Scientist , 51 (8), 1260–1279.
• Bandura, A. , Ross, D. , & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 66 (1), 3–11.
• Barker, M. , & Petley, J. (2001). Ill effects: The media violence debate (2d ed.). London: Routledge.
• Bartholow, B. D. , Bushman, B. J. , & Sestir, M. A. (2006). Chronic violent video game exposure and desensitization to violence: Behavioral and event-related brain potential data. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 42 (4), 532–539.
• Beaty, B. (2005). Fredric Wertham and the critique of mass culture . Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
• Bracci, P. (2010, March 12). The police were sure James Bulger’s ten-year-old killers were simply wicked. But should their parents have been in the dock? Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257614/The-police-sure-James-Bulgers-year-old-killers-simply-wicked-But-parents-dock.html
• Breuer, J. , Vogelgesang, J. , Quandt, T. , & Festl, R. (2015). Violent video games and physical aggression: Evidence for a selection effect among adolescents. Psychology of Popular Media Culture , 4 (4), 305–328.
• Brooks, X. (2002, December 19). Natural born copycats . Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/dec/20/artsfeatures1
• Brown, M. (2007). Beyond the requisites: Alternative starting points in the study of media effects and youth violence. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture , 14 (1), 1–20.
• Brown, S. (2011). Media/crime/millennium: Where are we now? A reflective review of research and theory directions in the 21st century. Sociology Compass , 5 (6), 413–425.
• Bushman, B. (2016, July 26). Violent video games and real violence: There’s a link but it’s not so simple . Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/violent-video-games-and-real-violence-theres-a-link-but-its-not-so-simple?63038
• Bushman, B. J. , & Anderson, C. A. (2015). Understanding causality in the effects of media violence. American Behavioral Scientist , 59 (14), 1807–1821.
• Bushman, B. J. , Jamieson, P. E. , Weitz, I. , & Romer, D. (2013). Gun violence trends in movies. Pediatrics , 132 (6), 1014–1018.
• Carnagey, N. L. , Anderson, C. A. , & Bushman, B. J. (2007). The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 43 (3), 489–496.
• Carrabine, E. (2008). Crime, culture and the media . Cambridge, U.K.: Polity.
• Chiricos, T. , Eschholz, S. , & Gertz, M. (1997). Crime, news and fear of crime: Toward an identification of audience effects. Social Problems , 44 , 342.
• Cline, V. B. , Croft, R. G. , & Courrier, S. (1973). Desensitization of children to television violence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 27 (3), 360–365.
• CNN Wire (2016, July 24). Officials: 18-year-old suspect in Munich attack was obsessed with mass shootings . Retrieved from http://ktla.com/2016/07/24/18-year-old-suspect-in-munich-shooting-played-violent-video-games-had-mental-illness-officials/
• Cohen, S. (2005). Folk devils and moral panics (3d ed.). New York: Routledge.
• Cullen, D. (2009). Columbine . New York: Hachette.
• Dahl, G. , & DellaVigna, S. (2012). Does movie violence increase violent crime? In N. Berlatsky (Ed.), Media Violence: Opposing Viewpoints (pp. 36–43). Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven.
• DeCamp, W. (2015). Impersonal agencies of communication: Comparing the effects of video games and other risk factors on violence. Psychology of Popular Media Culture , 4 (4), 296–304.
• Elson, M. , & Ferguson, C. J. (2013). Does doing media violence research make one aggressive? European Psychologist , 19 (1), 68–75.
• Evans, B. , & Giroux, H. (2015). Disposable futures: The seduction of violence in the age of spectacle . San Francisco: City Lights Publishers.
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Social Media Marketing Case Studies: How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Business

Social media is a powerful tool that can be used to grow your business. By using social media effectively, you can reach a wider audience, build brand awareness, and generate leads. In this article, we will look at some social media marketing case studies to see how businesses have used social media to achieve their goals.

Case Study 1: Starbucks

Starbucks is a coffeehouse chain that has used social media to significant effect. They have a large following on all major social media platforms, and they use social media to engage with their customers, promote their products, and share their brand stories.

One of Starbucks' most successful social media campaigns was their #ShareACupOfKindness campaign. This campaign encouraged people to share acts of kindness with their friends and family. The campaign was a huge success, and it helped position Starbucks as a brand committed to kindness and compassion.

Case Study 2: Nike

Nike is another company that has used social media effectively. They have a strong presence on all major social media platforms and use social media to connect with athletes, sports fans, and fitness enthusiasts.

One of Nike's most successful social media campaigns was their #JustDoIt campaign. This campaign featured inspiring stories of athletes who overcame challenges and achieved their goals. The campaign was a huge success, and it helped to position Nike as a brand that inspires people to be their best selves.

Case Study 3: Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is a company that has been using social media for many years. They have a strong presence on all major social media platforms and use social media to connect with people worldwide.

One of Coca-Cola's most successful social media campaigns was their #ShareACoke campaign. This campaign featured personalized Coke bottles with people's names on them. The campaign was a huge success, and it helped position Coca-Cola as a brand about sharing happiness and connection.

These are just a few examples of how businesses have used social media to grow their businesses. By following the standards of these companies, you can use social media to achieve your business goals.

Here are some additional tips for using social media marketing to grow your business:

• Set clear goals:  Before you start any social media marketing campaign, it's essential to set clear goals. What do you want to achieve with your social media marketing? Do you want to increase website traffic, generate leads, or make sales? Once you know your goals, you can tailor your social media marketing strategy accordingly.
• Target your audience:  Not all social media users are created equal. It's important to target your social media marketing efforts to your target audience. This means understanding your target audience, what they care about, and where they spend their time online.
• Create engaging content:  The key to social media marketing is engaging your audience. This means creating interesting, informative, and relevant content for your target audience.
• Measure your results:  It's key to measure the results of your social media marketing efforts so you can see what's working and what's not. This will help you adjust your strategy accordingly and improve your ROI over time.

By following these tips, you can use social media marketing to grow your business and achieve your goals.

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Science News

Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. what now.

Understanding what is going on in teens’ minds is necessary for targeted policy suggestions

Most teens use social media, often for hours on end. Some social scientists are confident that such use is harming their mental health. Now they want to pinpoint what explains the link.

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By Sujata Gupta

February 20, 2024 at 7:30 am

In January, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, appeared at a congressional hearing to answer questions about how social media potentially harms children. Zuckerberg opened by saying: “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health.”

But many social scientists would disagree with that statement. In recent years, studies have started to show a causal link between teen social media use and reduced well-being or mood disorders, chiefly depression and anxiety.

Ironically, one of the most cited studies into this link focused on Facebook.

Researchers delved into whether the platform’s introduction across college campuses in the mid 2000s increased symptoms associated with depression and anxiety. The answer was a clear yes , says MIT economist Alexey Makarin, a coauthor of the study, which appeared in the November 2022 American Economic Review . “There is still a lot to be explored,” Makarin says, but “[to say] there is no causal evidence that social media causes mental health issues, to that I definitely object.”

The concern, and the studies, come from statistics showing that social media use in teens ages 13 to 17 is now almost ubiquitous. Two-thirds of teens report using TikTok, and some 60 percent of teens report using Instagram or Snapchat, a 2022 survey found. (Only 30 percent said they used Facebook.) Another survey showed that girls, on average, allot roughly 3.4 hours per day to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, compared with roughly 2.1 hours among boys. At the same time, more teens are showing signs of depression than ever, especially girls ( SN: 6/30/23 ).

As more studies show a strong link between these phenomena, some researchers are starting to shift their attention to possible mechanisms. Why does social media use seem to trigger mental health problems? Why are those effects unevenly distributed among different groups, such as girls or young adults? And can the positives of social media be teased out from the negatives to provide more targeted guidance to teens, their caregivers and policymakers?

“You can’t design good public policy if you don’t know why things are happening,” says Scott Cunningham, an economist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Increasing rigor

Concerns over the effects of social media use in children have been circulating for years, resulting in a massive body of scientific literature. But those mostly correlational studies could not show if teen social media use was harming mental health or if teens with mental health problems were using more social media.

Moreover, the findings from such studies were often inconclusive, or the effects on mental health so small as to be inconsequential. In one study that received considerable media attention, psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski combined data from three surveys to see if they could find a link between technology use, including social media, and reduced well-being. The duo gauged the well-being of over 355,000 teenagers by focusing on questions around depression, suicidal thinking and self-esteem.

Digital technology use was associated with a slight decrease in adolescent well-being , Orben, now of the University of Cambridge, and Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, reported in 2019 in Nature Human Behaviour . But the duo downplayed that finding, noting that researchers have observed similar drops in adolescent well-being associated with drinking milk, going to the movies or eating potatoes.

Holes have begun to appear in that narrative thanks to newer, more rigorous studies.

In one longitudinal study, researchers — including Orben and Przybylski — used survey data on social media use and well-being from over 17,400 teens and young adults to look at how individuals’ responses to a question gauging life satisfaction changed between 2011 and 2018. And they dug into how the responses varied by gender, age and time spent on social media.

Social media use was associated with a drop in well-being among teens during certain developmental periods, chiefly puberty and young adulthood, the team reported in 2022 in Nature Communications . That translated to lower well-being scores around ages 11 to 13 for girls and ages 14 to 15 for boys. Both groups also reported a drop in well-being around age 19. Moreover, among the older teens, the team found evidence for the Goldilocks Hypothesis: the idea that both too much and too little time spent on social media can harm mental health.

“There’s hardly any effect if you look over everybody. But if you look at specific age groups, at particularly what [Orben] calls ‘windows of sensitivity’ … you see these clear effects,” says L.J. Shrum, a consumer psychologist at HEC Paris who was not involved with this research. His review of studies related to teen social media use and mental health is forthcoming in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Cause and effect

That longitudinal study hints at causation, researchers say. But one of the clearest ways to pin down cause and effect is through natural or quasi-experiments. For these in-the-wild experiments, researchers must identify situations where the rollout of a societal “treatment” is staggered across space and time. They can then compare outcomes among members of the group who received the treatment to those still in the queue — the control group.

That was the approach Makarin and his team used in their study of Facebook. The researchers homed in on the staggered rollout of Facebook across 775 college campuses from 2004 to 2006. They combined that rollout data with student responses to the National College Health Assessment, a widely used survey of college students’ mental and physical health.

The team then sought to understand if those survey questions captured diagnosable mental health problems. Specifically, they had roughly 500 undergraduate students respond to questions both in the National College Health Assessment and in validated screening tools for depression and anxiety. They found that mental health scores on the assessment predicted scores on the screenings. That suggested that a drop in well-being on the college survey was a good proxy for a corresponding increase in diagnosable mental health disorders. 

Compared with campuses that had not yet gained access to Facebook, college campuses with Facebook experienced a 2 percentage point increase in the number of students who met the diagnostic criteria for anxiety or depression, the team found.

When it comes to showing a causal link between social media use in teens and worse mental health, “that study really is the crown jewel right now,” says Cunningham, who was not involved in that research.

A need for nuance

The social media landscape today is vastly different than the landscape of 20 years ago. Facebook is now optimized for maximum addiction, Shrum says, and other newer platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have since copied and built on those features. Paired with the ubiquity of social media in general, the negative effects on mental health may well be larger now.

Moreover, social media research tends to focus on young adults — an easier cohort to study than minors. That needs to change, Cunningham says. “Most of us are worried about our high school kids and younger.” 

And so, researchers must pivot accordingly. Crucially, simple comparisons of social media users and nonusers no longer make sense. As Orben and Przybylski’s 2022 work suggested, a teen not on social media might well feel worse than one who briefly logs on. 

Researchers must also dig into why, and under what circumstances, social media use can harm mental health, Cunningham says. Explanations for this link abound. For instance, social media is thought to crowd out other activities or increase people’s likelihood of comparing themselves unfavorably with others. But big data studies, with their reliance on existing surveys and statistical analyses, cannot address those deeper questions. “These kinds of papers, there’s nothing you can really ask … to find these plausible mechanisms,” Cunningham says.

One ongoing effort to understand social media use from this more nuanced vantage point is the SMART Schools project out of the University of Birmingham in England. Pedagogical expert Victoria Goodyear and her team are comparing mental and physical health outcomes among children who attend schools that have restricted cell phone use to those attending schools without such a policy. The researchers described the protocol of that study of 30 schools and over 1,000 students in the July BMJ Open.

Goodyear and colleagues are also combining that natural experiment with qualitative research. They met with 36 five-person focus groups each consisting of all students, all parents or all educators at six of those schools. The team hopes to learn how students use their phones during the day, how usage practices make students feel, and what the various parties think of restrictions on cell phone use during the school day.

Talking to teens and those in their orbit is the best way to get at the mechanisms by which social media influences well-being — for better or worse, Goodyear says. Moving beyond big data to this more personal approach, however, takes considerable time and effort. “Social media has increased in pace and momentum very, very quickly,” she says. “And research takes a long time to catch up with that process.”

Until that catch-up occurs, though, researchers cannot dole out much advice. “What guidance could we provide to young people, parents and schools to help maintain the positives of social media use?” Goodyear asks. “There’s not concrete evidence yet.”

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Supreme Court to decide if White House went too far fighting social media misinformation

The case grew out of concern from conservatives that their views were being suppressed about 2020 election fraud, covid-19 origins and treatments and other issues..

WASHINGTON − After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested without evidence that baseball legend Hank Aaron’s death in 2021 was caused by a COVID-19 vaccine, the Biden administration pounced.

“Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP,” the digital director for the White House’s COVID response team wrote in an email to an official at Twitter.

What the White House viewed as an effort to correct misinformation about a life-saving vaccine during a pandemic, critics called an example of a broad pressure campaign by the federal government to quash views it doesn’t like.

Now the Supreme Court is being asked what boundaries to set .

If the justices place too many restrictions on how the government can work with private social media companies in areas such as public health, election integrity and foreign interference, it could impede efforts to stop harmful misinformation, experts say.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

But if there aren’t enough guardrails, the government – whether a Democratic or Republican administration – could have too much power to influence debate in a public square dominated by social media.

“I think we need to figure out how to draw these lines more carefully in ways that protect legitimate speech from government suppression,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College who studies misperceptions about politics and health care. “But I'm concerned people are using that idea to try to shut down any kind of government information exchange with social media platforms, which I think could be harmful.”

Could the Supreme Court `destroy the internet'?

The Supreme Court takes up the issue Monday, three weeks after it heard challenges to laws passed by Florida and Texas to limit the ability of social media giants to regulate user content.

“This is the second major case in the last month in which the Supreme Court could destroy the internet, if it's not careful,” said James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University. “They're unlikely to do that. But it's still a case in which they have to be very precise about what they say.”

Both cases grew out of concern from conservatives that their views were being suppressed about claims of 2020 election fraud, the origin of and treatments for COVID-19 and other issues, complaints that congressional Republicans have amplified with multiple hearings.

The GOP-controlled House last year passed legislation to prohibit federal employees from “advocating for censorship of viewpoints.” The bill , which has not advanced in the Democrat-controlled Senate, was a response to Twitter briefly blocking links to a  New York Post story  about  Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020.

Former Twitter executives denied last year that they were pressured by Democrats and law enforcement to suppress the story.  Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, who regularly communicated with the FBI about election security issues, testified at a congressional hearing that the agency was always careful “not to cross the line into advocating for Twitter to take any particular action.”

Lower courts sided with challengers

In the case before the Supreme Court Monday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and numerous other federal officials are being sued by the Republican attorney generals in Missouri and Louisiana and by five social media users who said their posts or accounts were removed or downgraded.

Kennedy, who is running for president as an independent and contends in a filing “there may be no more individual in the country more heavily targeted for social media censorship by the federal government,” has a separate suit still working its way through the court system.

One of the challengers being represented on Monday, Jill Hines, co-director of the conservative Health Freedom Louisiana group, said the warnings she received from Facebook included one for sharing a screenshot of a Kennedy tweet and one for her post of a Daily Mail story headlined, “Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline due to build-up of carbon dioxide, study warns.”

The study referenced included no evidence that masks cause serious health problems, according to PolitiFact , a nonpartisan factchecking site.

A district court in Louisiana sided with Hines and other challengers, imposing sweeping restrictions on the government’s interaction with social media platforms.

The New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit narrowed the restraints but the Justice Department said they would still place unprecedented limits on how government officials can speak about matters of public concern, address national security threats or relay public health information.

The restrictions are on hold while the Supreme Court reviews the case.

Three justices have already criticized `government censorship'

Three of the court’s six conservative justices –Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch – wanted to reject the federal government’s appeal.

"Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing," Alito wrote when the court agreed to take the case.

The Justice Department argues public officials’ interaction with social media platforms was not coercive, nor did it involve “significant encouragement.” Government agencies “largely provided the platforms with information, leaving it up to the platforms to decide what action to take, if any,” the government’s lawyers wrote in a filing .

More: Mask mandates? Supreme Court rejects appeal from Marjorie Taylor Greene, GOP lawmakers

Lawyers for some of the challengers say that unless what’s being shared is illegal – such as child pornography – the First Amendment doesn’t allow the government to mediate “between true speech and false speech.”

“It's not the government's role, and never has been the government's role, to be the truth police,” said Mark Chenoweth, president and chief legal officer of the New Civil Liberties Alliance. The group represents the infectious disease experts who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups to promote "herd immunity."

Persuasion or coercion?

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said the Supreme Court needs to clarify the line between permissible persuasion and impermissible coercion – and must emphasize that applying that standard should include a full examination of the facts and context.

In Monday's case, for example, President Joe Biden’s public statement that social media companies were “killing people” by not sufficiently combatting misinformation about vaccines may have exerted public pressure but did not carry a retaliatory threat even if the word choice was provocative, according to the institute , which reviewed some of the charges.

The challengers’ objection to an internal email sent from a Biden COVID adviser to a Facebook official is trickier. Complaining that “100% of the questions I asked have never been answered and weeks have gone by,” the official wrote: “Internally we have been considering our options on what to do about it.”

The email sounded accusatory and demanding and could be read as an implicit threat of regulatory retaliation, according to the institute.

However the Supreme Court comes down in this case − and in its pending ruling on the Texas and Florida social media laws – the ramifications could be far-reaching.

Olivier Sylvain, an expert on communications law at Fordham University and a research fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute, called it a “special, maybe even once in a generation, opportunity to define how far governments may go to protect against the online distribution of lawful and unlawful harmful content.” 

Contributing: Bart Jansen, Jessica Guynn, John Kennedy of USA TODAY.

More: Supreme Court sounds skeptical of Texas and Florida laws to regulate social media

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Redge Media video cloud deployed at Lithuanian public broadcaster

April 4, 2024 13.05 Europe/London By Julian Clover

The Warsaw-based technology supplier has agreed a 36-month contract following a public tender. It delivered the technology to run the LRT EPIKA platform in less than 6 weeks.

EPIKA LRT is based entirely on Redge Media, an end-to-end cloud-hosted platform that supports all aspects of multimedia content ingest, storage, security, and distribution. The company is supporting the entire multimedia content delivery process and functions under a TV as a Service model.

The service offers a wide range of applications across eight platforms; updates are being rolled out on a regular basis.

LRT EPIKA is available on web and mobile platforms (Android and iOS), as well as on devices such as Apple TV, Android TV, Samsung TVs, LG TVs, Hisense TVs, and Chromecast. Additionally, it is available in two language versions – Lithuanian and English, offering the latest productions and archival materials without any charge for viewers in Lithuania.

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About Julian Clover

Julian Clover is a Media and Technology journalist based in Cambridge, UK. He works in online and printed media. Julian is also a voice on local radio. You can talk to Julian on Twitter @julianclover , on Facebook or by email at [email protected] .

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• Case Studies

Air Canada’s ticket sales take flight

Campaign results

• $2,315,191 in incremental sales
• $6.3MM in total sales
• 80% new customer transactions
• $542 average order value

Opening account

In its efforts to explore new ways to inspire more U.S. travelers to chose Canada’s largest airline to travel the globe, Air Canada turned to Chase Media Solutions right out of the gate.

How do you motivate someone to take a chance on a new brand? And, more important, how do you do it when they’re buying something as significant as an international flight? Air Canada was eager for answers, and Chase Media Solutions was happy to show how transaction-based marketing could deliver.

Branching out

Air Canada leveraged Chase Media Solutions’ exclusive purchase data to create a campaign targeting new-to-the-airline customers within Chase’s 80MM audience. The team identified a transaction-based segment composed primarily of customers with no purchase history with the brand in the last year. Then, working together, Chase Media Solutions and Air Canada designed a cash back offer construct that would drive the specific growth the airline craved: Ticket sales. They did this by setting a minimum spending requirement that encouraged shoppers to make purchases larger than just an upgrade or baggage fee.

Total gains

Air Canada’s transaction-based marketing campaign landed an impressive $2,315,191 in incremental sales (45% incrementality for new customers) and successfully inspired transactions from 9,450 new customers . It garnered 32.2MM customer impressions during the 30-day campaign and an average order value of $542 .

Continued growth

Air Canada decided to run a subsequent campaign to build on the momentum. With Chase Media Solutions’ help, the airline used this second campaign to test and optimize the offer construct while continuing to engage both new and existing customers. (Offers can be designed with different reward formats, such as a percentage or a fixed cash back amount). Their second campaign achieved a 40% incremental lift for new customers and a 75% incremental lift for loyal customers . It also resulted in transactions from 7,475 new customers, $2,270,172 in incremental sales and $5,166,599 in total sales .

Onward and upward

“The Chase team succeeded in creating a thoughtful, targeted offer that exceeded our expectations.”

O’Leary continued, “Within a 60-day period they developed, tested, and validated two distinct offer constructs in market that simultaneously drove incremental revenue and awareness for Air Canada amongst Chase’s cardmember base. Running the second campaign allowed us to additionally test a slightly different offer construct, enabling us to build upon the strong performance of the first month. These tests clearly demonstrate the potential of the Chase Media Solutions channel, and we look forward to working together more in the future to attract more U.S.-based travelers to Air Canada.”

News Feature

April 3, 2024

Students, faculty member present at state social studies conferences

By Kayla Holman, communication assistant

Northwest Missouri State University undergraduate students and a faculty member representing the School of Education recently presented at annual social studies conferences in Missouri and Kansas.

Megan Trussell, a junior elementary education major from St. Joseph, Missouri, and Alyssa Wright, a junior elementary education major from Kansas City, Missouri, presented at the Missouri Council for the Social Studies conference in Springfield; Jenna Stallo, a senior elementary education major from Kansas City, Missouri, presented at the Kansas Council for the Social Studies at Wichita State University.

The students presented at the conferences in February with Dr. Tina Ellsworth, an assistant professor of professional education.

Megan Trussell and Alyssa Wright presented at the Missouri Council for the Social Studies conference in Springfield. (Submitted photo)

“By presenting at these conferences, teacher candidates are developing leadership skills by designing high-quality instructional materials to a teacher audience,” Ellsworth said. “It’s my hope that they are inspired to elevate their own practice and see themselves as contributors and leaders in the larger field of education even prior to entering the classroom. It’s also my hope that they find value in creating their own professional learning network as they interact with professionals from across the state and the country.”

Trussell, Wright and Ellsworth presented a session at the Missouri conference, titled “Preparing for Contentious Issues.” The students designed and presented strategies to promote practices of civil discourse to PK-12 teachers.

“Contentious issues are all around us and consistently make their way into our classrooms,” Ellsworth said. “As social studies teachers we cannot avoid them, nor should we. We know our democracy hinges on civil discourse around public policy issues, so we must be proactive in creating a classroom community that is conclusive for such discussions.”  

Jenna Stallo presented at the Kansas Council for the Social Studies at Wichita State University.

At the Kansas conference, Stallo and Ellsworth presented “Promoting Historical Literacy with Primary Sources,” where participants learned innovative and engaging strategies for teaching with sources that promote historical literacy.

The students credit Northwest and the School of Education for offering a learning experience that prepares them for their careers as professional educators.

“I was able to further practice and get comfortable speaking with educators or administrators who have more experience than I do,” Trussell said. “I was able to have networking opportunities to put my name out there and show how serious and invested I am in my education and career. Additionally, this opportunity allowed me to think more deeply about how to integrate discussion and civil discourse in my future elementary classroom.”

Ellsworth joined the Northwest faculty in 2021 and teaches undergraduate and graduate coursework related to curriculum, multiculturalism, social studies and change management. She has master’s and bachelor’s degrees in social studies education from the University of Central Missouri and earned her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in social studies education from the University of Kansas.

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

Title: prompting for numerical sequences: a case study on market comment generation.

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have been applied to a wide range of data-to-text generation tasks, including tables, graphs, and time-series numerical data-to-text settings. While research on generating prompts for structured data such as tables and graphs is gaining momentum, in-depth investigations into prompting for time-series numerical data are lacking. Therefore, this study explores various input representations, including sequences of tokens and structured formats such as HTML, LaTeX, and Python-style codes. In our experiments, we focus on the task of Market Comment Generation, which involves taking a numerical sequence of stock prices as input and generating a corresponding market comment. Contrary to our expectations, the results show that prompts resembling programming languages yield better outcomes, whereas those similar to natural languages and longer formats, such as HTML and LaTeX, are less effective. Our findings offer insights into creating effective prompts for tasks that generate text from numerical sequences.

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arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

2024 Annual Spring Dance Presenting Series

In culmination of the yearlong Choreographing Justice Series and Cornell University’s Freedom of Expression Theme Year , the Department of Performing and Media Arts is pleased to announce the 2024 Annual Spring Dance Presenting Series at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, from Thursday, April 25 through Saturday, April 27 . 

This year’s series includes the premiere of an evening-length interdisciplinary dance project that reimagines and reclaims the Kiplinger Theatre, entitled This table has been a house in the rain , followed by a walk-through installation of body-based and dance-driven mixed media in the Schwartz Center atrium. All performances are free and open to the public, with the Kiplinger doors opening at 7:00 pm for a pre-show observation leading up to the live performances beginning at 7:30 pm. Audiences are then invited to experience and engage with the multimedia installation directly following the main stage event in the Schwartz Center atrium. 

Get tickets: pma.cornell.com/tickets

Over the course of the spring semester, participants in this year’s dance project laboratory had the unique opportunity to work with and be mentored by internationally acclaimed choreographers and dance artists whose bodies of work have catalyzed community, social advocacy, and critical archival by [re]claiming and activating freedoms of their own bodily expression: distinguished guests Eiko Otake, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Keith Hennessy, and faculty Danielle Russo. Otake introduced students to exercises and practice towards body-based democracies and autonomous expression, prompting participants to locate themselves, their stories, and their intentions for making and for performing. This set the foundation for improvisation, and experimental inter/play with collective scores and scenes by Houston-Jones and Hennessy, and choreographic studies, dramaturgy, and direction led by professor Russo. In response to Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s Perhaps the World Ends Here , these students generated, self-directed, and collaboratively designed an original 75-minute performance project with set, costume, sound, projection, and lighting faculties, students, and guests, building upon legacies of dance and performance as freedom practice. What Adrienne Marie Brown might call emergent strategy turns into futurist action, encouraging us to trust and engage with the synergetic space that Fred Moten refers to as “figuring it out together.” Whether seated at, bringing to, cards on, always room, turning, clearing, or as Nina Simone said, “to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served,” what is the power, the promise of gathering and of taking time to come to the table today? In tandem, participants in PMA 3350 & 4350: Technology & the Moving Body I & II and PMA 1611-601: Rehearsal and Performance produced a collection of dance films, stills, and object explorations with faculty Olive Prince, echoing these very themes, questions, and curiosities: How can dance and performance be portals for embodied inquiry into power, collaboration, equity, and liberated imagination?

This event is made possible through the generosity and support of Cornell University’s Freedom of Expression Theme Year , Cheryl Whaley and Eric Aboaf, and the Lisa Lu Foundation.

"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from "The Woman Who Fell from the Sky" (1994), with permission from the author Joy Harjo and publishing house, W.W. Norton.

Poster image created by Wei Jian Cheng, Molly Hudson, Irene Kim, Isabel Padilla, Taylor Pryor, and Eliza Salamon.

PMA Department Chair Samantha Noelle Sheppard Quoted in NYT Article About Sean Combs

Summer Experience Grant applications now open

Sixty Years of Theatre Studies: A Talk by Dr. Marvin Carlson ‘61

PMA Department Chair Samantha Noelle Sheppard Quoted in NYT Article