My Family Farm was, at the time, the most anticipated addition to the online social game FarmVille 2.

My role was to source content to create a “viral buzz” using our social media platforms.

This was an interesting time in the lifecycle of FarmVille 2 because the game was struggling to attract an audience, and as a result our marketing budget had been drastically cut. Still, word around the office was that the My Family Farm update needed to be a hit, otherwise the game would get the axe. No pressure.

There was no longer a dedicated marketing team, so it was left to the community team to generate interest. That team consisted of me and my manager. Together, we examined our options and came up with a plan that would eventually turn into Zynga’s most popular marketing event.

Our plan, essentially, was to squeeze the value out of every single piece of content we could muster and use the reach of our social platforms to compensate for a lack of traditional marketing.

We started marketing the feature nearly two months before its release, and then for several weeks after. Our goal was to make sure our audience had plenty of time to discuss the release on their own.

I wrote dozens of social posts over the course of those few months, and spent countless hours engaging with people in the comments of those posts.

I also interviewed the game’s development team, including artists, programmers, and leaders, to create a series of behind the scenes content that was posted to the FV2 blog. With the limited budget that was available to us, I arranged for giveaways of physical gifts to supplement the in-game awards we were giving out.

I am particularly proud that we were able to include a charitable cause in our promotion. We collaborated with No Kid Hungry to provide hunger relief and healthy food to American children.

Our campaign generated more than 72 million unique impressions across multiple platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the FarmVille 2 blog.

We also collected more than $20,000 in donations for No Kid Hungry.

It was, at the time, Zynga’s most successful campaign, garnering more impressions, revenue, and users than any campaign before it and at a fraction of the usual marketing cost.