APPLYING SOCIAL MEDIA TO YOUR BUSINESS: A THOUGHT

JOURNEYJames Rogers, VP of Marketing

OVERVIEW

• The Facets of Social Media

• Cost of Social Media

• Business Table Stakes forthe 21st Century

• Outcomes/Goals/Strategy

• Which Channel for Which Purpose?

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THE FACETS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Is social media…

• A channel to express thought leadership?

• A channel to emphasize and communicate your brand?

• A channel to measure presence/share of voice/perception…your influence?

• A channel to drive demand generation activities?

• A communication medium that creates exposure that must be governed?

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THE FACETS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Is social media…

• A channel that provides timely/relevant business/market intelligence?

• A community in which to interact with customers?

• A Web-based community that creates new paradigms of interaction and therefore changes the business model and monetization of exchanges?

• A new medium that requires product and content development to adequately participate?

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IF ONLY IT WERE THIS EASY…

• 911,000 [Royal] wedding-related Tweets were tracked in 30 days. That’s about 30,000 per day and accounts for 71% of all social media data. (USA Today)

• It takes only 20 people to bring an online community to a significant level of activity and connectivity. (The Next Web)

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GENIE IN A BOTTLE

Once you start social networking, you’re stuck… and you don’t get three wishes!

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THE CORE COST OF SOCIAL MEDIA

• Marketing• Product Management• IT• Customer Service and Support• Legal/Compliance• Executive staff• HR• Sales• Finance

Even if you have the support of the organization and other business stakeholders ready and willing to help be socially active, there are still enormous costs and dedicated resource commitments needed to be effective!

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Monthly investment of a Twitter account = $2,382 (33K followers)

Full-out social media campaign cost per year = $210,600

Source: Focus infographic, 2011

THE CORE COST OF SOCIAL MEDIA

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THE INCREMENTAL COST OF SOCIAL MEDIA

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1. A Chief Content Officer

2. A Social Media Editorial Manager

3. A Social Media Community Manager

4. A dedicated and specialized agency to help with AR/PR/social community monitoring

5. A social media analytics/ops resource to leverage the tools to monitor and coordinate social interactions

THE INCREMENTAL COST OF SOCIAL MEDIA

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6. Social Media Partner Community Manager

7. Discretionary budget for unique content creation (videos, ad units, blogs, webinars)

8. Discretionary marketing development funds to co-sponsor blogs and partner activities

9. Development costs (YouTube pages, blogs, microsites, Facebook pages)

10. Advertisement/Promotion fees (promotion on social media sites—e.g., YouTube, Linkedin, Facebook)

BUSINESS TABLE STAKES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

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SOCIAL MUST BE CONTINUOUSLY MANAGED

The Perception Gap:

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OUTCOMES, GOALS & STRATEGY

We all know what can be measured today:

• With Google Analytics and other Web analytics tools, you can measure amount of SEO traffic originating from social media sites!

• You can measure traffic to your social media communities!

• You can measure CPM’s on ad units at social media sites!

• There are tools to measure # of followers, click through rates, share of voice, sentiment, reach, influence, impressions, etc.

• There are tools to monitor, aggregate and alert when keywords and mentions occur.

• With cost pressures on the business, unless your CEO or CFO is forward-thinking, these numbers aren’t usually enough to justify the investment needed!

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SOCIAL MEDIA’S IMPACT TO THE BUSINESS

The Social Media Funnel

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LEAP OF FAITH

1. If we are active, we listen, we participate, we positively contribute, then we will become more “top of mind,” and the community will more likely short list us and conduct business with us!

2. With the changes that Google has made with its search algorithm (Panda), it’s more important than ever to have frequent and unique content to digital properties for page rank and expanded awareness.

3. YouTube’s growing importance in search, content and relevance to business incurs integral cost of original and fresh content.

4. Not participating and (being silent) allows others to portray our business… and frees consumers to speculate. That conversation is happening, and a business has to understand that it probably doesn’t want to relinquish that conversation to others.

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THE POWER OF BLOGGING

• Foundational to your social presence• Content is the fuel for your social media

rocket ship!

• Solid basis for partnering and networking

• How to measure value• Traffic – site visitors and subscribers

(RSS), benchmarking competitor blogs.• Reach – clicks on RT blog posts (bit.ly,

ow.ly), Google alerts, Social Mention• Influence – Technorati (aggregate

rating), community sites with ratings like Biznik

• Engagement – post-to-comment ratio

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THE POWER OF TWITTER

Influencer Communication Brand Exposure Site Traffic SEO

Monitor what is being said about your business (and your competitors)Stay up to date on industry buzz

Integrate live feed into website (viral)

Potential is large, but too much promotion is a turnoff

Tweets rank high in search

SEO value is shifting (Google Realtime no longer taking Twitter data as of July 2011; now taking it from Google+)

Demonstrate thought leadershipBuild relationships (via RTs, DMs, commenting, questions)

Good for breaking news, ranking profile name

Address customer service issues

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THE POWER OF FACEBOOK

Influencer Communication Brand Exposure Site Traffic SEO

More effective in B2C than B2BMore playful, personal forum

Partnership with Skype

Ad platform Decent, but probably won’t drive massive numbers of unique visitors

Links are “no follow”

Great for soliciting/sharing opinionsFan pages

“Facebook for Business” (SMBs)

Evolving as search engines factor “social signals” into rankings

Showcase company culture (multimedia)

ComScore, Inc. ratings system Lower “viral” potential

Google +1 button – highlights companies that may not have highest search ranking

Contests, giveaways, events, polls

FB fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using a brand and 41% more likely to recommend a fanned product

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THE POWER OF LINKEDIN

Influencer Communication Brand Exposure Site Traffic SEO

Most important social media tool for B2B (26%)Self-employed are more likely to increase use

Showcases professional prowess in your organization

Continues to improve by encouraging sharing in every new feature

Very high page rank

Answering industry-related questions, establish expertise in field

High SEO value for vanity searches (names), but that’s about it

Lead generation/upsell opportunities

Polls/market research, collaborationMarket intelligence

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THE POWER OF YOUTUBE

Influencer Communication Brand Exposure Site Traffic SEO

Great for entertaining and/or informing

Second only to Facebook

Growing in this area, particularly through in-video messaging and URL branding

Very good for building links back to your site (videos rank well)

Crisis communications/customer complaints

Clicks on content links are on the rise

New videos are usually given a huge initial boost a few days post-launch

How-to videos (best strategy for viral/SEO marketing)

Some experts believe it should be treated as a major search engine

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Questions?

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