Communications in the

Digital Era of Social Media

Kathleen Holmlund Strategic Communications Counsel at

News Strategies™

@PupaKat

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

Questions?

•  What it social media?

•  Why should I be using it?

•  How much will it cost? or rather: How much time is it going to take?

•  Is it safe? I’m scared!!!

•  How can incorporate this into my existing marketing and communications mix?

•  Which platforms should I be using?

•  How do I use these platforms and engage effectively on them?

•  How do you grow your “followers” and “likes” and the level of interactions on these platforms?

•  How do you measure results and ROI?

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

What is social media?

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

Wikipedia says:

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques.

Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue.

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

Social Interaction +

Technology =

Social Media

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

The style of discourse has now changed to engagement, interaction,

listening and immediate and transparent online conversations.

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

•  Mainstream papers, magazines, TV, radio, cable

•  Blogs, social media, forums

• Online news services

• Online news aggregators

• Maybe someone you never heard of ...

• Lines have become blurred between pure

journalism, entertainment and opinion

Who is Today’s Media?

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

•  Trained, experienced reporter

•  Blogger, with or without experience

•  Celebrity, notable, attorney

•  Someone with absolutely no skills or

experience in journalism

•  Your customer

Who is a Journalist?

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

Whether you are a for-profit or non-profit organization we are all having to get our message across in a competitive world of Googleability where an objective is to both participate and manage (not “control”) conversations about the visibility and brand of your organization in the vast online environment . . .

Why should I use social media?

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

In the digital era, organizations can enhance or even bypass mainstream media outreach opportunities to communicate their information and messaging, their way, directly and effectively, to their audience through social media channels.

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

How much will it cost? Where do I start?

Hmmm, how long is a piece of string?

It all goes back to strategy basics:

  What is your communications goal?

  How will you know that you have achieved it?

  When would you like to achieve that goal?

  How realistic is the goal given your resources, etc…

  What are the challenges in achieving this goal?

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

Which platforms should I be using?

•  Which ones are you most comfortable with? •  Which ones are your employees, customers, suppliers using? •  Which ones are your potential customers using? •  What resources do you have at your disposal?

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

How does it fit in with my current marketing mix?

These are additional tools in your marketing mix. You will want to ensure consistent messaging across all your platforms.

The difference now is that we are moving from purely “push” PR style promotional messaging to a more engaging and conversational “pull” style.

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

How do I measure social media?

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

How do I engage effectively on these platforms?

•  Social Media is a conversation

•  Be active and responsive

•  Be personal and authentic

•  Encourage sharing

•  Make social media an organization-wide activity

•  Bonus: love what you do

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

Links to useful social media tools   Tweetdeck (handles Twitter mainly but also FB)

  HootSuite (handles Twitter, FB, and LinkedIn updates)

  MarketMeSuite (handles Twitter and FB, and particularly effective for people needing to handle multiple accounts. More so than TweetDeck and HootSuite, I have found as it separates the accounts better)

  Social Mention (Real-time social media search and analysis. A Google Alerts for social media)

  Google Analytics and Woopra for website stats (Woopra provides real-time stats and also has an iPhone app)

  Sprout Social for social media stats and analytics

  Social Media Wordpress Plugins: AddThis, Digg Digg, Leenk.me

Communications in the Digital Era of Social Media

  Rules of Social Media Engagement – by Brian Solis

  Online Database of Social Media Policies

  56 Social Media Infographics

  Online Marketing Infographic

  Which SM platforms are best for which marketing outcomes – Very helpful infographic

Links to useful social media resources

•  Egg Timer – Useful countdown timer •  LetMeWork and SecretGeek – SW to help block time-wasting sites

Time-saving resources