by Karianne Mackin

Social media strategic

guide

The age of social media

Make your brand a story in someone’s life

Effective social media strategies are like good stories… Good stories connect and inspire people…

…inspiration evokes an emotional connection…

…and emotional connections create brand affinities.

But don’t forget

Social media strategy is not independent from your organization’s strategy, rather a complement to your overall strategy and brand identity.

It’s all about the different touch points

A successful campaign is made of several parts that work together:

USE Social Media to curate your content,

extend your message & sustain word of mouth

Traditional e.g. OOH, print, digital  Videos, Blogs, Social Media

 Responsive Sites to keep the story continuous

Your brand identity should be reflected throughout each of your strategic elements

And remembering who you are

What is your brand identity? What do you stand for? What are your values? How do you want to be perceived?

Remember Apple's "Think Different” ad campaign? "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes…”

By communicating what they stood for, Apple intrigued like-minded individuals and got them to LISTEN

Elements Of a strategic plan

Establish your business objectives, goals and metrics

Review your competitors to see where they are & what they are doing

Define and find your audience

Implement your strategy – acquire your customer and maintain loyalty

Evaluation  

Build a clear plan  

OBJECTIVE 1 OBJECTIVE 2 OBJECTIVE 3

AUDIENCE

CHANNELS

METRICS

AUDIENCE

CHANNELS

METRICS

AUDIENCE

CHANNELS

METRICS

REVENUE?   BRAND AWARENESS?  

RETENTION?  

Your objectives will determine:

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE?  

who your target audience is

wHAT CHANNELS to USE

how to measure success

Make sure your goals are realistic, specific and manageable ACTIVITY BASED METRICS:

Followers, Likes, Shares

RESULTS BASED METRICS: Engagements, Click-thru, Conversions

SET YOUR GOALS & METRICS  

Shares Comments Replies

URL Shares Clicks Conversions

…then look at  

But how do I measure?

*a rough guide

Impressions Shares Reach

If you want to…  

Measure Engagement

Drive Traffic

Track Awareness

Audience

Define your audience

A2er re-visiting your brand identity and establishing your goals and objectives,

define who you want to talk to and

research, research, research… Social medial allows you to develop messaging for multiple sub-segments of people, rather than a single ‘target audience’

-  Facebook targeting makes it easy to target by demo, behavior, device, likes and dislikes, and psychographics

-  Adjust your content and tone to relate to different audience sub-segments

And find them

Develop insights on your audience through Social Listening:

-  Use free tools like Google Alerts to be aware of brand/product mentions and competitors

-  Utilize paid tools like Sprout Social to monitor select keywords

-  Note consumer affinities and dislikes, passions interests, and competitor

Match the profile of your audience to social media channels, blogs, and websites.

Social Media campaigning is a two way street and begins with listening to your customers

 

Competition

Take a look at

your competitors

-  View company websites to see which social media channels they use and how they integrate them into their website

-  Check social media pages and tally #followers

-  Note frequency of posting, audience engagement with posts, and brand responses

-  Any current or past campaigns, and how they are using social media to push their message

Review at least 2 of your competitors To see how they are using social media

Strategy

Great strategies lie in understanding the affinities, touch points and profiles of your audience, then learning what and whom shape their decision making process.

 Have a conversation, not a campaign

With social media we are able to connect with people in a way that fits into their everyday life

Showcase Your

Product

Understand your

consumer

relate to them

Find them where they are in their everyday life and communicate with them. How can they benefit from your product?

Who do they trust? How do they interact? How will they best understand you?

Study key traits and habits of your audience. What do they typically do?

What do they typically want?

Take a look at your brand or product

Explain simply how you do it better than everyone else

+ =

-  Highly trafficked, widely used sites (Facebook and YouTube) -  Use highly visual imagery and minimal text - FOCUS: Mass reach, Impressions and Brand recall

Awareness

Preference

Decision

- Win over your audience with product benefits - Facilitate relationships with bloggers and 3rd party advocate fans to push your product - FOCUS: Brand favorability

-  Convince consumers to buy with a ‘call to action’ (e.g. offer incentives) -  FOCUS: Purchase

Consideration -  Utilize targeting tools on channels where your audience is spending their time -  Create digital communities within social media platforms and blogs who share your brand values -  FOCUS: Brand sentiment

acquire your audience  

-  Advocate your product, encourage participation from your audience -  FOCUS: User interaction, Community

Promote Engagement

Customer Service

-  Manage current ‘fans’, assure product experiences are positive, respond quickly and directly to negative feedback

-  FOCUS: Customer service, Brand loyalty

and maintain their loyalty  

Give people a reason to be advocates of your brand by offering something of value

Encourage followers to share your news, stories, events and pictures

Use the ‘One to One’ philosophy & give incentives for new referrals

Create a hashtag for your audience to promote a message that’s relevant to

ü  your customer ü  your campaign ü  your brand

Evaluation

Go back to your goals, objectives, and metrics –  Did you hit your mark? –  Where can you improve? –  Did you want more engagement? More

shares? More impressions? What can you change next time?

Most social media sites are able to provide metrics, or use a 3rd party tool to view results

–  Twitter Analytics –  Hootsuite Analytics –  Google Analytics –  Facebook Page Insights

Learn and grow

ANALYZE your learnings and ADAPT your strategy

 

Tools for easy community management

Add blog feed to wall via Notes app, integrate channels on fan page, Integrate CRM with Facebook Fan Activity

Pinterest Analytics Tool, Tailwind

Followgram, Ink361, Iconosquare

Create a branded YouTube channel to share videos with a graphic “Call to Action” overlay

Use Hootsuite to share blog posts on your LinkedIn profile to generate more website traffic

TweetDeck, Twitaholic, TweetReach, What the Trend, Twitpic, HootSuite, tinyurl, Twitalyzer

…and other help2l

Resources

•  Sprout Social: Monitor and manage multiple social media accounts with one interface (fee)

•  Crowdbooster: Streamline Facebook and Twitter fans and followers (fee)

•  TweetDeck: View all aspects of your Twitter account(s) in one interface

•  Twitaholic: Finds and connects with the top 50 Tweeters in your city

•  Co-Tweet, Buffer, HootSuite: Schedules your social media postings

•  Tweet-Reach: Tracks the reach of your tweets

•  What the Trend: Analyze current tweet trends and short descriptions why they are trending

•  Followgram: Allows you to manage your IG account and view profile statistics online

•  Ink361: Shows details about IG users by hovering over photos

•  Iconosquare: View your IG profile statistics and community analytics online

•  Pinterest Analyitics Tool: Insight on how users interact with your pins

•  Tailwind: Schedule pins and gain insights

•  Think Up: Get insights about what you and your friends/fans are doing online (changes, updates, etc.)

3ank you!