1

Course: Social Media Strategy (UCI)

Subject: 12 Month Social Media Strategy & Action Plan

From: Rajendra Singh

LinkedIn - in.linkedin.com/in/rajendrakumarsingh/

Twitter – rajendra8singh

To: Prof Burgess (Instructor)

Date: 25th May 2014

‘’The final project will be a PowerPoint presentation to summarize the 12 month social

media strategy plan. You can summarize the monthly activity or provide more detail -- that is

up to you. But, essentially, I am looking for a snapshot of the overall strategy. Create a

sufficient number of PPT slides to tell your story in a presentation. If you want to include the

12 month social media strategy template, you can do so as an attachment. Make sure to

include an executive summary up front.’’

Prof Burgess

2

The Details are prepared for Including Social Media as

part of business launch for a new company in India

with planned launch for 4G Mobile Services having

estimated investment of 12 Billion USD. This is

basically a Primer For Social Media Strategy. Being

part of Executive Team of the Company this will be

my input to the Strategy, Marketing and Social Media

team. I won’t be the Marketing or Strategy of Social

Media Manger.

3

Background of Market (1)

India

Population 1300 million

Mobile penetration – 75%

Internet penetration < 12%

Broadband penetration <5%

Smartphone penetration <15%

Camera phone >60% (800 million)

PC penetration <5%

TV penetration >80%

Social media penetration <7%

(Facebook highest <7%)

Population below age of 25 >55%

Biggest democratic market in the world where people have freedom of

expression

4

Background of Market (2)

India

States - 35

Districts - 740

Villages - 638,000

Religion – Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian, etc.

Languages - >16, English – 5% penetration

Festivals - >100

Entertainment – Films, Music, Sports, Cricket

Internet/Digital Skills - Excellent

Very varied population, many interest, photo upload, music , etc.

Democratic country – Multi party

“Great possibilities of expression”

Lends well to Social Media

5

4G Industry Composition

4G

Mobile

Digital

Devices

Mobile phones, Laptops, Tablets

Replacement

Retail

Service

Ecommerce, Education, Health

Location based

Mobile Apps

Web-Design, Development

Security

Government Regulations

Vendors

Video Conferencing

Competition: 2G, 3G, CDMA, 1x, EVDO, VoIP, 4G

6

Why Social Media? Some facts, statistics & Insights

1. An average Facebook users has 130 friends. (source: AllTwitter)

2. Monthly active users now total nearly 850 million. (source: Jeff Bullas)

3. 21 percent of Facebook users are from Asia, which is only less than 4 percent of Asia's

population. (source: Uberly)

4. 488 million users regularly use Facebook mobile. (source: All Facebook)

5. 23 percent of Facebook's users check their account 5 or more times daily.

(source:Socialnomics)

6. More than 1 million websites have integrated with Facebook in various ways.

(source:Uberly)

7. 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day. (source: Jeff Bullas)

8. As of 2012, 210,000 years of music have been played on Facebook. (source: Gizmodo)

9. Links about sex are shared 90 percent more than any other link. (source: AllTwitter)

10. As of 2012, 17 billion location-tagged posts and check-ins were logged.

(source:Gizmodo)

11. 80 percent of social media users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook.

(source: Business2Community)

12. A whopping 77 percent of B2C companies and 43 percent of B2B companies acquired

customers from Facebook. (source: Business2Community)

13. There are 175 million tweets sent from Twitter every day in 2012. (source: Infographics

Labs)

14. The average Twitter user has tweeted 307 times. (source: Diego Basch's Blog)

15. Since the dawn of Twitter, there's been a total of 163 billion tweets. (source: Diego

Basch's Blog)

16. The average user follows (or is followed by) 51 people. (source: Diego Basch's Blog)

17. 50 percent of Twitter users are using the social network via mobile. (source: Microsoft

tag)

18. In August 2012, Instagram hit 80 million users and counting. (source: Visual.ly)

19. In August 2012, Instagram had an average of 7.3 million daily active users.

(source: All Things D)

7

20. The average Instagram user spent 257 minutes accessing the photo-sharing site via

mobile device in August, while the average Twitter user over the same period spent 170

minutes viewing. (source: All Things D)

21. 34 percent of marketers have generated leads using Twitter. (source: Digital Buzz Blog)

22. 80 percent of Pinterest users are women, while 50 percent of all Pinterest users have

children. (source: Search Engine Journal)

23. Pinterest referrals spend 70 percent more money than visitors referred from non-social

channels. (source: Search Engine Journal)

24. 28.1 percent of Pinterest users have an annual household income of $100,000.

(source:Ultralinx)

25. Total unique visitors to Pinterest increased by 2,702.2 percent since May 2011.

(source:Ultralinx)

26. 69 percent of online consumers who visit Pinterest have found an item they've bought or

wanted to buy, compared with 40 percent of Facebook users. (source: All Facebook)

27. Over 1/5 of Facebook-connected users are on Pinterest daily, which represents more

than 2 million members. (source: AppData)

28. The most popular age group on Pinterest is 25 - 34 year olds. (source: AllTwitter)

29. The Google +1 button is used 5 billion times per day. (source: AllTwitter)

30. 48 percent of fortune global 100 companies are now on Google+. (source: Burson-

Marsteller)

31. Google+ pages appear in search results for 30 percent of brand term searches for brands

with G+ pages, up from 5 percent in February 2012. (source: Bright Edge)

32. Only 8 percent of Americans 12+ have a Google+ profile page. (source: Edison Research)

33. 625,000 new users on Google+ every day. (source: AllTwitter)

34. Websites using the +1 button generate 3.5x the Google+ visits than sites without the

button. (source: HubSpot)

35. At least 60 percent of Google+ users log in daily. (source: tecmark)

36. At least 80 percent of Google+ users engage on a weekly basis. (source: Chris Brogan)

8

We enter the fast and curvy track now.

India – Big Opportunity

9

Is It Better to Be Strategic ?

Executive Summary

Here is a brief presentation about the Social Media Strategy for a new company. The

Company is launching 4G Mobile Services in India, the fastest growing Data and Voice

market in the World.

Social Media has evolved to play a key role in Business, Strategy, Marketing, Customer,

Employee and Shareholders engagement.

More and more people are connecting to the Internet—and for longer amounts of time

whether through a computer or mobile phone, consumers continue to spend increasing

amounts of time on the Internet.

SIMULTANEOUS SMARTPHONE AND TABLET USAGE WHILE WATCHING TV

Having a mobile device on-hand while watching TV has become an integral part of consumer

routines—41 percent of tablet owners and 38 percent of smartphone owners use their

device daily while in front of their TV screen. Not surprisingly, social networking is a top

activity on both devices, but people aren’t just chatting with their social connections,

they’re also shopping and looking up relevant program and product info.

SOCIAL CARE

Social care, i.e. customer service via social media, has become an immediate imperative for

global brands. Customers choose when and where they voice their questions, issues and

10

complaints, blurring the line between marketing and customer service. Brands should

consider this evolution and ensure they are ready to react on all channels.

ADVERTISING ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Brands and advertisers looking to share their message on social might consider this: While a

third of people find ads on social networks to be annoying, more than a quarter of people

are more likely to pay attention to an ad posted by a friend.

THE CONSUMER DECISION JOURNEY FREQUENCY OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

Frequency of Social Activities. Percent of social media users participating at least once a

month 70% (Hear others' experiences), 65% (Learn more about brands/products/services),

53% (Compliment Brands), 50% (Express Concerns/Complaints about Brands/Services), 47%

(Share Money Incentives).

The days when companies could tightly control brand messaging and progress consumers

along a linear purchase funnel have long ended. Social media has fundamentally changed

the consumer decision journey. Consumer decisions and behaviors are increasingly driven

by the opinions, tastes and preferences of an exponentially larger, global pool of friends,

peers and influencers.

The role of social media in the consumer decision journey extends beyond North America,

and indeed is even more pronounced in other regions.

Social media’s influence on purchase intent is strong across all regions, but strongest

among online consumers in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Middle East / Africa markets.

Thirty percent of online consumers in the Middle East / Africa region and 29 percent in Asia-

Pacific use social media on a daily basis to learn more about brands/products/services, with

one-third of respondents in both regions connecting on a weekly basis.

Across all regions, social media has the potential to influence consumers’ entertainment

and home electronics purchase decisions. These categories are followed closely by:

Travel/Leisure (60%), Appliances (58%), Food/Beverages (58%), Clothing/Fashion (58%) and

Restaurants (57%). These categories were also the most discussed products/services via

social networking.

Social media represents a huge opportunity for brands to gain positive favor with

consumers. With growing disposable income in emerging markets, savvy marketers can

harness the growing adoption and influence of social media to impact business.

11

SOCIAL MEDIA IS COMING OF AGE

Social media and social networking are no longer in their infancy. Since the emergence of

the first social media networks some two decades ago, social media has continued to evolve

and offer consumers around the world new and meaningful ways to engage with the

people, events, and brands that matter to them. Now years later, social media is still

growing rapidly and has become an integral part of our daily lives. Today, social networking

is truly a global phenomenon.

What’s driving the continued growth of social media?

Social Media Platform MOBILE

More people are using Smartphone and tablets to access social media. The personal

computer is still at the center of the social networking experience, but consumers are

increasingly looking to other devices to connect on social media. Time spent on mobile apps

and the mobile web account for 63 percent of the year-over-year growth in overall time

spent using social media. Forty-six percent of social media users say they use their

Smartphone to access social media; 16 percent say they connect to social media using a

tablet. With more connectivity, consumers have more freedom to use social media

wherever and whenever they want.

PROLIFERATION

New social media sites continue to emerge and catch on. The number of social media

networks consumers can choose from has exploded, and too many sites to count are adding

social features or integration. While Facebook and Twitter continue to be among the most

popular social networks, Pinterest emerged as one of the breakout stars in social media for

2012, boasting the largest year-over-year increase in both unique audience and time spent

of any social network across PC, mobile web, and apps.

How is consumer usage of social media evolving?

THE GLOBAL LIVING ROOM

Social TV is on the rise. The skyrocketing adoption and use of social media among

consumers is transforming TV-watching into a more immediate and shared experience. As of

June 2012, more than 33 percent of Twitter users had actively tweeted about TV-related

content. Some 44 percent of U.S. tablet owners and 38 percent of U.S. Smartphone owners

use their devices daily to access social media while watching television. In the Latin America

region, more than 50 percent of consumers say they interact with social media while

watching TV; in the Middle East / Africa region, more than 60 percent do. From global

events like the Summer Olympics, to regional events like the Presidential debates in the

12

U.S., consumers around the world used social media to engage with everyone from close

friends to complete strangers, revolutionizing the television viewing experience.

SOCIAL CARE

Social Care is transforming customer service. Social media has emerged as an important

channel for customer service, with nearly half of U.S. consumers reaching out directly to

brands and service providers to voice their satisfaction or complaints, or simply to ask

questions. In fact, one in three social media users say they prefer to use social media rather

than the phone for customer service issues.

How is social media impacting marketing?

SOCIAL WORD-OF-MOUTH

Social media enables consumers to generate and tap into the opinions of an exponentially

larger universe. While word-of-mouth has always been important, its scope was previously

limited to the people you knew and interacted with on a daily basis. Social media has

removed that limitation and given new power to consumers.

HYPER-INFORMED CONSUMERS

Social media is transforming the way that consumers across the globe make purchase

decisions. Consumers around the world are using social media to learn about other

consumers’ experiences, find more information about brands, products and services, and to

find deals and purchase incentives.

OPPORTUNITY FOR ENGAGEMENT

Consumer attitudes toward advertising on social media are still evolving. Though roughly

one-third of social media users find ads on social networking sites more annoying than other

types of Internet advertisements, research suggest that there are opportunities for

marketers to engage with consumers via social media. More than a quarter of social media

users say they are more likely to pay attention to an ad shared by one of their social

connections. Additionally, more than a quarter of consumers are ok with seeing ads on

social networking sites tailored to them based on their profile information.

One more view from IBM.

Marketing digitization-following the consumer Social media is re-shaping the way

organizations engage their customers and nurture their relationship to brands, products and

13

services. Here are some figures that give an idea of the scale of the social media

phenomenon:

1.43 billion people worldwide visited a social networking site last year

Nearly 1 in 8 people worldwide have their own Facebook page

Last year, one million new accounts were added to Twitter everyday

Three million new blogs come online every month

65 percent of social media users say they use it to learn more about brands, products

and services

For marketers, a good portion of social media’s value lies in its ability to aggregate

communities of interest, identify specific demographics and thus enable marketers to

precisely segment and engage their audience. The goal is to monetize these outputs — to

capture the interaction with a brand, product or service, and distil from this information the

drivers of preference and ultimately purchase.

A social media strategy, then, seeks to carefully balance message and media with specific

consumer segments. This balance is possible because the technology is now available to

capture consumer preferences and opinions expressed through social media and apply

predictive capabilities to identify new opportunities and determine patterns and

propensities to influence and advocate. Companies can then act on this insight by

integrating it with one-to-one marketing automation solutions to pinpoint campaigns to

specific segments, driving consumer advocacy and ultimately revenue.

As social media becomes a standard component of most organizations’ marketing mix and a

source of rich customer insight, its spend is being scrutinized, with better justification and

metrics required to engage a vast social media landscape. This analysis requires a rich

analytics environment, one which is transformative in its ability to offer a consolidated,

global view of customer data and deliver actionable insight.

Social media can be a catalyst to help companies achieve:

Inluence and intimacy. Social media amplifies the “relationship” in customer relationship

management (CRM). Consumers trust their peers. And companies have the ability to

aggregate and segment consumer data fairly easily.

Scale and speed. Social media channels enable marketers to reach more customers

faster, dynamically, and with greater precision. It can take months of planning, creative

development and media purchases to launch a print ad campaign, compared to the

immediacy of Twitter and Facebook campaigns.

Lower costs. Social media offers dramatically lower costs to precisely target and engage

audiences across multiple channels, segments and locations.

14

Social media enable organizations to connect and engage consumers in a unique way, but

also personalize and monetize customer relationships on a sustained basis to ultimately

improve profitability.

15

4G Business Persona and Targeted Audience

In 1st twelve months targeted audience is the current smart phone users,

current broadband users, data users, current social media users,

influencers, opinion leaders, early technology adopters, annual income>

USD 25,000, who have unmet needs of faster download, more secure

technology, better handsets, global level new services and the fatigue of

using legacy services.

Illusive and Ever Changing Network

16

Company Profile

A new company with 4G license for the entire territory of India

6 billion USD have been invested in Spectrum and Licensing

Another 6 billion USD have been earmarked to launch 4G services

This will be biggest 4G launch in the world in terms of scale and market

size

Company is already an oil giant (exploration, drilling, etc.)

Company is already a retail giant in India (kind of Wal-Mart)

Company has insignificant digital marketing/social media presence,

strong traditional marketing

Will start from scratch

New Beginning

17

Strategy and Organization Map: Integrated View

1. Strategy

Planning / Formation Execution

2. Traditional Marketing

9. Finance

3. Digital Marketing (Internet, Social Media, Web,

SEO, Agile)

5. Innovation

6. Technology

Evaluation Deployment Monetization

7. Patent / IPR

4. Business Analytics

8. Decision Making 10. Process

11. People

Massive & Rapid Business

Growth Engine 11 Nuggets

18

19

Social Media SWOT Analysis – New 4G Company

Strengths

New cutting edge Technology

Quality and huge spectrum

Availability of cash, strong balance sheet

Superior execution skills

Whole country license

Respectable brand

Weaknesses

New Team

Complex Launch

New Process

Dependence on Infrastructure partners

New untested 4G handsets

Churn of Customers

Customer Power

Under developed eco-system

20

Social Media SWOT Analysis – New 4G Company

Opportunities

Big Market (1300 million population)

Low Internet penetration (11%)

Low broad band penetration (4%)

Higher % population below 25 years of age (55%)

Low social media penetration (6%)

Higher download speed

Low legacy effect

Lifestyle trends

New business applications

Threats

Uncertain Foreign Direct Investment

Introduction of new/better technology

Retaliation from existing players

Government sanctions against social media

Negative environment factors

Unstable Government

Vertical Integration

21

4G Company to be Launched – Keywords to be focused

Brand Competition Target Market Industry Other

Company name/Website name/Product or Service names/Leaders

Competitor Names Words or phrases that describe target market

Words or phrases relevant to your industry

All possible related keywords

Aircel 4G handsets Churn Video Conference

4G Idea 3G handsets Acquisition Zero cost

3G Loop Fast download Connection Prepaid

2G Tata Data Security Monthly bill Postpaid

1X Bharati Latest handsets Internet Post dated cheque

EVDO Vodafone Essar Ltd. Latest laptops Apple Credit history

CDMA BSNL Internet of things Dongle Value added services

Verizon MTNL M2M DB level BTS

AT&T

Download speed Indoor Coverage Call drop

Vodafone

New Customer

Netork failure

Airtel

Cheap services

GSM

Airtime

MVNO

High class service

NOC

New technology

TCP/IP

22

Integrated & Dynamically Consistent Strategy

Business Strategy

To be number 1, market leader with 30% plus market share, 4G company in

next 5 years

Digital Marketing Strategy

To contribute 50% of company’s overall marketing contribution in the next

5 years (progressively from 20% in the 1st year)

To have positive ROI on Digital Marketing Expenditure

Social Media Strategy

To be an innovative Social Media integrated marketing team enabling

Company’s overall business plan, business strategy and digital marketing

strategy.

To collaborate with all teams , functions and departments of the company

To be the dominant and market leader with more than 30% share in 4G

Social Media Marketing.

To assist in all the phases of business and sales funnel towards conversion.

23

12 – Months Plan / Action - Self Social Media

The following are the actions for social media itself in first 12 months

Understand new Company’s Business Plan

Understand Company’s Technology Plan

Understand Competition Landscape

Write SWOT

Understand demographics

Understand and prepare “Persona & Audience”

Understand organization structure

Meet Top Management and take inputs and agree for weekly discussion

Create Social Media team as part of Overall Marketing Team and Digital

Marketing Team

Finalise Social Media KPIs, Metrics and align them to larger objectives of

Company, Marketing and Digital Marketing

Prepare and take approval for Social Media Budget for 12 months

(Approximately 100 million USD)

Shortlist, appoint and onboard strategic vendors and consultants

Evaluate and finalise Social Media Channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter,

Instagram, etc.)

Create website and widgets

Start tie-ups with external agencies

Start Blog (to be calendarised and written by CEO, CTO, CIO, CMO, etc.)

Targeted date of Blog – Tuesday 10.00 am.

Create Social Media PR Team and Crisis Management process

Establish Social Media Analytics and Measurement

Start Social Media Content creation, Curation and Release

24

12 Months – Others Integrated Working and

participation of Social Marketing with other

functions/departments

The following are function wise various initiatives in which social media can

partner and collaborate with other functions of the company

Strategy: Planning/formation, execution, feedback, double looping,

competition analysis, influencing external factors like Government

People/HR: Hiring, recruitment, on boarding, talent assessment, training,

retention, optimized compensation and benefit, morale building,

communication, best place to work inputs, policy formulation, talent

stickiness, change management

Innovation: Idea generation, crowd sourcing, idea evaluation, design

thinking, concept testing, market sizing, competition intelligence, strategic

insights

Technology: Evaluation, deployment, monetization, external/expert

opinion, life cycle management, total cost management, strategic inputs

Patent/IPR: Breach information, advance information, protection,

deployment, monetization, information analysis, insights

Traditional Marketing: Proper mapping of paid/owned/earned media, cost

management, idea testing, ROI, integration, speed, change management,

pricing, competition activities, market inputs, customer service, reach,

customer life cycle management, brand building, appropriate amplification

and advancement of required messages, right selection of signals from

crowded noise

25

Digital Marketing: Lead generation, listening, opinion management,

audience profiling, crisis management, cost optimization, customer

acquisition-retention-conversion, SEO/SEM, customer service, CRM,

integration, life cycle management of product, service and customer

Analytics: Web analytics, social media tool inputs, vendor management,

hypothesis testing, assumption challenging, agile project management, big

data analytics

Process: Training, deployment, evaluation, customer/employee feedback,

benchmarking, competition insights

Decision Making: Uncertainty evaluation, in time risk mitigation, timely

feedback, credibility, trust, quality, speed, diagnosis, optimization

Finance: Cost management, fund raising, budgeting, ROI, assumption

building, share holder involvement, appropriate and timely 2-way

dissemination of information.

26

The Social Media Strategy Template

5 Points

27

1.Clarify Your Business’ Social Media Goals

Getting Started

In order to gain customer trust, establish expertise, and meet potential customers, every business needs to have a social media presence. It’s simply not enough to have social media sites up for your business; without a clear strategy for social media use, your business will struggle to get the customer engagement levels and increased sales you’re looking for. To get the most out of your social media efforts, your strategy should include the following:

Step 1: Clarify Your Business’ Social Media Goals

All business planning should start with defining clear goals, and social media is no exception. Without a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with social media, you are unlikely to achieve anything at all because your efforts will be scattered or aimless. In addition, different social media goals require different sets of action. For example, if your goal is to gain consumer credibility, that looks very different than if your goal is to convert 30 percent of prospects to sales.

Start by writing down at least three social media goals for your business. Make sure each goal is specific, realistic and measurable. It is vital to make your goals measurable so that you can track your business’ progress towards each goal. To test how measurable your goal is, ask yourself what it will look like when partially or completely achieved. If you don’t know, you need to continue working on the goal’s measurability. It’s also important that your goals for social media relate to your overall goals for your business. Rather than choosing social media goals arbitrarily, make sure these goals tie in with your overall sales, marketing and productivity goals.

28

2. Audit Your Current Social Media Status

Take Current Social Media Inventory

Start by conducting a search for both officially sanctioned and unauthorized pages representing your company. These could be fan sites, rogue employee sites or malicious sites posing as you or your company. Check the pages to see how many followers you have, how much activity is on the page and whether all links work. If any of your pages have become overrun with spam, sign on and delete it.

My Business’ Social Media Log

Distribute Surveys

If you’re not currently on social media at all, your first step is to figure out which sites would be most beneficial for you to use. You can do that by inviting current customers to complete a survey online or in store. Consider offering an appropriate incentive to your customers for completing the survey, like a discount or coupon. Collect demographic information as well as information about which social media sites your customers use. If you already have some sort of social media presence, post a similar survey on your social media pages as well as providing it to customers after purchase.

My Business Survey Results

29

Search for Your Competitors’ Pages

Investigate what your top competitors are doing online. Check out their social media pages on each social media network to see how much of a presence they have. In addition to checking out whether your competitors have a social media presence, it’s important to analyze their existing pages. Ask yourself what each of your competitors does well and does not do well on social media. You can use this analysis to help you in crafting your social media strategy.

30

3.Develop Your Content Strategy

All of the work you’ve done in the previous steps should now enable you to develop a comprehensive content strategy for your social media campaign. Your content strategy should include:

As part of your content strategy, you should create an editorial calendar. Your editorial calendar lists the dates you intend to post blogs, Facebook posts and other content you may plan to use during your social media campaigns. Check out this sample editorial calendar, then create your own.

An example of an editorial calendar.

Pro to schedule posts to as many social media sites as you’d like. Remember to put your scheduled posts on your editorial calendar so you don’t forget about them.

31

4.a) Guide to Social Media Metrics: Measuring Mentions

Mentions

The first social metric you need to track is volume of mentions, which is the size of a conversation. Depending on your job role or function, you’ll want to track mentions for several different keywords such as your company, brand name, product or service, industry, the competition or a particular market term. This will give you a complete picture of the social conversations that matter most. Mentions are simply the number of times the term or phrase you’re tracking was used across social media, helping you understand just how much (or little) attention the subject is receiving in social.

How to Measure Mentions:

Mention volume is a simple (but tasking) counting metric. You can invest in a social media marketing platform that will automatically track the number of mentions for a specific search term for you. Or, you can count tweets, wall posts, etc.

How to Use Mentions:

Establish a Baseline

Track mentions in recurring time periods (daily, weekly, etc) to establish the typical volume.

Record benchmarks so you can accurately measure growth over time. Take Action

Find the right windows to engage. Are there certain days or times when mentions increase?

o Marketing should rearrange its content schedule to capture the attention of an active

audience.

o Customer service and sales should be online and ready to engage with clients or

prospects.

React to spikes in mentions. o PR should investigate a spike in brand mentions as it could signal a positive brand

story they should amplify or a negative one they’ll need to get ahead of to prevent a

potential crisis.

o A product team needs to understand the cause for a surge in market terms or features

and evaluate how or if they need to react.

o Marketing should prepare competitive positioning when top competitors see a surge

in volume.

Use mentions to track if campaigns, product launches or other initiatives are gaining traction. Did mentions increase after launch? Are they remaining stagnant? Monitor mentions closely and consider making tweaks if you’re not seeing a reaction.

32

4.b) Guide to Social Media Metrics: Reach and Exposure We’ll break down reach and exposure. Reach and exposure are often used interchangeably as they both represent the size of your potential audience. However, they do differ slightly.

Reach

Reach is the potential audience for a message based on total follower count (Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn followers, total Likes on your Facebook page, etc). If your boards have 1,000 followers on Pinterest, then each of your pins could potentially reach 1,000 people.

It’s important to note that Facebook provides its own analytics around reach, which it defines as “the number of people who saw your post”. Facebook considers a post to reach someone when it’s shown in that person’s News Feed. They also provide “total reach,” which includes the number of unique people who saw any activity from a Page as well as paid vs. organic reach.

Exposure

Exposure further expands on your potential audience by measuring not just the number of your followers, but the number of followers each of your followers have. Each time a person shares something in social, it is delivered to their list of followers—each instance is called an impression. And those impressions are included in a message’s exposure. For example, if your company’s latest tweet was retweeted by a Twitter user with 10,000 followers, then the exposure for that tweet would include the number of impressions based on your audience plus the 10,000 impressions based on that specific user’s audience. Of course, not everyone who receives a post in their social feeds will read it, which is why exposure measures the potential audience.

How to Measure Reach and Exposure:

To measure your reach, you would tally your following on each social network—number of Twitter followers, Facebook page likes, LinkedIn followers or connections, Pinterest followers, etc. You can keep track of these stats manually or can use the analytics reports provided by each social network.

Measuring exposure on your own can be a bit tricky, especially if you’re looking to track the impressions of a particular campaign or market team. Quality social media management or analytics platforms will automatically track exposure for you. Or if you want to measure your content’s exposure manually, you can tally up your total follower count as well as each time your content is shared in social. For example, on Pinterest you would track the number of repins and the number of followers those

33

who repined your post have, as well as pins from your website or blog. Focus on the sharing stats for each platform—retweets, shares, likes etc.—as well as links from your website or blog to calculate your average number of impressions.

How to Use Reach and Exposure:

Track reach on each social network over time to determine where you’re seeing the most growth.

Use exposure to measure the spread of a conversation to evaluate the success. Inform future initiatives. Determine what’s resonating with your audience by finding

what types of content or messaging received the highest exposure. Use that research to perfect future campaigns or content creation.

Track competitors’ exposure to view potential share of voice. Compare exposure to mentions to find potential influencers. If a specific post’s

exposure was many times higher than its mentions, someone with a large social following is clearly distributing the content. Research the influencer and find ways to work together.

Combine exposure and reach with engagement metrics to help form a more complete understanding of impact.

34

4.c) Guide to Social Media Metrics: Sentiment

Sentiment

Sentiment refers to the emotion behind a social media mention. It’s a way to measure the tone of the conversation—is the person happy, annoyed, angry? Sentiment adds important context to social conversations. Without it, measurement of mentions alone could be misleading. If you were measuring mentions for your company’s new product, you might assume a surge in mentions meant it was being well received. After all, more mentions = more people talking about the product. But what if all those mentions were negative?

Measuring sentiment will help you understand the overall feeling surrounding a particular subject, enabling you to create a broader and more complete picture of the social conversations that matter to you.

How to Measure Sentiment:

Measuring sentiment on your own can be quite a time commitment, depending on the size of the conversation. To record the sentiment of mentions, you would read each one, evaluate the tone and assign a score such as positive, negative or neutral.

There are a few free tools available that track and measure sentiment and quality social media marketing platforms will provide automatic sentiment analysis. The uberVU via HootSuite platform uses a powerful automation tool to determine sentiment, which is based on machine learning technology. If a person was to tweet about their experience shopping at Sears, the sentiment would be determined based on the description words they use. “Such great deals at Sears!” would register as positive whereas “Customer service at Sears is the worst.” would register as negative.

How to Use Sentiment:

Evaluate Brand Health

Analyzing sentiment on a regular basis will help you understand people’s feelings towards your brand, company or your product or service.

Consider using a tool that provides automatic sentiment analysis to get a quick overview of your brand health without having to dive into each individual mention.

Head Off a Crisis

Watch your sentiment level for any signals that could indicate a dramatic shift in brand health.

35

A sudden spike in negative mentions could be an indication of a developing crisis. Loop in your PR department, dive into the mentions to find the cause, and establish a plan for handling the rise in negativity.

Competitive Research

Sentiment analysis can also be used to find how your brand or product is being perceived in comparison to your top competitors.

Keep an eye on the overall sentiment level of competitors and find opportunities (positive and negative) that you can use to shape your positioning against theirs.

Evaluate Campaigns and Other Initiatives

Use sentiment levels to measure the success of product launches, marketing campaigns or other new initiatives.

Track how levels change throughout the duration of the initiative to establish if it is being received positively or negatively. Consider adjusting your strategy if negativity rises.

Did your increased sentiment level remain post campaign? Use the sentiment research to inform and perfect future initiatives.

36

5. Use Analytics to Track Progress

Once you’ve begun your social media campaign, don’t sit back and keep doing the same thing over and over. Instead, check your analytics frequently to see how your campaign is performing.

Use your preferred analytics tool to find out who’s reading, responding and reposting your social media posts. Hootsuite Pro offers advanced analytics and reporting for your social media measurement needs.

Use Facebook Insights to find out when your fans are online, how many are seeing your posts and who’s sharing or responding.

Google Analytics can show you who’s viewing and engaging with your web pages.

Remember to match your analytics up with your goals. Examine data that measures your specific progress towards your objectives so you can ensure you are on the right path.

Build the capacity for measurement into every social action. Use URL shorteners, like our own Ow.ly links, to track your click-throughs. With the Ow.ly tool you can see a quick snapshot of the number of clicks on any link you shortened within HootSuite, insight that you can use to determine what Tweets and posts resonate most with your followers. If 800 people click on a URL in a funny Tweet promoting your new shopping app but only 200 people click on a URL in a more serious Tweet, this knowledge can be applied in future posts. In other words, URL click data can be used to increase the chances of your followers clicking a link.

Reporting can also go much deeper. With HootSuite you can use data gained from uberVU, Webtrends, Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, Google+ Pages Analytics, Twitter Profile Stats, our own custom ow.ly Click Stats and more to generate easy, drag and drop social analytics reports shared easily by email. More importantly, you can analyze that data to optimize future programs and messaging.

37

38

Creating a Social Media Strategy :

Granular Details( Details to be filled in after due

consultation)

5 Steps

39

Step 1: Clarify Your Business’ Social Media Goals

All business planning should start with defining clear goals, and social media

is no exception. Without a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with

social media, you are unlikely to achieve anything at all because your efforts

will be scattered or aimless. In addition, different social media goals require

different sets of action. For example, if your goal is to gain consumer

credibility, that looks very different than if your goal is to convert 30 percent

of prospects to sales.

Start by writing down at least three social media goals for your business.

Make sure each goal is specific, realistic and measurable. It is vital to make

your goals measurable so that you can track your business’ progress towards

each goal. To test how measurable your goal is, ask yourself what it will look

like when partially or completely achieved. If you don’t know, you need to

continue working on the goal’s measurability. It’s also important that your

goals for social media relate to your overall goals for your business. Rather

than choosing social media goals arbitrarily, make sure these goals tie in with

your overall sales, marketing and productivity goals.

My Business Social Media Goals Are:

1.

________________________________________________________________

2.

________________________________________________________________

3.

________________________________________________________________

40

Step 2: Audit Your Current Social Media Status

Prior to creating your social media strategy, you need to assess your current

social media use and how it is working for you. This requires figuring out who

is currently connecting to you via social media, which social media sites your

target market uses and how your social media presence compares to your

competitors’.Take Current Social Media Inventory Start by conducting a

search for both officially sanctioned and unauthorized pages representing

your company. These could be fan sites, rogue employee sites or malicious

sites posing as you or your company. Check the pages to see how many

followers you have, how much activity is on the page and whether all links

work. If any of your pages have become overrun with spam, sign on and

delete it.

My Business’ Social Media Log

Social Media Site URL Followers Last Activity Date

1.

2.

3.

Distribute Surveys

If you’re not currently on social media at all, your first step is to figure out

which sites would be most beneficial for you to use. You can do that by

inviting current customers to complete a survey online or in store. Consider

offering an appropriate incentive to your customers for completing the

survey, like a discount or coupon. Collect demographic information as well as

information about which social media sites your customers use. If you

41

already have some sort of social media presence, post a similar survey on

your social media pages as well as providing it to customers after purchase.

My Business Survey Results

Number of respondents_____ Average age_____ % Male_____ %

Female_____

% on Facebook_____ % on Twitter_____ % on LinkedIn_____ % on

Other_____

Search for Your Competitors’ Pages

Investigate what your top competitors are doing online. Check out their

social media pages on each social media network to see how much of a

presence they have. In addition to checking out whether your competitors

have a social media presence, it’s important to analyze their existing pages.

Ask yourself what each of your competitors does well and does not do well

on social media. You can use this analysis to help you in crafting your social

media strategy. Guide to Creating a Social Media Strategy | 3Social Media

Network Strengths Weaknesses

Competitor #1

Competitor #2

My Company

42

Step 3: Develop Your Content Strategy

All of the work you’ve done in the previous steps should now enable you to

develop a comprehensive content strategy for your social media campaign.

Your content strategy should include:

# What type(s) of content you intend to post and promote via social media

# How often you will post the content

# Target audience for each type of content

# Who will create the content

# How you will promote the content

As part of your content strategy, you should create an editorial calendar.

Your editorial calendar lists the dates you intend to post blogs, Facebook

posts and other content you may plan to use during your social media

campaigns. Check out this sample editorial calendar, then create your own.

Your content strategy may also involve creating posts in advance to be

posted later. Remember to put your scheduled posts on your editorial

calendar so you don’t forget about them.

Editorial Calendar in detail to be worked out.

43

Step 4: Use Analytics to Track Progress

Once you’ve begun your social media campaign, don’t sit back and keep

doing the same thing over and over. Instead, check your analytics frequently

to see how your campaign is performing.

• Use your preferred analytics tool to find out who’s reading, responding and

reposting your social media posts. Hootsuite Pro offers advanced analytics

and reporting for your social media measurement needs.

• Use Facebook Insights to find out when your fans are online, how many are

seeing your posts and who’s sharing or responding.

• Google Analytics can show you who’s viewing and engaging with your web

pages.

Remember to match your analytics up with your goals. Examine data that

measures your specific progress towards your objectives so you can ensure

you are on the right path.

44

Step 5: Adjust Your Strategy as Needed

Once you’ve analyzed your current campaign, resolve to do more of what is

working and revise things that are

not working. Re-write your content strategy based on your analysis to reflect

your new understanding. You will need to keep developing your strategy and

content and using analytics to guide your next step throughout your social

media campaign.

My New Social Media Strategy

The following worked well to reach my goal of

__________________________________________________________:

1.

2.

The following did not work so well:

1.

2.

My goal for the next period is ___________________________________

In order to reach that goal, I will make these changes in my social media

strategy:

1.

2.

3

45

Thank You