A Framework for Social Strategist and Chief Marketing Officers

By: Kevin Dean

Tables of Contents......................................................................................Social Strategy is not Childs Play 3

...............................................................................................Your Plan is not a Strategy 3

.......................................................................................Answering the Wrong Question 4

......................................................................................................Organizational Impact 4

................................................................................................................Impact on Sales 5

........................................................................................................Impact on Marketing 7

............................................................................................Impact on Customer Service 7

...............................................................................................Impact on Public Relations 8

......................................................................................................................Impact on IT 8

.....................................................................................The Strategy Map Fundamentals 9

...............................................................................................The Financial Perspective 11

..................................................................................................The People Perspective 12

........................................................................................The Conversation Perspective 14

...............................................................................................The Platform Perspective 15

.................................................................................................The Internal Perspective 16

....................................................................................The Best Strategy Doesn’t Win!! 17

.............................................................................................................................About 19

................................................................................................About the Author 19

.....................................................................................................About CrushIQ 19

..................................................................The Crush360 Strategy Engagement 19

Social Strategy is not Childs Play

Don’t you just love watching a good sporting event? One Friday afternoon I ran into my neighbor and asked him if he had any big plans for the weekend? He told that he was going to watch his grandson’s game. And I replied “Oh that should be fun.” To which he replied “Have you ever watched a kid’s game?” Take for instance soccer.

The goal and basic principles of the game are always the same. Get the ball through the goal more times then the other team. But how the game is children play the game amusingly. They all just run after the ball chasing it around. Oh and don’t forget the kid who is almost oblivious that a game is going on around them and has become distracted by something else and seem to just wander around the field aimlessly.

On the other hand watching the Pros play the game is a completely different experience. It is like a well-choreographed yet spontaneous performance. The pros know how to move off the ball, when to move to and when to with the ball. The Pros play with grace and purpose.

Business is a lot like a sporting event. The goal is to win! You want to win customer preference and create sustainable competitive advantage that yields the desired profit for the stakeholders. That sounds simply enough, the question is do you run your business like a child or a professional?

Kids just run after the ball and a lot, if not most people, do that with Social Media. They say “Oh look! Everyone seems to be building Facebook fans pages. Well maybe I should to.” So they run to put up a Facebook page. Then they say “Oh look! Google launched a new site. Let me run over there too.” Or perhaps they are like the kid scratching his butt on the field saying, “I don’t see why anyone would every use social media for business.” That’s how kids play the game.

But pros take the game to a completely different level. Phil Jackson who is arguably the best basketball coach of all time said that basketball games are won and lost in practice. Practice is where you build your strategy and train to execute it.

Don’t feel bad if you just realized that your approach to Social Media and Consumer Engagement is childlike. That is where everyone starts out. Remember that even Michael Jordan got cut from the team in High School. But also realize that even the greatest players need coaches. This eBook endeavors to be your consumer engagement coach. Teaching you the fundamentals of a Social Strategy.

Your Plan is not a Strategy

Let’s get down to basics. There is a lot of confusion around what a strategy really is. Most people get confused and do not fully understand the differences between a

strategy, a goal, an objective, a vision, an idea, and a plan. Each of them are disparate and serve completely different purposes. Add to the confusion by Googling “Social Media Strategy” you will find that most of the results that are returned are really goals or plans. They are not really strategies.

Creating a Facebook fan-page is not a strategy. It is not really even a plan. It is an activity. Getting more twitter follower is not a strategy. It is closer to a goal then anything else. Creating a content calendar is not a strategy; it’s a plan.

While searching for Social Media Strategy, you will also find a lot of great questions that you should ask yourself about your organization’s consumer engagement initiatives. But those questions alone do not constitute a strategy.

Here is the problem with Googling information about Social Media Strategies. The term is being used as a keyword for Search Engine Optimization and it is not returning concise actionable information around creating a true social media strategy. Sorry for all the confusion you have run into.

Harvard Professor Michael Porter has clearly articulated, “The steps and action you want to take is not your strategy”. Your business strategy is the overarching approach or method that guides how you will deliver value to the market place and stakeholders. Plans are fluid, they will need to change and adapt to constantly changing environmentally conditions. Strategy is solid, they stand steady ensuring stability while allow for a variety of tactics in order to achieve the end goal.

Answering the Wrong Question

“What is the ROI of Social Media?” Hold your breathe, Count to 10, OK now scream! First of course you know that to calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment and that the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio. Of course you know that determining ROI for anything is nebulous since the whole nature of ROI calculations make it so that you can be easily manipulated the calculations to suit any purpose. But before you go and try to answer that question, STOP!!!

Whenever someone asks you what is the ROI of Social Media, they are really asking “What is the value of Social Media?”. They are not asking for a mathematical calculation. They are asking to for you to clearly show them how engaging in Social Media is will help them meet their Financial objectives. Answering this question is clearly different from answering a mathematical equation. Once you show how social media aligns with the stated business objectives then the numbers that you later show will make perfect sense. To do this you must have a roadmap that helps pave the way from engagement to financial dividends.

Organizational Impact

Social Media has on your on your entire organization. The sales team, the marketing department, customer service, public relations, Information technology and finance are all impacted. I it crucial that you understand this impact. It will help you to appreciate that you must moving beyond thinking about Social Media and start thinking about becoming a social business. So I will outlineWe will start by outlining the impact on Sales.

Impact on SalesTo understand the impact Social Media has on sales we first must understand the Sales Cycle The traditional measures the time it takes to more a customer from the initial contact until the close of the sale. The sales cycles identify where in the process a consumer may be in efforts to help sales move the customer along to the next phase of the process. Social Media make the sales cycles more dynamic. The social media sales sales goes beyond more customer to a transaction but includes the actual use of the product or service.

The phases in the Sales Cycle are:• Discovery• Selection• Validation• Purchasing• and Use

Lets discuss what is involved in each of these phases:

Discovery

Discovery is the point that a consumer gains and builds awareness of your product or service. Today consumers gain awareness of organizations and their offerings in 3 primary ways. Those ways are:

• Search• Word of Mouth• Advertisement and Product Placement

SearchA consumer could discover your product or service through search. The yellow pages has become irrelevant people today search for products or services using search Engines such as Google, Bing or other Social Search Services.

Word of MouthConsumers could discover your product through word of mouth. Through a shared experience from someone within their personal network, a person could gain awareness of your product or service. Through social media sites like Facebook, twitter, or Google plus, a consumer may gain exposure to your organization

AdvertisementsConsumers also discover product through advertisement and product placement. Online advertising and product placement allows organizations the ability to collect leads and move prospects into the next phase of the sales cycle. Ads on Facebook or place in content through Google are an effective way to increase exposure as part of the discovery phase.

After a consumer has had sufficient exposure to your product and service to arose interest they next move the the selection phase.

Selection

Consumers have access to an abundance of products and services options to choose from. During the selection process consumers weed out the products and service that do not meet their personal preferences and come to a decision of which product or service that they want to purchase.

Validation

After consumers have narrowed their option down to the item that they intend to purchase move into the validation process. This is the most extensive phase of the Sales Cycle. Consumers validate products and service in 3 ways:

• Education• Network Approval• Third Party Reviews

EducationIn the validation phase consumer educate themselves about the product and service that they are validating and how they intend to use it. One way that they educate themselves is through view videos on YouTube of other Social Video Sharing Platforms. The use of online video posted on site such as YouTube is an effective tool to educate consumers and help move them through the validation phase.

Network ApprovalConsumers want the validation of those whom they associate with. Whether they are buying a pair of jean, an automobile, or a home the seek validation from the family and peers. You can help consumers gain network approval by make information about your offering easy to share on social networks. By incorporating a catchall social sharing widget into your website you allow consumer to get validation from network in a manner that works best for the consumer.

Third Party Reviews

Through rating and review sites such as Yelp According consumer gain further validation of a product or service that they are interested in. According to a 2011 survey by BrightLocal.com. 55 percent of U.S. consumers trust a local business more after reading positive online reviews and 67 percent of respondents say they trust online reviews as much as word-of-mouth recommendations. One approach is to make is easy for consumer to unfiltered find reviews of your organization. Consumer realize that no company will have 100% glowing reviews therefore it is more important that consumers see how you addressed the negative review instead of attempting to cover it up.

After consumer have validated your product and service they are ready to more to the purchasing phase.

Purchase

When a consumer is ready to purchase your products or service you need to make it easy for them. If your products or services cannot be purchased online then you can use GeoTargeting service to help the consumer find the best location for them to buy. In addition you can use insight gain through social media monitoring for cross selling. One caution regarding cross selling is that items that you are cross selling may also need to go through the sales cycle and potential loss or delay of sales can occur.

Use

After the consumer has purchased your product or service the experience that they have with the purchased item paves the way for future sales. Therefore it is crucial that you have good product and customer support mechanisms in place. This can be done through Wikis and Forums. In addition your want to make it easy for consumers to share their experience in order to aid other through the sales cycle.

Impact on MarketingOne of the primary roles on marketing is to communicate the value of an organizations products or service in effort to drive sales. To accomplish this object Marketing must identify it’s audience, Create an audience appropriate message and publish it on the most appropriate channels. The traditional channels are printer, TV, radio and mailings. Social Media does not change the objective but it adds to the channel mix.

Impact on Customer ServiceSocial Media has given consumer the ability to voice their frustration in a way that public exposes your organizations flaws and errors. Customer Service must be empowered to quickly and publicly resolve consumer issues. Organization must employ listening tools to identify when a consumer voice a customer service issue on a social media platform. Next customer service representatives must be empowered to address the consumers concern immediately. This will require that organization modify

their policies from a black and white do and don’t list of rules to situational based principles. Customer Service also needs to be trained about how to quickly escalate issues to marketing or public relations.

Customer service must now publicly share its knowledge base with consumers. By creating and /or contributing to wikis and forums companies empower the community to find and offer solutions on their own. This approach can reduce the number of calls that could potentially come into an organizations customer service department.

Impact on Public RelationsInstead of having to pitch stories to the mainstream media channels in efforts to get message in front of consumers or the masses, social media empower PR professional to get their story in front of the people who mater most. Public Relation professionals also need to build relationships with mass mavens and connectors. Mass mavens contribute to blogs and forums and have a large amount of followers who consider them to be a trusted resource. Mass connectors share lots of resources with a large amount of connections. Public Relations professional also need to continual monitor conversation on the social web and have a crisis plan to address potential social media consumer disasters.

Impact on ITIT professional have been working with the underlying technologies that drive social media for many years. Developers are comfortable using, XML, RSS, and Web Services however they have primarily using these technologies in a controlled environment inside the enterprise. Social media introduction 3 major challenges that IT professional must address.

1. Security2. Scalability3. Integration

Security Because social media sites are sharing platforms, where users can upload and exchange pictures, text, music and other types of information with little effort this opens up vulnerability that IT professional need to protect their organizations from.

ScalabilityIT Professional must address the issue of scale. They must figure out what are the best tools for the organizations size and ensure that as their social media activities the have to proper tools in place so as not to interrupt ongoing activities.

IntegrationPerhaps the biggest obstacle IT professionals face is how to integrate streams of social data with your corporate data. This will require becoming efficient with Service

Oriented Architectures, and making API calls to third party applications and then normalizing and aggregating the data to produce actionable reports.

The Strategy Map Fundamentals

A Social Strategy Map is your playbook. It is an Infographic of an organization. The strategy map concept was developed map Harvard Professor Robert Kaplan and David Norton. I had successfully used strategy maps for many years at Fortune 500 companies. Then in 2008 I modified the strategy map concept to work for social media and begin using it with clients including one of the world largest privately owned companies.

A Social Strategy Map is broken down into five perspectives. They consolidate and exhaustive amount of research, envisioning and ideation into a clear objective that can be easily communicated and understood across the organization. It is accompanied with the measure for success for each perspective and the associated initiatives that will need to be executed in order to achieve the desired results.

The Perspectives in a Social Media Strategy Map are:

1.Financial2.People3.Conversations4.Platforms5.Internal

Social Strategy Maps are a valuable tool to communicate and link strategic objectives across the organization. Social Strategy Maps help to clarify and gain consensus around your strategy and ensure that all initiatives are tied to company financials. Each perspective supports they underlying adjacent perspective.

The social strategy map starts with the Financial perspective this is the ultimate measure of success of your social media initiatives. The Financial perspective sets the direction of your social engagement strategy.

While the Financial perspective is the driver of your strategy, the People are the most crucial to your organization success. You want to identify the people who directly make it possible for you to meet your financial objectives. The people objective does more than just identify a persona but groups of persona that will need to work together in order for you to meet your Financial objective.

After you have identified your People you are ready to outline they major conversations that you need to lead and engage in order to get the right people moving in the right direction to have the desired outcome on your financial objectives.

When identifying your conversations you will need to document what keywords you will monitor that represent your conversations. You will need to understand what the conversation triggers are that will lead to conversion events. Last but definitely not least; you will need to identify who are your mass connectors and mass mavens. Mass mavens are the highly connected individuals on social networks that create content that people view as authoritative. Mass connectors are highly connected individuals who share authoritative content created by others. The mass mavens and connectors have a significant influence on consumers in the discovery and validation phase of the social sales lifecycle. Mass mavens make up 80% of social media post about products and services.

In the Platform perspective you identify the vehicles that carry your conversation to the relevant people. This goes far beyond getting a Facebook page. While Social Media sites play a significant role in the platform perspective you also must consider what devices your people are having these conversations on so we evaluate here mobile, gaming, and other interactive devices.

The Internal perspective functions to ensure that your organization is ready for the ongoing activities to support your social media strategy. The strategy map should identifies the internal tools, processes, policies, or training your organization needs to have in place to serve as the foundation of your social media strategy.

Let’s now take each perspective and discuss it in greater detail.

The Financial Perspective

The financial objective is core to your Social Media Strategy. All the other perspective are in support of the Financial objective. The financial objective is the ultimate measure of success of your Social Media initiatives. During the identifying your organization’s financial path you will be reviewing and clarifying your organizations venture and doing a 4P review. The Social Media debate over ROI (Return on Investment) is resolved through the use of a Social Media Strategy Map, since the Social Media Strategy Map ties clearly links to Financials.

Financial Objectives will vary for each organization we utilizes 4 financial themes to help identify the strategic path your organization should follow. Those categories are:

1.Transformation2.Growth3.Maintenance4.Harvest

TransformOrganizations on the Transformation path will take a long term view of the market and look to innovate in new ways to meet an unmet or underserved market need. This will require that organizations invest heavily in new people, processes, and tools. Organization on the transformation path will probably operate with negative cash flows and low returns on investment. The measures that an organization would use on the Transformation path would be either Revenue Mix or Sales Mix. Revenue Mix is The relative contribution of quantities of products or services that constitutes total revenues. Sales Mix refers to relative proportions of the product sold i.e. the combination and percentage of each different item sold as a percentage of the whole.

GrowthOrganizations on the Growth path are looking to increase revenue or sales in targeted markets, customer groups, or regions. Companies on this path already have clearly defined products and services along with the supporting infrastructure to deliver. Organization on a growth path will look to invest significantly in consumer facing initiatives and tools. The measure that organizations will focus on in this path will be Revenue or customer growth.

MaintenanceOrganizations on the Growth path are primarily concerned about profitability. They are looking to maintain their existing market share while maximizing the income that can be generated form capital investments. Companies on a maintenance path may choose to use success metric based on:

ROE : Return on EquityROCE : Return on Capital EmployedEVA : Economic Value Add

HarvestOrganization on the Harvest path are cost conscious and seek way to reduce cost and take a keep the lights on approach. Organization in the Harvest phase understand that they will have limited opportunities to expand and may look to divest of customers or product and service offerings. Any investment will need to focus on consolidation or must have definite and short payback periods. The financial measure for organization on a Harvest Path will revolve around operating cash flow and reduction in working capital.

Your goal in the Financial Perspective is to clearly show alignment with the organization’s financial objective. It is not to show ROI although you will do that as a byproduct. Show any CEO how Social Media and Consumer Engagement will help them meet their financial objectives and they will invest whatever it takes.

Developing the Financial PerspectiveThe Financial Objective must comes from the company’s annual financial plan. Best in class businesses set their financial plan prior to the beginning of their fiscal year. The financial plan details the company’s objective in financial terms.

From the Financial Perspective you must have clearly identified the products and services that your organization offers. You must also have identified the price each product and service your organization offers. The sales projections of each product is also required.

The rest of your Social Strategy Map will show how social initiatives will proactively support your organizations financial objectives.

The People Perspective

While the Financial perspective is the driver of your Strategy, the People are the most crucial to your organization success. You want to identify the people who will make it possible for you to meet your financial objectives. These people may be consumers, partners, distributors, or vendors. These people make up a subset of your social media voice.

The first step in identifying the people that impact your financial perspective is to create a role based matrix identifying the major roles of people who could impact your financial metrics. Next you will want to perform a persona exercise to identify the specific individuals that fall within the groups that you have established.

PersonasPersonas are a composite user archetypes or representation that are constructed from demographic, psychographic, Technograhpic and an interaction use case.

Demographic data would include: the statistical characteristics of an individual such as gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, employment status, economic status, educational stations and geographic location.

Psychographic data would include attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. They are also called IAO (Interests, Activities, and Opinions) variables. Psychographics help us to understand behavioral patterns.

Technograhpic identify how are user segmentation utilizes social technologies. Technographics have seven overlapping levels of social technology participation. The 7 are depicted in a ladder hierarchy and from descend order are:

CreatorsConversationalistsCriticsCollectorsJoinersSpectatorsInactives

CreatorsCreators are originators of user-generated content. They publish articles and blog as well as upload audio and video to be shared with a community.

ConversationalistConversationalists generate a large number of small updates on personal updates. They also comment on content generated by other within the community.

CriticsCritics rate and review products and services as well as proof and edit information on wikis.

CollectorsCollectors are the people who curate and help to provide order to user generated content. They bookmark and tag using sharing platforms like delicious.

JoinersThe joiners have profiles on a multiple social networking sites and visit these regularly.

SpectatorsThe spectators read blogs, watch videos, listen to podcasts, read reviews, read tweets and review online forums and read all other types of post on social media sites.

InactivesInactives are the people who neither produce nor consume user generated content found of social sharing platforms.

The interaction use cases combines into a narrative of the goals of each persona in relationship to your product or service and the motivational drivers surrounding how the will engage with your company.

TribesAfter creating your user personas finally you will want to group the personas into tribes.

Tribes are groups of Personas that include multiple roles which work in a symbiotic relationship toward a shared outcome. You will list the tribes that will most impact your financial objective as the objectives for the people perspective.

The Conversation Perspective

After you have identified your Personas and Tribes now you are ready to outline they major conversations that you need to lead and engage in to get the right people moving in the right direction to have the desired outcome on your financial objectives.

You will record the conversation category as your objective within the conversation perspective. However you will need to create a manifest of supporting conversation information that helps you to understand what conversation are occurring and who are involved in those conversations. This will be a living document that is continual updated.

The supporting information that you will want to maintain for each category.

KeywordsKeywords and PhrasesDerivation for KeywordsAbbreviations for KeywordsExclusionary words to be included in Boolean searchesHashtags

Conversation TriggersConversations triggers are events and activities that lead to increased references to the conversation that matter to your organization

Mass connectors and mavensMass mavens are the highly connected individuals on social networks that create content that people view as authoritative. Mass connectors are highly connected individuals who share authoritative content created by others. Mass mavens and mass connectors do not differ from those identified in the People perspective because they most like do not have direct impact on your financial objectives. The mass mavens and connectors do have a significant influence on consumers in the discover and validation phase of the sales lifecycle. Instead of creating a persona for the mass mavens and connectors you will need to keep a list of who specifically these individuals are. You will need to understand their behavioral patterns and what motivates them and build relationships with them.

Now that you have a list of Keywords, conversation triggers, along with a list mass connectors and mavens now you can began crafting stories that ignite conversations around the emotional driver of your identified people. We have discussed what conversations drive value, we have outline how generate those conversations, now we are ready to move to the Platform.

The Platform Perspective

Selecting the most appropriate platform is crucial. The platforms are the vehicles that carry your conversation to the relevant people. While it may seem straightforward to select the Big 5 social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube or Facebook) the may not always be the most appropriate options for your company. On the Strategy Map it is recommended that you pick 2 to 3 sharing platform categories to place in the Platform perspective. This will be supported by documentation of specific

sites prioritized by activity volume. While specific sites may come and go as well as increase or decrease in popularity, the sharing platform category will always remain the same.

The first step in selecting your platforms is to listen and identify where the majority of your conversations are occurring. Next using your Technograhpic profile identify what category your personas fall within are they: • Creators• Conversationalists• Critics• Collectors• Joiners• Spectators• and Inactives

This will help your identify what action people take and what they are trying to accomplish. Then select the sharing platform that fits your people’s needs. Remember the 10 categories are:

1.New Sharing2.Video Sharing3.Audio Sharing4.Photo Sharing5.Bookmark Sharing6.Idea Sharing7.Knowledge Sharing8.Experience Sharing9.Connection Sharing10.Network Sharing

The Internal Perspective

Now it is time to ensure that your organization is ready for the ongoing activities to support your social media strategy. The strategy map should depict which of concentration internal tools, processes, policies, or training your organization need to have in place to serve as the foundation of your social media strategy. More than likely you will have all 4 area on your map with support plans backing up each objective.

Internal ToolsIn order to effectively manage multiple social channels across teams within an organization Social media management system will need to be in place. Social media management systems allow you to moderate conversations, assign tasks within your social workflow. In addition Social media management systems allow you to schedule messages to be posted in conjunction with social media campaigns. Other tools may need to be in place for content management, data integration, and reporting

ProcessesYour organization will need to map out how it will operationalize social media support through formalizing workflow, processes, and procedures. Your process you include consideration of how you will coordinate engagement across the team and how you will respond to conversation 24/7. Your process will need to address content publishing and general outreach. Crisis management and the appropriate escalation paths will need to be outlined. Finally the process should outline tracking and reporting needs.

PoliciesEach organization will need to establish it’s on social media policy based on the organization objectives, industry concerns, and executive management style. Your policy should be consistent with your organization’s standards of conduct. Authoritative laws, rules, and regulations. In addition the policy should foster respect and trust between consumer, partner, vendors, employees, and organizations leaders.

In addition to having a social media policy other organization and departmental policies should be reviewed so as not to be a barrier to open communication and speedy resolution of consumer issues. All we need to be trained within the organization on how to apply the policies. TrainingPulling it all together is the training of your organization’s staff to support your social media venture. Social Media Training will need to be conducted at all the different layers within your organization. There will need to be training specific to :

• All Employees• Executive Leadership• The Management Team• Sales, Marketing and PR• Customer Service• IT Professionals and • Human Resources

All Employees will need to understand how social media impact your organizations mission and how it impacts your companies financials. They will need to understand what role they play and what compliance to the companies social media policy means. Each specific department will need training specific to there area.

The Best Strategy Doesn’t Win!!

You can have the best strategy on paper, but it does not mean anything unless you execute on it flawlessly. You cannot build a 3 or 5 year Social Media strategy. With Social Media your strategy needs to be agile adjusting with the every change

landscape of technology. You can accomplish this by using OODA loops. OODA stands for: • Observe• Orient• Decide• and Act

You Observe by using listen tools to gauge what people are saying and the effectiveness of your communications. Next you Orient your self to what you have observed by understand the impact of you listening efforts. Then you Decide make determining what your options are and then selecting the best choice. Finally you Act by implement the decision that you have made.

Success is comes not from the Strategy but from the Execution. However, your cannot Execute if you do not have an effective Strategy in place.

About

About the Author

Kevin Dean is the Author of Social Strategy Maps. Kevin Dean is the Chief Strategist at CrushIQ and is a recognized expert in the fields of consumer engagement and social media technologies. Kevin is an instructor, guest speaker, and panelist on the subject of social media and web technologies at conferences around the country. As a public speaker Kevin Dean has delivered discourses in front of thousands of people. He has been featured and quoted in trade journals and television reports on the trends and effects of social media on business.

Following Kevin on twitter: @kevinjdeanAlso Subscribe to the SocialStrategyMap.com RSS feed

About CrushIQ

At CrushIQ, we are dedicated to giving real people and real businesses, real tools and specific know how for building business success through the power of social media. We speak to, train and educate businesses of all sizes, nationwide, on how to efficiently and effectively engage through this powerful medium.

For our clients, however, we engage on a much more intimate level. We follow a very specific process, one proprietary only to us, for assessing a client’s current social engagement situation, discovering opportunities for business development and building a strategy tied directly to a client’s financial goals for success. Our social strategies can be qualified, quantified, analyzed and tracked.

We call our process the Crush360, and it exists solely for defining and building effective social media solutions for our clients, that clearly define the return on their investment.

The Crush360 Strategy Engagement

The following outlines the step-by-step process of a Crush360

Determining the level of social business sophistication

Is your company new to social media, have you had experience with the medium, or would you con- sider your company to be an advanced user of social business. This is good to understand at the very beginning, before determining what needs your company may have regarding a social media strategy.

During this phase we will learn your current level of social business experience, integration, use, knowledge, support, budget and expectations and will be performing a series of interviews, including questionnaires, to determine a starting point.

The Assessment Phase

During a Crush360 Assessment, we mine a lot of data. A LOT of data! We listen to thousands of digital conversations about you, your competitors and your industry. The breakdown of this data falls into the following categories:

1.Socio Economic Landscape & Customer Map2.Sentiment analysis3.Brand analysis4.Ecosystem assessment 5.Competitive threat analysis.

Crush360 Social Strategy.

A Crush360 Social Strategy empowers companies to communicate and link their strategic social consumer engagement objectives across their entire enterprise. It also helps to clarify and gain consensus around a social strategy and ensure that all initiatives are tied to their company’s financial objectives.

A Crush360 Social Strategy Map leverages the Social Strategy Map concepts outlined in this eBook as well as in-depth workshops and processes to elicit your organizations strategic perspectives.

CrushIQ will create a Social Strategy Map walking you through our ideation and validation process to define your Financial, People, Conversation, Platform, and Internal Perspectives. The strategy will serve as a road map for successfully executing your consumer engagement initiatives.

To learn more about implementing a Crush360 Social Strategy Map for your organization please contact:

Kevin Dean at 616.608.2576 or email kevindean@crushiq.com

The Social Strategy MapCopyright © 2012 by Kevin Dean

No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the authors. All request should be sent to:

CrushIQ 7032 Wrightsville Avenue, Suite 201

Wilmington, NC 28403