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Hello
This ebook is a collection of posts published on our blog, The Cube.
Written by Gemma Went, the social media strategy series looks at each
stage of the process, giving the tools and tips that enable you to produce
a robust strategy for yourself.
Gemma gives you a step-by-step guide, from getting buy-in at the start
to ongoing management, in an easy to follow, straightforward style. Well
that’s our thing you see: no fluff, no jargon and lots of common sense.
We’ve referenced a few social media platforms and sites in this ebook.
However, things progress very quickly in social media land, so if any of
these are out of date by the time you read this, we’re sorry. If you have the
time, or inclination, do drop us an email to let us know.
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Is it right for your business?
Contents
4
7 Getting buy in
10 Goals and objectives
13 Finding your audiences
18 Developing tactics
21 Measurement
24 The content plan
27 Defining your resources
29 Guidelines and training
31 Ongoing management
32 Getting in touch
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Social media has been big news for a while now. You can’t read a trade
There are a number of considerations to think about before you climb aboard.
Here’s a checklist that will help you to understand a little more about what’s
involved and whether it’s right for you.
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Do you have buy in from the boss?
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Is it a priority for you?
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So you’ve done you’re research and decided that social media is right
Getting buy-in
for your business. The next step is convincing the Boss/C Suite/Board
that the time and budget investment will help you to achieve the results
they want. This, my friends, is the tricky part. Your boss will have read
countless articles questioning the ROI of Social Media. It’s likely they’ll
have assumed that it’s only for the youth or that it’s irrelevant to their
business. Your job is to prove it’s worth and get full, ongoing support,
resources and budget. Social media is more than just a ‘campaign’, it’s a
long term commitment that needs ongoing support and to get this kind
of commitment you need a strong business case.
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Competitive analysis
Getting buy-in
Find out which platforms your competitors are using. Do they have any
success stories or case studies? Do they appear to be reaping other
rewards through using social media (has their press coverage increased?
has brand awareness grown? are they directly engaging with prospects
online? are they speaking regularly at events?). If so, these are great ways
of showing how social media can work. But, don’t be put off if you can’t
find many using social media. It could be that take-up in your industry is
slow, which means you could be the first.
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Then provide them with budget requirements – do you need to hire an
Getting buy-in
external consultant? Do you need external training? Do you need extra
salaries (or portions of salaries)? Also provide them with the timings. Be
realistic with both of these, they need the cold hard facts not hype.
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The next step is to identify your goals and objectives. I’ve seen these
So start with your business plan and marketing strategy. What overall
business goals do you need to meet? Break these down and think about
whether social media can help you meet them. Be realistic and identify
those goals you can achieve. If you have a marketing strategy (and if not,
why not?) go through those goals and objectives and pull out those that
social media can help you to achieve. The key here is to align your social
media objectives with your business goals to ensure you can achieve
what you need to.
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There is a wide range of objectives social media can help you with and I’ve
Building awareness
Establishing thought leadership
Launching new products or services
Increasing reach (either geographically or by sector)
Generating leads
Increasing sales
Research and insight (understanding how to improve your product or
service)
Saving costs (eg reducing recruitment costs)
Building your community
Creating word of mouth activity
Improving public relations activity
Driving traffic to a website or blog
Improving SEO
Improving customer/client relations
Providing customer/client service
Competitive analysis
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Now I wouldn’t suggest including all of these. You’ll be setting yourself up
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Now you need to think about those target audiences (aka people) you need
Then think about who these people are, which industries they work
in, what they like, what they read, what motivates them, age ranges,
personality traits, where they hang out, technical know-how, how likely
they are to use social media. Really do your research and segment your
audiences. You may uncover some less obvious people that could be
great for you. Keep a record of this, a simple spreadsheet will do, and as
your experience of using social media grows, review and update, adding
others as necessary.
Also identify your key influencers. These could be people that stand out
within your communities, people that others listen to, people that create
action (tip: this doesn’t necessarily mean those people with thousands
of Twitter followers, true influence is far more than simply big numbers).
They could be peers, journalists, thought leaders or other stakeholders.
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People with game changing opinion and ideas. People who challenge the
If you don’t know where the people you want to connect with are, make
the most of the various free monitoring tools to track who is talking about
the keywords associated with your business: Google Analytics, Social
Mention, Technorati, Addictomatic and Board Reader, to name a few,
can help. This should highlight who has a voice in these subject areas.
Once you’ve profiled the people you want to connect with, you need to
find them. This is an ongoing process and takes a little time to begin with,
so set some time aside to research where these people are. This will give
you a good idea of which social platforms you should have a presence
on, so keep your mind open to niche sites as well as the big guns. The
research mentioned above will already have given you a good idea of
where these people are, so record popular sites
from that. There are a bunch of tools you can use
to help you find them on the main social networks.
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How to find people on Twitter
There are a few search tools for Twitter and some of these double up on
features, so have a play around and see which suit your needs.
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How to find people on Linked In
You can’t simply choose to connect with people on Linked In as you can
with Twitter. They need to give their approval (which I’m a fan of), so if
they’re connected to you through someone you’re connected to, request
to be introduced to them.
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How to find people on Facebook
Use the find people tool by popping your email address in. It finds all
those people in your address book that are using Facebook.
Search for fan pages in your subject area and browse other fans there.
Once you’ve connected with some key influencers, browse their
friends and connect with people that way (aka piggy backing your
friends friends).
When using the search function, filter your results to drill down to the
people you’re looking for.
Use the search for workmates function to find people affiliated with
companies.
Keep an eye on the suggestions that pop up on your news stream.
As I mentioned, this can take a little time, particularly when you first start
using social media, but it’s worth the time and effort. It’s not a ‘one time’
job either, set a reminder to review your connections regularly to keep it
fresh and to ensure you’re not missing anyone crucial to your business.
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Please note, there’s been no Twitter profile or Facebook Page in site so far.
Developing tactics
This is important as these activities are tactics NOT strategies, something
often misunderstood.
Your tactics will be based on the work done so far in the strategy
development. Take a look at your goals and objectives, get a good feel for
them and what they mean. Then have a look at the research you’ve done
on your audiences, think about where they are online, how they interact,
what sort of things do they respond well to? do they like creative social
media campaigns (virals, competitions etc) or do they simply respond
well to conversation and advice? (tip: most DON’T respond well to overt
selling). Spend a little time thinking about this and capture any creative
ideas you have about what they like.
If you did a competitive analysis while you were getting buy in, use this
research to understand how your competitors are using social media. If
you didn’t you’ll need to do this. Have a look at those doing a good job,
those that look like they’re getting some good results (a decent sized,
relevant community that interacts with and/or signs of influence – so
creating action, having content shared, mentions etc). Obviously you
don’t want to copy what they’re doing, standing out is so much better,
but it will give you a good idea of what’s working well.
We’ll be covering resources in more detail later, but at this point have
a think about what resources you have to work on this. Do you have
anybody that can dedicate their time to it? Are there a few people you
can use? Once you have a good idea of what resource is available, and
how much time they’ll have, keep this in mind so that
you don’t develop resource hungry tactics you’ll be
unable to action.
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Next, take your objectives in turn and create tactics to help you achieve
Developing tactics
them, with all of the above research in mind. Here is an example:
Now this is a very general objective, but a common one (which is why I’ve
picked it). You could make this more specific if you like: build awareness in
a certain region, for a specific service, in a certain sector. Better still attach
some numbers to it to help with measurement: Grow brand awareness
of xxxx service and increase web enquiries for that service by 10%. The
more specific the better.
These are just a few examples, but you get the idea.
For each objective there could be a range of tactics
that will help you to meet them. You will also need to
attach metrics to each to ensure you can measure
the effectiveness against what you’re trying to
achieve, but we’ll cover that next.
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Go through each objective you’ve already identified and list tactics. Then
Developing tactics
refine this list with your resources in mind (be realistic here, if not you
could be setting yourself an unachievable workload).
Once you have your proposed list of tactics, think about who else in your
organisation should have sight of this and bring them together to discuss
any possible issues. For example, the IT department may need to deal with
restrictions to social networking sites, the legal department may need to
be involved in the guidelines or policy, the customer services department
may need to use the social networking sites as a channel to deal with
customer problems, the sales department may want to understand where
possible leads are coming from. This helps to refine your strategy and
ensure it fits with the rest of the business. They could come up with a few
ideas you haven’t thought of and, more importantly, any potential issues
that need to be ironed out before you move on to the next stage.
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Once you’ve developed the social media tactics, you need to set the
Measurement
metrics to understand if those objectives are being met. Now this isn’t an
exact science as much of this activity relies on word of mouth, which has
always been hard to pin down. Digital activity has made it much easier to
get a handle on metrics and understand how the tactics are working.
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It’s worth spending some time matching the right metrics to the right
Measurement
objective. Think about the paths your customers or clients take to get to
the end goal, this could throw up some useful metrics for you to measure
along that path. A few examples are listed below, note not all of them are
digital. Don’t overlook the offline stuff, this is just as important.
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Track relationships. What’s happening to the people you’re connecting
Measurement
with on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, the blog etc. Are you moving them
to your CRM system? Are you tracking how often you’re connecting
with them? Are you keeping an eye on how these relationships
progress?
Increase in footfall to your shop/restaurant/bar. Do you know how
many people visit? Where did they come from? If you run campaigns
with promotion codes this can give you some great data.
And while on the subject of location based businesses, are you
tracking Foursquare, Gowalla and other location based apps? Check
ins, tips, how many people are making the most of your offers through
these apps (if you’re running them of course) are all useful metrics.
Once you’ve collected some decent data over a few months, you can
start to spot patterns and make assumptions about cause and effect. This
can help you to improve and refine your activities and help you get what
you need out of them. It also means you can spot those activities that
aren’t producing the results you need and stop them in favour of putting
more effort into the stuff that is working.
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A good content plan can supercharge activities and make sure you publish
Break your goals and objectives into a range of core topics then hold a
creative brainstorm with your team, or you can do this alone. The aim
is to develop a range of subject areas for each topic. Always keep your
audiences in mind when doing this, think about what they will genuinely
be interested in and don’t fall into the trap of writing for yourself or your
peers.
Once you’ve generated ideas for content topics, you can start thinking
about the various channels you will use it on and how you will use it:
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Curating content across multiple digital channels ensures the best results.
To ensure your content plan is fresh, stay up to date with the latest buzz
around your topics by:
Before you start to write, agree the style and tone of voice you want to use
that either fits with your personality or your business. And if you have a
search engine optimisation strategy, become familiar with your keywords
and include them (naturally) in all content (and if you don’t have an SEO
strategy, you need one).
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Content creation is an ongoing process and it’s easy to run out of steam.
Finally, you need to ensure your content makes people ‘want’ to read it.
Here are a few tips:
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Once you’ve decided which activities to add to the mix, you’ll need the
Commit resource to it
Social media is an ongoing activity that needs commitment, so be sure
to give it what it deserves from the start. Break down the activities into
specifics and estimate how much time each will take. The initial setup can
take a fair amount of time, so don’t overlook this. You’ll need things like
Twitter background design, avatar design, good bio profiles etc. These
don’t take up a great deal of time, but if you don’t have the right resource
in house, you’ll need to outsource it to ensure your online presence is on
brand.
Think about the ongoing work. How many social networking sites will you
be using? Are you launching a blog? If so, how often have you decided to
publish posts? Have you developed a content plan that includes things
like guest blogging? If so, how often will you write and publish these?
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If you have a few teams, think about which should work on this and get
If your business is an SME with limited resource, this still applies to you.
Who do you have in your team that can work on this? Again, talk to them
about your social media strategy and see if natural social stars volunteer.
If not, it may well fall to the person that handles your communications
activities for now.
Fitting it all in
If your staff are already overworked, you may be wondering how on earth
to fit this new activity in. The simplest way of handling this is to review
current workload and review the results. For example, if you’re already
measuring your marketing activity you will be able to work out which
activities are performing well and which aren’t. Remove those tasks that
aren’t delivering and replace them with your new social media activity.
It may mean juggling a few things and rearranging a few job descriptions,
but doing it this ways shows your commitment to the activity and will
allow your staff the time to work on it and do well.
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The right guidelines and training will allow your team to do a good job.
Guidelines
Your guidelines should cover:
Your objectives. Be clear why you’re using social and how it will be
measured so the team understand what they need to achieve and
what their KPI’s will be. The training can cover the full strategy, but I
find it useful to add the objectives in the guidelines as a reminder.
Who the social media team is. As social impacts many areas of the
business, this should also include those behind the scenes as well as
those on the frontline, like IT, Legal, HR etc.
Which social activity you’ve defined in the plan, how it will be used
and how much time is acceptable to spend on it.
Who owns the profiles, if your team is Tweeting from their own accounts,
for example, do they own those accounts or does the company? Be
clear with this from the start as things could get tricky if they leave.
Have a plan for what happens to profiles once people leave.
What content should be shared through social media. Be descriptive
here as this is important. Make it clear what content is confidential
and what isn’t. Also be clear what language is acceptable. If you have
brand/messaging guidelines it would be a good idea to share these so
that the team fully understand your positioning.
If the members of your social team have different roles, be clear what
they are and what’s expected of them.
What to do if things go wrong. List ALL possible risk scenarios and
how they should be handled to make it clear (and of course make sure
you have the process in place to deal with these if they happen).
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Training
If you feel it’s necessary, arrange a few sessions over a period of time to
give them the chance to feedback and discuss their findings.
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Finally, you need to think about who will ultimately be responsible for the
Ongoing management
activity and how will they keep an eye on progress to ensure objectives
are met? The same person will need to ensure the correct measurement
is taken and analysed to ensure you’re achieving what you set out to. I
find monthly reviews of the strategic objectives against actual activity can
help you alongside regular monitoring of your measurement system. This
allows you to see what’s working and what isn’t, allowing you to tweak
activity to ensure optimum performance.
Keep your monitoring system up to date. You may need to listen out for
new keywords or brands as things progress, so keep your eye on this.
And never forget to listen to your community and learn from them, they’re
a valuable asset to your business.
Once you get to grips with your social media activity, be open to
opportunities that come your way. Yes the strategy will help you to achieve
what you set out to and keep you aligned with the overall business plan,
but some unplanned doors often open through social media, so be open
to what can come your way, you could be surprised.
Finally, once you and your team are comfortable with your social media
activity, don’t be afraid to be creative with it. Come up with creative
campaigns that can raise awareness and engage further with your
community. Have fun with it, there are so many possibilities
within the various platforms, so see what you can come up
with.
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We hope this has helped you to understand how to make social media work for you. If you
need further help with social media, marketing or pr, get in touch.
email: gemma@redcubemarketing.com
twitter: @gemmawent
linkedin: linkedin.com/in/gemmawent
website: redcubemarketing.com
tel: +44 (0)20 7993 4998
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