Building your social media strategy

Or - How to win friends and influence people

What we’re going to talk about

• Strategy

• Tactics

• Metrics

About me• Former editor of the

Baron

• Former provincial and business reporter for the Telegraph-Journal

• Web Strategist for the University of New Brunswick

• Used to drive armoured vehicles. Seriously.

What does a web content strategist do?

• Connects audiences with the information they are most interested in

• Engages audiences using a variety of platforms - web, social networks, e-mail to create, maintain or strengthen relationships

UNB.ca

• Most important communications platform for the university for reaching prospective students, alumni, donors and the general public

• More than 100,000 monthly visitors

• Site down from 200,000 pages to approximately 50,000

@UNB

• More than 3,200 Facebook fans (without spending a single dime!)

• More than 2,000 Twitter followers

• Nearly 50,000 video views on YouTube (most in the last year alone)

• Still figuring out how to leverage Flickr more...

Technology last

What is a strategy?

• It is a plan of action to achieve a specific goal

What are some potential goals?

• Boost readership

• Engage audiences for longer

• Find stories

• Find volunteers

• Promote great stories to the wider public

• Generate revenue

Tactics

• Actions that lead to the execution of your strategy

Metrics

• Ways to measure how successful your tactics are and whether you’ve achieved the goals of your strategy

Some ideas

Tactic Goal Metric(s)

Facebook Fan Page / Twitter

Feed PostsBoost readership

Increased print pick-up, increased

pageviews on website

Use videos, Flickr slideshows, Document

Sharing tools

Engage audiences more

Longer time on site

More ideas

Tactic Goal Metric(s)

Use free tools to monitoring social

mediaFind stories More ideas at

story meetings

Use web traffic monitoring to

determine which stories resonate

Engage audiences more

Longer time on site, more pageviews

Even more ideas!

Tactic Goal Metric(s)

Celebrate successes, network

Increase volunteers

Recruit four or five new

volunteers

Sponsored live tweeting of

sporting events, ads in videos

Generate revenue

Additional funds received

Do’s

• Set up Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter accounts, Flickr, YouTube/Vimeo

• Embed streams from social media into your sites

• Use contests and giveaways to increase fan base and engagement (and generate revenue!)

• Experiment, experiment, experiment!

D’ohs

• Let accounts lapse, stagnate

• Just post links to your social media site and don’t do anything else with them on your site

• Go overboard with sponsorships or ads

• Get into arguments with PR folks

Examples

Discussion