Salesforce / Radian 6: Marketing cloud ebook_sm_maturitymodel Dec 2012

www.radian6.com / 1 888 6radian

Copyright © 2012 Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Follow the Social Media Maturity Model to Become a Social Business

http://www.radian6.com/?utm_source=pdf&utm_medium=ebook&utm_campaign=EffectiveSocialMediaMeasurementApril2012ebook

http://www.salesforce.com/marketing-cloud/overview/

Follow the Social Media Maturity Model to BecoMe a Social BuSineSS

www.radian6.com1 888 6RADIAN 1 888 672 3426 / [email protected] Copyright © 2012 Salesforce Marketing Cloud [ 2 ]

Best Practice for using this Ebook:•Answer 10 questions to determine your company’s social media maturity.

•Click below to learn more about each of the categories in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Media Maturity Model.

•After completing the Social Scorecard, discover what defines each stage so your company can move to the next one.

Letter from David B. Thomas

Ideology and Leadership

Staffing

Internal Education

Social Listening

Engagement and Community

Social Content

Social Advertising

Measurement and Analytics

Social Media Tools and Systems

Conclusion


mailto:community%40radian6.com?subject=


http://radian6.com/socialscorecard




Letter from David B. Thomas, Senior Director of Content and Community, Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Over the last five years, I’ve met with hundreds of enterprise social media folks, from CMOs to social media managers to newly-hired communications specialists. They all have one thing in common: they think their company is way behind when it comes to social media maturity. I always tell them the same thing: If you’re thinking about, planning for, and participating in social media, you’re already way ahead. Now there’s a new way for companies to understand how their social media efforts stack up and help them develop a path to move forward.

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Scorecard is a simple, online tool you can use to see how social media has impacted your organization to date, and develop a path to move forward. In less than five minutes you can learn where your company’s social media maturity ranks against other organizations based on more than a year of data gathered from social enterprises of every size in every market. (Plus, the dataset grows as more people participate.) The results are provided in both numeric form and on a grid showing company results across nine key metrics. We’ll email you your Social Media Maturity Grid, along with a list of free enterprise social media resources tailored to your needs — a road map for the journey ahead, if you will.

The Social Scorecard looks at key metrics of a company’s social media maturity, including:

•Ideology and Leadership

•Staffing

•Internal Education

•Social Listening

•Engagement and Community

•Social Content

•Social Advertising

•Measurement and Analytics

•Social Media Tools

The Social Scorecard incorporates the knowledge and expertise of many people. Amber Naslund laid the groundwork during her tenure as Radian6 Vice President of Social Strategy. I took it a few steps further and made it the core of our Social Media Needs Assessment, and Jeff Cohen developed it into what you see today, with the help of Greg Poirier at the helm of our web team. It was definitely a team effort, and now we want you to take it to your team.

Give it a try. Kick the tires. Let us know if you see anything that surprises you or anything we can do better. And let’s work together to make the social media world just a little more... mature.

What follows in the next 9 Chapters are descriptions of the stages of each of the 9 categories of the Marketing Cloud Social Media Maturity Model. If you haven’t already completed the Social Scorecard, you may wish to do so before you proceed.




https://twitter.com/davidbthomas

http://twitter.com/ambercadabra

http://twitter.com/ambercadabra

http://twitter.com/jeffreylcohen




Ideology and LeadershipSenior leaders are responsible for the vision of a company. Their level of understanding of social media sets the tone for how it will roll out and scale across an organization. The following four stages track social media maturity against senior executives’ awareness and activity. In his Dreamforce conversation, General Colin Powell stressed the importance of this awareness. “I think any leader has to have his or her finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the information revolution.”

Stage 1: Early Stage

Very often, social media begins at a grassroots level within a company. Someone in marketing, PR or corporate communications understands the value of social media to the company and creates a Twitter profile, a Facebook Page or even a blog. Sometimes this may be done under the radar by focusing on a discrete event or a specific product. Regardless of where it starts, these pockets of activity are unconnected, and sometimes unauthorized.

Every day your senior leaders can’t pick up a magazine, go to a website or turn on the TV without someone telling them that social media is changing business (and our society in general). In this early stage of maturity, they may not even be aware of the company’s social media activities, or they may begin to show interest in it. Others throughout the company question the value of social media to the business, and it is your job, if you are the one who started the efforts, to explain that value if you wish to move beyond this stage.

Stage 2: Supportive

As companies expand their social media presences, senior leadership becomes more supportive of these efforts. One of the best ways to bring executives on board is to establish social media goals that align with business goals. What does your CMO care about? What are her metrics for success across the marketing organization? Make sure your social media program aligns with those objectives. Did you get to one million people liking your Facebook Page? That’s great, but make sure you can show how it provides value to the company.






It is critical at this stage that the company be able to prove the value of social media. Budget and resources are provided to expand the program, but it is not an open-ended endeavor. This is not a blank check category, but one where a bit of skepticism remains. Show your senior leadership the daily value you get from social media. Are you keeping up with influencers and competitors? Are you alerted to potential supply problems before your logistics team? Are you starting to build thought leadership for the company? All of these activities have value that can be measured in ways your executives can understand.

Stage 3: Engaged

Senior leaders become more engaged in social media activities when they continue to see the results. This goes well beyond any single campaign to the level where social media is spreading beyond marketing, PR and even customer service. Companies like Zappos have extended their company culture beyond their own walls and have given all employees the training, guidance and encouragement to connect with customers on social media. This type of program has to originate from the highest levels of the organization, but it is the responsibility of the social media leaders to sell this idea up.

While many companies still block social media use at work, mature companies are leveraging their employees’ social networks for business benefits. If your employees are well-connected in your industry, and to your customers and future customers, doesn’t it make sense to let them have relevant and public business conversations about things that are important? This is how relationships are built. Leaders in this stage understand that employees represent the company on a daily basis on the phone, through email, and in public at trade shows and conferences. Social media is just an extension of that. Remember, this is not meant to open the door on chaos. This is to be managed with proper training, policies, and procedures.




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Stage 4: Passionate

It is one thing for senior leaders to encourage social media activities, but it is another for them to be active on social platforms themselves. It really changes how they approach social media. This doesn’t mean creating a Twitter account for the CEO and having the PR team Tweet for him, or just asking him to share press releases. It means they are truly part of the social experience, connecting with other executives, sharing information about the company and the industry, and expressing their informed opinion. Leaders at your company are leaders in your industry and social media helps them promote their own thought leadership, and the company’s as well. Here’s a good guide for preparing your chief executives for Twitter.

Some senior leaders who have embraced social media to share personal and company updates, as well as interesting articles shared by others, are Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, Beth Comstock, CMO of GE, and Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology & Strategy Officer of Cisco. These are companies that have been incorporating social media across their organizations, and it would not have happened to the extent that it has without a high level of executive support.

More Information




http://www.pammarketingnut.com/2012/10/15-things-every-ceo-cmo-cto-cio-must-do-before-hopping-on-twitter

http://www.radian6.com/blog/2011/05/social-media-university/

http://twitter.com/bethcomstock

http://twitter.com/bethcomstock

https://twitter.com/Padmasree

http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/six-principles-of-social-media-marketing



StaffingStaffing sets the tone for how social media is executed in any company. Many beginning social media programs are not driven through official channels, but are started by passionate individuals who make time in their schedules for these activities. Things like job descriptions, reporting structures, performance reviews and compensation plans cause others in the company to take these new roles and activities seriously. As you plan your social media growth, make sure to meet with the HR department so your social media skills can be considered in an official capacity.

Every company is different in how they mature with regard to social media, but here are the stages that generally apply to how companies staff for social media.

Stage 1: Informal

When a few people, or one person, starts participating in social media on a company’s behalf, they are doing it at the expense of something else. This is often a tactical decision, rather than a strategic one. Someone in the marketing department registers a Twitter account to make sure squatters don’t take the name. Maybe you get approval to set up a social media account for an event or run an Instagram contest. This is not a bad thing; everyone needs to start somewhere.

These decentralized efforts should be viewed as building blocks for expanding social media personnel. Even if no one is using social media for your company, start thinking what social media responsibilities look like. Keep your higher level business strategies in mind, because connecting employees’ activities to common goals can help make the case for resources.

Stage 2: Partial

In this next stage of social media maturity, there is definitely an official social media program with staff in multiple departments, including many with social media as part of their job descriptions. Social media may still only be a small part of each employee’s responsibilities,






but this is progress. Control of social media activities is centralized within one of the leading departments, usually marketing or communications, as they are responsible for company messaging.

Your social media leaders are starting to emerge, because someone needs to develop strategies and policies to move forward. Many companies collaborate with outside resources, but there is a need for a strong internal presence for social media to grow across your organization. Look to the VP of Marketing or the CMO for guidance, but these critical steps are based on strategy and company culture.

Stage 3: Dedicated

A full-time social media manager is the keystone of reaching this next stage of maturity. Now that someone is in charge, it is time to move social media to the hub and spoke organizational model. The hub can be a small team, possibly cross-functional, that is responsible for strategy, policy and training. The spokes, which can be functional groups, product groups or even geographical groups, are responsible for execution. This assumes that as your company has reached a place that it needs a social media manager, it has also scaled up its social media activities in general.

A social media council can also serve as the hub in this stage. This is a cross-functional group that includes representatives from departments beyond marketing or communications, like sales, support, HR, legal, IT, or compliance. This group is led by the social media manager or director and can also set policy and strategy. This internal group also can help evangelize social media in other parts of the organization. Learn more about creating a social media council in the Marketing Cloud Social Media Blueprint ebook.

At the same time that a company develops social media positions, the HR team starts understanding how social media fits into recruiting new employees and retaining existing ones. Prospective employees can be discovered and vetted through their social profiles before they even send in a resume. Recruiters also need to be aware of what job applicants are saying on social media about the hiring process. This is part of a company’s brand perception. Oh, and current employees use social media, too. Someone needs to listen to their public comments or complaints. This one is more than brand perception, because employees are a company’s most important asset, and someone needs to know what they’re really thinking.




http://www.radian6.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/MarketingCloud_SocialBlueprint_ebook.pdf



Stage 4: Dedicated and Multiple

The fully mature company has reached a state where many people in the company have full-time social media roles. These are social media managers, community managers and even social media analysts who make sure all aspects of social media fit the plan and meet the goals. According to Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group, the average corporate social media team has 11 members. The social media council is not a distant memory, but an active group that is interested in continuing to grow and scale social media throughout the organization.

The hub can continue to grow and become a center of excellence, which can provide social media guidance for multiple hubs across the company. The center of excellence can even become a company differentiator, as your social media staff shares best practices not just internally, but also with the external world through blogging and conference speaking.

More Information




http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2012/09/09/breakdown-corporate-social-media-team/

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2012/09/09/breakdown-corporate-social-media-team/

http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/social-media-blueprint-a-step-by-step-plan-to-prepare-your-company



Internal EducationEducation is an important part of any new company endeavor and social media education is no exception. Employees want to know what is going on with social media, what the limitations are, and how they can participate and help the company. Not only do companies need to accept and understand that their customers and prospects are using social media, they also need to accept that employees are too.

Stage 1: Basic

The first step in educating your employees is to create a social media policy. Even though only 24% of Fortune 500 companies have them, you should explore the value for your company. Many social media policies are negative and focus on what employees cannot do. Consequently, employees do nothing for fear of making a mistake. Successful social media policies let employees know what they can do, and provide positive examples of behavior. Treat your employees like adults and guess what they will act like? Adults.

A social media policy can cover such activities as whether employees can access their personal social media accounts at work, how to use their personal accounts to benefit the company, and how to represent the company to customers on social platforms. Many companies limit who can respond on behalf of the company, to make sure processes and policies are followed. Learn more about social media policies in detail from the Marketing Cloud Ebook.

Some companies that do not have specific social media policies or guidelines maintain that a separate policy is not needed, and their employees are covered by their standard code of conduct. While this is true in preventing behavior, employees can still benefit from positive examples of what exactly is expected of them.




http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesandresearch/2012inc500socialmediaupdate/

http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/the-building-blocks-of-a-sound-social-media-policy/



Stage 2: Training

Once social media policies or guidelines are in place, you have to let employees know about them. Emailing the policy to all employees or posting it on the intranet is not enough. Companies need to make sure employees are familiar with the policies. An online review of the policy can serve that purpose. A short, automated presentation with multiple choice questions at the end is one way to get material to all employees. This is similar to the security or ethics training that many companies require.

Informal training also starts happening at this stage. These can be monthly lunch and learns with members of the internal team, or even outside guests. Depending on the experience level of your staff, and who attends, these can range from optimizing your LinkedIn profile to sharing success of the blogging program. A by-product of this training is that it shows employees that social media is important, and the company cares about using it to make a difference.

Stage 3: Integrated Training

At some point in the social maturity of a company, training for all employees becomes official. This is more than a simple online policy review or lunch and learn. This is a training session for employees that is integrated with other employee training. It is easy to conduct this with new employees in their orientation session, but that doesn’t cover existing employees. It takes more work to get others trained on social media best practices, guidelines and company expectations.

This type of training continues to stress the message to all employees that social media is a critical part of the company infrastructure, and it is important they learn how the company can benefit from their participation. Social media policies are more integrated into other HR policies and no longer feel like standalone documents that can be easily overlooked. Expansion of social media training at this level cannot happen without the full cooperation of the human resource team. That’s one reason to consider creating a social media council and bring together internal stakeholders.






Stage 4: Training and Certification

Can you imagine how a company functions if all employees are certified in social media? Dell and Intel are two companies that have certification programs and are exploring full compliance of all employees. The certification program is not taken lightly. It is comparable to company spokesman training, because employees are representing the company in public.

This is not a far-fetched idea because your employees are already on social media and are associated with your company. Even if they don’t mention their employer on Twitter or Facebook, their LinkedIn profile tells everyone where they work. It makes sense to train them to become an additional company asset, rather than focus on telling them what they cannot do.

More Information




http://www.radian6.com/blog/2011/05/social-media-university/

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/legal/intel-social-media-guidelines.html

http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/social-media-blueprint-a-step-by-step-plan-to-prepare-your-company



Social ListeningFor as long as companies have been participating in social media, the common first practice has been to listen before talking. People are talking about your company, your competitors, and your industry. These conversations are happening on the social web whether you are listening or not, so you may as well tune in. If you aren’t doing even the most basic level of listening, you really aren’t grasping how social media has changed business.

“The customer now has a lot more power in shaping and influencing the perceptions of your brand,” said Marketing Cloud SVP and Chief Product Officer, Marcel LeBrun. Customer-centric companies are the ones that are thriving, and an easier way to start putting the customer at the center of your business is to listen to them.

Let’s review the various stages of maturity that companies go through with their social listening activities.

Stage 1: Grassroots

In this early stage of social listening companies may not even have an official listening program. If anyone is listening at all, they might be using something like Google Alerts that notifies them on a daily basis of any company or keyword mentions on the web. The other thing that characterizes this grassroots approach is that it’s usually very siloed. The PR team is listening only to potential reputation and crisis situations. Marketing may be listening only for things related to their campaigns. And there may even be a rogue product engineer listening for product ideas. Nothing about this effort is coordinated and these different departments don’t even know others are listening.

In addition to being separate and distinct, listening at this level is very tactical. There is no thought about tying these activities to higher level business objectives. Companies are listening for direct mentions of their company and products, but they are not expanding much beyond Twitter @ mentions or comments left on a Facebook Page. This is not a tool-based approach. Most of this listening cannot even be called listening. A low level marketing associate, or intern, may go to the company Twitter account a couple times a day to see if anyone Tweeted at them. This barely scratches the surface of what is possible.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vou8gvkfM8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vou8gvkfM8



Stage 2: Basic Brand

When a company advances to this stage of listening they’ve begun to use free or paid tools to manage this process. This is no longer an ad hoc activity, but one that is trying to get an accurate picture of conversations online about your company or brand. Even with free tools you have the ability to consistently listen for variations of your company name. Listen for common misspellings, no @ sign on Twitter, hashtags, abbreviations, or product names.

This can now be described as listening with intent. You don’t want to report to your CMO that you have a listening program in place, but aren’t sure what you are hearing. Volume of mentions is an easy measurement, but that’s not really enough. Can you tie this to company activities? Did your mentions increase when you launched a new product? If they didn’t, how can you reduce friction around sharing the news? Do your press releases get picked up by automated accounts (bots) and nowhere else? Listen to discover where the conversations are about your brand. Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar discovered that there were more relevant conversations for their business on blogs and forums, as opposed to Twitter and Facebook. Basic brand listening is starting to become more strategic, but it can also be used as the discovery mechanism to create an overarching social strategy.

Stage 3: Full Brand, Some Competition and Industry

Full brand listening requires the use of paid tools to capture the full conversations around your company, products, executives, activities, and customer service. Companies that don’t have a recognized brand name, like many B2B companies, approach full brand listening a little differently. Rather than focus on company and product names, they listen for common terms around their industry and product categories. Prospects might not mention the enterprise software company by name, but they may ask for recommendations for a new HR performance review tool.

In addition to capturing everything that is going on about your company, listening for competitors’ activities, comments, complaints and questions is a big part of how this starts changing. Again, this is not about listening for competitive intel for the sake of doing it. It is about creating a structured process where you can discover actionable insights from what you hear. If there is no one on the product team that is interested in learning more about your competitors’ products, this can be challenging, but there are surely people in areas of your company that can benefit from that information.




http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/case-study-caterpillar/



Industry monitoring is something that is often covered by another group within the company. Maybe the market research team does that or an outside provider sends over monthly reports. It is unlikely that they are including more than a cursory glance at the social component in those industry reports. As companies mature, they start including this industry research in their listening activities.

Stage 4: Full Brand, Competition and Industry

The fully mature company has an official listening program that is running on all cylinders. They have the brand covered. They know their major competitors’ every move on the social web and every time there is even a whisper about them. And their industry monitoring is second to none. They are gleaning so much real time information about their industry that they can publish it to promote their thought leadership.

Customer service and technical support are an important part of the listening environment as well. And all of this is done with purpose. And process. Cisco is a company that has developed such a robust listening program to the point that they installed a social media command center to manage the flow of incoming data.

More Information




http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/12/five-examples-of-social-media-command-centers-for-the-worlds-largest-brands/

http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/the-guide-to-social-media-monitoring



Engagement and CommunityOne of the biggest changes for companies in the social media age is that customers’ and prospects’ expectations have changed. Every media outlet encourages feedback over social media. Every retail establishment wants you to like them on Facebook. This barrage of social media activity encourages the two-way conversations that really are the hallmark for this still–new form of communication. Companies need to understand that customers are now in charge. A social media profile is an invitation to use that communication channel, and many companies are not even listening. According to a study of regular Twitter users who Tweeted complaints to companies with Twitter accounts, less than one-third of the companies responded.

Stage 1: Listening

It may sound obvious, but the first step to engaging is listening. If you don’t even know what the conversation sounds like, it is impossible to plan how to respond. Whether a company establishes social profiles first or starts listening first, it is important that preliminary listening occur. While a social profile is a signal for customers to Tweet rather than call, companies need to understand the social landscape before jumping in. This early listening can help with the development of processes required for engaging. This will also help you understand your staffing needs and the types of tools required.

The best way to understand what to do with what you hear is to create a playbook, which is a guideline for your social media front line. This is especially important at the beginning, as your social media responders may just be engaging on a part-time basis, between other tasks. Having predetermined escalations paths and suggested responses can help simplify this process as they respond to only the highest profile comments and complaints.




http://www.maritzresearch.com/~/media/Files/MaritzResearch/e24/ExecutiveSummaryTwitterPoll.ashx

http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/social-media-playbook/



Stage 2: Responding

The next stage is where engagement starts getting serious. Responding to customers and prospects is the official responsibility of one or more people in the organization. For companies with a smaller volume of social conversations, they may begin trying to respond to every conversation, although it is primarily reactive. For companies with a larger volume, the social media playbook is of utmost importance, because they will never be able to respond to all comments and they need a way to prioritize what they respond to. In an interview with social media consultant Jay Baer, Rick Wion, Director of Social Media for McDonald’s USA, describes how the company manages 2.5 million posts per month.

Customer service and tech support begin to get involved in social media engagement at this point. It is much easier to begin training your customer service reps on how to respond through social media, rather than continuing to email questions to the customer service team. As you expand this social function, talk to your customer service team to understand general volume of phone and email requests, as well as the ten most common questions. This will help expand the social media playbook to include likely customer service issues and how to respond.

Stage 3: Participating

Companies that have built communities around their brand have done so through engagement. Some of the largest brands do naturally attract customers to communicate with them on social media just by being there, but for most of us, if you build it, they do not come. This level of engagement requires dedicated community managers who nurture the community by paying attention to them. This is more than just responding to questions. The social team encourages the community to share by posing interesting and thought-provoking questions. But it also means celebrating in their successes, commiserating in their challenges, and becoming a valuable part of the communities they are striving to build.

A community is a group of people with similar interests, experiences and desires. It is not a group of people who like a brand. You might think of these people as a community, but unless your community managers become key members of the community, it is a loose collection of people. You may even get them to engage with your online activities, but the goal is to develop advocacy in your community. Not only will advocates recommend your brand on their own, but they will defend your company when others raise questions or share negative opinions. A company gets to this place by valuing their customers and making sure the community team has the authority to truly serve the community.




http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-pros-podcast/how-mcdonalds-handles-thousands-of-social-mentions-per-day/



Stage 4: Engaging and Creating

The top stage in engagement and community is indicated by two main activities: broader adoption and content-based engagement. Broader engagement means that community managers are the front lines of engaging with customers, prospects, advocates and others on social channels, but it doesn’t stop there. Other employees, or in some cases, all employees can engage on behalf of the company. Yes, this requires training. Yes, this requires trust. And it requires the right employees. Companies like Dell and Intel have certification programs in place for just this purpose. And Zappos encourages employees to solve customer problems.

The other mark of this stage is the creation of content for the purpose of engagement. This is content that is interesting, relevant, remarkable, valuable, educational, and shareable. How can you help your customers and prospects do their jobs better? Provide tips for success. The first part of this approach is creating this content, which we will look at in more detail in the next Chapter, but simply publishing it is just the beginning. Rather than responding with a 140 character Tweet, community managers respond with a link to helpful content as well. Remember that employees have ingratiated themselves to the community they helped build. If the community were a small town, it would be one thing to walk your neighbor’s dog, but quite another thing to share your grandmother’s marble cake recipe.

More Information




http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/how-to-craft-a-successful-social-media-content-marketing-plan



Social ContentThe social media revolution is driven by content. How many times do people say “content is king” or the only way to connect with customers and prospects is with content? Heck, we’ve even said it ourselves. Plenty of companies, however, don’t understand what kinds of content to create. While this certainly starts with the marketing or communications team that knows what kind of content to publish on social channels. But there is the much larger question of what does it mean from a social maturity perspective.

You can think of these stages as different positions in a media organization, even though the expected result is not the same. Media organizations have based their business models on two main revenue streams: advertising and subscribers. Companies use social media content to build an online presence, remain relevant to customers and prospects, nurture communities, drive leads and sales, connect with influencers, and improve search engine optimization. Traditional marketing copy does not do this. Press releases do not do this. Like everything else in the social media maturity model, the effectiveness of any social media efforts have to be measured against business goals. Once you have clarified your company goals, it is easier to understand what role it needs to play in your organization.

Content is not an optional component of social media. Companies need content to tell their stories. It is the core of what the outside world sees. How does your content compare to your competitors? What about within your target industries? Remember that everyone is bombarded with messages, long and short, written and image-based, audio and video all day long. So you are not just competing with your traditional competitors to make an impact. You are fighting the entire world.

Stage 1: Reporter

The first stage as a content publisher is to think like a reporter. Once social channels are established, you begin sharing updates or links on these channels. But before you get too far, you need to remember your traditional marketing training. You must think about your target audience and what platforms they frequent. Use a social media monitoring tool to discover this information. What is the message and what action do you want your target to take? If you are sharing third-party content on your Twitter account, you want your followers to click the






link and find value in the article. This demonstrates your company’s value as a curator and one who finds and shares valuable content. Another action is to get followers to retweet the Tweet. While this doesn’t qualify as an endorsement of what your company shared, it does spread your company name to their followers as a sharer of quality content.

As you begin looking for content to share, as well as simple status updates, look to your employees. If some are active on social networks themselves, follow their updates and share what they share. If you have an internal network, ask employees to share the best content they find, so the company and others can share it. Curating quality content can and should be a company effort.

Stage 2: Producer

Once a company gets comfortable sharing content on social channels, the creation begins. Everyone is trying to feed the content machine and the importance of visual content continues to grow. Facebook favors visual content. More brands are ramping up their Instagram efforts and you can’t ignore Pinterest if your target audience is primarily women.

Companies again need to look inside for stories they can tell with social content. Photos from trade shows or community activities are easy, but what about photo-based how-tos? And don’t forget your customers. One of the best ways to tell a company story is through a customer video. Have connections to thought leaders in your industry? Conduct an interview with them. Better yet, do it as a Google Hangout so others can join live and participate. They can also be broadcast live and recorded for YouTube. You’ve just created more shareable video content for your other channels.

Stage 3: Editor

Much of the content companies create lives on outside platforms. As companies mature and create more of their own content, they need to own the platforms that house it. A blog is that home. When you post content on your company blog you have a greater opportunity to convert the visitor to a lead or a sale. You can’t exist in the social media world forever without thinking about conversion paths. Grow and nurture a community all you want but at some point, you have to determine a measurable outcome. A blog also offers control. Social platforms are known to change on a regular basis as features come and go. Elements move on the page. You decide when and how to change your blog.




http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Online-Pictures/Additional-Material-and-Demographics.aspx?view=all

http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/12/how-updates-from-the-biggest-social-media-channels-will-affect-your-brand/



A successful blog usually cannot be handled by just one person. Some of the best blogs utilize people from multiple departments to create content. Customers and prospects have different interests, so leverage others within your company to appeal to a wider audience. Make it as easy as possible for people to submit blog posts. Email still works. Reward your bloggers with gift cards or swag. And be sure to share successful blog posts internally.

Stage 4: Publisher

A social publisher gets it. This is a company that is curating and sharing great third-party articles, posting status updates on their social channels, creating visual content with photos and video. They are creating shareable audio blogging regularly with contributions from across the company, and, here’s the big and, creating longer form content like Ebooks, white papers, and even combining content to make “kits” on a topic or idea. High level content companies also host webinars and build data collection tools for additional information to add to the content stream. Hubspot is a top company that has a fully functioning content program that drives conversions. Compare your company to the rest of your industry to see if you can become the leader in your space.

More Information




http://blog.hubspot.com



Social AdvertisingSocial media provides a significant marketing opportunity for brands, and social advertising can support and amplify those activities. Ads are considered social if they appear on a social network, but what makes them particularly powerful is using social recommendations and social actions, along with targeting, to create highly relevant and engaging messaging.

As more social advertising opportunities arise on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere, you may find that these social, engaging ads are sharing an ad budget with traditional web banners or paid search advertising.

There are five drivers of social advertising: action, targeting, metrics, storytelling, and discovery. For more detail, review the Marketing Cloud Social Advertising Ebook.

Stage 1: Basic

Companies that start exploring social ads know they can expand the reach of their social presences with them. While Facebook has the most sophisticated ad platform, and the most types of ads, Twitter and LinkedIn also have ad platforms. All three platforms give you the ability to target your ads, although Twitter does it automatically and the other platforms let you choose your audience. LinkedIn is the most traditional advertising platform, as the social aspects don’t go much beyond targeting. Both Facebook and Twitter give you the flexibility to promote content and messages that have already resonated with followers. Both platforms also let you promote your accounts to bring a larger audience to future posts.

This first stage is about taking the leap to leverage these tools and experiment. You can better evaluate the success of these efforts if you understand what your costs and percentages are in other forms of advertising or activities. Driving leads and sales through social ads generates data to help measure success. For example, how many leads or sales do you gain from every 100 followers or fans, and what does it cost you to acquire a new customer by traditional means?




http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/everything-you-need-to-know-about-social-media-ads/



Stage 2: Targeted

The next level of social advertising focuses on Facebook because they currently offer the most advanced targeting of any social media platform. Amplifying your content is about more than just building your audience; it is about expanding the reach of a message. Companies in this stage are spending more money on their ads because they understand the value of promoting their best content to their audience and those similar to their audience. The reason advertising to friends of your fans works on Facebook is because your next customer will be a lot like your current customers. Studies have shown that one of the reasons people like Facebook Pages is because they already do business with them. So this means that advertising to the friends of people who like your Page is advertising to people who are similar to your customers.

Companies that focus on advanced targeting of their social ads also use A/B testing as a means to improve their results. The best way to determine the success of something is to have two small test groups and show them different versions of the same promoted content. The one that performs better is the one that is used on the balance of the list. Make sure the variable is limited to one element, like the headline, image or call to action, but not all three. You can create your groups by targeting, but you need to make sure you have a big enough audience to make the time and effort worthwhile.

Stage 3: Automated

Marketers have become comfortable with automated algorithms running many types of online ads, for example pay-per-click and Google banner ads. The next stage for companies using social ads is to use a platform that makes optimization decisions based on performance. If a sponsored story gets a lot of engagement and clicks, the budget can be increased automatically. An under-performing ad can be turned off the same way. No one has to worry about a campaign going out of control in the middle of the night. In addition to showing the right ads at the right time to the right people, automated social ads provide better data and analytics, so marketers can gain more actionable insights from their campaigns. And this ultimately improves performance of the social ads.






Stage 4: Integrated

The highest stage of social advertising maturity occurs when a company’s paid strategy is fully integrated with all aspects of the company’s ad spend. Social ads are not siloed in development, budgeting or reporting. It is part of a coordinated marketing effort that amplifies content based on other marketing efforts. Paid, owned and earned have completely merged. Even those managing the company’s social channels are empowered to adjust the ad spend.

So even though companies may still buy high profile television commercials, they can use social content and social ads to amplify them to a more targeted audience. TV might reach the largest audience, but it is not very well targeted to your customers and potential customers. Support the campaign by posting an extended version of the commercial on Facebook to reach a targeted customer base. Promote that post with ads to drive even more engaged fans to view it. The social components help with measurement and optimization of the overall campaign. These social ads are not bolted-on after thoughts, but a coordinated, integrated effort.

More Information




http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/everything-you-need-to-know-about-social-media-ads



Measurement and AnalyticsOne of the biggest challenges for companies using social media is understanding what to measure. This has nothing to do with what tools they are using, or even the size of the organization. Companies just can’t quite get their heads around determining their success metrics for social media. One of the problems is that everything is online and trackable either manually or within a tool. People can get overwhelmed with all the data that is available to them and consequently, they can’t separate the signal from the noise from a measurement perspective.

Many companies focus on the easiest numbers, like followers, likes, comments and shares. While it is important to keep up with these types of numbers to track growth of platforms, they should not be a measure of success. You can buy followers or clicks very cheaply. Develop a measurement framework that relates to business objectives. Your CMO is not interested in how many likes your Facebook Page has. What is she reporting to the CEO? Align with that. The big one is return on investment (ROI). According to IBM’s Global CMO Study, 63% of CMOs view ROI as a measure of success. The challenge is measuring the return. If you are not looking at leads or sales or something else with a clear monetary value, it can be difficult to determine those numbers.

Another issue with social media measurement is that there are not yet standard measurements that everyone agrees show success. Brands publish statistics, marketing executives stand on stage at conferences and talk about their successes, but nobody says “here are the things to measure.” Oh, and there aren’t really benchmarks for anything anyone does measure. You can see how many followers your competitors have but you don’t know how many leads they drive, and more importantly, how their social media efforts contribute to marketing effectiveness and reducing cost per lead.

Stage 1: Not Tracking

Even with all the above in mind, there are companies engaging in social media activities and they just don’t know where to start measuring. So they wind up doing nothing. This really does happen. It can also be a symptom of technology. Early stage companies use a variety of tools,




http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/cmo/cmostudy2011/cmo-registration.html



based on personal preference, and some of the free tools have no metrics associated with them at all.

A company may track time related to social media so they can address the resource issues, but there is no connection to the business impact. They may also track volume of how many posts they shared as a measure of activity. This is not how social businesses operate.

Stage 2: Tracking the Basics

Once companies start tracking social media metrics, they are usually looking at optimization. These are the obvious metrics that are easy to compile: followers, likes, shares, comments. These tell you how your company is doing building reach by growing an audience and how the content you share is resonating with that audience. These numbers can help you improve what you are doing. You can think of this as fishing for bait. If you catch a small fish that you will use for bait, you don’t take a picture holding it. You reserve that for when you land the big one. These kinds of metrics stay within the team that is doing the work. Share reports with executives when you have something to share (and have progressed to the next stage). If your CMO is happy receiving these types of reports, you need to ask her what she really wants. Because this is not it.

Stage 3: Tracking and Analyzing

Social media success is determined by how it helps achieve company goals. Alignment here is very important. Companies that have reached this level of maturity in measurement don’t have awkward conversations with others in their company where they try to explain how the siloed social media metrics are relevant. The social media team does not create their own reports, but the data is integrated into other reports. It’s not about how social media drove web traffic, but how social media contributed to web traffic along with pay-per-click ads, banner ads and other marketing tactics. Can social media support improving customer satisfaction and increasing brand awareness? Of course it can. If these are the goals that are important to the company, you start by looking at how these are measured in the traditional sense and develop a methodology from measuring this in social media. These approaches are not common, but there are companies doing them.






Stage 4: Tracking, Analyzing and Integrating

What does social media measurement nirvana look like? The importance of social media has risen to the highest levels within an organization. It is not just fully incorporated into regular company reporting, but the information is so valued that it is taken into account for business planning. The CMO gets the return on investment reporting that is so coveted. Consider one of the goals of becoming a social business is to put the customer at the center of everything you do. If you think of social media as one of the best ways to bring together the voice of the customer with the voice of your company, then this doesn’t sound so unattainable.

More Information




http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/5-steps-to-effective-social-media-measurement



Social Media Tools and SystemsA company’s technology decisions help set them on the path to meeting their goals and objectives. If multiple systems are cobbled together and require lots of manual work to create reports, guess what people will spend their time doing? Creating reports, rather than analyzing them looking for patterns or ways to improve. What if there is no standardized tool set? Incompatibility can add another level of complexity to growing social media across an organization.

Stage 1: Free Tools or None

When companies start social media accounts they don’t think about technology decisions. They also don’t usually think about tracking appropriate metrics. This leaves many social media practitioners choosing their own tools based on their own personal preference. This also means that people could use no tools at all. If a company posts directly on twitter.com, there are no additional metrics available besides follower counts without paying to advertise on the platform. At least the native Facebook platform has some statistics available. If you are tracking followers and likes, there is no need to use anything beyond these websites. But once you start trying to look at the impact of your activities, some advanced level of tool is required.

It is easy to see how the choice of tools relates to your measurement needs. You should determine what types of things you want to measure before picking your social media tool to make sure it serves those needs.

Stage 2: Some Free and Some Paid Tools

Many free tools operate on the freemium model. This means you get limited functionality for free, but you pay to upgrade your features. Team access to accounts is a typical example of a paid enhancement. Another one is access to data older than three months. There are many examples of social media measurement websites which offer very basic tracking but if you want anything more, you have to pay to subscribe.






Companies in this second stage are starting to standardize their social media tools. While it may not be one standard, it could be that an official list is provided for departments and the teams can pick from the list. This at least removes the oddball tools from the mix when it comes time for reporting. The other thing that starts driving this stage is the expansion of social media beyond a core team. As business units and other functional departments start planning their own social media activities, the tool use expands. Companies need to start to rein in the selection before it gets too far afield.

Stage 3: Paid Tools, Official

Just like the other stages in this category, companies that have reached this stage in their maturity have been driven by things other than technology. To get to a place where a company has standardized its social media programs on one paid tool means it has a clear understanding of its goals, but it also understand the needs of multiple users. Marketing may need one thing, while customer service needs another. And the European team has a different set of needs altogether. It is impossible to come together on a technology solution without this level of understanding.

Consider what this means in your organization. Does technology drive decisions or do functional requirements? It is easy for the marketing team or the social media team to standardize their tools around a paid solution, but what does it take to roll this out across the organization? Discovery of social media activities even becomes part of this. Who knew this team of engineers was so active on social media?

Stage 4: Social Integrated with Other Systems

And finally, the perfect ending for this whole discussion of integrating social media across an organization wraps up with an understanding of integration across technology systems. We’ve seen plenty of possible silos within social media efforts and one of the clearest ways to break those down is to bring social media activity into your other business systems. Want to start making your sales team social? Bring social media conversations into their house, the CRM system. You can do this on a Tweet by Tweet basis and open cases or leads with each post that comes in, or you can connect your customers’ and prospects’ system records to their social profiles. This will let sales reps see all of their targets’ social activities to warm up conversations. The same is true for partners, vendors, and even employees. Recruiters can discover new employees on social media sites long before they ever read a resume.






Companies that focus on bringing social data into their business systems can respond better, faster, and with more knowledge for their customers. At the end of the day we serve our customers, and anything that allows us to do that better is worth exploring. Look at every system in your organization and determine where and how social media can be added to the information displayed.

More Information




http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/5-steps-to-effective-social-media-measurement



ConclusionSocial media is not an instant change in any organization, but a process. Each one of the above categories require different capabilities, resources, and approvals. That’s why we have broken this down to these nine categories. Companies will progress on each of the categories at different rates. While leaders with vision are needed for a company to achieve the highest levels of social business, it will be driven by leaders and teams at every level who can see the future and don’t want to be left behind.




Date post:	17-Oct-2014
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