By Social Agency
Six Steps To Running A Social Media Initiative
For HandsOn NetworkAugust 12, 2010
By Social Agency
Social Media is Not a Fad
• Social media sucks up 23%
of our online time, email is
third at 8.3%
• In May, Twitter users posted
2 billion posts in the month
• In June, Facebook added its
500 millionth user
• According to an August, 2010 Nielsen survey, once dominant email now the third most popular internet
activity, trailing social networks and online gaming among American Internet users
0
5
10
15
20
25
Email Online Gaming
Social Media
8.3 10
23
US Internet Activity
By Social Agency
Does this sound familiar?
We blog. We have a Twitter account and a Facebookpage but we have no focus. We also don’t have the resources to manage it all. We don’t know if it’s effective. But we know we have to do it.
Isaac Barchas, former McKinsey & Co. consultant & Director of the Austin Technology Incubator
By Social Agency
I. Social Media Objective
II. Build People Base
III. Develop Content & Plan
IV. Publish Content
V. Gather Metrics
VI. Refine Campaign &
Content
Steps to Running a Social Media Initiative
By Social Agency
Determine the Social Media Initiative’s Objective
• Define objectives
• Set
goals, benchmarks
&KPIs
• Establish social
media guidelines
The most effective social media initiatives are tied together by a common business objective. The key
performance indicators (KPIs) are determined by business objective.
Examples of Social Media Policies
http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php
OBJECTIVE KEY PERFORMANCE METRICS
Create brand awareness # of Followers,# of Mentions,Mention Audience,Retweet Audience,# of Fans/Likes,# of Video Views,# of Channel Views,# of Subscribers
Customer care # of Replies ,# of Direct Messages,# of Twitter Click-thrus,# of Comments,# of Likes,# of FB Click-thrus,# of Ratings,# of Comments
Demand generation Email addresses, username, Real name, Location, # of Followers, Engagements, Click-to-Conversion
Are You Ready?
By Social Agency
Build People Base
• Listen to the
conversation
• Learn the etiquette
• Engage in the
conversation
• Give more than you
take
• Build Trust
Your social media team should monitor and engage in the conversations what is being said about your
product, brand, company, competitors and or industry.
By Social Agency
Engaging is all about
TrustSharingListening
Flickr photos by niclindh, samshad473, notsogoodphotography
By Social Agency
Conversing Well
Be human, be polite, and be present
Tips for being a good conversationalist
• You have to be present to win.
• Take some time to learn the etiquette of the community you want to enter.
• Give a little first before asking for anything.
• Be responsive to people who react to you.
• Forward along content you find interesting, providing ample credit to the creator. No shy robots
By Social Agency
Develop Content & Plan
Great content is social media gold. Content effectiveness can be measured by the number of user
engagements such as click-thrus, retweets, replies or comments.
• Keyword searches & RSS
feeds
• Use of multiple voices &
personas depending on
demographic/psychograph
ic targets
• Content templates
• Channel selection
• Identify key influencers
By Social Agency
Channel Strategy Selection
Channel Customer Care Brand Awareness Traffic to Your Site SEO
Use keyword search monitoing through
a program as Spredfast or Radian 6 to
track what people are saying about you
and your competitors
Offers unique opportunities for Web
site integration and to engage with
customers in a viral way helping your
company stand out from the masses
Potential can be large but promotion
is an art form- promote your brand
too heavily and turn off followers, yet
don’t promot enough and receive little
attention
Value in your site is limited, but tweets
will rank high in search results – good
for ranking your profile name and
breaking news. Although shortened
URL are of little benefit
Great for engaging people who like
your brand, want to share your
opinions and participate in giveaways
and contests.
Facebook brand pages are great for
brand exposure jump-start your brand
exposure through the ad platform or
hire a Facebook consultant to help
you grow your brand presence.
Traffic is decent and on the rise
thanks to share buttons and
counters, but don’t expect massive
numbers of unique visitors to go to
your site
Little to no value, aside from blogs
picking up and featuring your posted
links. Not worth the time expenditure.
Unnecessary to spend too much time
on this, though properly tagged
photosets of company events can help
customers put a face on the team
behind your brand
Participation in industry-related
groups might get your photos, and
thus your brand, viewed by people
with similar interests but numbers will
be small.
Even if you get tens of thousands of
visits to a photo hyperlinked with your
URL, click-through rates are among
the lowest around
Heavily indexed in search engines,
passing links and page ranks. Also
helps images rank higher in Google
Images and in building inbound links.
Not the primary focus, but customer
engagement opportunities are possible
by answering industry-related
questions establishing yourself as an
expert in the field.
Effective for personal branding and
demonstrating your organizations
professional prowess. Encouraging
employees to maintain complete
profiles to strengthen your team’s
reputation as advisable.
Unlikely to drive any significant traffic
to your site, though you never know
who those few visits might be from –
perhaps a potential client or
customer.
Very high page rank – almost
guaranteed on the first page of search
results – especially for your company
name or individual employees’ names
but that’s about it.
Whether you seek to entertain, inform
or both, video is a powerful channel for
quickly engaging your customers
responding to complaints and
demonstrating your social media savvy.
One of the most powerful brand
topics on the Web when you build
your channel, promote via high-traffic
sites and brand your videos.
Traffic goes to the videos. If the goal
is to drive traffic back to your site,
then add a hyperlink in the video
description but don’t expect traffic to
correlate closely with video views.
Very good for building links back to
your site because videos rank high.
Also a tried-and-true way for your
brand to gain exposure.
Not the site’s primary strength though
occasionally an objective third-party
write-up as a PR effort, perhaps to
counteract bad press or customer
sentiment, can be promoted.
Opportunities are huge, especially for
promoting objective press/blog
coverage of your brand. Make sure
content doesn’t read like an ad, or
your site might be banned for being
overly commercial.
The grandfather of the traffic spikes
become active in the community or
hire someone who is. If your site is
corporate then consider launching an
industry blog on a noncommercial
web domain to establish
Very good because even if your story
doesn’t become popular then your
page will still be indexed quickly. If your
story does become popular, this is
likely the best site in terms of getting
linked to by bloggers.
By Social Agency
Identify & Engage Influencers
1. The number of times they talk about you
2. The number of times other people repurpose or share their content that is about you
3. The size of their network
By Social Agency
Publish Content
• Schedule content
• Team & user roles
The publishing of content should viewed holistically and establishing cadence that does not border on
“spew” or social media spam. User roles and access controls are establish to help with governance.
By Social Agency
Gather Analytics
• Measure the
effectiveness of each
message
• Gather metrics by
channel, voice, accou
nt and initiative
• Measure the
sentiment of your
product, brand or
company
• Calculate both “hard”
& “soft” ROI on the
initiative
With an objective in mind, and goals in hand, measurement is imperative to know if you’ve succeeded
or failed. Failure is OK, and to be expected at first, as long as you fail informatively.
By Social Agency
Refine Campaign & Content
• Revise content
strategy: Add, edit,
delete scheduled
messages according
to historical
performance
Sharpen the initiative: Leveraging the gathered analytics, assess the effectiveness of the content and
refine the messaging if necessary.