Strategic social media use

How to get the most bang for your buck

Claire Bower, Marketing and Communications Manager

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Who am I?

- Marketing & Communications

Manager (Imperial College London)

- Former Digital Communications

Manager (BMJ)

- Senior Associate Editor (BJSM)

- MA in Electronic Communication &

Publishing (UCL)

- MSc in Psychology (Glasgow)

- Postgraduate Diploma in Digital

Marketing (IDM)

Claire Bower

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“Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone”IBM

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Objective

setting

Analysis/

Evaluation

Strategy/

Tactics

Audience

insight

Framework of social media success

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Framework of social media success

Objective

setting

Analysis/

Evaluation

Strategy/

Tactics

Audience

insight

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Objective setting – what are you trying to achieve?

- Build your profile

- Drive an online sale/registration

- Increase views/citations of an article

- Educate people about a topic

- Drive traffic to your website

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Objective setting – what are you trying to achieve?

- Build your profile (Reach)

- Drive an online sale/registration (Conversions)

- Increase views/citations of an article (Clickthroughs)

- Educate people about a topic (Engagement)

- Drive traffic to your website (Referral traffic)

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Objective

setting

Analysis/

Evaluation

Strategy/

Tactics

Audience

insight

Framework of social media success

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“In the largest study of its kind, we

analyzed 144 million posts and

1.1 billion reactions…our primary

finding is this – there is no single

‘best’ time that works for

everyone”Spasojevic, N., Li, Z., Rao, A., & Bhattacharyya, P.

‘When-to-post on social networks’. ACM, 2015.

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When is your audience most active? (Followerwonk)

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What is existing audience sharing and where? (BuzzSumo)

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Identify influential sharers of your content

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New audience insight

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Target competitor audience (Followerwonk)

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Framework of social media success

Objective

setting

Analysis/

Evaluation

Strategy/

Tactics

Audience

insight

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Practical tips

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Influencer outreach

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Post when your audience is online

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Don’t underpost or overpost

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Image (and video) is everything

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Hashtags work…to a point

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Be a subject expert – add value

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Objective

setting

Analysis/

Evaluation

Strategy/

Tactics

Audience

insight

Framework of social media success

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Key performance indicators

- Build your profile (Reach)

- Drive an online sale/registration (Conversions)

- Increase views/citations of an article (Clickthroughs)

- Educate people about a topic (Engagement)

- Drive traffic to your website (Referral traffic)

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Reach (TweetReach)

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Conversions (Google Analytics)

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Clickthroughs (bitly)

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Engagement (Sprout Social)

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Referral traffic (Google Analytics)

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Objective

setting

Analysis/

Evaluation

Strategy/

Tactics

Audience

insight

Framework of social media success

• Business objectives

• Key performance

indicators

• Behaviour

• Preference

• Influencers

• Competitors

• Platform

• Content

• Scheduling

• Influencer outreach

• Conversions

• Engagement

• Reach

• Sentiment

• Referral traffic

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In conclusion

- Clear objectives

- Align measurement

- Audience insight

- Strategy/tactics

• Influencer outreach

• Schedule posts

• Don’t overpost / underpost

• Image is everything

• Hashtags can work

• Be a curator

- Monitor, test and learn!

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Questions?

Thank you!

@clairebower

c.bower@imperial.ac.uk