Posts Tagged ‘social media strategy’
Social Media Strategy? Think Like a Reporter
Monday, July 12th, 2010Recent surveys have shown that while businesses are embracing social media in droves, many are doing so without any real strategy in place. Without a strategy, there may be no clear ownership, or definition of success, or measurement, or integration with other marketing and PR efforts—all of which can lead eventually to wasted time and effort, abandoned blogs and Facebook pages, and even the erroneous conclusion that social media doesn’t work for us.
Yet developing such a strategy can be challenging; where does one start? Most of us have, through the classroom, TV shows or somewhere in life, learned about the reporter’s questions: who, what, when, where and why. Just as these questions are critical to solid journalism, so they can be invaluable to social media strategy development.
Who: the first who question is who will be in charge of social media efforts? Responsibility should be placed as high as possible—with the CEO ideally (think Tony Hsieh, or Jonathan Schwartz before the sale to Oracle). If not possible, then responsibility should rest with an executive in marketing, PR, product management or customer service. If absolutely necessary, this leadership can be outsourced, but only as part of a close long-term relationship. Who else will be involved? In all but the smallest companies, there are often multiple individuals tweeting, networking and even contributing to the company blog. In these situations, it’s imperative to have a social media policy in place, encourage subject matter experts (SME’s) to share their unique knowledge, and remember that everyone who participates is acting as a public face for the company—social media isn’t a job for an intern.
What: what type of information will you use to attract a social media following? In b2c, contests, games, apps and coupons are popular content. In the b2b world, thought leadership content is key, but this can take different forms depending on your resources and style: blogs are the most common media, but video, podcasting, online presentations and articles are other ways to share information and education with prospects. What also refers to subject matter—in b2b, that usually means reporting on research, offering a unique perspective on industry developments, solving problems, providing how-to guides, or presenting other information that is of value to your audience and positions your people as the experts.
When: how often will you write new blog posts? Tweet? Update your company’s Facebook page? The answers will be different depending on your company’s resources, the amount of content you have to work with, the number of employees involved in your social media efforts, the specific social media tool and other factors. In general, more is better, and most companies could probably benefit from greater social media activity, not less. There is a risk of over-doing things, particularly on Twitter, but as long as your focus is on adding value rather than self-promotion, few followers are likely to complain. Most companies find that the amount of time they need to devote to social media, particularly to engagement, starts out modestly and increases over time as their blog readership, Twitter following, Facebook fan base and other groups grow.
Where: which social media sites and tools will you use? There’s no question that blogs (which usually mean WordPress), Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have emerged as the “big four” social media venues. According to recent research, these are used by 70% or more of those active in social media (no other single tool was used by more than half of respondents). Twitter is probably the closest thing to a universal social media tool for business, while Facebook is huge in b2c, and LinkedIn is indispensable on the b2b side. These are the tools to start with, but by no means should a social media strategy be limited to these: depending again on talent, resources, corporate personality etc., other tools to take into account include YouTube and Vimeo (video sharing); SlideShare (presentations); social bookmarking sites like Digg, delicious and Propeller; online forums (there are specific forums for almost any industry); Ning (for creating your own community or finding others to engage with); PitchEngine (social PR); and social profile sites like VisualCV and PeoplePond, just to name a few.
Why: possibly the most important question of all. What is your company aiming to accomplish through social media? What are your goals? How will you measure them? There are at least a hundred ways to measure social media success and more than a hundred tools for monitoring them. While measuring social media ROI is difficult to do with any precision, it’s important to use what measures you can to help gauge the impact and continually improve your efforts.
Crafting a social media strategy is vital to achieving success and avoiding wasted efforts. It’s a challenging exercise, but one that can made easier by thinking differently—such as like a reporter.
Minnesota’s Social Media Event of the Summer
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010If your small to midsized business is struggling with questions about how to create an effective social media strategy, use social media tools most effectively, make the best use of your time on social media, generate results or other related issues, mark your calendar for this upcoming one-day social media and online marketing event.
On June 24, SCORE will be hosting its Social Media & Internet Marketing Boot Camp in Bloomington. Having shed both its original acronym and somewhat stodgy image several years ago, SCORE today is a dynamic organization that helps startup and growing businesses to maximize their success, through face-to-face counseling, online interaction, webinars, live events, and partnerships with organizations such as the American Express OPEN Forum.
This seminar will cover a wide range of actionable social media and online marketing subject areas, including how to:
- • Develop a social media strategy
- • Use online reputation management (do you know what people are saying about you? and what you can do about it?)
- • Maximize your social networking efforts while minimizing your time
- • Design an effective business website – then optimize it and measure your results
- • Generate revenue through email marketing
- • Use specific social media tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging) most productively for business
And much more. Learn more about the seminar and how it can benefit your business. Hope to see you there!
Social Media Marketing Strategies for 2010
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010Marketing Sherpa last week released its 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark report. Though the full report runs $400, much interesting data can be gleaned from the free executive summary. The report’s authors begin by noting that:
“An important transition in the use of social media for marketing purposes is taking place. A rapidly increasing segment of marketers are gaining the experience required to advance from novice to competent practitioner capable of achieving social marketing objectives and proving ROI…In the past year, marketers have been captivated by the ample hype about Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media platforms…(but) they jumped into this new medium thinking tactically about the latest social media platforms they could add to the mix rather than thinking strategically about the objectives they needed to achieve. In the year ahead, we see social marketing maturing to the point where a majority of organizations will be in transition from the trial phase to the strategic phase of the learning curve.”
Among the key findings from the report:
Despite the lingering economic malaise, companies across virtually all industries plan to increase budgets for social media marketing in 2010. Such plans are most nearly universal in retail and ecommerce, where 79% of survey respondents plan to increase budgets, with only 1% planning budget reductions for social media. In computer hardware and software, 55% of firms plan budget increases while 5% say they will cut budgets. In business and consumer services, the figures are 54% increase, 1% decrease.
When asked which objectives they planned to target and measure, 88% of “strategic” social media marketers (those who have reached the highest level of social media marketing maturity) answered “increase website traffic” while 75% said “lead generation.” Interestingly, PR-type measures—such as improving brand or product awareness and reputation—scored in the middle of the pack of 10 possible objectives, with just over half of marketers indicating they would target and measure these objectives. Note that these are some of the most effective uses of social media, and arguably much more important from a strategic standpoint than simply increasing web traffic—but they are also much more difficult to measure with any precision. Somewhat surprisingly, increasing customer support quality and decreasing support costs were identified as the least important objectives, with only about a third of companies in the MarketingSherpa benchmarking study planning to target and measure these goals.
This key chart compares the difficulty and effectiveness of various social media tactics, as well as their level of usage. Note that the four most popular tactics are microblogging such as Twitter ( highly effective with low effort); blogging (highly effective but high effort); social networking (moderately effective, low effort); and multimedia content sharing such as images, video and presentations (low effectiveness, moderate effort). Fewer marketers are focusing efforts on blogger relations, which is viewed as being the most effective tactic but also the one requiring the most effort. That result seems somewhat counterintuitive, as companies that actively use tactics like blogging and Twitter will find blogger relations less taxing than will firms who rely primarily on “pitching” bloggers to obtain coverage.
From the buyer standpoint, the two most popular uses of social media (with roughly 60% each) in the commercial realm are to “learn about new products / features / services” and to “learn about specials and sales.” What is critical for marketers to understand is that buyers are talking about two distinctly different sets of products and services here. Buyers are most interested in price for items like a popular model of flat screen TV, common office supplies or today’s lunch; but they are seeking thought leadership when considering hardware, software or services to solve a vexing business problem. They don’t care about the technical details behind today’s lunch special or a thought leadership white paper on “Solving Your Mid-Day Hunger Issues,” and are likely to be skeptical of a coupon for a 5% discount on outsourcing a critical IT project or purchasing a key piece of enterprise software.
Finally, when using social media for research purposes, buyers are most interested in hearing from independent third parties, with blogs, boards and forums being the most popular tools. Secondarily, they want to read about results from peers and colleagues, with blogs and Twitter being the most popular media. However, close behind, vendors are the third-most sought source of information; blogs and Twitter are again the preferred platform, with wikis being the least popular. The lessons? It’s critical to get key influencers and customers talking about your products and services, and if you’re not currently writing a blog or optimizing your use of Twitter, you need to.
Again, you can purchase the full report or download the free executive summary of this social media benchmarking report from MarketingSherpa here.
6 Ways To Spread Thought Leadership Content (Without Blogging)
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010Many social media experts believe a blog should be the core of a social media strategy, as the key vehicle for sharing thought leadership content which can then be promoted using Twitter, social networking and other tools. No question, there are many compelling reasons why blogs are important for business. But what if you simply don’t have the time or resources to commit to maintaining a blog with regular posts, or at least you’re not ready to make the commitment yet? Here are six other ways to share your thought leadership content without committing to the demands of regular blog posting.
Your Website
Create an area for articles on your website. This allows you to write and post articles as time permits, rather than committing to a regular once, twice or more per week posting schedule. This also allows you to write fewer but more in-depth articles less suited to the blogging format. You can still promote this articles using social media and SEO just as you would with blog posts, and even add an RSS feed (yes, it’s possible to add an RSS feed to any web page, though it is likely to attract fewer readers than regular blog posting).
Industry Publications
Many online trade publications will accept (and are actually hungry for) bylined articles, as long as they are true thought leadership pieces that address industry issues rather than blatant product or service promotion. Most will permit one or more links back to your site as part of the “about the author” section, which is helpful for both direct traffic and SEO.
Article Publication Sites
For a little more creative freedom (including the ability to add text links within the article to specific pages on your site), try publishing an article through article publication sites. Many of these articles appear well in search on their own (particularly EzineArticles) as well as being great sources of links for SEO.
Guest Blogging
If you have an article that’s most suitable as a blog post, try contacting influential bloggers in your industry about providing a guest post for their blog. Again, as long as the post is suitable for their readers and focused on thought leadership rather than promotion, many bloggers will appreciate getting a “day off” from writing their own content, and will permit a link or two back to your site, at least in the “about the author” section and possibly within the content as well. Be sure to link to other authoritative sources within your copy as well to maximize value to the readers as well as appearing truly helpful, not just self serving.
Google Knol
Google Knol unfortunately uses the insidious no-follow tag, so you won’t get any SEO benefit from posting there, but the articles themselves often show up well in search. So, you can still include links to your site from your article; while these won’t supply any SEO link juice, they often provide relevant direct traffic.
Directory Sites
Many industry-focused and general web directory sites, such as Qondio, allow you to post articles as well as standard directory listings. Requirements tend to be similar to those for article publication sites. These are sort of the reverse of Google Knol; while articles on these sites may not show up highly in search listings themselves, they do pass link juice and so are helpful for the SEO on your own website.
A regularly updated and properly promoted blog is still the best way to socially share thought leadership content. But if you’ve got some content, but not enough for regular blog posting, these alternative avenues can still be helpful and supportive for content marketing, social media and SEO objectives.
