Published on 5th February 2009
“Good fortune is what
happens when opportunity
meets planning”
Thomas Alva Edison
A STEP-BY-STEP STRATEGIC SOCIAL
MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE
FAST TRACKING SOCIAL MEDIA PLANNING | EAST&URBAN Sdn Bhd
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SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS: SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

INTRODUCTION
This Social Media Program Design Guide is developed by EAST&URBAN Sdn Bhd with the objective of
helping companies or individuals who are looking for a systematic method to design a social media
program.
The Social Media for Business program is aimed at helping companies achieve the following objectives:
Fast track their understanding about the world of social media and how it has become one of the,
if not THE most important platform for companies to build their business and brands.
•
To provide a systematic process for companies to plan and build their social media programs for
purposes of Marketing & Branding, Innovation, Customer Engagement and Culture Building.
•
This Social Media Program Design Guide provides companies with step-by-step instructions, guidelines
and resources to develop their strategic social media program to support their corporate objectives.
Companies need to fine-tune the eventual program that resulted from the use of this guide and proceed to
actual program implementation without wasting months and effort in trying to understand, navigate and
figuring out how social media works.
EAST&URBAN can continue to provide on-going advisory or become an outsource partner to ensure
social media succeeds as an important strategic tool to business success.
About EAST&URBAN
EAST&URBAN started out as a boutique consultancy practice in the year 2004 primarily in the areas of
brand consultancy. The firm has provided brand consulting advisory to local brands owned by small
companies to public listed companies in Malaysia. The firm kept a close track on development in the field
of marketing and branding which inadvertently led it to specialize in the hottest field today – Social Media
Marketing. The firm led by its principle consultant, Mr. Cseng Lim who has both engineering and
Information Technology hands-on experience provides the firm with the advantage of combining
technical know-how to the firm’s business consulting practice.
The last few years has also seen the firm being asked to share its know-how in the field of marketing,
branding and social media via conferences and seminars. It’s most recent speaking event was FMCG
Product Marketing and Branding and Event & Sponsorship Marketing organized by Asia Business Forum
in the month of Jan and Feb 2009.
Firm Homepage: www.csenglim.com
Visit:
Principle’s Blog: www.discussonbrand.com | Listed on Social-Media.Alltop.com
Follow our Principle: www.twitter.com/csenglim | www/linkedin.com/in/csenglim
Contact Cseng Lim: cseng@csenglim.com or +6012.210.9512
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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
This Social Media Program Design Guide is developed by EAST&URBAN Sdn Bhd. The content in this
document is proprietary Intellectual Property rights of EAST&URBAN Sdn Bhd, a private limited company
based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
When you and/or your company purchase this document through the company’s approved sites, you may
use it for developing your company or personal social media program but no portion of this document is
allowed to be reprinted, reproduced, distributed, changed, reengineered or shared without express
written permission from EAST & URBAN Sdn Bhd. You also do not have the right to give away or resell
this document in whole or in portion.
DISCLAIMER
This document is a guide to help you design your social media program. It is not a definitive manual nor
does it provide any form of guarantee to the success of your social media program. You are advised to use
the guide in a manner best suited to your business and personal social media environment and purpose.
By using this guide, you and/or your company agrees to hold harmless, release and forever discharge
EAST&URBAN Sdn Bhd from any loss, damages and any other forms of liabilities including all that are
unknown, unforeseen and unexpected that may result from using this document.
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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

CONTENT
1.0 BUSINESS AND SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVES
2.0 STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS AND IDENTIFICATION
2.1 Targeting the Right Community – PBR Analysis
2.2 Your Relationship Structure
2.3 Capacity for Partnership, Benefits Offered and Risks Assumed
2.4 Establishing Permission and Policies
3.0 SELECTING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM
4.0 SETTING UP YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES
4.1 CONTENT AND CONVERSATION
4.1.1 Defining Your Conversation Parameters and Categories
4.1.2 Establishing Your Content Border Parameters
4.1.3 Reviewing Your Survival or Suicide Initiative
4.2 OUTREACH AND OUTPOSTS
4.2.1 Shortlisting Your 3 Primary Candidate Outreach Channels
4.2.2 Identify Your Viral Outpost Nodes
4.2.3 Theme Presentation and Brand Image
4.2.4 Linking and Participating in 3rd Party Channels
4.3 LAUNCH AND CREATE AWARENESS FOR YOUR INITIATIVE
4.3.1 Use Traditional Marketing and PR Techniques
4.3.2 Use Search Engine Optimization Techniques
5.0 PLANNING FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCE
5.1 Setting Up Your Social Media Units
5.2 Outsourcing Consideration for Social Media Activities
5.3 Legal Considerations and Implications
6.0 MEASURING SOCIAL MEDIA INITIATIVES
6.1 The Truths and Types of Measurements
6.2 Examples and Description of Metrics
6.3 Implementing Measuring Initiatives
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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

BUSINESS AND SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVES
All successful businesses are guided by a strong set of objectives. These objectives are
sometimes labeled and applied differently depending on the context and time of relevance
of the objectives. For example a company’s Vision and Mission Statements have an
overarching context on the purpose of the organization and this can sometimes cover the
industry that the company participates in. Vision and Mission Statements’ time relevance
can be anywhere between 10 years to forever. A company’s Value System is usually applied
within the company’s walls to guide its business practices and may change according to
internal and external influence. At a much lower level, corporate annual business objectives
are revised year to year depending on what the company intends to achieve for that year.
Social Media objectives are best seen as the ‘tactical’ part of the any of these sets of a
company’s objectives. Sometime a company’s vision is hard to be pragmatic in actual
running of a business but it can be made practical via social media means. When social
media are used in this context, it usually means Social Media is position as a primary
strategy to actualize that vision with or without financial returns. Social media objectives
can also be position to support, to amplify or as a participative platform to an existing
business strategy or tactical initiatives.
Social media for marketing can help you increase the activity around these top goals:
Website traffic and user behavior
Conversion and sales tracking
Page views, ad exposure

Growing brand awareness

Creating a positive brand association and keeping it there

Business development and a broader customer reach



Credit: Marketing Pilgrim
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SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS: SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

Social media for innovation can help you increase the activity around these top goals:
Access to customer wants and needs about your products and services.
Understand how customers use your products and their recommendations for
improvements.

Value creation for the customers by allowing them to understand your R&D

initiatives.
Provide a user role for customers to participate in your innovation exercises such as

becoming beta testers, evaluators etc.

Social media for culture building can help you increase the activity around these top goals:
Promote and inculcate your company’s corporate value and cultural norms.
Close the ranks between senior management and other levels of employees.
Access to employee ideas and promote their participation in corporate initiatives.

Disseminate information and corporate communication effectively across the

company.

Provide employee with a collaboration platform for them to become more productive,

creative and increase teamwork in delivering your business goals.

Social media for management leadership can help you increase the activity around these
Identify and nurture future management talents that are often hidden by corporate
top goals:
bureaucracy.
Provide managers with a collaboration platform that increases the degree of

participation and teamwork.
Access to greater collective recommendations, ideas and solutions.

Close ranks between senior management with lower level managers in promoting a
leaner management practice.


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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS AND IDENTIFICATION
Social media is essentially about people, their experiences, thoughts, ideas, personality and
generally ‘what’s in it’ for them. It is also important to clarify when we use the term ‘what’s
in it’ it does not necessarily mean that they are seeking financial rewards or
compensations. Within the social network in the Internet, ‘what’s in it’ for the most social
media participants are the needs for trust-building, emotional and intellectual association
with people of common interest and purpose. Looking down at the microscopic level of the
social networks that exists, there are thousands of groups, tribes and ‘fan’ clubs. The
common ground shared between them, the conversations that flowed and the activities of
these different groups defined their purpose and what they can contribute or generate in
terms of value to its members and to the social media network in general.
Hence, for companies to succeed in social media it is important that they have to first
possess a clear understanding of the great degree of segmentations within the social circles
in the web and establish the form of stakeholders that they are interested to engage.
The other critical reasons why companies need to be particularly objective on engaging the
right crowd is to ensure that their activities are focus on generating results than just
playing the probability game, as in the case of many practices of traditional marketing and
advertising initiatives.
The third reason for identifying the right stakeholders is because companies need to
ensure continuity. Significant efforts need to be made to first establish relationship with
this right crowd, the logic here is the maintenance of this relationship, if possible minimal
in terms of cost and investments. Continuity also helps to build a strong network and
relationship with the company, thus promoting trust-building and familiarity which will in
turn drive other forms of results such as WOMM, fanship, etc. All these are important to
drive organic growth for the organization that are not only limited to sales performance.
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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES
A social media platform is your playground to engage your target market. The next
important step is to determine the strategies that you want to use to guide your approach
and activities (the tactics). Every successful business initiatives have to follow a set of well
defined strategies that governed the engagement of your corporate ‘playground’ in yours
or competitors’ market.
By having well defined strategies, your company will benefit by:
a. Being more focus on your actual tactical activities thus limits the degree of
waste in terms of your financial and non-financial resources.
b. Allow your company to identify the right and/or relevant metric that will
provide a barometer on how you are doing in terms of your social media
performance.
c. Builds specialized skills and know-how in your area of social media
engagement.
…
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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

DETERMINE YOUR CONTENT AND CONVERSATION TEMPLATE VI
A. SOCIAL MEDIA SUICIDE PREVENTION CHECKLIST
The following are some of the known best negative practices that will discourage
the effectiveness of your social media initiatives. This checklist however has to be
weight against your company or personal degree of risk acceptance in engaging
your target market. If your company has very high risk aversion, social media is not
in the first place the right platform for your company.
No What Not To Do … Tick
1 Lack of authentic content and conversation
2 Too much tactics for schmoozing
3 Intends to create or participate in flame wars online
4 Hire a voice talent or a professional video production house
5 Collecting too much personal information
6 Your platform only intent on pushing your agenda
7 Your platform is over-featured and over-marshable
8 Not listening enough and plans to be defensive to critics
9 Sets many guidelines on how target group can or should participate
10 Plan to stalk people on your platform with spam and ads
11 Too much self-promotion and selling
12 Use of misleading type of content, headlines and images
13 Looks more like news site or digital newsletter publication
14 Too much solicitation of opinions than creating a participative form
15 Have hidden agendas that are no transparent on the onset
Once you have done this checklist, spend the next 15 minutes to consider revising
any relevant aspect of the activities that we have performed in this Content and
Conversation Strategy Segment.
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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

PLANNING FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCES
Incorporating the use of Social Media in your corporate environment should not be taken
lightly. Companies that assume Social Media commitment is just another ‘activity’ among
the many in the company is dead wrong and certainly will not see results if this is the
perspective taken. Just as advertising, sales, marketing, public relations and investor
relations are separate operating units within a company for it to be effective, social media
too requires a separate strategic business unit. In essence in view of the important of
online marketing plays today and will likely be the next primary platform for business
operation and marketing, companies should eventually strive to consolidate their differing
marketing units into one effective cross platform social marketing unit. The same applies
for HR and other management practices that social media can generate significant value
creation.
The organization of Social Media Resources should be made in the following teams:
Content and Conversation Production Team
o Production Tools
•
o Working Reference and Content Libraries
o Training Programs
In-House or Outsourced Technical Specialist Team
Strategy and Content Research Teams
•
•
However companies practice them at the level that is affordable and relevant to the social
media objectives of the company. The proposed social media structure of resource
organization is holistic in nature and would be affordable to most large size organization
that intends to consolidate their relevant business unit into a single social media unit.
This segment will provide some guide to your company on how to organize your social
media resources.
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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

SOCIAL MEDIA METRIC
THE TRUTHS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT
Measurement is important for every corporate initiative including social media. Although
most measurement may not be exact, it is still useful to measure to provide the company
with a form of guide and beacons about their activities. It is also important to link
measurements to objectives set for the initiatives and not to over do it.
Compared to conventional marketing where measuring metric can be an expensive and
often a complex and incoherent affair, social media metrics offers a more straightforward,
cheaper and with proper analysis methods, provide strong insights about your target
market, their response and their behaviors online.
It is also important to know that there is no such thing as THE BEST way in measuring
social media. Every company should adopt metrics that makes most sense to them and that
will allow them to benefit strategically from the measurement. Once a standard method is
adopted regardless it is obtained from an outsourced party or internally developed, it
should not be the end of it. Continuous refinement and changes may be necessary to reflect
the on-going dynamics of the players and environment within the social media initative.
No company should be spending resources to try to check or measure everything because it
is simply expensive, resource heavy and it takes too much time to make sense out of the
load of raw data being produced from the Internet.
Statistical sampling may be required and checking for statistically relevance using some of
the statistical tests that are available when analysing information will be needed to provide
a level of confidence to the results produced from the raw data.
Practicing common sense is a must. Sometimes analysts tend to be overly data-driven that
they forgot to use common sense. Common sense is best use when forming the initial
hypothesis or questions that links to the objective of the social media initiative.
Every metric or measurement used should be defined in order that it does not create
ambiguity to its use and the context of its application.
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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE

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SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM DESIGN GUIDE