Transform Your Company From a Wallflower into a Social Media Butterfly

Transform Your Company from Wallflower to Social Media Butterfly The people, tools, and strategies you need to provide the underlying groundwork for long term successful social media execution Laura Lippay Dir. Technical Marketing, Yahoo! Inc @lauralippay YAHOO! CONFIDENTIAL

In this session we will look at
Why social media?
Who should be involved? Who are the stakeholders at your company?
What is the process for getting involved in social media?
What are the avoidances I need to know to make sure I don’t fail

Why should my company be involved in social media ?

Social networking online is like social networking offline

People are talking about you .

You walk into a room of people talking. You want to become part of this group. What do you do?

But SO many big brands are socially awkward. And they’re paying for it. VERY PUBLICALLY.

United Airlines breaks guitars

Who should be involved in social media at my company?

who has a hand in social media?
Product
Marketing
Research
Customer Care
Sales
PR/Corporate Communications
Editors/Writers/Bloggers
Brand
Community Managers
Some people wear multiple hats

how does each stakeholder get involved?
Download this paper
Social Media Stakeholders in a Medium-Large Company: Traditional vs. Social Media Processes and Data + Social Media Involvement http://bit.ly/1zhEtO

how do I set up the groundwork for successful long term social media engagement?

Example of how Yahoo is currently setting up the groundwork

Yahoo’s step 1: Centralization
STAKEHOLDERS : A Social Media tiger team was set up with stakeholders from
CONSENSUS : A consensus was reached on these things
Centralizing data/reporting system across as many Yahoo business units as possible (in order to get cross-BU data)
Allowing each business unit and/or product to appoint community managers and own their own social media strategies
CENTER OF EXCELLENCE: Stakeholders collaborated on company social media guidelines, resources, email lists, internal social media meetups, etc.
Customer Care
PR/Corporate Communications
SEO
Brand
Research & Insights
Marketing
Product
Sales
Editorial

Yahoo’s step 2: Define
NEEDS ASSESSMENT: Stakeholders were interviewed to determine needs
Ex: Customer care needs broad reach in real time
Ex: SEO needs to measure SEO effect of social network promotion
Ex: Product needs unsolicited feedback, competitor sentiment comparisons and global market direction
REQUIREMENTS: In the process we determined things to look for in a social media listening platform vendor
Ability to provide global market data in multiple regions, countries and/or languages
Ability to differentiate sentiment when people reference something they found on Yahoo vs. sentiment towards the Yahoo! product
Automated sentiment: there is too much data for a company our size to sift through items to manually apply sentiment

Yahoo’s step 3: Setup
REVIEW : Over a dozen social media listening platform vendors were formally reviewed by several stakeholders
CHOOSE : After some hands on evaluation, a vendor was chosen
SETUP : Accounts were set up for Community Managers or people assuming the Community Manager role for each property or business unit

Yahoo’s step 4: Listen
LISTENING : Properties and business units are watching data around things like
Company asset (brand, services, people, products) sentiment
Company asset issues, problems, needs
Industry trending topics
Sentiment around launches & news
Global market needs
Influencer and potential partner identification
Sentiment around competitors
The following are some report screenshots that provide insight and can help drive strategy, from vendors we reviewed

NetBase MarketScout: Brand sentiment broken down by demographic

Dow Jones: People favorability (sentiment) comparison

Dow Jones: People share of voice comparison

Yahoo’s step 5: Plan
Each product or business unit determines these things (and more) based on the data they gather:
Global markets to go after, and with what content
Communities and Influencers to engage with online and offline
New products and product features , or feature enhancements/fixes based on product and competitor sentiment, market needs, and industry trends
Marketing messaging based on product and competitor sentiment, market needs, and industry trends
Negative sentiment issues to address
Potential content partners to approach

Yahoo’s step 6: Engage
Different groups engage in different ways.
For example:
Customer Care doesn’t need a long listening time to begin to engage in various places online to address issues.
Research doesn’t engage at all – they solely provide insight and analysis
Product listens for several months in order to determine engagement needs. Some hire full time community managers and some address social media engagement through various teams within the product. Engagement is with communities online (forums, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc) and offline (community events, industry events)

Yahoo’s step 7: Evaluate
As with Engagement, each product or business unit is monitoring different metrics.
The following are some report screenshots from vendors we reviewed.

Nielsen BuzzMetrics Topic volume comparisons

Nielsen BuzzMetrics: Tracking YSM sentiment before and after feature launch

TruCast Dashboard

social media vendor comparison
Download a side by side feature comparison of several social media vendor solutions (listening platforms, reporting, and analysis) who we reviewed at Yahoo, and that you can use to compare potential solutions for your own company.
http://bit.ly/PwSk5

It’s * important * to note, that just like in real world, live person communities…

… the time and resource you put into engaging with your community will determine your success

engaging with communities is a dedicated full-time job
WHY?
Here’s some of the things a Community manager needs to have
A deep understanding of the industry
Industry trends
Needs, wants, gaps, opportunities of industry participants
Solutions to needs, wants, gaps, opportunities
A lot of friends
A ton of real (not bot) Twitter followers
Highly engaged and active communities on Social Networks
A following in the industry through blogs, articles, conference and event appearances

engaging with communities is a dedicated full-time job
WHY?
Here’s some of the things a Community manager needs to do
Stay on top of real time industry events, trends, news
Identify and manage communication and engagement with communities and influencers through multiple online and offline channels
Channel issues, questions, etc to the appropriate people in the organization
Article: 36 Responsibilities and Goals of a Community Manager http://conniebensen.com/2009/02/28/community-manager-responsibilities-and-goals/

what are the avoidances I need to know so I don’t fail? Eliminate random acts of Social Networking: Make sure you understand where to engage, who to engage with, what your message and goals are, and how you will manage efforts full time, before you enter into social networks

what are the avoidances I need to know so I don’t fail? Push = Shove Hooking up an RSS feed to a Twitter account is Push Marketing (so Web 1.0), not Social Networking. Compare it to walking into a room and blurting out to everyone over and over again that you sell hammers. No fun. Engage with communities, don’t push your agendas on them.

what are the avoidances I need to know so I don’t fail? Avoid becoming another Social Media FAIL story Be sure to monitor negative sentiment trends about your company assets to squash fires before they spread

what are the avoidances I need to know so I don’t fail? Don’t just hand over efforts to whoever is available Make sure to put the right person in charge of your social media engagements – someone who attracts people to them for their contributions, insights, and engagement in the community.

thank you . @lauralippay

Transform Your Company From a Wallflower into a Social Media Butterfly

by Laura Lippay on Oct 18, 2009

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Transform Your Company From a Wallflower into a Social Media Butterfly — Presentation Transcript