Chamber of Commerce - Social Media Strategy Workshop
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Here are the Slides from the Social Media Strategy Workshop held on the 7 May 2013 at Newton Rigg Conference Centre.
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Chamber of Commerce - Social Media Strategy Workshop
- 1. Social Media Strategy RACHEL MURRAY
- 2. Rachel Murray Digital Marketing Consultant Hydrant @HydrantRachel
- 3. Introductions Brief Introductions Name Job Role Company Social Media Experience
- 4. Structure of Today •Social Media Landscape •Developing your Strategy •Monitoring your Strategy •Case Study •Questions and Answer, Practical Questions
- 5. Agenda 10.00 -11.00 Start, Introductions and Best Practice 11.00 – 11.15 Break 11.15 – 12.30 Social Media 12.30 – 1.30 Lunch 1.30 – 2.45 Developing your Strategy 2.45 – 3.00 Break 3.00-4.00 Case Study and Overview
- 6. Objectives Learn best practice tips for social media sites Equip you with the knowledge and skills to create a social media strategy Allow for the practical application of skills and knowledge learnt
- 8. Social Media Landscape Social Media is evolving, with the introduction of new features, new capabilities and often new sites and trends regularly. Main Sites that businesses use are – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ and Pinterest. The power of social media has become extremely relevant for businesses with a huge percentage of people using it as part of their daily lives, and using it regularly. ◦ 52% adults in the UK are using social media regularly ◦ 37.3 million people in the UK use social media ◦ Over 40% of UK companies use social media and 50% of those actively encourage staff to use it
- 9. Social Media Landscape Facebook ◦ More than a billion monthly active users as of December 2012. Twitter ◦ 340,000,000 Tweets per day ◦ 200,000,000+ active users ◦ 15.5 million people have Twitter in UK Linked-In ◦ The worlds largest professional network with over 200 million members in over 200 countries Pinterest ◦ As of February 2012, Pinterest had accumulated 10.4 million users. Google+ ◦ 1M+ Business and brand pages created in the first 6 months. ◦ 400M+ Google+ users and growing fast
- 10. Twitter Twitter can be used for many purposes in regard to your business whether that be promotions, communicating with your audience, responding to consumer queries etc. Respond – Retweet, Reply and monitor conversations Reward Followers Demonstrate Leadership Establish Right Voice – How do you want your business to appear to the Twitter Community. Search for relevant followers Recommended to Tweet a few times a day – Also the weekend!
- 11. Facebook Types – Pages, Groups, Personal Pages Branding ◦ Increase Brand Awareness ◦ Showcase Brand Personality Facebook Groups ◦ Networking ◦ Coaching Clients ◦ Social Groups ◦ Niche Focused Always Changing – New Timeline http://www.facebook.com/about/newsfeed
- 12. Facebook Analytics Page Insights gives you the data you need to gather consumer insights. With Page Insights, you can: • Assess the performance of your Page • Learn which content resonates with your audience • Optimize how you publish to your audience so that people will tell their friends about you
- 13. Facebook Advertising Pay per click Do your research – Sponsored Stories Use Image well – 100x80 pixel picture Split Testing • Body of your ad • Photo in your ad • Headline of your ad • Sponsored Story vs. regular ad Watch your Results ◦ A typical click-through rate on Facebook is 0.04- 0.05%. Local Campaign – Sponsored Stories Lookalike Audiences
- 16. Linkedin The worlds largest professional network with over 200 million members in over 200 countries Based on six degrees of separation – LinkedIn uses: ◦ 1st degree connections (immediate) ◦ 2nd degree connections to your first degree connections Helps to build relationships More than 2.6 million companies have Linked-In Company Pages 11+ million members in the UK as of January 9, 2013
- 17. Linkedin Company Pages List your products and services available – Never leave blank! Get Recommendations – for your products/services Post content that interests your followers and less about how great your company is Encourage employees to like and share updates – will help to grow customer base Listen to your audience Look and analyse Insights of Company Page Take part in Linked-in Groups discussions
- 18. Linkedin Linked-In Advertising ◦ Pay Per Click Create a group around your specialisations and core competencies Introductions Endorse fairly Professional Photo ◦ Self Branding ◦ Consistent Image Used on all profiles Recruitment
- 19. Pinterest Around 71% of businesses never use Pinterest, even though traffic to the site has doubled since mid- 2012. 20 million users and it is growing year-on-year. Ettiquete ◦ Be respectful ◦ Be yourself ◦ Give credit to the sources of the image ◦ Stay alert ◦ Let Pinterest know of any misconduct. Shared Interests - As a business, you can provide inspiration for these interests by pinning in a personal, authentic way. Be a sociable pinner – like, re-pin and share
- 20. Pinterest - Principles Put pinners first - Before you start pinning, consider what pinners really care about. Check out your web analytics to see what they like best, or talk to them directly. Tailor your pinning for them. Curate your collection - Create a few boards to start your collection. Show what inspires you - Instead of just showing off your products, show what inspires them Be authentic – Be creative and show your personality Share your pins – Promote your Account
- 21. Google+ Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance. (Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO )
- 22. Google+ Verifying and linking your site with them to boost authenticity and quality. Understand your audience – target right messages Segment Followers with Circles Consider Keywords – In About section Hangouts and Communities Reviews – add creditability
- 23. Do’s and Dont’s Workshop Re-consider the best practice advice discussed, and your own knowledge on the platform and lessons learnt to consider do’s and don’t’s when using social media. Note down one do and one don’t of how to use social media, whether that be things to consider when posting or things that you feel are best and not best practice.
- 24. Do’s and Don’t’s Regular Updates – Including Weekends Show Personality - Be friendly and open Variety of Content - Be engaging Double check spelling and grammar - Proofread Search for popular hashtags Stay active Develop a plan Encourage Email database to join Add widgets to your site Respond Segmentation and Targeting Don’t ignore feedback, interactions and mentions Don’t be repetitive Plagiarize Share too much information Forget your audience as this is the key to success Use multiple names across platforms – keep it consistent! Set up if you don’t plan to invest time Assume people will find you Hard sell Mix personal and business
- 25. Break
- 26. Multi Channel Strategy It is important that you are creating the write messages to your audience, as your audience may be different on different networks. It is how you manage the cross-over and integrating them successfully. ◦ Using all your social media channels ◦ Successfully integrating them and making them part of your marketing campaign ◦ Measuring cross-over ◦ Consider touch points – identify all points of contact ◦ Encourage collaboration
- 27. Multi Channel Strategy - Moby http://destroyed.moby.com/ Using Instagram, Soundcloud, Facebook and Twitter. Users encouraged to Instagram pictures using appropriate hashtag at specific time and displayed on micro-site.
- 28. Multi-Channel Strategy - Cadbury ◦ How Cadbury uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ ◦ Separate for Brands – Share Recipes, New Product Launches ◦ Facebook Pages ◦ Visual Posts ◦ Limited Responses to Customer Care Communications ◦ RT for Sweets Campaign ◦ Google+ Hangouts and Communities
- 29. Cadbury – Twitter and Google+ Twitter -https://twitter.com/CadburyUK 130,000 Followers – Tweets 20 times a day Separate customer service Twitter Google+ - https://plus.google.com/u/0/+CadburyUK/pos ts Early Adopter Hangouts and Communities Cakes and Baking Community
- 30. Multi Channel - Kendal Calling Kendal Calling - award- winning, innovative, independent festival based in the Lake District. Instagram • Sharing images to encourage people to like the image. • 450 Followers • Tag Photos - #kendalcalling
- 31. Instagram – Visit Scotland Using #naturalscotland on Instagram as part of a photography competition. Additionally used on Facebook to display images to allow for sharing of the Images.
- 32. Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media Virility of Information Integration of daily life Privacy and Security ROI – Measurement Developments in Technology
- 33. Negative Feedback A recommendation is to have a strategy or plan in mind to deal with negative feedback on twitter. Identify the type of feedback ◦ Straight Problem ◦ Constructive Criticism ◦ Attack ◦ Trolling/Spam Decide how to react ◦ Does it require a response? ◦ Do you have a standard response? ◦ How will you manage the communication?
- 34. Search Engine Optimisation Keyword Strategy Keyword Rich Content Back Links – add creditability, increase site traffic and visibility of your posts. Profiling Naming – Profile descriptions Contact Information and Description Link your Website – icons and Widgets to gain more online exposure. Verify social media sites
- 35. Round-Up USP – What is yours and how to apply that to yours content? What site ? – identify your customers, and go where they go! Negative Feedback – How to respond Search Engine Optimisation – Keywords Multi-Channel – use all sites, and how? Be prepared to face challenges and take advantage of opportunities
- 37. Strategy A Strategy can effect and enhance every corner of your organisation. So it is important to set out specific, measurable goals before you begin, enabling you to evaluate just how much you have achieved. ◦ Develop brand/ product/ services awareness ◦ Build audience/ customer base ◦ Educate audience/ customer base ◦ Understand more about your audience/ customer base ◦ Increase reputation Focusing on the ultimate goal, will guide what you do, when you do it and what content you will share..
- 38. Components of your Social Media Strategy Planning and Analysis Big Idea & Campaign Making it Happen Conclusion
- 39. Planning and Analysis ◦ Where are we are now ? ◦ Where do we want to be? ◦ What do we want to achieve? ◦ What do we want to do with Social Media? ◦ How will we get there? ◦ Who do we want to communicate with and how?
- 40. Planning and Analysis Who is your Online Audience? ◦ Customer, Audience, demographic, location, data resources and key influencers What can you offer? ◦ The Business, Brand, Industry and Unique offering Market Trends – adapt and utilise market changes and trends Competitor Analysis ◦ What are you competitors doing? ◦ How are they engaging with their audience? ◦ What is their persona online? Define team skills – Internal Resources and Capabilities
- 41. Planning and Analysis Customers and Audience Understanding the buying and decision making behaviour of your customers, clients or target audiences is essential and involves considerable invested research and planning. ◦ Existing customer and audience ◦ New customers in current demographic ◦ New customers in new demographics Prioritised list of customer segments and which customers are more likely to deliver the aims of the strategy
- 42. Planning and Analysis What are your reasons for using social media? What do you want to achieve? Example: You can use your page to do many things, such as find new customers, build your brand and relationships with current customers, promote events and special offers, communicate with internal teams, and much more. Devise an actionable plan for reaching these goals. KPI’s, Goals, Return On Investment, Financial and Audience engagement ◦ Digital, Business, Operational, Financial, Engagement, Team, Creative
- 43. Planning and Analysis ◦ Where are we are now ? – Analysis of Current Activity, Position and Resources ◦ Where do we want to be? – Setting measurable of targets, KPI’s and goals ◦ What do we want to do with Social Media? – What else do you want to do ◦ How will we get there? – What can we do, capabilities and resources ◦ Who do we want to communicate with and how? – Online Audience, Target Audience
- 44. Big Idea and Campaign ◦ How exactly do we get there? ◦ How will we achieve the goals set? ◦ What will be competitive and unique advantage? ◦ What is the Content, Ideas and Tactics to how you will achieve objectives and goals?
- 45. Big Idea and Campaign Once you have a few goals in mind, think about your customer and what kind of things they want to see from you. What will get them excited? What will keep them engaged? ◦ Brainstorming creative ideas ◦ Define channels and plan for each ◦ Allocate projects to team members based on skill set ◦ Create timeline of your campaign/ Editorial Calendar ◦ Creating an Action Plan
- 46. Big Idea and Campaign Action Plan • Action Type • Priority • Details • Frequency • Metrics • Time • Tactics Action Type Priority Details Frequency Metrics Time Means Like Fan Pages Low Search for Relevant Pages to receive updates from 2 New Likes per week Number of Likes 10 Minutes per Week Facebook and Internet Search
- 47. Big Idea and Campaign Create timeline of campaign/ Editorial Calendar ◦ When are you going to post? ◦ What type of content do you want to post? ◦ How often to post? Tools to use: Scheduling Tools Or as simple as a Calendar to mark what and when to post.
- 48. Big Idea and Campaign ◦ Actionable Tactics of how to achieve goals, targets and KPI’s ◦ Creative Ideas and Marketing Campaigns ◦ Preparing an Action Plan ◦ Creating an editorial calendar or posting schedule
- 49. Making it Happen ◦ Implementing your strategy ◦ How do we monitor performance? ◦ How will you measure the success? ◦ What tools will you use to action your strategy?
- 50. Making it Happen Split Testing and measure what works Tweak as appropriate Monitor and Report Performance - Record all data with reporting, analysis and procedures Use analytics to see what works and what does not Management – Internal resources or Outsource?
- 51. Making it Happen Managing Internal Resources Collective Voice – if there is more than just one staff member contributing to online content, ensure that there is a collective voice. Staff Social Media Policies ◦ What to include? ◦ What does it cover? ◦ Legal Employee Training on using social media Utilising Internal Resources
- 52. Evaluation Did the strategy exceed Goals? What were the unexpected benefits? What was learnt? What were the Key Performance Indicators? What is the value of the KPIS? Which audience segment engaged with the campaign the most? What is the value of engagement in relation to the goals?
- 53. Evaluation ◦ Evaluate the initial goals, ROI’s and KPI’s and compare the reality ◦ Review unexpected benefits, mistakes & lessons learned ◦ Utilise for future campaigns ◦ Establish continuity in engagement ◦ Summarise the benefits of the strategy
- 54. Evaluation Tools to use Measuring and Reporting Hoot Suite – Reporting and Scheduling Google Analytics Social Facebook Insights Pinterest Web Analytics Raven Tools Other Scheduling - Buffer URL shorterner Google Analytics
- 55. Evaluation – Tools to use? ◦ Do you use any tools that you would recommend? ◦ Scheduling Tools or software that assists, supports or improves your social media usage?
- 56. Summarise • Where are we now, and where do we want to be. Analysis and Setting goalsPlanning and Analysis • Action Plan, How going to achieve this. Big Idea & Campaign • Managing and Measuring Making it happen • Evaluate and Measure Evaluation
- 57. Accompanying Strategies Content Strategy – What is the purpose of your content, what has it to achieve? Marketing Strategy – overall marketing strategy of your organisation, campaign, and objectives Keyword Strategy – Keywords that you ideally using in your content, areas you want to optimise Editorial Calendar – Plan what your going to say, when and how your going to do that.
- 59. Workshop – Case Study Given a Case Study Analyse and Create Strategy based on what you have learnt today Present your solution Things to Consider: What channels are recommended? Target Audience/Customers Include Examples How will you measure success?
- 60. • Where are we now, and where do we want to be. Planning and Analysis • Action Plan, how going to achieve this.Big Idea & Campaign • Managing and Measuring Making it happen • Evaluate and Measure Conclusion
- 61. Overview
- 62. New Developments – 2013 and ahead ◦ Facebook Developments ◦ E-Commerce and Social Media ◦ Visual Marketing – Pinterest and Instagram ◦ Google+ - Niche Markets ◦ Google+ and Verification ◦ Mobile and Responsive – Capturing users on mobile
- 63. Facebook Developments Graph Search - https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch New Timeline - https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline New Homepage/ Newsfeed - https://www.facebook.com/about/newsfeed Facebook’s future is mobile – users on mobile, advertisements on mobile Launch of the Facebook Phone
- 64. Follow Up To Do: Develop your Strategy Create clear objectives, targets and KPI’s. Implement – assign responsibilities Accompanying Action Plan and Editorial Calendar. Measure and Report. Measuring Setting up Analytics Clear Reporting Schedule Report and Monitor
- 65. Rachel Murray - Hydrant Rachel Murray Rachel.murray@hydrant.co.uk @HydrantRachel 0845 862 1111
- 66. Question and answer IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR REQUIRE ANY PRACTICAL ADVICE THEN PLEASE ASK
Editor's Notes
- – “Hi, I’m Rachel Murray and I am a digital Marketing Consultant at Hydrant. Hydrant are based in Carlisle and are a digital agency specialising in web design and development for a wide array of clients. My role at hydrant is focused on digital marketing for clients as well as internal marketing for Hydrant. At hydrant we offer digital services including email marketing, social media and much more. We offer social media management, training to our clients and today we will be using our expertise from client experiences, our own experiences to present to you training on social media and how you can make the most of your social media channels by implementing a social media strategy.”
- Allow everyone to introduce themselves and their company or who they are representing. Mention a brief description of how you currently use social media and your experiences.
- Today’s Structure we will break up the course intro four sections, firstly looking at the social media landscape and best practice when using each network including Facebook. Pinterest, Linkedin, Twitter and Google+. We will then look at a framework for creating your social media strategy and how you can monitor your strategy and applying this to a provided case study.
- Overview of Social Media, best practices and tips when using social media.
- Social Media is evolving, with the introduction of new features, new capabilities and often new sites regularly. Main Sites that businesses use are – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ and Pinterest. The power of social media has become extremely relevant for businesses with a huge percentage of people using it as part of their daily lives, and using it regularly. 52% adults in the UK are using social media regularly and an astounding 37.3 million people in the UK use social media. In businesses, Over 40% of UK companies use social media and 50% of those actively encourage staff to use it showing the large significance of business marketing using social media.Breaking it down, Facebook is largely popular with more than a billion monthly active users as of December 2012. Twitter is so powerful with people sharing content regularly with 340 million tweets per day, 200 million active users and 15.5 million people in the UK have twitter. Linked-in is also a major social network globally, with over 200 million members in over 200 countries. Pinterest is a social networking site that has seen a large increase over the last year, and as of last February had accumulate 10.4 million users which is a hugely significant increase and demand for a new social networking site. Google+ is fastly becoming a must have social networking site with over 1 million brand pages created within the first 6 months, and 400 million users which is a growing number. Sources:Google+ and Pinterest Stats - http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32362/35-Statistics-That-Fuel-the-Battle-Between-Pinterest-and-Google.aspx http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_1AFTFm3hk&feature=youtu.be
- Twitter is a really popular social networking site used by businesses and at Hydrant, it is what we use to connect with our audience. Twitter allows users to share content whether that be text, images or videos composing within a 140 character tweet with the popular use of hashtags. Twitter can be used for many purposes in regard to your business whether that be promotions, communicating with your audience, responding to consumer queries etc. A few simple practices that you can use to Build your following, reputation, and customer's trust with are:People may be discussing your brand, organisation or industry so its best to regularly monitor the comments, interactions and mentions. Responding to the feedback and interactions will allow for discussion and for you to manage the communication and respond within real time. Retweet and reply publicly to great tweets posted by your followers and customers.Reward your audience for following which could be updates about special offers, discounts and time-sensitive deals. At Hydrant we respond our audience as we are part of a drupal community as this is the form of website that we create, so we mention and have free draws to win tickets to conferences. Which is a form of reward to our followers.Demonstrating leadership on Twitter will establish your presence which can be done by reference articles and links about the bigger picture as it relates to your business. Including tweeting relevant content to your business and industry. Establishing the right voice is important as you want to engage your audience and for them to find your communications interesting and building a conversation. Twitter users tend to prefer a direct, genuine, and of course, a likable tone from your business, but think about your voice as you Tweet. How do you want your business to appear to the Twitter community?Recommended followers - It is likely that people are already having conversations about your business, your competitors or your industry on Twitter. You can use the following tools to find others on Twitter that are similar to you, or industry specific. On average on Twitter, you will have noticed the people that you follow can be constantly tweeting and noticeable or others you may vaguely see and in some cases forget that you follow them. To have that established presence, it is recommended practice to tweet a few times a day. Whether you schedule your communications to be at peak times. It can be noticed however with some business profiles that they do not share tweets and content at the weekend or outside business working hours which could be a missed opportunity if you are doing this.
- Facebook for businesses can be used in a number of ways – groups, personal pages or dedicated business pages. They are used for Branding - Facebook Pages are branded. You are using your company name and logo to increase your brand awareness, and your Facebook Page can showcase your brand personality as people read through your Timeline. Facebook Groups are also perfect for businesses.If your business is about networking or bringing people together into natural groups, then Facebook Groups can be a great addition to your business marketing. You can use Groups to communicate, schedule events, share documents and more. Example:Networking groupsGroups of coaching clientsSocial groupsSchool groupsNiche-focused groupsFacebook is a forward thinking social media site as they are always changing, for example new timeline is going to be rolled out and new features are constantly being added to the site.
- Page admins are interested in understanding if people are engaging with the content they publish. To help them with this, Facebook provides Page admins aggregated anonymous insights about people's activity on their Page. Facebook users give permission for their Pages activity to be logged for Page
- Facebook Advertising is also a major component to why businesses use and are successful on Facebook. Facebook Advertisements can be setup for adverts related to your website or your Facebook page. Facebook Advertisements are charged on a pay per click basis, hence why it is important that you are conducting Facebook advertisements effectively and capturing your target customers attention.https://www.facebook.com/help/383440231709427/You don’t have much space to grab someone’s attention on Facebook ads. You have a 25-character headline, 90 characters in the body and a small 110 x 80 pixel picture (in reality it displays as a 100 x 65 pixel photo). The best chance you have to grab someone’s attention is with the photo.If you are using Sponsored Stories, the ad defaults to your profile picture or the post picture if you choose to promote a specific post. But if you promote your Facebook page or an external website, you can select the image you want to use.As its hard to grab someone's attention on Facebook ads, make sure that you split test all of your advertising! When you design your campaign, you can split test the variables between your ads so that you get the cheapest clicks and find out which ads are performing the best.Here is a short list of things you may want to split test:Body of your adPhoto in your adHeadline of your ad Sponsored Story vs. regular adSplit testing the body, photo and title of your ad is fairly straightforward. Make sure you are only changing one thing at a time so you don’t confuse the results.As with everything, it’s the return on your investment that matters. Watch how much it costs you to achieve your objective and make sure you have realistic expectations.The ads that perform the best on Facebook typically are either promoting a Facebook page or advertising something free. Advertising something free that requires an email opt-in can be a great strategy. You can then start connecting with those people via email and social media.Set your expectations correctly. A typical click-through rate on Facebook is 0.04-0.05%. You may see better results if you pick an ad model that works well for you and do your testing.Lookalike Audiences - The new tool uses targeting feature ‘custom audiences’, which was launched last autumn and lets marketers take their current customer lists and show ads to those people on Facebook.Facebook explained: “Now with lookalike audiences, Facebook can use attributes like interests or demographics and show ads to people who share common attributes as their existing customers. Advertisers can serve any type of Facebook ad to these new groups of people potential customers.”Local Campaign - Local businesses can benefit from Sponsored Like Stories because many people have a lot of local friends on FacebookReference Point - http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-ad-results/Reference - http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/03/20/facebook-launches-lookalike-audiences-targeting-tool-advertisers
- Demographics are a major component of creating the successful ad as you can use a variety of options to create an advertisement to reach your target audience. When conducting research an interesting starting point is viewing the advertisements that are targeted at you. The following is advertising that are personal to my searches and preferences, and demographics created sponsored stories based on recent searches, age, gender, location and preferences and previous interactions.Example type of music, Carlisle, pages liked to do with travelling and authors that I have liked on Facebook.
- In comparison, This is the targeted ads for a 25 year old male with hobbies in outdoor sports, technology and mountain biking which is identifiable when the advertisements are looked at. Login to your own personal facebook page and follow this link to see ads targeted to your demographic https://www.facebook.com/ads/adboard/?type=stories. This allows for research to be gained on demographics.
- Linked in the largest professional network with over 200 million members in over 200 countries. Linked-In is a social networking site that is aimed at professionals, with a steady growth rate with two new members signing up every second and is based upon the six degrees of separation with linkedin having 1st degree connections which are immediate connections and 2nd degree connections to your first degree connections. It is a network that helps to build relationships on the basis of the fundamental, with the use of recommendations, referrals and introductions. Linkedin offers both company and personal pages, with more that 2.6 million companies having Linked-In Company Pages. Company Pages allow for a brief about us section, skills to be added as well displaying all staff members that are listed within the company,Source:http://www.slideshare.net/punchmedia/linkedin-statistics-2013
- When using Linked-In for business to business social media marketing, a few considerations to enhance effectiveness are;Create adverts to draw attention to your company page, or your professional pageWhen you think it could benefit your business, ask your contacts for introductions to their contacts.Endorsing other people skills adds creditability to their profile, and they may endorse your skills back. Professional photo which allows for instant recognition, you should use the same headshot across all of your professional platforms. It helps with your personal branding.Things to share on Linked-In should be a mix of third party articles, company blog posts, links to e-books and webinars, employee information and other content appropriate for your LinkedIn audience.The main thing to do for lead gen is to make sure you are providing compelling offers with calls-to-action so prospects can become leads for your B2B company.
- Around 71% of businesses never use Pinterest, even though traffic to the site has doubled since mid-2012. In fact, Pinterest now has more than 20 million users and it is growing year-on-year.Pinterest can be successful for certain types of businesses. Businesses that are successful tend to be online retailers, arts and crafts, creative industries and people sharing infographics. When pinning images there is an etiquette when using which is to be respectful, be yourself, give credit to the sources of the image, stay alert and let pinterest know of any misconduct. Becoming a sociable pinner can be beneficial. If you “like” a lot of images, comment and re-pin images, you can gain higher exposure and hopefully, increased traffic to your profile. When people visit your page, have a Pin It! button ready so that they can like and share your content with others.Reference: http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/blog/2013/02/how-market-your-business-pinterest
- Pining Principles - http://business.pinterest.com/pinning-principles/
- Google+ is a recent social networking site however it is important to consider a presence on in terms of SEO. Verifying and linking your site with Google+ can booth authenticity and quality. With Google placing a increasing huge emphasis on linking sites to Google+ pages as a sign of quality and intends to give verified sites higher ranking. With Google+ it is important to consider your audience and who you are targeting the right messages to. As segmentation can be conducted to the different followers within circles. For examples, manufacturers, clients, friends, potential customers etc. Therefore in terms of seo it can allow for a verified search listing and authority. Google+ is unique in the way that it allows for a different form of communication as you can conduct hangouts which is like a video conference with your followers, and establish a community.Google+ offers a number of features expected to push it further ahead in popularity, including the recently launched Communities groups, in which interest groups can be created to share and discuss content to interested users, while its Google Hangouts feature allows free video conferencing for up to 10 people - something Skype charges for - and enables live streaming of conferences for others to view.http://mashable.com/2011/12/21/google-plus-brand-strategy/
- When using social media it’s important to consider good and bad practice, as an exercise here today I would like everyone to think back on past experiences, the way they use social media or maybe even an article you have read that maybe relevant. I would like everyone to note down one do and one don’t of how to use social media, things to consider when posting or things that you feel are best and not best practice.
- Multi channel or also referred to as integrated marketing are important as Marketing plans that lack an integrated strategy tend to deploy the same message across all channels, or worse, different messages and offers for each channel. Both approaches contribute to an inconsistent customer experience. Add to the mix poor communication between groups, and you have the recipe for an inconsistent customer experience.It is important that you are creating the write messages to your audience, as your audience may be different on different networks. It is how you manage the cross-over and integrating them successfully. A metric is to consider all the touch points, by identifying all the points of contact you have with your audience. Finding out your target audience on each network and catering messages effectively towards that. Collaboration is encouraged on different networks, with many example encourage their varying audiences to participate in other networks whether that be as simple as encouraging your twitter audience to follow on twitter compared to getting your twitter audience to enter a pinterest competition and share it on facebook when done.
- A successful example of an intergrated marketing strategy was Moby launched his new album Destroyed via a microsite that employs Soundcloud and Instagram. Destroyed is visualized as an album/photo book, featuring photos from Moby’s tours (on which he wrote the album). Tracks from the album play upon your arrival at the site, with the full album available for streaming via Soundcloud‘. There’s also a participatory story-telling angle: a map is ‘pinned’ with Moby’s photos across various locations, while fans can add their own via Instagram and a #destroyed tag.
- Cadbury’s use of social media has been very successful and real shift from their traditional marketing with the of Facebook and Google+ for product launches, as well as its shift away from traditional media thanks to its success in social media.Therefore I thought it would be interesting take a closer look at how the brand uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.Facebook - Cadbury established separate Facebook pages for each of its most popular products, including Dairy Milk, Wispa, Crème Egg, Bourneville and Hot Chocolate. Each one publishes its own content and competitions making it difficult to condense it all into a single blog post, so I'll just focus on the key highlights.The first thing to note is that all the pages are updated on a daily basis with brand-related content, ranging from straightforward product promotions to recipe ideas. In general each post attracts thousands of likes and tens of comments, which the social team does a good job of responding to.Cadbury clearly sees value in maintaining an active Facebook presence and interacting with customers, probably because it has already achieved a great deal of success in nurturing its fans as brand advocates.Looking specifically at the Dairy Milk page, most of the content is currently about promoting the Joyville brand with a strong focus on its competition to find a ‘Joyville Taster’. The winner receives a trip to the Cadbury factory, a year’s supply of Dairy Milk and the chance to be the first to taste new products.Twitter - As with Facebook, Cadbury has established separate Twitter feeds for it different products, but unfortunately it hasn’t achieved the same amount of success.The main corporate account has more than 130,000 followers, far more than any of the product-specific feeds, and tweets upwards of 20 times per day. However most of tweets are either repurposed from Facebook or are retweets of other users that have mentioned the brand. The social team do occasionally respond to @mentions, but these appear to make up a small proportion of the activity.The Dairy Milk (31,000 followers) and Wispa (6,000 followers) feeds are much the same, with repurposed content and retweets making up a majority of the activity. Furthermore, unlike a number of other consumer brands that I’ve looked at, Cadbury doesn’t attempt to provide customer service on Twitter. Instead it includes a link to the customer service contact information in its bio.Pinterest- Cadbury UK has been running a Pinterest board for more than a year now, but its level of commitment has been somewhat lacking. It has created just five boards and pinned a grand total of 116 images. Thankfully Cadbury hasn’t fallen into the usual trap of only pinning its own content, however its difficult to see what the social team is hoping to achieve by maintaining this accountThe latest board is definitely the most attractive and includes a range of images showing recipe ideas that use Cadbury products. But overall the account is largely inactive and I can’t imagine it yields any positive results for the brand.Google+ - Cadburys have embraced Google+ and it posts several updates a day, much of which is repurposed from other platforms though it seems some of the content is unique to this platform.The chocolate brand was an early adopter of G+ and last year. Cadbury has hosted several hangouts in the past 12 months, including one to celebrate reaching 500,000 followers and another to let its community ask questions to Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington. At the minute much of the content is focused around its recipe for Crème Egg brownies, which also links into its Cakes and Baking Community.Source: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/62382-how-cadbury-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google?utm_medium=email&utm_source=daily_pulse
- As with Facebook, Cadbury has established separate Twitter feeds for it different products, but unfortunately it hasn’t achieved the same amount of success.However most of tweets are either repurposed from Facebook or are retweets of other users that have mentioned the brand.
- Kendal Calling is an award-winning, innovative, independent festival based in the Lake District. It features pioneering contemporary music and art alongside traditional rural entertainment. We pride ourselves on being the most fun you can have in the countryside with fields full of activities and attractions for everyone, from families to stag parties!http://statigr.am/viewer.php#/user/204883660/http://www.kendalcalling.co.uk/
- Using #naturalscotland on Instagram as part of a photography competition. Additionally used on Facebook to display images to allow for sharing of the Images.https://www.facebook.com/visitscotland/app_475190179199916
- Social Media has developed and grown rapidly over the last few years, presenting many opportunities and challenges for businesses online. With the instant communication that social media allows for content can be shared and viewed in a matter of seconds. Content needs to be carefully planned and considered to ensure that it is consistent with brand values, brand personality and relevant as the information can be viewed so instantly. A few organisation over the past year have had to overcome the challenge of the virality of information, an example is Tesco, after the horsemeat scandal a schedule tweet was issued from the customer service which caused an anger from followers and the tweet was viral with the hashtag trending and negative press received. This example indicated that the virality of information must be considered as when content is shared, it has the potential to be viewed so information must be well-thought out.Social media has also presented a whole new avenue of marketing, with social media being a huge Integration of daily life, with mobile and tablet users and the number of hours spent online on the network. With interaction on social media being a daily component of peoples day to day activities it is a prime opportunity to connect with new and existing customers and utlise in marketing. Privacy and Security – remains a challenge for social media users with hacking and fake profiles etc. An example was when US major fast food company Burger King were hacked by someone pretending to be mcdonalds. Other instances include when users are hacked and Direct Mails are sent to there follower list to link through to a spam site. A Challenge that is often presented for businesses when using social media as part of their marketing strategy is that Return on Investment can be hard to measure – however this challenge can be overcome by setting up the correct goals and targets and having benchmarks to compare too. By setting up social analytics within google analytics or having personal targets on number of followers, engagement levels etc. Social media sites are constantly updating, adding new features and adapting to further technology. This can present new opportunities for businesses to cater to these changes. An example is Facebook Graph Search – how to network to consider it?
- Negative Communication is another challenge that social media presents, as social media presents an opportunity for people to say whatever they like, and in Facebook terms “what is on their mind”.. A recommendation is to have a strategy or plan in mind to deal with negative feedback on twitter. As a quick task, I would like for you to imagine that you work for a retailer who sells products online, and uses a thirdparty distribution channel. This tweet was sent and mentioned your organisation, the tweet had already been retweeted several times – how would you ideally respond?
- SEO - using keyword relevant to your organisation and words that you think you should be competing for and listed within, Especially in blog posts and most certainly within the titles of blog posts. Creating back links to the site is also important from the content - which can be done by the encouragement of sharing. Employee sharing by providing a pre-created tweet which will then reach a larger audience. Naming social media profiles properly - profile description is effective and details what the organisation does, add website address to link to the site and appropriate landing page and also include location. 1.Keyword StrategyThe keywords used within written content is important to consider. It is recommended to have a keyword strategy in place, using the best keywords for your company, industry and market and make sure your written content contains these words. Having a list of keywords and implementing these keywords effectively whether that be in tweets, facebook posts and especially in blog posts and most certainly within the titles of blog posts, will allow for the SEO listings to be relevant to the keywords used. 2. BacklinksWhen creating content on social networking sites ensure that is shareable, and encourage users to share via social networks such as retweeting therefore creating natural and organic backlinks to the site. Creating backlinks to content will add credibility, increase site traffic and visibility of your posts.3.Employee Sharing Wherever you can – share your social media links.. If you have a few employees working for you, make it compulsory for them to share your tweets, videos, posts and updates via their social networks. By doing so, it is increasing backlinks and online exposure. 4.Profile NamingOptimise all the social profile descriptions regularly to ensure that it is effective and details what your organisation does, add your website address to link to the site and appropriate landing page and also include location. If you’re listed in any directories ensure to fill out the fields related to social media accounts. 5. Link with your WebsitePlace Social Media Icons or widgets on the Homepage of your website as the more links that you have to your content – whether this is from your blog, LinkedIn, Twitter or Pinterest – the more online exposure you will gain. Following each Social Media channel's instructions on verifying and linking your site with them will boost authenticity and quality.
- When using social media consider your unique selling point and utilise that through your content, and posts.Although there is many social networking sites, and they all have different advantages, and it can be tempting to create profiles on all. However consider what you have time to manage. Also identify where your customers are and go where they go. Example, Hydrant and Twitter.Negative Feedback, if you do receive negative feedback ensure that you handle it effectively, and have a response in mind to respond. Do not ignore, handle your customer communication.Search Engine Optimisation – optimise what keywords you are using – include within your content, titles etc. Multi- channel – use and cross over your social networking sites to utilise the benefits of a multi-channel strategy. Therefore when planning your marketing campaigns consider how you can incorporate using various accounts.Not every social network is for every business and you need to determine where you will get the best results. The biggest suggestion I have is to stop wasting time on things that aren’t working and come up with a plan to use social media that aligns with your businesses’ unique goals.
- Many businesses believe their strategy is to post once a day to Twitter and Facebook, but your strategy must be more comprehensive than this. If you want to have results with social media then you will need to determine the goals and objectives you’d like to achieve and ensure that you have a plan in place to achieve them.
- A Digital Strategy can effect and enhance every corner of your organisation. So it is important to set out specific, measurable goals before you begin, enabling you to evaluate just how much you have achieved at the end of the project. Organisations can build communities within Social networks in various different ways, but effective techniques include delivering engaging content, specials offers, news or competitions and encouraging sharing and virality. A strategy for social media needs to be consistent and relevant, keeping audiences interested and involved. The following objectives are examples of what you may be aiming to achieve with your strategy, and these are important to firstly set out and planning your strategy around. Develop brand/ product/ services awarenessBuild audience/ customer baseEducate audience/ customer baseUnderstand more about your audience/ customer baseIncrease reputationProtect your organisation from legal and administrative penalties in a digital ageFocusing on your ultimate goal will guide your next steps:what you do (what channels you will use)when you do it (what schedule you will aim for)what content you’ll share (blogs, images, testimonials, webinars etc.).
- Break down the strategy into four components which are:Most importantly Planning and Analysis, Big Idea & Campaign, Making it happen and Conclusion
- Where do we want to be?What do you want to do with your social media – Establish Loyalty, Customer Relationships, New CustomersWhat is the purpose of your content – engage, reply, inform…Who are your Customers/Audience? - Firstly to start, think about who your customers are, and who your customers are online. This is your online audience. Break down your audience into their behaviour online (how often they tweet, do they engage in your communication?). The Business, Brand, Industry and Unique offering – Consider your business, your brand, and the industry sector that you are within. What is your unique offering in all three and how does differentiate from competitors. Can you adapt this to your social media activity? What is the unique factor that you can apply when you are sharing content.Market Trends – Think about market trends within your industry and online, are you adapting your communications to market trends and changes? For example, Facebook graph search – are you optimising your content to suit these market trends. Or on twitter are you engaging in market trends by using trending hashtags to engage within the trends.KPIS – As part of this stage of developing your strategy, the main part is consider where you want to be with your social media. This can be done by establish benchmarks, Key Performance Indicators and Return on investment on both financial aspects and for audience engagement. The goals set should be for:Digital – Traffic levels, increased numbers of site traffic, engagement levels.Business – Business aims – the aims and goals of your marketing. Example, raise awareness of services available core to the businessOperational – goals of what you aim to achieve, how you will do some and management KPI’sFinancial – Return on Investment, conversions and financial targetsEngagement – whether this be engagement levels, aims for number of shares, likes, RT’sTeam – involvement, number of hours dedicatedCreative – whether this be the type of content you share, creativity of content.Competitor Analysis - What are you competitors doing? How are they engaging with their audience? What is there persona online? Identify one competitor and look at their social media channels to see what they are doing differently. Internal Capabilities and Resources – Be realistic at your situation, do you have the internal capabilities to manage 5 social media sites? Choose what works and use the resources that suit you and think about what one gets most engagement and works for your organisation.
- Digital Customer and Audience Strategy: Understanding the buying and decision making behaviour of your customers, clients or target audiences is essential and involves considerable invested research and planning. In stages, the following process defines the digital strategy for your customer and audience:Existing customer and audienceDefine their demographics, purchase history, behaviour online and social media activityDefine methods in researching email, mobile numbers and other personal dataNew customers in current demographic:Define demographicsSet measurable goals for growing customer baseSet measurable goals for growing Social Media likers and followersNew customers in new demographics:Define strategy for how to reach and grow new locations, new age groups, new socio economic sectors, global etc.Implement the initiatives to gain Key Influencers/ Brand Ambassadors.Research studies: Plan research and analysis of the customer and put the information to use.Prioritised list of customer segments and which customers are more likely to deliver the aims of the Digital Strategy.
- Set goalsWhat are your reasons for creating the page? You can use your page to do many things, such as find new customers, build your brand and relationships with current customers, promote events and special offers, communicate with internal teams, and much more. Whatever your goals are, it’s helpful to be detailed and specific so you can devise an actionable plan for reaching these goals.KPIS – As part of this stage of developing your strategy, the main part is consider where you want to be with your social media. This can be done by establish benchmarks, Key Performance Indicators and Return on investment on both financial aspects and for audience engagement. The goals set should be for:Digital – Traffic levels, increased numbers of site traffic, engagement levels.Business – Business aims – the aims and goals of your marketing. Example, raise awareness of services available core to the businessOperational – goals of what you aim to achieve, how you will do some and management KPI’sFinancial – Return on Investment, conversions and financial targetsEngagement – whether this be engagement levels, aims for number of shares, likes, RT’sTeam – involvement, number of hours dedicatedCreative – whether this be the type of content you share, creativity of content.
- Big Idea and Campaign is what you are including in your strategy and the part where it is coming up with the content, ideas and tactics to how you will achieve your objectives and strategy. Once you have a few goals in mind, think about your customer and what kind of things they want to see from you. What will get them excited? What will keep them engaged? To get you started here are some ideas: post images and videos, host Hangouts, share exclusive deals or give a behind-the-scenes tour. Check out the Tips and Strategies Guide for more ways to engage your following.Firstly brainstorm for creative ideas of what campaigns you will conduct, what you want to achieve and how you will do this. This involves identifying each channel and a plan for each, rather than a broad strategy. This is how you will achieve your set objectives. What is your target marketing, and how will you segment to reach your audienceUSP – What is yours and how to apply that to yours content?Create a timeline of your campaign and kpis throughout so you can measure and benchmark the results.Set up analysis, reporting and measuring procedures for the campaigns.
- For planning activities and breaking it down into an actionable plan,This is an example of an action plan that we conduct in Hydrant. The action plan includes action type, priority, details, frequency, metrics, time and tactics. Within the displayed example, this is one of the actions that is to like pages on the behalf of the business page. The priority for this task is low however the objective is to like 2 new relevant pages per week. This will take an estimated time of 10 minutes per week and will be measured on the number of likes increasing. The means to conduct this action is using both Facebook and Internet search.
- Mark your calendarTake out your calendar and decide how often and what type of content you want to post each day. Plan it out and write it down. We recommend posting at least every other day so your business stays top of mind and your followers have fresh content to keep them engaged. It’s also important not to post all your content at once to avoid overwhelming your follower
- Making it happen is implementing your strategy. Monitor and Reporting - Once your strategy is in place, It is vital that it is being regularly monitored, reviewed to ensure that set objectives and targets are achieved.To measure and be able to report on your social media strategy, Key Performance Indicators need to be set and objectives, whether this be the number of likes over a certain period. If these targets are not being achieved, actions can be conducted to re-adapt campaigns to make more achievable or you may find that the targets are achievable.Ensure that either the person created the strategy, responsible for marketing etc is reporting and measuring on social media activity, and it is the dedicated responsibility of an individual to make sure that the task is being completed.
- Implementing your strategy requires people to manage and report, which can be done by assigning responsibilities. If you are conducting your social media in house then it requires you to consider having social media policies in place. Social media policies are a legal contract that permits your staff to comply with organisational rules in association with social media, the right to monitor activity, and to restrict from employees from destroying the online brand reputation whether that be through business and personal pages. When there is more than one staff member contributing to content, ensure that there is a collective voice which is ensuring consistency between various contributors. This is in regard to having the same tone, same text style and displaying same personality. For some staff members, if social media is part of their job or if a staff profile is a requirement then employee training may be required or recommended in some cases to ensure that its managed effectively.
- Developing a Digital Strategy Evaluation: Evaluation is crucial to success and one overriding question must be answered - how much has your organisation benefited from the process? To fully assess this, you need to ask several key questions:Did the strategy exceed the goals?What were the unexpected benefits?What was learnt over the course of the putting actually going live with the Digital Strategy?Can you take learnings for the next cycle?What is the Financial evaluation of the strategy?What were the Key Performance Indicators?What is the value of the KPI’s?Audience engagement evaluation:Has your target audience been educated?Has the audience been moved to purchase?Has a new audience been introduced to the brand?Engagement:Touch points - which ones were successful?Which audience segment engaged with the campaign the most? And were they the priority audience segment that were defined as more likely to deliver the aims in the planning stage of the Digital Strategy?What involvement was required to engage?What is the value of engagement in relation to the goals?
- When reporting and tracking analytics to measure and report on social media – tools that can be used are.
- Aswell as a social media strategy for your business, you may have an accompanying strategy or find that another strategy is appropriate for planning your activities. A content strategy is analysing the purpose of your content, and figuring out what you are trying to achieve. I define it as the mindset, culture and approach to delivering your customer’s information needs in all the places they are searching for it, across each stage of the buying process. It is a strategic approach to managing content as an asset, with a quantifiable ROI. Therefore it is how you write, produce and place your content to gain quantifiable ROI.Marketing Strategy – is the strategy that you may have in place for your organisation, whether this be campaigns, over-arching objectives. Mainly focused on ways to increase sales, or gaining a competitive advantageAn SEO Keyword Strategy is a technique for determining the keywords that you should target with your SEO efforts. By performing a series of SEO keyword research and analysis steps, you can identify the keywords that will provide the best return on your investment. By targeting your SEO efforts toward keywords that provide the most attractive return, you can maximize your SEO spend. For example, an SEO strategy might tell a furniture store that the keyword side tableis a better bet than coffee table because it has more traffic, each visitor results in more profit, and the competition is lower.An editorial calendar is used by bloggers, publishers, businesses, and groups to control publication of content across different media, for example, newspaper, magazine, blog, email newsletters, and social media outlets. They are an extremely efficient way to control publication of content across diverse media outlets over time, so you know what to post, when and wear and this is measured. This may be as simple as creating a calendar.Resources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2012/09/18/what-is-a-content-strategy-and-why-do-you-need-it/http://www.seomap.com/seo/keyword-strategy/
- American Express – Pay by Tweet http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/12/twitter-american-express-pay-by-tweet Instagram Example - http://destroyed.moby.com/#
- http://ds.hydrant.co.uk/