This document provides guidance on creating an effective social media strategy. It recommends determining your goals, target audience, and the best platforms to engage them. Content should be tailored to the audience and a calendar created. Metrics like engagement and follower growth should be used to evaluate success. Customer service is important across all platforms to build advocacy. A mix of content types from different sources should be shared while maintaining relevance and quality. Tools can help manage profiles and measure results.

1. Creating a Social Site Strategy
Brought to you by Carole Smith, SynNeo
www.synneo.ie

2. Strategy – A Definition
 A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or
overall aim.
 A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired
future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a
problem.

3. What Do You Want to Achieve?

4. Who/Where is Your Target Audience?
 Facebook: Older audience where images and videos work well.
Ideal if you’re a B2C business
 Twitter: Integrated into the customer service offering from many
brands including utilities, phones, and banks.
 Google+: Still finding it’s way but starting to build up a keen following
 Pinterest: Primarily female . Great if your business is visual e.g.
Jewellery, travel, clothes.
 Instagram: Younger, audience 18-30, very visual platform
 Vine: 6-second video that you can share on Facebook and Twitter.
 LinkedIn: Very powerful professional networking tool and ideal if a
B2B business

5. What Works?
Do the research
Find out which tactics are being used by your
competitors e.g.
How often are they posting on...
 Twitter
 Facebook
 Instagram
 LinkedIn
The posts/tweets that gets the most engagement
Aim to Emulate the Best!

6. Determine Your Content
 And target it to your audience

7. Create a Content Calendar

8. How Will You Communicate?
Existing Clients New Clients
Email Facebook Ads
Phone Google Ads
In-store Website
Social Sites Newspaper
Events Social Sites

9. Set Some Goals
• Be specific e.g. more fans on social sites
• Create goals around available resource/skills/budget
• Determine a date to achieve your goal
• Evaluate progress and review tactics if they’re not
working

10. Without goals in
place, you have
no way of
measuring
performance

11. Growing Your Facebook Audience
Tell people you’re on Facebook!
 Put a Facebook icon/link on your website
 Add a link to your email signature
 Have all flyers/newspaper ads/newsletters
clearly show a link to your Facebook page
 Introduce a Facebook customer loyalty programme
 Encourage check-ins / reviews / testimonials
 Create an advocacy programme with staff

12. The Power of Referral

13. Quick Tips for Growing Fans
 Facebook
 Emoticons increase comments by 33%
 A post including a question increases comments by 100%
 A post with a photo gets 39% more interaction
 Twitter
 Post engaging images as they’ll pop out more in a busy
Twitter feed
 Post tips/news from your industry/relevant quotes

14. Different Tactics – Different Results
Drive sales
Drive traffic to a website

15. Brand Sharing Tactics
Alaska Airlines
are using their
napkins to get
people sharing
about their brand

16. Topical Tactics

17. Humour & Personality Works Too!

18. Organic Strategies
Create engaging content
Use visually appealing images to provoke an
emotional
response
Offer a quality online customer service
Quit the hard-sell

19.  Keep to the 70/20/10 rule
 70% of your content is brand- and business-building
which means sharing information that is valuable to
your followers. Content shared from other sources
makes up 20% with the remaining 10% self-promotional.
If the best you can do is continually post
‘Specials’ e.g. Turkey from €X, you are not
offering fans a good user experience
Engagement Leads to Conversion
Not another
special offer!

20. Customer Service – Be Socially Devoted
 If someone posts on your Facebook page or PMs you,
respond – quickly
 If someone tweets using your Twitter
handle, respond – quickly
No one likes to be ignored
Average response time on Facebook is 19 hours –
customer expects a response within 30 minutes

21. How Do You Handle It?
First learn how to use your chosen platform so you are
tracking incoming messages and posts about your
company
View negative feedback as an opportunity to show off your
customer care online
Take a breath before responding, offer to fix the problem,
and request the user PM/DM contact details and try to
take the matter offline
Negative Feedback Strategy

22. Recommended Social Site Tools
 Hootsuite
 Social Site Management Tool / 1 Dashboard for managing all
your social sites (Free)
 Post Planner
 Scheduler, some targeting and offers status suggestions (Free
entry plan)
 Likealyzer
 Facebook page analyser which offers tips on how to improve
your brand page (Free)

23. How to measure
success
•Increased traffic to your website
•Growing email database
•More foot fall into your shop
•Boost in revenue

24. https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaCoachI
E
https://twitter.com/CaroleSmith_
http://ie.linkedin.com/in/synneocarolesmith
http://www.synneo.ie/