Social Media is no longer just a new way to do marketing or a fun way to interact with customers - it's quickly becoming the only way to do marketing and a critical element of any business' communications strategy. Based on feedback from PARISOMA members, this is an intermediate level class designed to: Explore the unique opportunities and limitations of major social networking sites Discuss the use of various social networks for marketing, customer feedback, networking, and recruiting Learn how to develop a cross-network communications strategy, including influencer outreach Learn how to develop top-performing posts & tweets Understand how measuring your social media performance is key to success Networks covered include: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, and blogs

1. Social Business
December 2013
Jennifer Lashua
@runningjen
#PARISOMASM
1

2. Questions? Comments?
Tweet after the class:
#PARISOMASM
@runningjen

3. Agenda
Introductions
Why Social Media for Business
Finding Your Audience
Network by network - opportunities and limitations
Developing a cross-network comms strategy
Crafting top-performing posts & tweets
Measurement & Analysis
Q&A
3

4. Intro‘s
Who you are
Your business or idea (case studies needed!)
The last thing you posted or tweeted before coming into the room
4

5. Social Business
Integration of social media across all parts of a business
Marketing
PR
HR
Recruiting
Research
Product
Development
Customer
Service
Sales
Business
Operations
Finance
5

6. Why Social Business?
1. Be present where your audiences live & spend time
2. Listen & learn, gain insights
3. Communicate directly (2-way) with customers, future business partners, potential
employees
4. Create brand advocates
5. Humanize your brand
6. Build long lasting relationships
7. Share your passion and let others share with you
8. Communicate efficiently and effectively
9. Close the feedback loop by extending customer service
10.Increase SEO, and harnessing keywords and linking

7. Finding your Audience
7

8. Finding your Audience
Clearly identify the audience(s) you want to reach
• Be very specific
• It‘s OK to have more than one  means multiple strategies & targeted
messages
• Use example personas
Knowing your audience will help you find them on social networks
Speak to individuals rather than a crowd
8

9. Activity: Audiences
•
Who are the audiences you want to reach?
•
Describe each as distinctly and completely as possible
•
Explain why they‘re important to you
•
Use real people examples (personas) where possible
Example:
Consumer Marie – 34-yo married mother with young children, lives in a southeast US city
suburb. Mid to high annual income. Doesn‘t work outside the home but volunteers
frequently. Has a laptop purchased 5 .years ago and an iPad the kids play with. Shops
primarily online and in big box retail stores. Always looks for bargains but will spend $ if
there‘s value to her & her family.
 She matters because: She likely needs a new computer, and has income to purchase
one.
9

10. Social Networks
10

11. • Basics
•
 Providing a ―landing spot‖ for people to reach you
 Most widely-used social network in the US and
globally
 Reaching a mainstream audience
 Targeting specific audiences
 Demographics are broad, mainstream
 Photo & video sharing, article links, events, post
targeting
What it‘s good for
•
What it‘s not as good for
 Joining existing conversations
 >50% of users are accessing via mobile phone, est
75% by end of 2014
 Uber-real-time
 Means to create a community & 2-way dialogue via
post conversation and timeline posts; however…
 Note, spam will be an issue. Be ready to monitor, have
clearly defined Rules of Engagement.
 Vast majority of fans will never visit a brand‘s
timeline, engage solely via newsfeed posts & ads
• Advertising
 Available to anyone; Very prevalent on browser &
mobile
 Estimated 16% (less?) fans see an unadvertised
post
 Customer service
•
Content tips
 Use more images, fewer words
 Design for mobile
 If using video, upload natively rather than linking to
YouTube
 Hashtags – TBD
 Post once a day (more/less)
 Engage with your fans & other pages

12. •
• Basics

 High mobile use
• Advertising
 Available to brands & individual users
 Capped exposure, providing less intrusion to users
 Many types of promoted tweets; also possible to
purchase promoted trends
 Can significantly increase followers and # people
who see tweets (impressions)
Customer service
What it‘s not as good for

•
Reaching the largest mainstream audience

 Extremely real-time
 Public conversations
1:1 dialogue

•
Starting conversations and joining existing

 Active users are very active
Real time communication & information

 Fewer users than Facebook, but growing quickly
 High use associated with events – sporting events,
world events, and as second screen.
What it‘s good for
Tweet targeting (not possible w/o advertising spend)
Content tips

Use fewer than 140 char (100-120 is ideal)

KISS – more hashtags isn‘t always a good thing

Images, video, links, text - all work well when used appropriately

Design for mobile

Use hashtags but don‘t overuse

Tweet up to once an hour (as a general rule)

Think ―on the go‖ – people are going somewhere, shopping,
commuting

Engage, engage, engage! Fav, reply, RT

Vine - TBD

13. • Basics
 Visual storytelling
 Primary use scenarios:
 Shopping, planning a wedding/party, home
décor/design, holidays, travel
 Audience skews female
 It‘s about building collections, not for real-time
 Feed AND search based
• Advertising
 Recently made available to some brands
• What it‘s good for
 For products or brands within a target use case –
connecting with people looking for inspiration
 Drive to purchase / reservation
• What it‘s not as good for
 Real-time conversations
 Audience targeting
• Content tips
 Beautiful, inspirational imagery
 Re-pinning frequently and strategically
 Optimize copy & tags – think about how people
search
 Remember the feed
 Content life span is longer – 2-4 wks

14. • Basics
 Widely used across mainstream demographic
(skews young), growing quickly
 Combines two of the most powerful forces within
social technology —mobile and photo sharing.
 Real-time & mobile
 Hashtags are critical
• What it‘s good for
 Location-based or event communications
 Connecting with a young audience
 Visual storytelling
 Joining existing conversations / themes
• What it‘s not as good for
 Feed AND search based
 Audience targeting
 Can effectively cross-post images to Facebook
 1:1 conversations
• Advertising
 Recently made available to some brands
• Content tips
 Share beautiful, inspirational photography & video
 Timliness of content & hashtags is important
 Hashtags are key to discovery

15. • Basics
• What it‘s good for
 More SEO-driver than social network
 Platform offers unique functionality – eg, hangouts,
circles
 Draws a more tech-savvy, social media-savvy
following
• Advertising
 Driving search results to a webpage
or piece of content
 Niche conversations (circles)
• What it‘s not as good for
 Cultivating a community
 Ad opportunities within Google advertising network
―You can think of Google Plus
as Google 2.0…In the new Google,
we know your name, we understand
your circles, and we make every
service better.‖
Vic Gundotra, Google‘s senior VP of
social business at Google
• Content tips
 Share content that‘s key for SEO benefit
 Optimize with links, keywords, visuals
 Long form copy can be effective – blog-like

16. • Basics
 The defacto professional network
 It‘s not just jobs anymore (6X content than job posts)
 Users are here for professional growth and
networking
 Content that makes them smarter, or makes them
look smarter, works
• Advertising
 Many advertising opportunities available including
extensive targeting options based on user profiles
• What it‘s good for
 Developing a presence for a company and
company leaders
 Thought leadership
 Deep, niche content
 Intellectual conversations
 Identifying and nurturing leads (sales, recruiting)
 Connecting with your company employees
• What it‘s not as good for
 ―Fluffy‖ marketing or overt sales
• Content tips
 Use groups and targeted status updates for
audience-targeted content
 Share thoughtful, smart, professional-level content
 Avoid slang, emoticons, etc
 Be informative and useful, not sales-y

17. • Basics
•
What it‘s good for
 The second largest search engine in the world
 Wide range of content performs well on YouTube –
educational, entertaining, utility
 Broad audience demographic
 Serialized content, unfolding a story, multi-part
storytelling
 70/30 International / US
 Hosting content to serve via other networks (ie Twitter)
and embedding into blogs, websites
 YouTube reaches more U.S. adults ages 18-34 than
any cable network
 Content discoverability is key
•
 Poor video quality won‘t work (with few exceptions).
Resources spent on production time and equipment for
proper filming & lighting are good investments
 New focus on subscribers
• Advertising
 Multiple advertising opportunities exist for promoting
content, increased discoverability, ‗guaranteeing‘
views
What it‘s not as good for
•
Content tips
 Searches are specific and often questions – what topics
or questions can your content answer?
 Short content generally performs best. < 2 minutes
 Titles, descriptions and tags are critical for discovery –
spend time optimizing
 Use YouTube‘s tools – annotations, playlists etc

18. • Basics
•
 Creating conversations in long form
 Blogs take many forms from sophisticated, custom
sites to simple templatized platforms
 Sharing point of view, opinion, or education – on behalf
of a brand of a company‘s leadership
 A great way to tell a broader story about your brand,
without as much heavy-lift of a website
 Being the centerpoint of a marketing effort or campaign
– where all the pieces can come together to provide the
complete story
 Audience demographic will depend on how your
SEO-optimize and traffic you send via social & adv
 Demonstrating topic or thought leadership
 Traffic does not come to a blog -> you must drive it
 Sharing complicated content
 Can act as a content archive over time
• Advertising
 Vary by platform/network
What it‘s good for
•
What it‘s not as good for
 Tapping into an existing community (except Tumblr)
•
Content tips
 Determine a traffic-driving plan to ensure readership
 Headlines are critical
 Optimize for SEO

19. Activity: Social Networks
• Which networks are you currently using? Which are providing the greatest
benefit today?
• What are the priority social networks for your target audiences?
• Identify any opportunities to re-prioritize resources
Example:
Marie is likely to be active on Facebook, Pinterest, and possibly Instagram given
her demographic and interests
She may also be reading blogs related to family, children‘s, and health topics
I may want to test communications via these channels and aligned to these topics
to see which networks perform best.
19

20. Content & Editorial
20

21. Who are your favorite
companies, brands, or
organizations to follow on social
media?
21

22. 22

23. Creating an Editorial Strategy
What are my audience‘s pain points? How can I can play a role in solving?
What is my audience interested in today? How can I participate in that
conversation?
What I
want to
talk about
What the
audience
wants to
hear
about
23

24. Why brands should tell stories
The brands that are able to forge connections with their customers are the ones who
are the most gifted storytellers.
The best stories empower and motivate audiences. Capture hearts and minds.
The best stories embody purpose and relevance. The driving force that
underpins the "why" and builds the connection of why the audience should care.
Focus. Do less. Don't try to "boil the ocean" with your content & message. Instead of
one all-encompassing content strategy, focus specifically on the pain points and
informational needs of customers. Get laser focused.
Excerpts from Joe Pulizzi Why Most Branded Content is Just Awful
and Christel Quek, HBR: How to make your Brand Story
Meaningful

25. Influencers
Range of influencers spans from celebrities … all the way to the ―slightly above average‖ Joe
Compensation models vary with level of influence
Influencers generally want…
They generally don‘t want …
•
Relationships & Commitment
•
To be patronized
•
Service
•
Poor content
•
Stories & Other Social Currency
•
Customers, Fans, Followers
•
Dishonesty
•
Recognition
•
Waste their time
•
Incentives
•
Fun
•
Exclusivity
25

26. Activity: Editorial Approach
What are the 3 things your audience will care most about next year?
Example:
Marie will care about:
1. Providing her kids with every educational opportunity she can
2. Being smart on safety for her family – home environment, food,
transportation, etc
3. Finding time for herself to stay fit
26

27. Social Content Best Practices
27

28. 28

29. Think about mobile first
+18%
+102%
29

30. People like pretty pictures
30

31. Welcome to the TL;DR world
 Read it, understand it, be motivated to take action … in < 1 second
31

32. Commit to posting regularly and refrain from over-posting
Communicate like you‘re speaking to an individual person rather than a group
Be sure you can answer this question before posting : “So what?”
32

33. Measurement & Analysis
33

34. #dataoverload
There‘s [almost] no shortage of data.
Not everyone in the organization wants or needs to understand every datapoint.
The insights are what‘s important.
Don‘t let the data define the insights. Form your questions, then
find the data that can provide answers.
34

35. Define what doesn‘t exist
The WWW is >20 years old. Analytics are mature and well-accepted.
―Social Analytics‖ is multi-faceted, multi-platform, under development.
Different people and organizations have different needs.
Who will use data insights? How?
Define analytics tailored to specific needs.
35

36. 36

37. Question
Data
• What time of day does Intel get maximum engagement on
Facebook posts?
• Facebook insights data comparing posts at different times
of day across 2 quarters
• Measure likes, comments, shares
• Best time identified, to the minute.
Insight
• Facebook community manager adjusts posting schedule
Action

38. 38

39. • How can we efficiently drive traffic to a partner‘s
purchase page?
Question
Data
• # of clicks, # of impressions, Cost Per
Impression, Cost Per Click-through
Insight
• Entertaining lists are effective in meeting the
goals
Action
• Share this list via Intel social networks; replicate
list formats.

40. 40

41. • What factors contribute to a successful tweet?
Question
Data
• Tweet-level data: RTs, fav‘s, @replies
• Parse data by content type, topic, type of hashtags, tweet
length, # of hashtags, day and time of tweet
Insight
• Which types of content, day of week, time of day, tweet
length, number of hashtags perform best.
• There is a repeatable format for success on @Intel.
Action
• Create more tweets reflecting our best practices.
• Use but don‘t over-use top hashtags.

42. 42

43. • Which unique hashtags create maximum social
engagement on Twitter?
Question
Data
• Tweet-level data: RTs, fav‘s, @replies with specified
hashtags
Insight
• Top hashtags are immediately identifiable. Including
certain words and hashtags limits performance.
Action
• Increase use of successful hashtags, limit use of lesssuccessful hashtags or phrases.

44. @runningjen