The Real Science of Social Media: Fear & Experimentation [Tech Talks 2017]

Sarah A. Parker
The Real Science of Social Media:
Fear and Experimentation

Sarah A. Parker @SparkerWorks
Sarah A. Parker
Social Media Manager
@ Union Metrics

What’s the biggest barrier to social media
success?
Fear holds most brands back.

What kind of fear?
• Fear of the unknown
• Loss of control over aspects of brand management
• Fear that something will go wrong
• Fear that audience will reject or ignore them

Brands have to strike a delicate balance
to reach their audience; connecting
without coming across as inauthentic.
You want to relate to your customers but you don’t want to be
patronizing.

Don’t be a “Brand who says bae”
Consumers do not like inauthentic
attempts at connection and
they WILL call you out on it.

You can’t pretend to get it.
You have to actually get it.
(Or hire someone who does.)

What should brands do on
social media?

• Establish social goals that tie back to business goals and brand values
• Write a style guide that reflects brand personality and values
• Hire someone trusted to communicate the above
• Give that person room to work within established guidelines

Establish social goals that tie back to business goals &
brand values
• What are your established brand values? Consumers increasingly
want to do business with brands with similar values to their own.
• What is your brand voice? Write down its parameters in a document
or documents readily available to relevant team members
• Have your short-term (quarterly, etc) goals operate within and reinforce
these parameters

Founder’s Brewing brand values

Union Metrics brand values

Write a style guide that reflects brand personality & values
• This will save you from a lot of potential social media mishaps
• Establish ahead of time if your brand is:
• Snarky in certain circumstances, or never snarky
• Uses slang or even contractions
• Identifies the team member speaking
• References pop culture or memes, uses memes, GIFs or emojis
• Etc

Hire someone trusted to communicate these values in this
voice
• What qualities are important in a social media manager?
• Writing/communication skills
• Ability to work under pressure
• Patience for tedious tasks
• Basic working knowledge of pop culture is a bonus
• Don’t just throw social media management at your intern; you’re giving
this person your brand’s reputation to manage in real-time

Give your Social Media Manager room to work
• The documents your team has created and approved serve to
establish the parameters and guidelines your team will operate within
• Have a hierarchy attached to those documents for content approval,
especially during a social media crisis
• (You have a social media crisis communication plan, right?)

Social media mishap: United + leggings

Social media apology: DiGornio Pizza

Social media humorous deescalation: Red Cross

Let’s talk about measurement.

What should you measure?
• Spoiler: There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. What you measure will differ based
on your current AND ongoing goals for each platform.
• BUT, with that said, here are the 5 KPIs we* recommend marketers start with:
• Mentions: Track them across platforms
• Reach: Knowing the size of your audience gives you context
• Amplification engagement: Who’s spreading your message?
• Conversational engagement: Who’s regularly engaging with your brand?
• Share of voice: Where do you stand in your industry?
*Union Metrics

Mentions
• Mentions of your official account handles across platforms, plus
• Brand keywords
• Branded hashtags
• Include all platforms relevant to your brand

Reach
• Potential reach vs. actual reach: Know the size of your potential
audience vs. who you’re reaching now
• Pay attention to paid, earned and owned content
• Knowing the size of your audience helps you contextualize all other
metrics

Amplification engagement
• More of a commitment than conversational engagement
• Thinks retweets with comments, regrams, etc
• Think across platforms
• Are some channels getting more engagement than others?

Conversational engagement
• Doesn’t spread your content to new audiences, but is still important
• Think replies, comments, etc
• Helps identify brand advocates
• High conversational engagement indicates a strong online community

Share of voice
• You vs. your competitors in your industry
• It’s okay to start with a small share of voice
• Pay attention to growth or decline over time
• Decline over time vs. your competitors is a red flag that something is
wrong with your strategy

How to choose an analytics provider
• Be honest about your needs and your budget
• Choose a provider who can scale with both
• Ask what their data sources are (and confirm what they say)
• Be sure they comply with platform TOS (you don’t want them to get
shut down and disappear with your data)
• Combine insight from paid analytics with native analytics provided by
platforms + any free tools you use for maximum insight

And now for that “real” science:
Experimentation.

What do you mean by experimentation?
• Experiments are about testing an idea without a guaranteed outcome
(that can be scary because you’re not in full control)
• That’s why you’ve established parameters to work within and a
measurement system (compare results to baseline)
• So here’s the key: Leave room in your established strategy to try
new things and have a way to measure results
• Test a new platform, especially if your audience is on it
• Test a new content format (video, branded GIFs, etc)
• Have FUN with it. Your audience will be able to tell!

And here’s the really important thing:
It’s okay if you fail.
(Really. As long as you learn from it.)

Got questions?
Sarah A. Parker
@SparkerWorks

The Real Science of Social Media: Fear & Experimentation [Tech Talks 2017]

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