Tag Archive for: digital pr

Social Media Strategic Plan Template

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Now is the time of year where businesses all over the country are looking forward to the next year and setting goals. You’re social media program should be no different. If you’re like most businesses, you’ll be spending more time on social media next year, so its time to start developing strategy for your social media.

Is it possible to really measure social media and determine ROI? Well, its certainly not impossible. But you will have to do some pre-planning and prep. This is one of those circumstances where the more you put into it up-front, the better your results. I often tell my clients, “Now is the time to set up  to measure. Because someday, you’ll wish you had.” Determining ROI starts with a Social Media Strategic Plan.There are 3 phases to this planning. We’ll discuss two of them today. We’ll cover the third step in another blog post and finally, social media ROI (a.k.a. the Holy Grail) in our third installment. Never fear, you aren’t on your own through this process. We have planning templates to get you started!

I’ll be the first to admit that social media measurement is evolving and slightly awkward still. The industry is still evolving definitive best practices, but that shouldn’t stop you from social media strategic planning.  In fact, the good news is that much of social media measurement calls on some of the very same techniques that marketers have been using for a long time.

But let’s start with the basics. The first step in any kind of marketing measurement is the strategic planning phase.  At its most basic, you’ll take 3 steps to social media measurement: WHY, WHAT, and HOW. Our Social Media Strategic Plan template steps you through the first two: WHY and HOW. Phase one to social media strategic planning may take several hours to complete. If that sounds too overwhelming, consider the amount of time your business will spend on social media and ask yourself the cost of NOT knowing how your efforts are paying off? I suggest breaking it into several short planning sessions if you just can’t do it all at once. The important thing is that you do it.

If you’re already doing strategic planning, but need a nudge on how to measure social media, then this template will help you too.

Also, keep in mind that a platform is NOT a strategy. Twitter is not a strategy. Facebook is not a strategy. Its by determining your goals that you determine metrics, KPI’s then tactics. Platforms are TACTICS. One of the beauty of real social media strategic planning is that it isn’t platform dependent. If Facebook dies tomorrow, you’re strategy shouldn’t change. You’re tactics may change, but not your overall strategy.

First, let’s identify the 3 steps to social media strategy planning.

3 Steps to Social Media Strategy Planning:

The WHY: Identify Objective and Goals:

This is perhaps both the easiest and the most difficult to do. You might be tempted to say “Drive more sales!” but dig a little bit deeper. Go ahead. Do you want to drive sales in a particular region? To a particular audience? The thing with this stage is to be as specific as possible. Being specific makes measurement much, much easier. In the social media strategic plan template, this column is labeled “Goal/Objective.” Be specific, and realistic. Don’t choose so many goals that they will be overwhelming. Remember that you’ll be tracking each of these goals, so choose goals important enough to spend time tracking.

The WHAT: Now identify your metrics.

Metrics will be the tool by which you evaluate success. The key here is to make WHAT you measure consistent with the WHY. For example, if you are measuring leads, the metric might be conversions (email  opt-ins, downloads, registrations, etc.). But if you are measuring awareness, perhaps your metric is more like reach. Get it?

The metric must be quantifiable, otherwise, what will you count? The social media strategic plan template provides a column for “metrics” and even provides you with sample metrics for each sample goal. You can choose to measure track different metrics, just make sure the metrics match the goal. For example, increased followers does not equate directly to more sales, it equates to more reach.

The HOW: Identifying KPI’s.

KPI’s are measured over time. They are also at-a-glance numbers. Usually things like percentages, dollar values, etc. These are the numbers, based on the metrics, which will support the objectives and goals. Our next blog post will go into more detail about KPI’s and provide you some sample KPI’s for metrics.

The final phase of social media strategy planning

But before you move onto the KPI step, its really important that you identify the person responsible for each goal. That person should be reporting on the status of each goal. The Social Media Strategic Plan Template has an area marked “RYG”, for “Red, Yellow or Green.” If the objective/goal is on track to be accomplished by the deadline, its “Green.” If not, it’s “Red.” When its red or yellow, there is space for the corrective action. Corrective action is relevant because its not enough to identify THAT something’s not working, its just as important to FIX it. The simple act of tracking these items helps everyone stay involved in the success of the company. Its amazing what a simple spread sheet can do for a business.

With our social media strategic plan template you can save time and get started today! Best of all – its free! 

Download it here.

Our next blog post will include a template for KPI’s designed for social media. Don’t miss this next blog post, you can get it straight to your email box!

Feel free to email or tweet me with questions on the social media strategic plan!

 

 

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The Hard Questions of Social Media

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While using social media for business purposes has been around for the better part of 5 years now, we’re reaching a place where businesses are starting to ask “what should I be doing with social media?” Its a fair question. After dabbling in Facebook or opening a Twitter account, the next question is often, “what now?” And much of this questioning is driving the conversation for ROI. But before we dig into ROI, its worth asking some of the tough questions about why we’re even talking about social media.

Why Social Media?

Now, you know that I am an advocate for measuring social media, I also think its also time that we ask ourselves what we are really trying to accomplish with social media. What makes social media so special and how can we really achieve business objectives with it? Every single time I meet a new client I ask “Why Social Media?” I purposely ask the question very broadly, but I also usually get the broad answer of “we want to increase sales.” Its an honest answer. But its also the easiest. Without meeting a single client, without a single email, I already know this answer. But its time to dig deeper, I’m suggesting you dig deeper and I’m asking my clients to also. What are some of the questions we should ask ourselves about the social media opportunities before we get started?

What is our impediment to increased sales?

Do we need to create awareness? Do we need to distinguish ourselves from our competition? Do we want to create community? Do we need to drive traffic to a digital or real-life location? Do we have a PR issue to overcome? These are different goals and social media can be used in each case, but its best if we focus on one, at least initially. Depending on the ability for the company to support the objective, we may initially start with one channel. Its best to really narrow this down, because by answering this question as specifically as possible, we also set ourselves on the right track for ROI measurement.

How are we communicating with our audience now?

A strong mailing list is a great start to social media, as is a website  that supports social sharing and perhaps even a blog. If you are a new business, then its all the more important that your website have sharing capabilities and be integrated with social media. And building that email list will probably be one of your social priorities. If you are an existing business, your customers and clients are probably already using social platforms to talk about their experiences with you. Look into those platforms and start building relationships with people who are talking about you-its back to listen first, and then engage.

Who is our online and social audience?

Do we know who influences our audience in social media? There are certain audience segments where people have carved out niches for themselves, particularly in travel, Moms and B2B spaces. Its good to know and follow these people. Social media can help you create a relationship with these people who influence your potential customers. We tread lightly here because we are creating a relationship, not a promotional partnership. We may be choose to partner with influencial people in social media, but let’s start with identifying who they and why our audience is so passionate about them. Listen first. Talk later.

How can we use social media to support existing mediums and marketing channels?

How can we integrate social media into our existing marketing programs: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, social media is the farm not the silo. Don’t let your social media program live in the dark and don’t let your other marketing initiatives live without social media. Integrate! Let it work with the rest of your initiatives. If your using print, let’s find ways to integrate or even measure your print impact. Events and social media go together like two peas in a pod, there are lots of great opportunities for those two to work together. Look for ways to tie in a particular campaign across the board!

Are we ready for social media?

Are we open to a culture shift? Social media is more than a marketing channel, it really is a culture, a different way of looking at communication.

Its more transparent, more human than traditional marketing, its more individualized and very, very much about supporting customers so they can support you. Social media’s transparency requires that you consider how all your departments and staff can benefit from and participate in social media. Incorporating social media throughout the company is a great way to spread the work, and as we move forward, we truly are going to have to embrace the fact that each employee can and should take a role in marketing as so beautifully articulated by this McKinsey Quarterly article. Really ask yourself if there is any reason why your company’s employees shouldn’t be engaging current and potential customers. You hired them because they understand your business, shouldn’t they understand your customers too?

About a year ago I started advising my clients to “Stop Thinking Like a Marketer and Start Thinking Like a Human.” In other words, think about what makes YOU interested in companies and brands. Think about how you would like to be communicated with if you were YOUR customer.  Its hard to get out of our own heads sometimes, but start thinking about what would make you read more. That’s the essence of social media communication.

Are we committed or is this an experiment?

I strongly discourage dropping in and out of social media. Its sort of like not answering your phone…in both cases, it does nothing to create customer trust. If you just aren’t sure that you’re totally ready for social media, grab your handles and domain names on as many social media outlets as you can and leave a post or similar that directs people to the channels that you do monitor (your website for example). Also spend some time monitoring the social web for mentions of your company and products, this may help you understand the places you SHOULD go when you’re ready. BUT-and this is a BOB, big ‘ol but- remember that if you are going to start responding and engaging on social media that you should keep it up and also remember that the time to build community is NOT when you have a crisis, or a new product. You want community in place BEFORE you need them, which means you’ve already created the relationship.

Its really important that we get to the bottom of these hard questions before we leap into social media. You may find that answering these questions is a process of listening, learning and testing. Yes, these questions may unearth other questions, but if we’re to reap the full benefits of social media then we’ve got to plant the right seeds to get there.

QUESTION: What questions would you add to this list? Did you do this when your company started in social media? Please, let me know!

 

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Building Content That Attracts Customers and Clients

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When your building content, you’ve got to remember not to be blinded by the demographics. Sort of. To explain: last we I talked about how you shouldn’t be too blinded by demographics in social media, because, people like to talk to other people, not marketers. Building content that attracts customers and clients is about putting yourself in their shoes.

What to Consider When Building Content

Guess what? The same is true of content. If you’re building content, you should build it to attract the kind of people you want to do business with. I don’t mean the demographics of the audience, I mean the characteristics. Consider what inspires your ideal audience. What brings them into your world and shows that you can relate to them? One of the readers of last week’s post, Gwen, made a salient point: she wants to work with other women-owned businesses, so she supports women businesses in her sharing and tweeting. Not exclusively, but it’s definitely a focus. But what Gwen does very, very well is communicate in a tone that’s likely to attract professional women. She is supportive, positive, and warm in her tweets and engagements. Women are likely to be attracted to that type of communication so she naturally attracts more of the type of business she wants with that tone.

Dress for the customer you want

But again, it isn’t about demographics, its about attracting the type of business you want. Communicate to your potential clients like they communicate with their peers. It’s the same philosophy of dressing for the job you want. It’s one thing to know who your audience IS, it’s another thing to know who you want your audience to BE. Dress for the audience you want. And that’s what we need to think about in our communication with our audience. If you aren’t sure what I mean by that, take a step back, start a listening campaign. Start watching what your ideal customers talk about, what they share and who they share it with. Start tracking your clicks on your posts – which of your posts created action? Which were reshared? You’ll learn a lot from your audience if you dig a little deeper.

When you create content, think about what your ideal customers would like to see and in what format they’d like to see it. By content, I don’t just mean blog posts, and Tweets and Facebook updates, I mean all content. Content can be expensive to make, so make it worth your while. Consider companies who are creating infographics. They know that infographics are easy to read quickly and easy to share: perfect for our attention-deficit social media community. But other companies create white papers, they are trying to attract decision-makers who have the time and budgets to dig into info deeper. Using video is extremely powerful, when you consider who will be viewing the content (I’m still not clear on who this Bollywood-Planned Parenthood video was trying to say and to whom), but a video that speaks to your audience in a way that they can relate? Powerful stuff. Me? I create blog posts that are conversational in tone, occasionally take a risk and encourage some creative thought-I like people who can appreciate that tone, I work well with them.

And that’s really the point. When you stake your ground and create a strong voice, you may not attract everyone..but you will attract those people who you wish to attract and work with. At the end of the day, its more important to find the people who have the characteristics of people you work well with.

What are the characteristics of your ideal clients?

Photo Credit (Creative Commons) http://www.flickr.com/photos/uggboy/

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Why I’m not writing about Google+ yet.

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Its not that I don’t like Google+, I do. I think its elegant. I think its a brilliant integration of Google’s products. I think there are both useful and fun elements to Google+.

Will it replace Facebook? I really couldn’t say. I think it will be DIFFERENT from Facebook. For example, right now, there isn’t an official brand presence on Google+, that hasn’t stopped brands from setting up their presence, brands just don’t have a different presence than people right now. There also isn’t direct advertising on Google+, though there IS a handy search tool called “Sparks”, but its completely organic without any advertising.  Will that change? I don’t know. I suspect it will, but that depends on what Google’s end goal is with Google+. That goes hand in hand with the question of whether Google will monetize Google+. Aaaaand, before I could even post this blog, Google announced that there will be a way for businesses to officially have a presence, later this year.

I think that Google+ will have some interesting effects, I think collaboration may happen more natively on Google+ than on other social media sites, which may endear it to creative thinkers who also often happen to be early adopters.  I think its going to allow us to better see the information we want to see, while sharing the info we want with who we want. In essence, give us more control. I could go on and on about the “Hang Out” video conferencing feature, but again, before this post could even be posted, Facebook responded with that. So, you see, Google+ is already a game changer. As I said to a friend yesterday: a week ago if I wanted to video conference for free, I had one choice, today I have three. And so it goes.

There is a lot of conversation on the blog-o-sphere and Twitter-sphere from people who I respect, about what you should and shouldn’t do on Google+. Should you follow back? Should you create a brand page? (Google says it will shut down non-person profiles with the introduction of its business solution). Should you blend personal and professional contacts? Is creating “Circles” to limit conversation the essence of social media? It’s a little wild-westy there right now..and I love it. Google+’s culture is evolving. Its in the hands of the people – its the ultimate intersection of social media: the blending of digital tools and humans. I love watching the different approaches to integrating Google+ into the rest of our social presence. The social element is missing some “OOMPH” right now, but that’s because I think there is more “doing” than “watching” and “responding” right now. That’s to be expected to some degree, lots of us learn by “doing”. I’m one of those people. One thing I have decided to “do”/try is adding #pp to posts that are public in Google+. I think it lets people know that their comments will be more widely read and also lets them know that this is info I’ve shared with lots of people. We’ll see how its received and if something similar catches on.

But having had a week to “do” I think  I’m going to follow my own advice. I’m going to watch and listen.

 

What do YOU think of the Google+ experience thus far?

 

 

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Why engaging influencers is even more important given recent Twitter research

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I recently read an article by Tom Webster about the fact that measuring social media is limited largely by the fact that most data comes from Twitter rather than Facebook which has far more users, which limits the over all data a business receives from social media programs like Radian6. The fact that Facebook is a closed ecosystem has been a frustration of mine for some time, its one of the reasons that Twitter is one of my darlings, there is so much I can see and measure there. Alas, as Tom’s presentation on The Social Habit 2011 points out, according to Arbitron only 8% of Americans are using Twitter, despite incredibly high awareness numbers. Facebook continues to dominate the social scene, particularly in brand interaction.

But here’s the deal:  8% of Americans is still 20 million users. Please tell me any other marketing or promotions avenue which gives you access to 20 million users for free. Seriously. When I worked in magazines and tradeshows if I had been delivering 20 million readers or attendees, almost everyone one of my client’s problems would have been solved, and I would have been a hero. Alas, here’s the rub: there is a lot of junk in that group of 20 million people. Some of them will apply to you, some of them won’t. Some of them are active users (3 in 10 user Twitter daily), some of them aren’t.  But those who are using Twitter are apparently using the service more and more and Twitter users are more likely to use multiple platforms. Combine this with the fact that because Tweets are so easily indexed by search engines and its easy to see how the power of Twitter and its influencers can extend beyond the power of this single platform. Despite the short comings of services like Klout and Peer Index, there is significant relevance in identifying influencers who can evangelize your product. In fact, in light of the recent data, its all the more important to identify these people. Because those people on Twitter will almost assuredly be on Facebook (since 98% of Social Networkers are Facebook users).  Think of Twitter as the gateway drug to Facebook. While most Facebook users do not have a Twitter account, most Twitter users will have a Facebook account. And since businesses can not reach out to people who aren’t already fans, finding key influencers on Twitter will likely lead you to key influencers on Facebook. When you merge the idea that Twitter’s users are heavy social media users and typically cross platform users, with the Forrester Social Technographics information that suggests that MOST people are not social media creators or even critics, but spectators the importance of influencers becomes even more obvious. Because, generally speaking, most users (except influencers) use social media to listen, rather than actively engage.

For businesses considering a social media strategy, the question for Twitter clearly has to be: can we identify some key influencers and engage them?

What say you? Do you agree with me that Twitter is the gateway drug to Facebook?

 

Resources:

The Social Habit 2011 (download from SlideShare here)

Twitter X Factors (download from SlideShare here)

Tom Webster and BrandSavant.com

Forrester Research Social Technographics

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Quality or Quantity?

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Would you rather have 100,000 Twitter followers, 95% of whom don’t RT, @mention or even acknowledge you or 2,000 who hang on your every word and identify with your tweets in a passionate way? True, in either case, your REAL fans are likely to be in the mix, and your job is to identify and cultivate them.

Don’t you feel like you’d be fooling yourself to think that simply having fans or followers is enough? How can you activate people who just don’t care? Simply following your Twitter feed or Facebook page is an awfully low entry point, wouldn’t you agree?

Read more

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