By Social Agency

Six Steps To Running A Social Media Initiative

For HandsOn NetworkAugust 12, 2010

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Social Media is Not a Fad

• Social media sucks up 23%

of our online time, email is

third at 8.3%

• In May, Twitter users posted

2 billion posts in the month

• In June, Facebook added its

500 millionth user

• According to an August, 2010 Nielsen survey, once dominant email now the third most popular internet

activity, trailing social networks and online gaming among American Internet users

0

5

10

15

20

25

Email Online Gaming

Social Media

8.3 10

23

US Internet Activity

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Does this sound familiar?

We blog. We have a Twitter account and a Facebookpage but we have no focus. We also don’t have the resources to manage it all. We don’t know if it’s effective. But we know we have to do it.

Isaac Barchas, former McKinsey & Co. consultant & Director of the Austin Technology Incubator

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I. Social Media Objective

II. Build People Base

III. Develop Content & Plan

IV. Publish Content

V. Gather Metrics

VI. Refine Campaign &

Content

Steps to Running a Social Media Initiative

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Determine the Social Media Initiative’s Objective

• Define objectives

• Set

goals, benchmarks

&KPIs

• Establish social

media guidelines

The most effective social media initiatives are tied together by a common business objective. The key

performance indicators (KPIs) are determined by business objective.

Examples of Social Media Policies

http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php

OBJECTIVE KEY PERFORMANCE METRICS

Create brand awareness # of Followers,# of Mentions,Mention Audience,Retweet Audience,# of Fans/Likes,# of Video Views,# of Channel Views,# of Subscribers

Customer care # of Replies ,# of Direct Messages,# of Twitter Click-thrus,# of Comments,# of Likes,# of FB Click-thrus,# of Ratings,# of Comments

Demand generation Email addresses, username, Real name, Location, # of Followers, Engagements, Click-to-Conversion

Are You Ready?

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Build People Base

• Listen to the

conversation

• Learn the etiquette

• Engage in the

conversation

• Give more than you

take

• Build Trust

Your social media team should monitor and engage in the conversations what is being said about your

product, brand, company, competitors and or industry.

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Engaging is all about

TrustSharingListening

Flickr photos by niclindh, samshad473, notsogoodphotography

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Conversing Well

Be human, be polite, and be present

Tips for being a good conversationalist

• You have to be present to win.

• Take some time to learn the etiquette of the community you want to enter.

• Give a little first before asking for anything.

• Be responsive to people who react to you.

• Forward along content you find interesting, providing ample credit to the creator. No shy robots

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Develop Content & Plan

Great content is social media gold. Content effectiveness can be measured by the number of user

engagements such as click-thrus, retweets, replies or comments.

• Keyword searches & RSS

feeds

• Use of multiple voices &

personas depending on

demographic/psychograph

ic targets

• Content templates

• Channel selection

• Identify key influencers

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Channel Strategy Selection

Channel Customer Care Brand Awareness Traffic to Your Site SEO

Use keyword search monitoing through

a program as Spredfast or Radian 6 to

track what people are saying about you

and your competitors

Offers unique opportunities for Web

site integration and to engage with

customers in a viral way helping your

company stand out from the masses

Potential can be large but promotion

is an art form- promote your brand

too heavily and turn off followers, yet

don’t promot enough and receive little

attention

Value in your site is limited, but tweets

will rank high in search results – good

for ranking your profile name and

breaking news. Although shortened

URL are of little benefit

Great for engaging people who like

your brand, want to share your

opinions and participate in giveaways

and contests.

Facebook brand pages are great for

brand exposure jump-start your brand

exposure through the ad platform or

hire a Facebook consultant to help

you grow your brand presence.

Traffic is decent and on the rise

thanks to share buttons and

counters, but don’t expect massive

numbers of unique visitors to go to

your site

Little to no value, aside from blogs

picking up and featuring your posted

links. Not worth the time expenditure.

Unnecessary to spend too much time

on this, though properly tagged

photosets of company events can help

customers put a face on the team

behind your brand

Participation in industry-related

groups might get your photos, and

thus your brand, viewed by people

with similar interests but numbers will

be small.

Even if you get tens of thousands of

visits to a photo hyperlinked with your

URL, click-through rates are among

the lowest around

Heavily indexed in search engines,

passing links and page ranks. Also

helps images rank higher in Google

Images and in building inbound links.

Not the primary focus, but customer

engagement opportunities are possible

by answering industry-related

questions establishing yourself as an

expert in the field.

Effective for personal branding and

demonstrating your organizations

professional prowess. Encouraging

employees to maintain complete

profiles to strengthen your team’s

reputation as advisable.

Unlikely to drive any significant traffic

to your site, though you never know

who those few visits might be from –

perhaps a potential client or

customer.

Very high page rank – almost

guaranteed on the first page of search

results – especially for your company

name or individual employees’ names

but that’s about it.

Whether you seek to entertain, inform

or both, video is a powerful channel for

quickly engaging your customers

responding to complaints and

demonstrating your social media savvy.

One of the most powerful brand

topics on the Web when you build

your channel, promote via high-traffic

sites and brand your videos.

Traffic goes to the videos. If the goal

is to drive traffic back to your site,

then add a hyperlink in the video

description but don’t expect traffic to

correlate closely with video views.

Very good for building links back to

your site because videos rank high.

Also a tried-and-true way for your

brand to gain exposure.

Not the site’s primary strength though

occasionally an objective third-party

write-up as a PR effort, perhaps to

counteract bad press or customer

sentiment, can be promoted.

Opportunities are huge, especially for

promoting objective press/blog

coverage of your brand. Make sure

content doesn’t read like an ad, or

your site might be banned for being

overly commercial.

The grandfather of the traffic spikes

become active in the community or

hire someone who is. If your site is

corporate then consider launching an

industry blog on a noncommercial

web domain to establish

Very good because even if your story

doesn’t become popular then your

page will still be indexed quickly. If your

story does become popular, this is

likely the best site in terms of getting

linked to by bloggers.

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Identify & Engage Influencers

1. The number of times they talk about you

2. The number of times other people repurpose or share their content that is about you

3. The size of their network

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Publish Content

• Schedule content

• Team & user roles

The publishing of content should viewed holistically and establishing cadence that does not border on

“spew” or social media spam. User roles and access controls are establish to help with governance.

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Gather Analytics

• Measure the

effectiveness of each

message

• Gather metrics by

channel, voice, accou

nt and initiative

• Measure the

sentiment of your

product, brand or

company

• Calculate both “hard”

& “soft” ROI on the

initiative

With an objective in mind, and goals in hand, measurement is imperative to know if you’ve succeeded

or failed. Failure is OK, and to be expected at first, as long as you fail informatively.

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Refine Campaign & Content

• Revise content

strategy: Add, edit,

delete scheduled

messages according

to historical

performance

Sharpen the initiative: Leveraging the gathered analytics, assess the effectiveness of the content and

refine the messaging if necessary.