Social Media 101 for an Ecosystem Partner

Alan Belniak http://www.SubjectivelySpeaking.net

@abelniak May 2012

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Breaking It Down Into Elements

WHO

WHAT

HOW

NOW

NEXT

MORE

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‘Common’ social media places: – LinkedIn (company page, groups, Q+A,

personal profiles), Twitter (company and personal), Facebook (company), Google+ (company)

Other social media places – discussion boards+ forums, your customer

community site, YouTube, SlideShare

Action: take some time searching around these places for mentions of your company name and sub-industry terms – spend some time on persona identification

and development

WHO

Who is your audience? Do you know? Are you sure? Who are the contributors?

image sources: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10271567@N05/3363872519/ ; http://www.flickr.com/photos/ant_3000/6796318577/

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Who are your content contributors? – marketing? PR? sales?

– many people inside an organization have a viewpoint

Action: identify who is inherently good at creating content, and who might have the raw knowledge – pair strong writers with strong

subject matter experts

WHO (continued)

image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/edyson/183734074/

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Text – blog posts (on your own site or guest-posting in

other places), whitepapers, ebooks, slides (SlideShare), email newsletters, even tweets

Video – YouTube videos – can be instructional,

informative, entertainment, or info-taintment

Images – create a Flickr account, Instagram account, or

Pinterest account, and share images of your products

Audio – interview executives at your company or

industry leaders

– or, grab customer sound bites from an event floor

WHAT

Content is more than just words: text, video, images, and audio

image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eloqua/4690626051/

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Bonus: – the non-text content can often be embedded

into blog posts, thus combining multiple forms of media

Action: create a content calendar (.xls) with rows as weeks (12 weeks) and columns as days (Mon – Fri) – start plotting out content posts and items

– update every 4 weeks (rolling basis)

WHAT (continued)

image source: http://creo.ptc.com/2012/05/03/creo-parametric-2-0-new-design-software-delivers-great-graphics-performance/

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Outposts – the social networks in the ‘who’ stage are all outposts – ultimately you are driving them back to your site

to get them to download something, give you information, sign up for a meeting or call, etc.

– if you haven’t yet, create accounts on these outposts and get presences up and running

Go create some content! – use the calendar in the ‘what’ stage with the

people in the ‘who’ stage and start creating content

– it doesn’t have to be perfect – it needs to be ‘good enough’ (“MVP”)

Look at what others do for ideas, what you can (and can’t) get away with, and frequency

HOW

Moving from strategy to tactics… now what?

image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmasters/2516902376/

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Promote content – just because you create it doesn’t mean people will see it – propagate your content (smartly!) across

channels

– use a common shortened link and track the statistics

– time the posts correctly to reach the proper audience

Action: in the content calendar, create an extra row to store the shortened link so you can go back and track the content item easily

Also, go read this

HOW (continued)

Moving from strategy to tactics… now what?

Pro Tip: Aim to plan content for ~85% of the cells Save the remaining ~15% for silence, or real-time reactions to news

image source: Heinz social media content planning

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You’ve hopefully used bit.ly (or similar) to shorten links – now track them – how are they performing? when? where?

Hook up to Google Analytics – see what content works and what doesn’t work

Engage – if people are commenting on Facebook, Twitter,

LinkedIn, or sharing your SlideShare content – interact with them, thank them, ask them a question.

Action: aim to reply to everyone who @s you in Twitter, shares a piece of content, or asks a question on any of the sites – aside from bullying and downright negativity

NOW

OK… so now what?

image source: screen capture of https://bitly.com/KCXyV4+

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Google Analytics and bit.ly (or similar) – make adjustments in your content calendar

based on the results of the data

Identify your top contributors/commenters and look at them via an ‘influencer’ lens – Klout (free) or FollowerWonk (free + pay) or

SocMetrics (pay) or Traackr (pay)

See who has the most reach and influence and work with them – interview them

Action: once a week, ID your top commenters and contributors – look them up in LinkedIn and connect

– reach out privately to establish a rapport

NEXT

Pause for a moment and look at what you did.

image source: screen capture of http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/measure-social-media-with-free-tools/

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WHO – audience identification and personas

– listening

– SocialMention (free) • be sure to learn what the content on the left, top and right means, before digging into the

content on the main part of the page

WHAT – FAQ = content goldmine

– conduct a Q+A on Twitter or other networks

– look at search traffic on site for ideas; subscribe to a content marketing blog for ideas + tips

– roll up all content you produce in two weeks into a twice-a-month “sideways salesletter”

HOW – fun fact: On average, 84% of the content from Facebook pages (brands/companies,

not personal) isn’t seen • Facebook throttles what you can see based on the engagement of that brand and content

– look for tips on content creation, headline writing, and so on – learn to think like a journalist

MORE

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NOW – get free data from bit.ly on your links OR others’ links

• take any bit.ly link (example: http://bit.ly/KCXyV4)

• copy it and paste it into a URL window

• DON’T hit enter

• add a “+” sign (like http://bit.ly/KCXyV4+)

• NOW hit enter – see the stats

– learn more on Google Analytics and social sites

NEXT – run an ‘Analyze Followers’ report on FollowerWonk

– pay the cash for the credits if you need to (ongoing, or one-time [via PayPal])

– look at best times to tweet, and most influential followers

– read more about influencing the influencers

– use free tools to measure social media and understand more

MORE (continued)