Guide to Social Media Strategy Development, Implementation and Performance Measurement

Scottish Tourism and Hospitality

Guide to Social Media Strategy Development,
Implementation and Performance Measurement

Dr Jim Hamill and Alan Stevenson
April, 2010
jim.hamill@ukonline.co.uk
ast3v3nson@googlemail.com http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/

Guide to Social Media Strategy Development

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
Purpose of the Guide

1. EVALUATE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE
Applications, impact, customers, conversations, features and characteristics

2. AGREE YOUR GENERIC SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
Channels and depth of engagement

3. KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
Measuring success

4. INTERNAL SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT
Progress benchmarking

5. READINESS TO ENGAGE
Are you ready to engage?

6. SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT
Vision, strategy, objectives, targets, customers, key initiatives and actions

7. CHANNEL ACTION PLANS
“Getting there”

8. ORGANISATION, RESOURCE AND PEOPLE ISSUES
The key pillars of social media success

9. IMPLEMENTATION
Professional project management for social media success

10. MONITOR AND MEASURE
On-going performance measurement


The social media revolution……….

Figure 1: The Social Media Revolution
A Fundamental Shift Social Networks
• 78% of consumers trust • 66% of the global internet population visit Social Networks1
peer recommendations • Visiting social sites is the 4th most popular online activity
whilst only 14% trust ahead of personal email1
2
advertising • Time on social networks is growing at 3x the overall Internet
• 25% of search results rate, accounting for about 10% of Internet time1
for the World's Top • There are 400m Facebook users, roughly 50% are active; more
Brands link to User than 50m use LinkedIn
Generated Content4 Publishing
• 93% of Social Media • 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs6
users believe a • Organizations that blog get 97% more inbound links to their
company should have a website and 55% more website visitors7
presence in Social • 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily; 34% of bloggers
Media5 post about products or brands2
Multimedia Sharing
“Marketers don't understand • 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and
channels where you have to 100m videos are viewed per day4
talk and listen at the same • 3.6bn photos are archived on Flickr.com as of June 2009.
time...” Josh Bernoff, 2009 Roughly 1 photo for every 2 people on the planet4
Mobile Web
• In December 2009, 25% of the UK's population (16m people)
accessed the Internet from their mobile3
• iPhone App downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months from launch2
• 2.2bn minutes were spend on Facebook (UK) in December
2009 using mobile handsets3
Open Source and Free Hosted Applications
• As of February 2009, there are more than 230,000 open
source software projects8
• There are more than 100m downloads in 80 languages of
OpenOffice, the Open Source version of MS Office9
• More than 25m people use Google Apps, including major
corporations like National Geographic and Jaguar Landrover10
Source: The Authors and Others Cited
(1) Source: Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked (6) Source: ‘Universal McCann Wave 3’ 2009
Places, 2009 (Slideshare)
(2) Source: Socialnomics’09 (YouTube) (7) Source: Hubspot Inbound Internet Marketing
(3) Source: Guardian Unlimited, “Facebook Blog, 2009
Leads Rise in Mobile Web Use” (8) Source: Sourceforge.net
(4) Source: What the fk is Social Media (9) Source: OpenOffice.org
(Slideshare) (10) Source: googleblog.blogspot.com
(5) Source: Cone, Business in Social Media
Study, September 2008

Scottish Tourism and Hospitality Page 3


Introduction
The Web 2.0/Social Media revolution presents major opportunities (but also threats) for
Scottish tourism and hospitality businesses. The proliferation of travel review and
recommendation sites, peer-to-peer interaction in online communities, user generated
content, openness, sharing, mutual collaboration, online democracy, people and network
empowerment create exciting new opportunities for engaging with and energising your
customers, employees, business partners, stakeholders and brand advocates. Rather than
talking ‘at’ your customers, social media provides new, low cost channels for talking ‘with’
them i.e. business and marketing as a two-way dialogue and conversation with your customers,
a two-way dialogue with your network. As shown on the cover page, Web 2.0/Social Media is
not a thing, it is a state of mind!

There will be ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in social media. ‘Winners’ will be tourism and hospitality
businesses who fully utilise the interactive power of social media for engaging with and
energising customer, employee and network relationships.

With emerging social media (SM) opportunities, come new organizational challenges. Tourism
and hospitality businesses in Scotland are increasingly asking the following questions. What
social media channels should we engage with and how deep should our level of engagement
be? How can social media best help us to achieve our overall strategic goals and objectives?
What resource should we commit to social media, what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
should we use and how can Return on Investment be measured? How open should our
organization become? Who is talking about us, where online? How can we best manage our
online reputation? What ‘buzz’ is being created about our brand? Do we require new
organizational structures and new ‘mindsets’ to leverage the full potential of social media?
What new skills, knowledge and staff training are required? Should we have a corporate wide
‘Social Media Proper Use Policy’ for staff?

The timing of this Guide to Social Media Strategy Development for the tourism industry is very
pertinent. Levels of industry awareness and enthusiasm for social media have increased
exponentially over the last six months and there is now general acceptance of the exciting
opportunities being created. However, with growing enthusiasm comes the realization that
effective use of social media presents major strategic, operational, management and
organizational challenges for most companies.



Purpose of the Guide

Given the explosion of interest in Web 2.0/Social Media, it is not surprising that many tourism
businesses, DMOs and others are beginning to ‘dip their toe in the water’; experimenting with
low resource, low risk social media engagement activities. These early initiatives, often started
by ‘social media evangelists’, are very much to be encouraged. They help considerably in
improving organizational knowledge and understanding of social media and provide an early
indicator of what will or will not work. Hopefully, such early initiatives will firmly establish
social media as a key strategic priority.

With growing experimentation, comes the realization that successful use of social media
requires sound planning and the application of professional project management procedures to
social media strategy development, implementation, management and performance
measurement.

The purpose of this ‘Guide’ is to present a detailed
overview of the key strategic, operational, Figure 2: Ten Key Steps to SM Success
management and organizational challenges 1. The social media landscape
involved in planning, implementing and managing 2. Generic social media strategy
successful Web 2.0/Social Media strategies for 3. Key performance indicators
sustained tourism growth. The ‘Guide’ is 4. Internal SM audit
structured around the Ten Key Steps involved in 5. Readiness to engage
building a successful social media (SM) strategy 6. SM strategy development
summarised in Figure 2 and in the Social Media 7. Channel action plans
Development Cycle shown in Figure 3. A key 8. Organisation, resource & people
premise of the Guide is that ‘Social Media Planning 9. Implementation
Pays’. In other words, a planned and systematic 10. Performance monitoring
approach to SM strategy development will
considerably improve the likelihood of success, ensuring that your SM strategy is fully aligned
behind and supportive of your core business goals and objectives



Figure 3: Social Media Development Cycle

Source: The Authors

The Ten Steps can be sub-divided into three main stages:

• Getting the foundations right (Steps 1 to 5)
– Your social media landscape; generic strategy; key performance measures;
internal social media audit; and ‘readiness to engage’
• Social Media Strategy Development and Implementation (Steps 6 to 9)
– Vision; strategy; objectives; targets; customers; key initiatives and actions for
‘getting there’; organisation, resource and people issues; project management
for social media success
• Performance measurement (Step 10)
– Measuring on-going success and business impact



To get the best out of the ‘Guide’, you should ask yourself the following questions as you read
through it:

Self Help Questions
• What impact is social media having on my industry? How are my customers and
stakeholders using it? What are the specific opportunities and threats for my business?
What conversations are taking place relevant to my business, where and by whom?
What sentiments are being expressed? How open should we become? Do we need a
new organizational ‘mindset’ and structure?

• What are the most relevant SM channels for my business? Which channels should we
use and how engaged should we become in each channel?

• What KPIs should we use to monitor on-going social media performance?

• How well are we currently performing? What progress have we made benchmarked
against agreed KPIs and industry ‘best practice’?

• What are our main SM strengths and weaknesses; what obstacles and barriers do we
need to overcome?

• How do we ensure that our social media strategy is full aligned with and supportive of
our core business goals and objectives?

• How do we develop Action Plans for ‘getting there’?

• What are the key organizational, people and resource issues that need to be resolved?
What professional project management procedures will ensure successful
implementation of our agreed SM strategy?

• How can we measure on-going performance and business impact?



1. Evaluate Your Social Media Landscape

At its simplest, social media can be thought of as a set of applications and technologies that
allow individuals to interact in online communities, directly exchange information with one
another and create their own online content. As shown in Figure 4, the social media landscape
and range of applications available is extremely broad and diverse – too wide for any
organisation to consider all of the applications available. The starting point in developing a
social media engagement strategy is to monitor and evaluate the social media landscape for
your business. Social media landscaping will help you decide the best generic strategy to follow
(Section 2) and should be undertaken at five main levels:

• Applications – what social media applications are most relevant to your
business/organisation?

• Impact – what impact is social media having on your industry, how important has it
become?

• Customers – how are your customers using social media? What impact is it having on
customer behaviour?

• Conversations - what online conversations are taking place relevant to your business;
who is saying what about your brand where on the Internet and how should you
respond?

• Features and characteristics – what are the key features and characteristics of social
media that you need to understand i.e. social media culture?



Figure 4: The Social Media Landscape

Source: FredCavazza.net

Applications

To avoid the ‘we must use it because it’s available’ trap, you should identify the social media
applications and channels most relevant to your business. For most organisations, these would
include the applications listed in Figure 5 below and covered in more detail in Appendix 1.

Figure 5: Most Relevant Social Media Applications
• Feeds and Alerts • Multimedia Sharing
• Review Sites • Rich Internet Applications
• Publishing • Social Bookmarking
• Microblogging • Mobile and Internet Telephony
• Social and Professional Networking • Open Source and Hosted Applications
Source: The Authors



Industry Impact

Three of the most important questions to address in deciding the generic social media (SM)
strategy most appropriate for your business, are:

1. What impact is Web 2.0/Social Media having on your industry, product/service, or
strategic business unit?

2. How important is SM to achieving your overall strategic goals and objectives?

3. What are the specific SM opportunities and threats for our business?

High
In terms of the first two questions,
you should strategically position Figure 6: Generic SM Strategy Matrix
your organisation, product/service
High industry impact/ High industry impact/
or strategic business unit on the
Low strategic High strategic
matrix shown in Figure 6. The
importance importance
Industry Impact

vertical axis shows the industry
impact of social media and the
Strategic priority High engagement
horizontal axis the strategic
strategy
importance of social media to
Low industry impact/ Low industry impact/
achieving your core business
Low strategic High strategic
objectives. There is a clear generic
importance importance
strategy recommendation
emerging from each cell:
Passive approach Industry leader
• Strategic priority
• High engagement strategy
• Passive approach Low Strategic Importance High
• Industry leader
Source: the Authors

A Passive approach to social media strategy development and implementation may be
acceptable in industries where social media has had limited impact and is not considered
strategically important to achieving overall business goals and objectives. A more proactive
approach will be required in all other situations. A High engagement strategy will be required
in industries where social media has had a major impact and is considered ‘mission critical’ to
achieving strategic objectives. Your organisation has an opportunity for emerging as an
Industry leader in cases where social media is considered to be strategically important but the
overall industry impact, to date, has been quite limited. As social media begins to have a more
important industry impact, your organisation should be strategically positioned to capitalise on
this. In industries where social media is already having a major impact, but your organisation



has only made limited progress, the development and implementation of an effective strategy
should be considered a Strategic priority.

In terms of the specific opportunities and threats for your business, we would suggest that
social media has the potential for impacting on ten main areas as summarised in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Business Impact of Social Media
1. Mindset 6. Reputation Management

2. Business Intelligence 7. Sales and Marketing

3. Customer Insight and 8. Product Development and R&D
Understanding e.g. engage and co-create
4. Customer Interaction 9. IT/Software/Applications

5. Enhanced Customer Experience – 10. Operations, Internal Processes and
Rich Internet Applications HRM

Source: The Authors

Appendix 1 shows the way in which different social media applications can be used to deliver
real business benefits across five areas:

• Knowledge and insight
• Engagement and reputation management
• Enhanced customer experience
• Sales and marketing
• Operations and internal processes



Customers

Your customers, business partners, employees, stakeholders and brand advocates will already
be using social media in some capacity. Understanding the why and where of how they use it
and the influence of social media on customer behavior and decision-making is a cornerstone of
SM success.

Being customer and network led is critical to a successful social media strategy. It boils down
to three very simple questions:
1. Who are our customers, who do we wish to engage with?
2. Where do we find them ‘hanging out’ on social media?
3. How can we best engage and energise them?

Figure 8 shows a useful model for thinking about your SM presence. Consider the very centre of
the diagram as your company, organisation or web site. Each of the surrounding nodes
represents online communities that your customers may already be engaging with i.e. the
Social Media Channels where your customers ‘hang out’. These may include Facebook,
LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, blogs, forums or other social media channels. Your generic
SM strategy will be determined by where your customers ‘hang out’; how you can best engage
with and energise them.

Figure 8: Online Customer Communities

Source: Mashable – www.mashable.com



Conversations

One of the major trends on the social web has been the emergence of Social Media Monitoring
Tools – applications which allow companies to monitor the conversations taking place about
their brand across different social media platforms; who is saying what, where on the social
web. We have identified over 100 companies operating in this space, as summarized in Figure
9. These range from no or low cost tools such as Google Alerts, Trackur, Social Mention and
ViralHeat to more expensive and sophisticated tools such as Scoutlabs, Radian6, SM2 and
SocialRadar. The more expensive tools allow businesses to monitor and evaluate the following:

• ‘River of news’: all the information pertaining to your business
• The volume of relevant mentions
• The topic trends (peaks and troughs over a period), tying in with events or other
initiatives
• What is being said at an aggregate level
• The mention medium: tweet, blog post, forum post, news item, media upload
• The importance of individual mentions
• Overall sentiment or tone and reputation issues
• The importance of channels, sources or individuals (influencers)
• Updates and changes as they happen
• Actionable insights based on the above



Figure 9: Social Media Monitoring Tools – Tag Cloud

Source: The Authors

Who’s talking about you?
Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool relevant to your business, undertake an initial review
and evaluation of who is talking about your brand, where online. Sum up your initial findings
here:



Features and Characteristics

Before discussing specific applications and how you can use these in your business, this section
presents the key features and characteristics of social media. An understanding of the ‘Ten Key
Principles’ is critical to your future success in this area.

Figure 10: The Ten Key Principles of Social Media
1. The social aspect: Web 2.0 is first and foremost a social phenomenon. A key feature is
online democracy and user generated content. You cannot control what people say
about your brand online.
2. Power shift: Web 2.0 and social media empower your customers, empower your
network. There has been a major ‘power shift’ from companies and organisations to
customers.
3. Declining effectiveness of traditional approaches: Traditional sales and marketing
approaches are becoming less effective. Customers no longer listen to broadcast brand
messages.
4. Pull versus Push: It has become more difficult to push information/sales messages at
customers. In an SM environment, the customer decides what information feeds they
wish to subscribe to.
5. New ‘mindsets’ are required: Social media is business as a conversation with your
customers, a conversation with your network. New organisational mindsets are
required. Most organisations are not good at talking with their customers.
6. Engage and Energise: Effective use of social media is about engaging with and
energising your network (customers, employees, stakeholders) to become brand
advocates.
7. New performance measures: New performance measures are required. Measures that
evaluate the quality of your customer base, the quality of your online network and the
strength of the relationship you have with them. In a social media era, the 4I’s
(Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy and Influence) become the main drivers of future
business success.
8. Social media monitoring tools: Monitoring the online conversations taking place about
your brand has become ‘mission critical’.
9. Redefines online marketing: SM redefines the concept of a web site and online
marketing. It is no longer about driving traffic to your site. It about online engagement
with your network and delivering rich online customer experiences.
10. New approaches to your business: New approaches based on communities, networks,
openness, customer empowerment, engaging with and energising your network.
Source: The Authors



2. Agree your Generic Social Media Strategy

Your evaluation of the social media landscape provides the foundation on which decisions can
be made concerning the generic social media strategy most appropriate for your organisation.

Your generic social media strategy covers options and decisions in two main areas:

1. The number of social media channels to use
2. The depth of your engagement in each channel

Based on a detailed research project involving the world’s top 100 brands, the recent
Engagementdb study (www.engagementdb.com) identified four main types of generic social
media strategy:

• Mavens: Brands that sustain a high level of engagement across multiple social media
channels. Mavens have a robust social media strategy supported by dedicated teams.
Active engagement across a range of social media channels is a key element of their
overall brand management strategy.

• Butterflies: Brands using a large number of social media channels but with lower than
average engagement scores in each channel. Would probably like to become ‘Mavens’
but full organizational buy-in and resources to do so have not yet been achieved.
Danger of spreading activities too thinly.

• Selectives: Brands that focus on a small number of channels but with high engagement
scores in each one. Selectives focus on deep customer engagement in a small number
of channels where it matters most. Social media initiatives at these brands tend to be
lightly staffed, started by impassioned evangelists on a shoestring budget – can be a
powerful beachhead for further development.

• Wallflowers: Brands using a small number of channels and with below-average
engagement scores. These brands have been slow to respond to the opportunities
presented by social media, currently dipping their toes in the water, cautious about the
risks and uncertain about the benefits.

Your Generic Social Media Strategy
Agree the generic social media strategy to follow. Indicate whether you are a Maven,
Butterfly, Selective or Wallflower? What do you need to become?



3. Key Performance Measures

Your social media engagement strategy should be fully aligned with and supportive of your
overall strategic goals and objectives. It is critical, therefore, that Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) are agreed for measuring on-going performance and business impact.

Using a simplified Balanced Scorecard approach (see Section 6), KPIs should be agreed covering
both ‘lag’ and ‘lead’ measures.

• ‘Lag’ measures are your ultimate business goals and objectives.
• ‘Lead’ measures are the social media KPIs that will help you to achieve your overall
business goals and objectives.

We would recommend using the ‘4Is’ approach to agreeing your Social Media KPIs –
Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy and Influence, as shown below.

Figure 11: Social Media KPIs – the ‘4Is’ Approach

Involvement The number and quality of people in your various online networks; those
that read or view
Interaction Actions they take – post, reply, comment and review

Intimacy Levels of affection or aversion to the brand; community sentiments,
opinions expressed
Influence Advocacy, viral forwards, referrals and recommendations, social
bookmarking
Source: The Authors

The ‘4Is’ can be measured at two main levels. Each social media channel provides its own
statistics for measuring channel performance e.g. Facebook ‘Insights’, YouTube video statistics,
Twitter analytics etc. Second, Social Media Monitoring Tools (see Conversations, p11) can be
used for more detailed analysis and for evaluating the overall ‘buzz’ created by your social
media activities.

‘Lag’ Measures ‘Lead’ Measures
List here the overall strategic objectives to List here the main social media KPIs to be used;
be achieved from your social media activities for example, the ‘4Is’. In an SM era, these
become the main drivers of future business
performance



4. Internal Social Media Audit

Your Internal Social Media Audit evaluates progress made, benchmarked against agreed
criteria. Key questions to address include:

• What progress has been made?
• What social media channels do we already use?
• What is the level of engagement with each channel?
• Where are the main areas for future improvement?

Benchmarking is a key element of the Internal Audit and should be undertaken at five main
levels:

• Social Media Landscape – what progress has been made benchmarked against the
opportunities presented by your social media landscape?

• Generic Strategy – the level of progress made benchmarked against your generic social
media strategy?

• KPIs – what progress has been made benchmarked against agreed KPIs?

• Industry ‘Best Practice’ – the level of progress made benchmarked against industry
‘best practice’? How does your current level of SM engagement compare with the
industry average? What lessons can be learned from industry ‘mavens’?

• Strategic Gap Analysis – based on the above, what is the ‘Strategic Gap’ that exists
between the ‘current’ and ‘ideal’ scenarios; between where you are and where you
should be? The ‘Strategic Gap’ provides a very strong basis for future social media
strategy development.



5. Readiness to Engage

The Internal Audit of progress made (Section 4) should be followed by an evaluation of your
organisation’s readiness or preparedness to engage with social media. This involves evaluating
the social media strengths and weaknesses of the organisation and the main barriers and
obstacles to be overcome. The template shown in Figure 12 can be used for this purpose.

Figure 12: Readiness to Engage

Strengths Weaknesses

List here the main SM strengths of your List here the main SM weaknesses of your
organisation e.g. strong brand, quality organisation e.g. limited staff knowledge and
customer base, customers already active in understanding, resource issues, organizational
Social Media etc. mindset, influence/attitude of the IT Dept etc.

Obstacles/Barriers Overcome

Detail the main obstacles and barriers for your Indicate how barriers will be overcome,
organisation. including in-sourcing / out-sourcing options

Source: the Authors



6. Social Media Strategy Development

Steps 1 to 5 will establish a very strong foundation for developing and implementing an
effective social media strategy for your organisation. Steps 6 to 10, discussed below, cover
social media strategy development and action plans for ‘getting there’. They address in more
detail the following issues: organisation, people and resources; implementation; and
performance measurement.

We would recommend the use of a simplified Balanced Scorecard approach (see
www.balancedscorecard.org) to SM strategy development and implementation. This will
ensure that the social media actions and initiatives you introduce are fully aligned behind and
supportive of your overall business goals and objectives.

The key steps involved are:

• Agree the social media vision for your organisation
• Identify the key strategic objectives and targets to be achieved
• Detail who your most valuable customers are, where they ‘hang out’ on social media
and how you can best engage with them
• Describe the key social media actions and initiatives you need to introduce to achieve
your strategic objectives and targets
• Detail all organization, people and resource issues to be overcome

You will find the Social Media Landscape framework shown in Appendix 1 to be very useful in
developing your SM strategy. This matches ten of the most important Web 2.0/Social Media
applications with associated business benefits in five main areas:

• Knowledge and Insight
• Engagement and Reputation Management
• Enhanced Customer Experience
• Sales and Marketing
• Operations and Internal Processes

Social Media Planning
Using Appendix 1, detail the main social media applications relevant to your organisation and
their associated business benefits



You can use the template in Figure 13 to ensure that your Web 2.0/Social Media strategy is fully
aligned with and supportive of the overall business goals and objectives of your organisation.

Figure 13: Web 2.0 Balanced Scorecard Template

Strategic Theme
Insert here a clear statement of the overall ‘vision/mission’ to be achieved from your Web
2.0/Social Media Strategy:

Strategic Objectives
List the main strategic objectives to be achieved:

List the main KPIs to be used in evaluating the on-going success of your SM efforts:

Identify the main Targets for each KPI listed:

Customer Perspective
Your overall aim here should be to build a ‘quality’ customer base i.e. a strong base of loyal,
high value, high growth potential customers providing your organisation with a strong
foundation for sustained growth in sales and profits

Insert here a clear statement covering the main customer segments and their relative
importance to achieving your overall business goals and objectives:

List the main customer segments for your organisation:

Rank order these in terms of importance to achieving core business goals and objectives:

Internal Perspective (2.0 Initiatives)
In this section, you should begin to map out the key Web 2.0/Social Media initiatives and
actions required to achieve your overall goals and objectives. For each 2.0/Social Media
‘Initiative’ you should state clearly the overall objective to be achieved; targets and KPIs; and
the key actions required for ‘getting there’.



Initiative 1 Insert here a summary of Initiative 1 actions required to ensure that
(e.g. Facebook) overall strategic objectives are achieved. This should cover a clear
statement of:
Initiative 1 Objectives.
Targets and Performance Measures.
Key Initiatives and Actions required.

Initiative 2 Insert here a summary of the Initiative 2 actions required to ensure
(e.g. Linkedin) that overall strategic objectives are achieved. This should cover a clear
statement of:

Initiative 3 Insert here a summary of the Initiative 3 actions required to ensure
(e.g. Twitter) that overall strategic objectives are achieved. This should cover a clear
statement of:

Other initiatives Continue as above

Organisation, Resource and People Issues
In this section you should briefly identify the Organisation, Resource and People issues that
will impact on your ability to successfully implement the Key Web 2.0/Social Media Initiatives
and Actions agreed above.
Organisation Insert here a summary of the key organizational issues that need to
be resolved:



Resource Insert here a summary of the key Resource issues that need to be
resolved:

People Insert here a summary of the key People issues that need to be
resolved:

Source: the Authors

The Social Media Strategy emerging from the above Balanced Scorecard exercise can be
presented as a one page strategy map as follows:

Figure 14: BSC Social Media Strategy Map

Brief statement of your overall 2.0/Social Media Vision and Mission

KPIs / Targets KPIs / Targets
KPIs / Targets KPIs / Targets

Customer Perspective

Customer Customer Customer Customer
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4

Internal Management Perspective
2.0/Social Media 2.0/Social Media 2.0/Social Media 2.0/Social Media
Initiative 1 Initiative 2 Initiative 3 Initiative 4
- Objectives - Objectives - Objectives - Objectives
- KPIs - KPIs - KPIs - KPIs
- Targets - Targets - Targets - Targets
- Actions - Actions - Actions - Actions

Organisation Perspective
Organisation Resource People

Source: the Authors



7. Channel Action Plans

Once your Social Media Strategy has been agreed, brief Action Plans should be developed for
each priority SM channel. This can be done by cascading the Balanced Scorecard approach to
each channel identified as a priority for development e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. The
Action Plan for each channel should include a clear statement of:

• The overall objectives for that channel
• The KPIs to be used
• Specific targets
• The key channel actions and initiatives for ‘getting there’.

The template shown in Figure 15 can be used for this purpose.

Figure 15: Channel Action Plans

Channel X e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc
Objectives KPIs Targets Actions

Insert here bullet Insert here the main Insert here the Insert here the
points summarizing KPIs you will use to specific targets specific channel
your overall strategic evaluate channel agreed for each KPI actions and initiatives
objectives for this effectiveness required to achieve
channel agreed targets, KPIs
and objectives

Source: the Authors



8. Organization, Resource and People issues

Organisation, resource and people issues sit at the bottom of your SM Balanced Scorecard NOT
because they are the least important issues to address. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The
success of your social media strategy is very much dependent upon appropriate decisions being
made in the areas listed below.

Your ‘Social Media Strategy Document’ should contain a section that covers the following
issues:

• Roles, responsibilities and resources
o In-source roles and responsibilities
o Out-source roles and responsibilities
o Role of the Social Media champion
o Social media decision-making and control structures
o Resource plans
o Organizational culture and ‘mindset’
• Policies and guidelines
o Social Media Proper Use Policy
o Social Media Content Guidelines
o Social Media Channel Guidelines
o Customer Response Policy and Guidelines
o Employee Response Policy and Guidelines
o Legal aspects to the above

Organisation, Resource and People Issues
Detail the issues that your organisation must consider in this area



9. Implementation

Professional project management procedures should be used to ensure that your SM strategy is
delivered ‘on time, within budget’ and that agreed business objectives are achieved. Following
professional project management procedures will ensure that your Social Media Strategy
addresses the ten key success factors of any project:

1. Objectives – clarity; business case; link to overall strategy of the company
2. Project Scope – avoid being too narrow or too broad
3. Commitment – by the company, project team
4. Prioritization – vis-à-vis other commitments
5. Communications – project team, management team, employees
6. Project Team Dynamics – minimizing team conflicts
7. Scheduling and Managing Workload – aim being to achieve more with less
8. Deadlines – ‘Just in Time’ affects quality
9. Project Quality – aim to meet or exceed expectations
10. Customer Value – ensure the project meets the needs of “project customers”

Project management knowledge and practices are best described in terms of their component
processes; every project goes through a life cycle as shown below. Social media projects are no
different.

• Initiation / Definition: agreeing objectives and deciding what needs to be done
• Planning and Analysis: creating a solution
• Implementation: implementation and roll-out of the solution
• Performance and Control: evaluate progress and performance
• Project Closure: close the project and take lessons into the next project

There are a range of skills and resources that accompany successful Project Management, too
many to mention in this document.

Social Media Project Management
Outline the issues that you or your organisation must consider in this area



10. Monitor and Measure

To ensure that your SM strategy delivers a return on your investment, it is important to monitor
and evaluate on-going performance benchmarked against agreed objectives, KPIs and targets.
Performance evaluation should be undertaken at three main levels:

• Individual Channel Performance – the effectiveness/success of each channel
benchmarked against agreed targets for the ‘4Is’ i.e. Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy
and Influence. Most channels provide easy to access statistics for measuring each ‘I’ to
a very high degree of accuracy.

• Wider Social Media Performance – in addition to measuring the performance of each
channel, we would recommend monthly or quarterly reporting of the overall ‘buzz’
created by your SM activities using appropriate Social Media Monitoring tools. This will
show the impact of your SM activities on others and other channels. It will measure the
volume of mentions, trends over time, which channels are driving your buzz, who is
taking your message further, through which channels, and what affection or affinity are
they showing, and so on.

• Underlying Business Performance – the performance of each social media channel and
the overall ‘buzz’ created are ‘lead’ rather than ‘lag’ measures. In a social media era,
they are the main ‘drivers’ of future business performance. The final level of
performance monitoring, therefore, is linking your social media activity to overall
business goals and objectives e.g. enquiries, sales or customer loyalty. Is social media
achieving your ultimate business objectives i.e. ‘lag’ measures?

Whilst social media channels and monitoring tools provide a high level of (previously
unavailable) performance data, they cannot map every ‘cause and effect’ of your SM
initiatives. Whilst some of your users will visit a site and take an action directly from the
SM channel, others will go directly to the site or search for the website later.
Furthermore, some may learn about a great product or service from a Facebook friend,
but order by more traditional means e.g. phone or email. How are these interactions
captured? In this respect, businesses must be pragmatic and to some extent creative in
how they evaluate Social Media impact on underlying business performance.

Through creating a series of performance touch-points your business or organisation
can build an SM evidence base. Web analytics packages such as Google Analytics should
be utilized; they help your business to understand the following:
• those ‘jumping’ from Social Media channels and then taking action
• changes in proportions that are arriving “brand aware” and
• peaks in website activity and relationships to social media ‘buzz’



However, discerning the underlying business impact of Social Media will also involve
comparing Social Media “buzz” with trends in overall business activity (online and
offline). It will involve, taking time to “speak” to your customers, directly and through
polls or surveys in order to understand how they engage in SM channels and which of
your initiatives influenced them.

Ultimately, it will involve use of one of the new generation of Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) systems. Companies like Salesforce.com have already given their
application a strong “2.0” focus. In addition to capturing “traditional” customer
interactions, these tools are also capturing your customers’ social media interactions
with you across Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and others. Salesforce.com has been quick
to adapt their product and grasp the opportunity Social Media has presented, others
will soon follow.

Monitor and Measure
Outline how you will measure the on-going performance of your Social Media Strategy



Summary and Conclusions

With more companies and organisations becoming serious about social media, there is a
growing realization that successful SM practice requires sound planning and the application of
professional project management procedures to SM strategy development, implementation
and performance measurement.

This Guide has outlined the Ten Key Steps involved in SM planning. We hope that you have
found the content of the Guide to be useful in determining your own response to the exciting
opportunities that lie ahead. We would be more than happy to answer any questions you may
have either by e-mailing us at the contact addresses shown below or by posting on our ‘crowd
sourced’ Web 2.0 and Social Media e-Learning Community at www.web2-0cpd.com.

Thank You.

Dr Jim Hamill and Alan Stevenson
April, 2010
jim.hamill@ukonline.co.uk
ast3v3nson@googlemail.com



Appendix 1 – The Social Media Landscape and Business Benefits

The Web 2.0/Social Media applications most relevant to the majority of companies and
organisations are listed in Figure 16, each is matched with associated business benefits in five
main areas:

• Knowledge and Insight
• Engagement and Reputation Management
• Enhanced Customer Experience
• Sales and Marketing
• Operations and Internal Processes

References for Further Learning are also provided. The shaded columns indicate the main uses
for each application.

A Strategic Guide to Social Media Page 30


Figure 16: The Social Media Landscape for Tourism and Hospitality Businesses

Engagement Enhanced
Knowledge and Sales and Operations/
Overview Further Learning and Reputation Customer
Insight Marketing Internal Processes
Management Experience

Users subscribe to
receive regular updates
from favoured web sites,
blogs, online news
channels etc. The two Feed/Alert
Google Alerts Improved Feed / Alert
most popular ways of monitoring can
RSS in Plain English Essential for you can be used as a customer monitoring can
doing this are by support a range of
http://bit.ly/yVQr to subscribe to free ‘social insight and generate direct
subscribing to an RSS business processes,
Google Reader 1 relevant feeds media understanding sales leads and
Feeds & Alerts Feed and/or registering such as
http://bit.ly/aZZmK2 and alerts for monitoring’ tool should enhance opportunities;
with Google Alerts. procurement (new
Google Reader 2 building market alerting you the online and improved
Updates can be read on contracts or
http://bit.ly/bjMyuc /customer when someone offline customer customer
an RSS Reader, tenders), employee
Make Google Alerts your knowledge, talks about your experience knowledge can
smartphone or received monitoring and
virtual research assistant insight and brand or through lead to a better
by e-mail. An increasing new product or
http://bit.ly/dunB3k understanding destination customisation/ online customer
number of Web users service
online personalisation experience
are accessing development
information updates this
way. It represents
information ‘pull’ rather
than ‘push’

A Strategic Guide to Social Media Page 31


Engagement Enhanced

Sites like Trip Advisor or
Develop and
Booking.com which
implement an Leverage Improve Internal
allow travellers to post Use reviews to
agreed positive ‘word Processes (such as
reviews and Monitoring improve the
TripAdvisor Explained reputation of mouth’ Staff Training,
Review & recommendations review and customer
http://bit.ly/9l2itq management effects to Customer Service)
Recommendation covering destinations, recommendation experience;
TripAdvisor Tutorial policy for increase sales; and the Product or
Sites accommodation sites is critical to make it easy for
http://bit.ly/9Yjjvn responding to minimise the Service itself based
providers, restaurants, developing deep customers at
visitor impact of on customer
activities etc. Businesses customer insight the trip
comments negative reviews and
can respond to planning stage
(positive and comments recommendations
comments and integrate
negative)
reviews into their site.



Engagement Enhanced

Includes Blogs
(Wordpress, Blogger)
and Wikis (Wikispaces,
Wikimedia). A typical
Good
blog or wiki will combine
Provide access communication Blogs and Wikis
text, images, video and Provide an
Wikis in Plain English to accurate and tools, which improve internal
links to other web sites. Wikis are great opportunity to
http://bit.ly/18mwD up-to-date make it easy for communications
They promote user input sources of engage with
Wikipedia Tutorial information. customers to between tiers of
and user generated knowledge your customers.
http://bit.ly/2elx94 Allow view, comment management e.g.
Publishing feedback and comment. through which to Speed and ease
Blogs in Plain English customers to and pass-on key the CEO and the
Used creatively, blogging engage and of publication
http://bit.ly/170yk research, messages to staff on the floor
tools can be used to leverage. supports good
Blog Marketing interact and others. Great to and within
build your web site Customer reputation
http://bit.ly/coOQyT feedback. engage Departments e.g. a
rather than relying on a feedback through management
Wordpress Tutorial Support the customers, Staff Suggestion
proprietary CMS – blogs can help to often at the
http://bit.ly/Jczfj customer at the build brand Wiki. This is
significantly reducing build deeper highest levels of
Wordpress Lessons planning, arrival awareness, particularly
costs. Wikis provide a customer insight. the organisation
http://bit.ly/ihlCq and post-visit increase sales relevant for larger
more efficient means to e.g. CEO blog.
stages. and provide an organisations.
publish, where the
SEO uplift.
community creates and
reviews content e.g.
Wikitravel



Engagement Enhanced

Identify and
engage
Sites such as Twitter and Access to up-to-
Engage your customers and
Yammer which allow Famous for its date Twitter monitoring
followers with more
users to send short ability to break information for can improve
tweets, replies, importantly
‘tweets’ of 140 news; Twitter the hyper- process efficiency;
Twitter in Plain English retweets or influencers and
characters or less. users are often connected. allowing speed and
http://bit.ly/Unzp direct opinion setters
Twitter is a public the ‘first to know’ Particularly efficiency of
Microblogging Twitter Tutorial - Getting messages. You directly.
Microblogging platform e.g. breaking useful at the response to
Started can quickly Application
whereas Yammer is news of the Haiti arrival or emerging
http://bit.ly/X9FsK identify and just makes it easy
restricted. You can earthquake. activity stage. opportunities and
Twitter Guidebook as quickly for great
follow any Twitter Twitter Search Customers and threats. Yammer is
http://bit.ly/EQU82 respond to messages to
account and be and Twitter lists potential a closed network
potential reach a wide
followed. Twitter is good help find and customers can and good for status
reputation audience. Great
for building a community organise your interact through updates as part of a
issues through to engage
of users with an interest knowledge feeds. grouping tweets company intranet.
this application. customers,
in your status updates. with #hashtags
build brand and
increase sales.



Engagement Enhanced

Sites which allow users
to build their own online
Increasingly
profiles, connect with Great resources Facebook is
Provides an paying their
friends/business What is Facebook? for keeping track typically used
opportunity to way through Facebook is
associates and engage in http://bit.ly/cBjR5 of what friends, for customers
identify lead generation replacing Customer
social/professional Facebook for Business customers, to engage with
reputation and increased Support Systems
Social and networking. Includes Marketing associates and the brand
issues as they brand loyalty for some large
Professional most notably Facebook, http://bit.ly/2lvgFM colleagues are (through 'fan
arise and resulting in brands like
Networking the largest social Facebook for Business 101 doing. Provides pages’) or
engage increased sales. TalkTalk. LinkedIn
network in the world http://bit.ly/cwdd27 status updates of access support.
customers and Some are using and Facebook
with 400m registered What is LinkedIn? your network. LinkedIn allows
staff, quickly these tools to extend and in some
users and LinkedIn, the http://bit.ly/lBCQ LinkedIn is an your customers
and efficiently. build brand and instances replace
largest 'professional' How & Why To Use extension of your to get advice
Supports good move into more the Contact
network with over 50m LinkedIn.com Contact (through
reputation lucrative Database.
users. For those looking http://bit.ly/749Hq Management groups) and
management. business
to create their own System. connect to you.
networks.
network there are sites
like Ning.



Engagement Enhanced

Video and User Generated
images tell a Video and YouTube and Flickr
YouTube is a
story more Images can are essentially
great resource for
effectively than provide multi-media
tutorials and Photo and
words. Many valuable viral repositories. It is
Sites which allow users Online Photo Sharing in how-to guides. Video Sharing
Multimedia recent brand impact for a possible to store
to upload, share and plain English Both YouTube are great ways
Sharing reputation brand e.g. see your favourite
comment on multimedia http://bit.ly/b8zlsq and Flickr will for customers
issues centre the Battle at video footage and
content – video and How to Use YouTube provide a range of to express their
around an Kruger. These images which can
images. The most http://bit.ly/qAYt9 videos and experience of a
uploaded video. channels can then be embedded
popular include YouTube Online Video for images on your brand, product
Monitoring also leverage into your own site
for Videosharing and Marketing brand, product or or destination.
these media existing media, and elsewhere.
Flickr for Photosharing. http://bit.ly/baPonK destination. A Both great and
(and responding increase brand YouTube can also
review of related terrible.
effectively) is awareness, be viewed as an e-
comments can
critical to improve sales learning and staff
provide insight.
reputation and provide an training tool.
management. SEO uplift.



Engagement Enhanced

Mash Ups are Mashups create
applications created new value for
through applying and customers – a
combining different richer internet
Mashups add
applications (or APIs). Mashups provide experience with
Customers are new value and
They are often free and new types of video, images
using Mashups generate brand
available for use through valuable and even access
to post awareness as a Podcasts can
a browser. Examples information e.g. maps or reviews
comments - result. support corporate
include Panaramio What is a Mashup customer from other
good and bad. It communications, e-
Rich Internet images 'mashed' in http://bit.ly/GqWWF reviews, sites; makes it
is important to Podcasts are a learning and staff
Applications Google Earth or How To Make Your Own multimedia and easy for them.
review these. good way to training. They are a
TripAdvisor comments Web Mashup business listings
build brand and good means for
mashed into a Tourism http://bit.ly/KFFuQ by geo-location. Podcasts put
Podcasts can be reach out to a everyone in the
site. Podcasting in Plain English the customer in
a good way to wider potential organisation to get
http://bit.ly/21qbb Podcasts are a charge in terms
engage with audience. They valuable
Podcasting is a method How To Create A Podcast low cost and of when they
your customers can create viral information in a
of distributing http://bit.ly/Sobz efficient way to want to
or tribe - like a impact. They time and place that
multimedia files, such as access almost any consume
serialisation for also create suits them.
audio or video, over the conceivable information. It
your business or brand loyalty
Internet using RSS, for subject on the provides an
destination. which converts
playback on mobile move. extension to the
to sales.
devices and personal visitor
computers. Podcasts can experience - be
be found on websites here without
and directories like being here.
iTunes.



Engagement Enhanced

Social bookmarking sites Perhaps the
like Delicious, Social biggest single
Social The sites allow
Stumbleupon, Digg, bookmarking is benefit for an
bookmarking sites users to tag
Diigo and Reddit allow Social Bookmarking in not for organisation to Social bookmarking
are an alternative content, usually
users to collectively plain english everyone but promote the sites should be
means of finding this is at two
categorise interesting http://bit.ly/9HzOyy some customers use of social considered
valuable extremes e.g. a
Social web content (urls) Social Bookmarking: expect to be bookmarking is knowledge
knowledge and terrible example
Bookmarking through notes and tags Delicious tutorial able to easily the positive resources and can
insight. Through or a great piece
(keywords) and even http://bit.ly/bWmig bookmark your effect on page be a good way for
connecting with of content.
vote on whether it is Social Bookmarking content. Make rank. Social staff to quickly and
users you can Monitoring
good or not. What Tutorial 2 it easy for them bookmarking easily build and
create a which of your
emerges is a great way http://bit.ly/wdmCK through can create share a company
knowledge base content is being
of finding and sharing Social Bookmarking: providing a valuable knowledge base on
of individuals that tagged can
the most relevant PageRank button on each backlinks into almost any subject
will turn up niche indicate
content whilst http://bit.ly/12Tvah web page. your site and or discipline.
content on a reputation
identifying users that can These are easy increase your
regular basis. issues.
become your knowledge to install. ranking on the
base. search engines.


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