The document provides guidance on developing an effective social media strategy and building an engaged online community. It outlines a 7-step process: 1) profile internal community members, 2) match profiles to appropriate tools, 3) identify tools and objectives, 4) profile external community, 5) determine objectives, 6) determine resources, 7) rollout strategy. It emphasizes listening, connecting, adding value, and measuring engagement. Signs of a successful strategy include regular updates, resolving issues, and generating positive discussions about the brand.

1. Module 5:
Strategy and Planning
Building the community
1

2. The Social Technographics ™ Ladder
Six groups: Creators, critics, collectors,
joiners, spectators, inactives
“Taken together, these groups
make up the ecosystem that
forms the groundswell.
“By examining how they are
represented in any subgroup,
strategists can determine which
sorts of strategies make sense
to reach their customers.”
Groundswell.forrester.com 2

3. The Social Technographics™ Ladder
CREATORS
Forrester classifies
people according to
how they use social CRITICS
technologies.
Can quantify the COLLECTORS
number of online
consumers within JOINERS
these groups using our
consumer surveys.
SPECTATORS
INACTIVES
3
Source: Forrester

4. The Social Technographics ™ Ladder
Publish a blog
Creators make social content go. Publish your own Web pages
They write blogs or upload video, Upload video you created
CREATORS Upload audio/music you created
music, or text. Write articles or stories and post them
Critics respond to content from
others. They post reviews, comment Post ratings/reviews of
on blogs, participate in forums, and products/services
CRITICS
Comment on someone else’s blog
edit wiki articles. Contribute to online forums
Collectors organize content for Contribute to/edit articles in a wiki
themselves or others using RSS
COLLECTORS Use RSS feeds
feeds, tags, and voting sites like Add “tags” to Web pages or photos
Digg.com “Vote” for Web sites online
Joiners connect in social networks
JOINERS Maintain profile on a social networking
like MySpace and Facebook. site. Visit social networking sites
Spectators consumer social content
including blogs, user-generated Read blogs
video, podcasts, forums, or reviews Watch video from other users
SPECTATORS
Listen to podcasts
Inactives neither create nor Read online forums
consumer social content of any kind. Read customer ratings/reviews
INACTIVES None of the above
*Groups include people participating in at
least one of the activities monthly. 4

5. Step 1: Identify internal community
Profile them: How do they participate?
If you regularly ... Your profile is:
blog, tweet, upload Creator
write reviews, post replies Critic
tag objects, use RSS Collector
join a network Joiner
read blogs Spectator
do none of the above Inactive
5

6. Step 2: Matching
Identify the comfort level for participating.
Profile Example Goal Tools
Creator amplify word of mouth blogs
Critic product development wikis
Collector market research RSS
social
Joiner public relations
network
canary in the brand
Spectator monitoring
coalmine
Inactive getting started search
6

7. Step 3: Identify tools and objectives
Tool Description Objectives
Multiple individual/group For employees and interns
Internal blog
blogs only – gauge talent
Customer facing and
Internal Forums Technology discussions
internal-only
Make employees, partners,
LinkedIn Business networking
suppliers upload profiles
Employees, partners,
Wiki Collaborative publishing customers, students – open
knowledge database
Facebook fan Showcasing new
Engagement with advocates
page products, launches
Engagement, Brand
Twitter Microblogging
awareness, Media relations
Promote CEO thought
YouTube CEO’s speeches, talks
leadership
7

8. Step 4: Identify external community
• People who know you
• People who want to know you
• People who don’t know you
8

9. People who know you
Existing clients: What do they want?
• Quick info: eg: CEO bio, profile, map, contact
numbers, investor relations,CSR
• New information: Updates on product or service
• Support: Help them fix issues
• Space to vent or suggest improvements
• Promotions or discounts or events of upcoming
products
• Use press releases, photos, videos, whitepapers,
testimonials, blogs, podcasts, wikis
Competitor’s myth: “If I post too much information,
my competitors will use it against me.”
In most cases, it doesn’t make a difference.
9

10. Advocacy: Help the fanbase
Fanboy/girls: People who
help promote your brand or
product or service online
because they like it.
“Help them help you.”
ijustine.tv
Ideas: Blogger outreach programme.
Provide content they can use, link, embed,
share, mashup, send to others.Eg: widgets,
free fun apps, games, prizes for their
readers. 10

11. People who want to know you &
People who don’t know you
Potential clients who heard about you via third
party: media, search engine, social network, chat,
seminar, conference, trade event, other websites,
technical reports, associations, groupings.
What do they want?
• CLARITY: quick and easy information.
• CONFIRMATION: Are you credible, competent,
capable?
• ENGAGEMENT: Does your social media identity
suggest you are the kind of person (human) I
want to do business with? Why should I come
back to your website, social network page, follow
your blog or Twitter account?
11

12. Building the community
12

13. Step 5: Determine objectives
• What do you hope to accomplish from
social media?
• Where are your pain points where social
media can be applied – internal or external
communications, sales, marketing, HR,
management, CRM, CSR?
• Will you aim for awareness training or use
social media for a specific campaign?
• How will you gauge the level of success
from the campaign? 13

14. Step 6: Determine resources
• What can the company handle?
• What resources can we dedicate
in terms of people, tech, etc?
• Need to accept that staff,
customers will be negative
sometimes.
• If the company’s culture is top-
down, command-and-control,
you need to break mold by
seeking third-party expert help.
14

15. Step 7: The roll-out
“Different strokes for different folks”
Scenario 1: Corporate-wide awareness
training: You need to drum up support,
identify talent, bring in trainers
Scenario 2: Find your SWAT team: Get a
small team sneakily doing something and
rack up some small wins. This method can
backfire though. Eg: A page that attracts
attacks.
Scenario 3: Officially start with a few
committed bloggers, social networkers and
tweeters and roll out wider if necessary.
NOTE: Share successes and failures and
lessons from above. 15

16. The rollout
• Fail fast: People will appreciate transparency. Don’t fear
failures - first time you cock up, try again.
• Lobby: Personal motivations matter: eg: if there’s someone
wanting a promotion approach them individually. Get them
on board and to champion project early so they can claim
benefit later on. It’s all lobbying skills.
• Champion: Champions come from all depts. Age is not an
issue. Just because someone is young doesn’t mean he/her
is innately ‘digital.’
• Skeptics: Get some pessimists and skeptics
on board. Give them the tools, learn from
their criticisms.
16

17. 17

18. On management buy-in
ROI: There is no silver bullet to building a
business case
• The 1st question is often ‘How can this help us?’ but it
should be ‘How can we help our customers?’
• Evaluate the cost to achieve the same by traditional means
ie: print advertising, marketing, support and IT dept costs.
• Justification: “If we don’t, our competitors will take market
share.”
• Financial Dept: Give them the numbers.
• HR: Talk about staff retention.
• IT: Talk about leverage to buy new toys.
• Legal: Aim of legal dept is to reduce risk to zero. Businesses
work by taking and managing risks.
• Executive buy-in will expedite the financial, legal HR team
18
getting on board.

19. Setting guidelines: example
• Use common sense (don’t piss off • When expressing an opinion,
your boss) emphasize that you speak only for
• Do not post entries that are yourself, beginning a sentence
personal attacks or culturally with "IMHO"
sensitive or religiously offensive • If you doubt the appropriateness
• Do not discuss unreleased of a post, ask a peer what they
products and features think and then read it again the
next day as if it were headline in a
• Post a standard company
newspaper.
disclaimer on your blog, profile
page and disclose affiliation to • Do not post too much noise (ie:
company or specific projects inane accounts of your boredom
with life)
• If you post all or parts of an
internal email, conceal the names • Respect the platform, be an adult
of the sender and recipients • Keep it friendly, and have fun
• Be wary of copyright issues
EG: http://channel9.msdn.com/About/ 19
http://womma.org/blogger/read
http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm

20. Dealing with the trolls
Source: 2008 Forrester Research 20

21. 1.Listen 2.Connect 3.Add Value
4.Measure
21

22. 1. Listen
• Search keywords in Google
• RSS feeds, iGoogle, Google
Reader
• Google Alerts, TweetAlarm
• Facebook Group or Page
• Use dashboard tools:
SocialMention, Trackur,
Brandtology
22

23. 2. Connect
• Twitter: Respond to tweets
mentioning your brand, thank
followers for re-tweets, say
hello to new followers
• Facebook: Thank new fans
for “liking” your page, provide
weekly Discussion topics
• YouTube, Blogs: Comment
on blogs mentioning your
brand, show gratitude if
23
positive

24. 3. Add value
• Provide customer support
• Respond to complaints
• Direct questions to real
people who can provide the
answers, if unavailable on
website
• Correct misinformation,
myths, rumours
• Promote issues important to
your company
24

25. 4. Measure
• Quantitative: Page views, Unique
visitors, time spent, downloads, number of
friends, fans, followers, likes, tweets, re-
tweets, clicks to short links (eg: bit.ly
provides stats), comments, mentions, video
embeds
• Qualitative: Were we able to resolve a
customer issue, avert a crisis, save costs,
improve a service/product. Did we learn
something that we didn’t know before?
Were we able to engage our customers in
new conversations? What is the sentiment
of people blogging/tweeting about our brand
– positive, negative, neutral? 25

26. 26

27. Signs that your social media
strategy is working…on their blog
 They have interesting things to say about their respective
profession and industry.
 They update regularly and link to interesting ideas, stories and
other blog posts
 They provide glimpses into their life outside of work – family,
friends, hobbies – that humanizes them.
 They do not bad-mouth their current or previous employers, or
colleagues (caveat: unless there is lesson worth learning)
 They keep it friendly – no personal attacks
 They seem genuine and honest
 They have a picture, bio, RSS and blogroll
Adapted from Boris Epstein, CEO and Founder 27
of BINC

28. Signs that your social media
strategy is working…on Twitter
 Tweets often (between 2-10 times per day)
 Responds and genuinely helps others
 Has growing and healthy followers/following
 Keeps a balance between personal and
professional tweets
 Engages in discussion related to your business
and seems to get Twitter
28

29. Signs community is working…on
Facebook
 Updates often: pictures, status updates, videos
 Users sign up on your Group, Pages, Events
 Users leave comments and show genuine
interest in wanting to engage with brand, product,
service, launch, event
 Staff on Facebook are member of groups
relevant to their profession
 Staff updating with photos and videos of Events,
Family Day, CSR programmes, New Product
Launches – all PG-13
29

30. Signs that your social media
strategy is working…on LinkedIn
 They have complete profiles
 They have genuine recommendations from peers,
managers and colleagues
 They are members of groups pertaining to their respective
fields
 They update their status often
 They voluntarily answer questions
 They are linking to their employer, blog and other projects
of interest.
 They are participating and getting involved discussion in
the community.
30

31. Signs of success… on Google
When company or brand is Googled:
2. Leads me to company blog, webpage, landing pages,
microsites, staff or company social media pages
3. Leads to active discussions on issues related to company
4. Leads to profession-related discussions and commentary
on social media sites.
5. Does not lead to something controversial or negative,
(unless a lesson to be learnt)
When staff are individually Googled:
7. Doesn’t come up blank.
8. Leads me to their online blog, webpage or social media
profiles and company is identified. (3 and 4 above apply)
31

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