Marketeers don’t need policies to tell them what they can and cannot share using social media. In fact they are the ones most likely to engage and use social media in a business. However, what they do need is a marketing plan. As a digital marketing consultant working with SMEs seeking support from Coventry University, I have spoken with several business developers or marketeers looking to develop their website, optimise their website, engage on social media, without a marketing plan in place. Always review your current situation first. Then set goals and plan ahead. Then implement in a flexible manner to allow for any needed changes.

1. Digital Marketing for SMEs

2. Key Learning Aims
 Google Analytics
 Planning for social media marketing
 Guidelines for social selling
 Guidelines for good customer service in the era of social media
 Developing a social media company policy
 Paid Per Click Advertising
 Developing your company digital marketing plan

3. Social Media Policies
Marketing
Sales
Customer Service
Human Resources and Recruitment

4. Social Media Policies - Marketing
 Review and analyse your current business situation: look at
finance, ideal customers, best sold products/services, best
perceived services/products, problems, challenges.
 Set goals.
 Plan strategies to allow you to achieve your goals.
 Implement strategies.
 Monitor constantly.
 Review results regularly and adapt.

5. Social Media Policies - Sales
 “Social selling: The use of social media by sales organizations
for listening, customer engagement and internal
collaboration — is an inevitable consequence of social buying”
 Social selling NOT making sales pitches in the social media
Hootsuite, retrieved July 2014

6. Social Media Policies - Sales
Performance benefits of social selling:
 Total attainment of sales quota: 64% of social sellers vs. others
 Customer renewal rate:55% of social sellers vs. 48% of others
 Sales forecast accuracy: 54% of social sellers of 42% of others
 Sales reps that have achieved their quote: 46% of social sellers vs
38% of others.
Hootsuite, retrieved July 2014

7. Social Media Policies - Sales
The pillars of social selling:
Listen and learn
Research and relate
Engage and impress
Collaborate and close
Hootsuite, retrieved July 2014

8. Social Media Policies – Customer Service
“23% of customers who had a positive
service interaction told 10 or more people
about it...[however] 48% of customers who
had negative experiences told 10 or more
others.”
Harvard Business Review, retrieved 2014

9. Social Media Policies – Customer Service
Listen to your customers:
 Create Google Alerts for your company name and all your
product names and service offerings.
 Join industry groups on LinkedIn and monitor for brand or
product mentions.
 Create a search on Twitter (using tools such as Hootsuite or
Tweetdeck) – focus on key brand and product names.
Salesforce, retrieved July 2014

10. Social Media Policies – Customer Service
Engage with your customers:
 Provide real-time customer service.
 Facilitate customer-to-customer communication to allow social self-service.
 Step out of your comfort zone – help customers on third party forums.
 Make your help content searchable by humans (not just search engines)
 Keep any help forums (be them actual forums, or LinkedIn groups) active, add new
content regularly.
 Don’t be a spectator, engage,
 Put a time-limit on any unanswered query (after which, step in and offer help).
 Don’t allow problems to escalate – address them publicly and then take them in the
offline environment.
Salesforce, retrieved July 2014

11. Social Media Policies – Customer Service
Collaborate:
 Identify your in-house experts and keep track of their areas of
expertise.
 Enable cross-functional teams to work on customer problems –
people want to help if you allow them to use their knowledge to its
full extent, encourage them and reward them.
 Publish the latest solutions in a fully searchable resource.
 Make collaboration part of employee appraisals to embed it into
the culture.
Salesforce, retrieved July 2014

12. Social Media Policies – Customer Service
Metrics
Contact engagement
Searchable self-service
Speed to connect
Defection rate
Net promoter score
Salesforce, retrieved July 2014

13. Social Media Policies – HR and
Recruitment
 State the purpose of the policy.
 State who is covered by the policy.
 Clearly state the scope of the policy.
 Establish who is responsible for implementing the social
media policy.
 Establish who is allowed to use social media on behalf of the
company/brand/service.
 Review policy regularly.

14. Social Media Policies – HR and
Recruitment
Dos
Promote job openings.
Keep in touch with staff.
Offer staff and colleague
recommendations.
Build and consolidate teams.

15. Social Media Policies – HR and
Recruitment
Don’ts
Don’t use social media to screen candidates.
Don’t rely on social media to communicate with
employees/colleagues.
Don’t ignore your employees’ right to privacy.

16. Social Media Policies – HR and
Recruitment

17. KPIs for Social Media
 Brand strengthening – Sentiment ratio – SR=
Positive:Neutral:Negative Brand mentions/Expenses
 Word of mouth – Share of voice=Brand mentions/total mentions
 Word of mouth – Audience
Engagement=Comments+shares+trackbacks/total views
 Customer satisfaction – Issue resolution rate = total number of
issues resolved satisfactorily/total number of issues
 Generating new product ideas – topic trend = number of specific
topic mentions/all topic mentions
 Promoting advocacy – active advocates = total number of
advocates active within 30 days/total number of advocates

18. Digital Marketing Plan – Action Points
 Measure your company current social media presence
 Perform digital competitive analysis (SWOT social media analysis)
 Establish digital marketing goals
 Develop suitable digital marketing strategies
 Determine your target market
 Source suitable social media tools
 Develop content
 Assign tasks
 Monitor
 Re-fine
 Set and stick to your budget