A basic plan for developing a social media initiative

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2. Creating a social media
Strategy
ESWH Social Media Team
Developed Tony Williams
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3. Overview
● Social Media Channels
● 6 Steps to Creating a Social Media Plan
● Budgeting for Social Media
● Getting Started
● Questions
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4. What is Social Media
● Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social
interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing
techniques.
- wikipedia.org
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5. What is Social Media?
● An ongoing conversation that’s happening RIGHT NOW
● A promotional channel for content distribution
● A long-term return on investment
● A steady stream of information for:
 Research
 Feedback
 Building Relationships with customers, clients, contacts
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6. Current Statistics
● Over 50% of people in the US have at least 1 social media account
● Social media makes up over 17% of all online usage
 Overtaken email as #1 activity on the web
● 93% of Americans believe companies should have a social media
presence
 85% believe those companies should be interacting with customers
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7. Social Media Facts- Facebook
● 1.5 Billion active users worldwide
 819 Million on mobile devices
 Mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users
● 53% female, 46% male
● 300 Million Photo uploads per day
● Thursdays and Fridays, engagement is 18% higher
● Average time spent on Facebook is 20 minutes
● 4.75 Billion pieces of content shared daily
● Largest segment is 25-34 years old
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8. Social Media Facts- Twitter
● 1 Billion registered users
● 500 million tweets sent daily
● 100 Million active users daily
● 170 minute spent per user on Twitter Monthly
● Peak days to tweet are Tuesday & Wednesday
● Millennials and Teens are most active segment
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9. Social Media Facts-
● 1 Billion unique visits each month
● Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
 Almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year
● 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
● 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
● According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34
than any cable network
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10. Social Media Facts-
● 70 Million users as of 2013
● 47% of US online consumers have made a purchase based on
recommendation from Pinterest
● Pinterest generates 4x more revenue per click than Twitter and 27%
more than Facebook
● Pinterest buyers spend more money on items than any of the other
top 5 social media sites
● Conversion rates for Pinterest traffic are 50% higher than conversions
from other traffic
● 80% of total pinterest pins are repins
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11. Social Media Facts–
● Over 350M Users
● Google plus has great SEO benefits
 Google plus links are all “dofollow”, meaning they pass valuable link juice
 Posts are crawled and indexed immediately
 Bots crawl 2,500 words on a + page, vs 275 on Facebook
● Google Plus for business offers more integrated analytics on your
business page
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12. How is Social Media Used?
● Customer Service
● Product/Service Feedback
● Networking and Job Searching
● Lead Generation/Sales
● Promotions
● News
● Internal communication
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13. Creating a Social Media Plan
Steps:
1.Preplanning
2.Listen to the Conversation
3.Create Your Target Profiles
4.Set Specific Goals
5.Join the Conversation
6.Measure ROI
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14. Step 1 - Preplanning
Questions to ask internally:
● Where do our customers get their information
● What influences our customers?
● How does information flow in our industry?
● What promotional channels are we currently using?
 Are they working?
● What is my sales funnel? How are leads qualified?
Asking questions indicates how social media can be used to
complement your business goals.
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15. Step 2 – Listen to the Conversation
● Secure your brand on social platforms
 Usernames are often unique
 Use consistent usernames across all platforms
● Set up monitoring channels
 Google Alerts
 Social Mention
 Technorati
 Twitter Search/Twitter Lists
 Radian6
● Monitor: individual influencers, competitors, blogs/comments, and
industry news sources
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16. Step 3 – Create Your Target
Profile
● Focusing on key target segments lowers marketing costs
● Example:
 Target Audience is 25-35
 $350 Billion in spending power
 Spend 20 hours online weekly
 96% of them join social networks
● This information can be gathered through market research, surveys,
or previous studies
● What is the perfect prospect?
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17. Step 3 – Create Your Target
Profile
● Find key attributes from monitoring channels
● Chart presence on social media
● Determine Market Segmentation
 Demographic
 Geographic
 Psychographic
 Behavioralistic
● Continue gathering customer data at each step of your plan
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18. Step 4 – Set Specific Social Goals
● Generate Leads
● Increase brand awareness
● Increase traffic/Opt-ins
● Develop relationships with current customers
● Boost SEO/SEM results
● Reduce CRM costs
● Increase Revenue
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19. Step 5 – Join the Conversation
● 3 Phases of Social Equity
 Awareness
• Qualify fans and followers as leads
 Engagement
• Increase long-term communication
• Exclusive promotions will help turn advocates into customers
 Social Commerce
• Determine small data set to introduce products to
• Gather product reviews
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20. Step 5 – Join the Conversation
● Establish an Editorial Calendar
 Choose specific days for posting content
 Be consistent – you’re a news source
 Helps stay on track and organize content
 Choosing specific topics each day helps find content ideas
● Share calendar with everyone involved
● Use video to build quality content
 Doesn’t have to be professional
 Include descriptions and tags for search engine optimization
 Post video with content on your blog/website
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21. Step 5 – Join the Conversation
● Be Transparent and Authentic
 Don’t be evasive
 Offer your name, title, experience
 Admit your interests in the topic
 Define your credibility (Use LinkedIn to build your credible profile)
 Contribute quality input on topics of interest
● Strive to answer questions about your authenticity
● Don’t focus on selling, focus on engagement
● Earn a reputation, build trust, then sell to qualified leads
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22. Step 5 – Join the Conversation
● Be the expert in your industry
 Write about what you know
 Offer insights to those who ask for it
 Share links to resources you think add to the conversation
● Use topics you monitor to start conversation
 Articles/blog posts
 Community Forum Threads
 Conversation from social media groups
● When customers trust your content, they’ll trust what you’re selling
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23. Step 5 – Join the Conversation
● Have rules of engagement
 Know what to do with negative responses
 Determine who in your organization is involved in responding
 Admit to mistakes and thank those who bring it to attention
 Respond Kindly
● Share these rules with your team
● Turn brand “detractors” into “advocates”
 People remember bad experiences, but will buy again if it’s corrected
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24. Step 6 – Measure Your
● What is a Return?
 Non-financial
• Visitors, word of mouth, page views, fans, followers, referrals
 Financial
• Sales, Transactions, Coupons
• ROI
● Not all returns have to be $$ to bring value
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25. Step 6 – Measure Your Returns
● Qualitative
 Are we part of our industry’s conversation?
 How do our customers perceive us versus our competitors?
 Did we build key relationships?
 Are we moving from monologue to dialogue?
● Quantitative
 Website Analytics
 Social Mentions
 SEO Rankings
 Linkbacks
 Subscribers
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26. Step 6 – Measure Your Returns
● Establish before/after baseline
 What did our online environment look like before social media?
 What online channels were we using?
 What does it look like now?
● Determine hard numbers here
 5.5% conversion rate before
 8.5% conversion rate now
● This baseline should track at least 6 months
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27. Step 6 – Measure Your Returns
● Develop Activity Timeline along same baseline
● Diagram exact dates in which key SM activities occurred
 8/11 blog started
 8/13 Facebook page started
 9/15 FB ad campaign begins
 9/17 FB ad ended
● Note Milestones on diagram
 500/1000/10,000 fans
 100 clicks back to blog link
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28. Step 6 – Measure Your Returns
● Look at Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
 Transactions
 New Customers
 Sales
 Revenue
 Average Order Size
 E-mail list size
● Use Google Analytics to determine exact numbers
● What are the transaction precursors?
 Brand mentions
 Loyalty metrics
 Store traffic
 Free sample offers
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29. Step 6 – Measure Your Returns
● Overlay all timelines and look for patterns
 SM Activities
 Web Analytics
 Store Metrics
 Loyalty Metrics
● Circle areas where increases occur
● How were specific numbers achieved?
 Facebook promotion
 Product launch
 Press release
 Coupon offer
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30. Budgeting for Social Media
● Allocation vs. Addition
 Do you raise new funds or borrow from existing budgets?
● How to determine Allocation or Addition
 What are your goals?
 How much is your existing marketing budget?
 Which current tactics work? Which are most expensive?
 What internal resources are available?
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31. for Social Media
● What to budget for:
 Time
 Design and Branding
 Analytics Tools
 Social Monitoring
 Automation Applications
 Social Media Advertising
 Outsources/Consulting
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32. How to Get Started
● Start with platforms you can actively maintain
● What outsourcing is needed?
 Design, development, content management, market research
● Plan your content flow
 Will you push content through all channels?
● Find tools to automate processes
 Tweetdeck (now by Twitter)
 Hootsuite
 Sprout Social
 Mailchimp
 Sendible
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33. Additional Resources
● Blogs
 Socialmediaexplorer.com
 Socialmediatoday.com
 BrianSolis.com
 Mashable.com
● Tools
 Tweetdeck
 Sendible
 Hootsuite
 Shoutlet
 Buffer
 Trackur
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