Creating a Killer Social Strategy

DiviCon 2015
Creating a Killer Social Strategy
presented by Robin Frank, 11/17/15

created by Robeen Frank robeenf@gmail.com
Today’s Agenda
• 5 Steps to Creating a
Killer Social Strategy
• 10 Key Elements of
Every Killer Social
Media Strategy
• Deep Dives
• Visual Content
• Video is hot
• Facebook Organic
Reach
• Pinterest
2

Yours Truly
Social Media
I work with companies
large and small to help
them build and tune-up
an engaging online
presence.
I’m known as a dynamic
speaker and speak
regularly at national
conferences, companies,
and events.
3
Personal Branding
I help individuals in many
fields create powerful
personal brands.
My personal branding
strategy is featured in the
recent book “Digital
Marketing” written by
Larry Weber and
endorsed by Reid
Hoffman (Chairman,
Founder/LinkedIn) and
John Donahoe
(CEO/eBay).
Reboot Camp
Innovative program to help
people refine their job search
skills and confidently change
careers or re-enter the
workforce after a break.
Six inspiring and pragmatic
sessions cover topics from
networking and interview skills
to social media and personal
branding, plus two hours of
one-on-one coaching.

Social media is all about connecting with your
audience on an authentic level - to do this you
need to intimately understand your current and
potential customers
4

5 Steps Smart Businesses Take to
Create a Killer Social Strategy
6

Step 1:
Know Your Audience
7

Where Does Your Audience Hang Out?
8

Consolidate Your Social Strategy
• Each social channel is not a stand-alone effort - they should work
together to achieve your goals
• Each platform has its goals and messages but your brand is
consistent between platforms
• Establish strong relationships and get people to tune-in
• Create focused, original content that is on brand and adds value - on
platforms where your target audience lives
9

Step 2:
Know the Trends and Use
Them to Inform Your Strategy
10

Facebook Dominates Small Business
Social Media Marketing
11

2015 Social Media Trends
1. Video is hot
2. Visual content drives
traffic
3. Consistency is more
important than frequency
4. Improving Facebook
organic reach
5. Pinterest is the new Google
6. Post like a fan not a
marketer

Step 3:
Focus on the Customer
13

Your Target Audience Needs
Depend on Buying Cycle Stage
• Mistake - taking customer-focused brand
messages and customizing them into content
for each channel
• This process puts channels, content and
messages first and assumes the target
audience’s needs are always the same
• Fact: Your target audience has different
communication needs depending on which
stage of the buying cycle
• Solution: Start with the customer’s need
and then build the social media process,
content and resources around the customer
• Win: Customizing content to the audience’s
changing needs increases engagement
14

Step 4:
Understand the
Stages of the Buying Cycle
15

Tailor Social Messages to Buyer Personas
• The buyer’s journey starts
before buyers think of
themselves as buyers and
extends after purchase
• Your social strategy should
address different customer
needs in the cycle
• When they are not in the
market to buy
• When they become
engaged in buying
• When they become
customers
• After they purchased the
service
16

Pre-Purchase Persona
• Attracting prospects
• Consumers who are in the
market to buy, but haven’t
purchased from you yet
• SEO optimize - use keywords:
mentions of your company,
competitors, industry or
specific products and services
• Create social media campaigns
to grow fans and followers
• Monitor conversations &
engage with those responding
• PR bonus - look for larger
industry or corporate issues
and identifying journalists or
bloggers for media outreach
17

Purchase Persona
• Research
assistance
• Find consumers
actively seeking
purchase
information and
help them
• Sales
representatives
are best suited
for more
relevant
engagement
• Goal: conversion
18

PostPurchasers Become Your Best
Brand Advocates
• Use social to keep
customers happy
• Focus on resolving any issues
they may have
• Offer advice and help for
product/service use
• The goal is to delight
customers, minimize negative
comments and promote the
positive
• Customer service bonus:
schedule follow-ups in 1-2
weeks to check in
19

Step 5:
Perform a Social Media
Audit
20

How To Do a Social Media Audit
• Review your posts for the last 3-12 months
• Which posts got the most traffic, as well
as the most shares and other
engagement?
• Reassess and evolve your strategy
• Tools
• Google Analytics - start with a
comparison report, which you can do for
any period of time
• Facebook - AgoraPulse Facebook Page
Barometer
• Twitter - Simply Measured Free Twitter
Follower Report
• Tailwind’s Pinterest Tools
• Iconosquare Instagram Statistics
• Google+ Steady Demand Brand Page
Audit Tool
21

10 Elements of Every Killer
Social Media Strategy
22

#1: Uniquely Tailored to Your Business
• Social media is different for every brand, company and product
• Do the appropriate research
• Copy best practices, adapt, measure, evolve
• There is no silver bullet approach to building your social media strategy
• There are endless ways to build one that depend on variables like your
business size, business type, brand, location, and demographics
23

#2: Social Strategy Aligned With
Business Goals
• Define the role of social
media in your marketing
strategy
• Social media is the first and
sometimes only point of
contact for consumers
• What do you want to
accomplish with your business
- your social goals should align
with your business goals
• Treat social as mission-critical
not an afterthought
24

#3: Clearly Defined Social Goals
• Organic growth and
engagement are the core of
any successful social
strategy
• 400 new website visitors
• Build following by 1000
• Build awareness by 100%
• Generate 20%
engagement
• Drive $5K in sales
25

#4: Clear Content Strategy and
Editorial Calendar
• Define the goals for each social network
• Types of content for each network
• Create a content calendar
• Social is a channel for engagement
• Share great curated content, interact
with followers, and help your
business stay at the front of the
customer’s mind
• Do not use your social networks only to
advertise your products and services
• This is a practice that can quickly
dull engagement and customer trust
• When you provide helpful and
relevant content more than 70% of
the time, this earns you the right to
post some promotional posts
26

Great Content Strategy to Win at Social
Media and Search
• Set your recipe
• Conversational vs. educational vs. promotional
• Number of posts per week
• Tie in local/calendar events
• Have a top messages doc to refer to - consistency
• Create an editorial calendar
• Keeps content organized, consistent, relevant to your audience
• Spreadsheet of all content across all channels, by date for
creation, publishing, promotion, and tracking
• Guarantees that you always have something to talk about
• Ensures you are proactive, not just reactive, to drive eyeballs to
your assets
27

Editorial Calendar: Social Media
28

#5: Efficient Execution
• Economies of Scale
• Schedule social postings in
advance with a programs such
as Hootsuite, Sprout Social,
Edgar, etc.
• Monitoring is easy too - for
mentions, comments, replies
• Postings to Twitter, Facebook
and LinkedIn can be similar
• Automate connections – for
example, each published blog
post is automatically linked
to your social networks
29

MED: Minimum Effective Dose (Tim Ferris)
• Maintain a regular social media
presence without getting
sidetracked or overwhelmed
• Varies – find your recipe and
stick to it
• Daily - posts on 1-3 platforms +
interact with
audiences/blogs/influencers you
want to build relationships with
• Pins/Instagram can be 10-20
• Monitor -1-2 metrics
• Size of your networks, shares of
your content or info, referrals,
views
30

Don’t Set it and Forget It - Consistency
is More Important Than Frequency
31

My Top Social Media Hacks - Efficiency Tools
1. Build in time to listen
2. Content Strategy + Editorial Calendar
3. Automate with a tool – postings,
interconnect networks
4. Digg Reader for curated content
5. Get a Social Signature
6. Get memorable business cards
32

Hootlet - Post From Anywhere
33

Easy Content Curation
• Finding, grouping,
organizing, and sharing the
best and most relevant
content
• Decide how to present this
to your audience – what
viewpoints do you add?
• Create a Digg Reader of
your content sources so
they can be easily scanned
• Twitter lists
35

Get a Social Signature
Online/Offline
36

#6: ROI is Measured And Tracked
• Tools
• Hootsuite
• Sprout Social
• Edgar
• Platform-specific apps
• Establish the metrics by which
you'll measure social media
success
• Use an analytics or measurement
tool to track these metrics
• Be prepared to evolve your
strategy in response to these
results
• The largest contributor to ROI is
measuring links back to your
content
37

#7: Competitive Analysis Informs
Strategy
• Analyze what works for your
competitors - and then determine
how to use that information to
improve your social media strategy
• Website
• Customer acquisition strategy—
analyze their direct, organic,
referral and other traffic
sources
• Review their content marketing
and see if it is producing results
• Look at where they are
advertising/promoting their
content and guesstimate
whether their marketing budget
is effective
38

#8 Listening is Built In
• If you're all about broadcasting
rather
than LISTENING, trouble city
• Listen to Competitors
• Listen to Influencers
• Helps you find interesting
angles
• Helps you fine-tune where
can you help, provide real
value and differentiate
yourself
• Look for current events
• Tools – Google Alerts +
Hootsuite
39

#9: Website Optimized For Social
• Your website is your brand’s
home base - drive traffic there
• Use your blog to establish your
brand’s voice, share
information and engage
visitors
• Include a call to action (CTA)
at the end of your blog posts
asking readers to like you on
Facebook or follow you on
Twitter (or whichever
platforms you’ve determined
are best for your audience)
40

Display Social Icons Prominently in
Your Header or Sidebar
• Get more followers
• Social icons for following
• Integrate live social media
feeds (e.g., Facebook and
Twitter) so visitors can see your
recent activity
• Get more content shared
• Incorporate sharing buttons on
your pages and posts to ensure
that your content is easily
shared
• If you don’t have sharing
buttons, your visitors will likely
click away and you’ve lost that
opportunity to reach a wider
related audience.
41

#10: Mobile Optimization is Critical
• For all mobile channels, make
your header image and profile
image count
• Cohesive colors and logos to
website
• Test profiles on different
devices and apps
• Responsive Test
• Responsive Design Checker
• Tell a story with your bio
• Posts that focus on visual - video
and images
• For campaigns
• Are CTA’s visible and usable?
• Is the social page easy to
navigate?
42

A Few Deep Dives
43

Have a Visual Content
Plan
44

90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual,
and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain
than text

Relevant Content + Great Graphics
Build Awareness & Engagement
46
NOT

Bite-sized Content: Share-ables
• These are the really easy-to-
create, easy-to-share individual
images that would be on Facebook,
Pinterest and Instagram
• Examples: funny photos, behind-
the-scenes shots, images that
incorporate quotes, tips or other
short bits of text
• They are really a good jumping-off
point to lead into a longer
message.
• Creation tools
• Canva
• WordSwag
• These types of images are designed
to increase reach and engagement
47

Step-by-Step Images
• Checklists, how-to images and
tutorials are all great examples
of “Step-by-Step” images
• This format is ideal for sharing
procedures, systems or “secret
sauces” with your community
• These images work particularly
well on Pinterest and get shared
a lot
• This kind of visual content
doesn’t need to be fancy or even
overly designed–they just need
to be helpful and easy to use
• Remember, people love
shortcuts
48

Showpieces
• These are pieces of content that require more investment of
time and resources but are most likely to bring better return in
terms of sharing and traffic
• Infographics - how-to’s, top tips
• Turn slide decks into pdfs for Slideshare
• Video tours or snippets
49

How Will You Use
Video?
50

Videos Become Content of Choice
in 2015
51

How Will You Use Video?
• Online video has always been a
powerful tool, but it’s becoming more
mainstream for businesses of all sizes
• Video storytelling is one of the most
powerful ways to get a message across
• The combination of visual and audio
elements adds an immediately
engaging, human, and emotional
touch to content
• The use of video content for
marketing increased 73% this year
52

Video is the Untapped Frontier
• Native embedded video on Facebook and
Twitter are going to be massive
• Facebook - uploaded directly to the
news feed gets higher reach
• Twitter - allows you to upload up to a
30-second video that doesn’t count
against the 140-character limitation
• Most popular forms of short video
• Instagram with15-second videos
• Vine with 6-second videos
• LiveStream with Periscope and
Meerkat
• Use your smartphone to create video
using these apps
• Videohance
• Hyperlapse
• Stop Motion Studio
53

Facebook:
Best Practices to Increase
Facebook Organic Reach
54

Declining Facebook Organic Reach
and What to do About it
• Currently around 8% of your
fans will see any post
• Despite the fact that 92% of
small businesses agree that
social media is important for
their business AND that the
majority use Facebook for
their social media marketing,
most also report that they
don’t know whether their
Facebook outreach is
“working”
55

Facebook Organic Reach Tips
• No tagging and no hashtags on
FB
• No big links - Facebook includes
a link to your content in any
graphic/link added
• Humorous, original, thought-
provoking branded graphics
work well
• Content: you need to be
persistent with (and recycle)
your content on Facebook
because it may be the second
or third posting that brings the
win
56

Ask Questions Creatively
•Basic questions don’t inspire fans to
answer
•Ask a similar question with multiple-
choice answers, illustrated by an
interesting graphic
•Zomato, a restaurant finder app, asks
questions and includes intriguing
graphics
• As a result, their posts always get huge
engagement
•Post questions your audience wants to
answer
•Remember, pictures and a little humor do
wonders for engagement
57

Post Quality Content, But Less
Often
• Of the 1500+ stories a person might
see, News Feed displays around 300
• As a Facebook marketer, you’re
fighting for one of those
precious spots
• Aim for quality not quantity
• More posts won’t necessarily
bring you more love from
Facebook
• 2x/day is good for Facebook
• Fanpage Karma
• Coca-Cola India posts less
frequently on their Facebook
page than Pepsi India, but when
it comes to fan engagement,
Coca-Cola India is the clear
winner
58

Use Organic Post Targeting to deliver your
content to the audience most likely to
engage with it
• This post is targeted to 150 fans,
selected by their interests and
educational status
• If this post had been targeted to
all 12,000+ fans of the page, the
engagement would have been
much lower
• Facebook offers eight options to
set your target
• Gender, relationship status,
education level, age,
location, language, interests
and post end date
59

Pinterest
60

Pinterest Is the New Google
• Combines the power of search with visual content
• Pinterest is second only to Facebook in the amount of traffic it
drives to websites
• Facebook USA is 4X Twitter
• While its second-place finish is a distant one, Pinterest does
far better sending consumers to websites than older and
larger platforms Twitter and Google+
61

Guided Search: Pinterest as a
Visual Search Engine
• Guided Search gives you keyword
suggestions when you enter a search
term on Pinterest, further
narrowing down what you're looking
for
• Pinterest>Google if your search is
vague and you are interested in
exploring
• If you want to buy a Kate Spade
iPhone wallet case with polka-
dots, then Google away
• If you need a new iPhone case
and are unsure of what type,
style or color, Pinterest will give
you some seriously exhaustive
options
• When you search, "Guides" pops up
below the search bar
• Helps find keywords to add to
62

Sharing on Pinterest
• Optimize your images on
your website so users can
easily find and share to
Pinterest
• Portrait-oriented images
on every page
• Best size is an aspect
ratio of 2:3 and a
minimum width of 600
pixels
• Enhance image
descriptions with
keywords
• Use the Tailwind app -
great tool for marketing
and analytics
63

Essential Elements of a Stellar
Pinterest Brand
• Pin content regularly
• Pin timeless content
• Build brand thought
leadership
• Provide assistance or
education
• Create content to share
your brand expertise
• Add value to their
community
64

Best Practices to
Improve Engagement
65

Improve Social Media Engagement
• Do your fans interact with you
on social media?
• Want to spark more
engagement?
• While it’s relatively easy to get
people to like and share posts,
it takes creativity to drive
comments and dialog
66

Arrange a Q&A Session
• No matter what your business,
give people an opportunity to ask
questions and there will be plenty
of social media engagement
• Google hangouts and Twitter
chats or even create a simple
Facebook post that asks your
audience what they want to know
about your company or product
• You can interview experts
related to your industry in that
type of scenario as well
• NASA occasionally arranges
Google hangouts with astronauts
and scientists
67

Tag People in Curated Content
• When you share someone else’s
content, tag the original publisher
• Attract the attention of the
original content creator
• They may post a comment
thanking you for the share
• Write curated articles
• Choose a topic and reference
multiple articles, along with
their authors and links
• Then, tag everyone mentioned
in the post when you post
socially their thanks
• Gets the conversation going,
and results in more shares by
authors, who may tag you back
68

Encourage User-Generated Content
• The most convenient, yet trickiest, way to get engagement
• Take ideas from brands like GE, Belkin, Target, Warby Parker, Pepsi and
Starbucks to get you thinking creatively
• Starbucks’ #WhiteCupContest is an excellent example of a successful
UGC contest
• The coffee giant took the cue from their customers, who doodled
vibrant designs on the brand’s iconic white cup
69

Stay Up to Speed On The Industry
• Social media is a constantly
changing world
• What was true yesterday may
not be true tomorrow - take
Facebook’s organic reach for
example which has declined to
under 10% in the past year
• Get up to speed and stay there
• Resources
• Mashable
• Social Media Examiner
• Copyblogger
• Hootsuite University
70

Thank You!
robeenf@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/robinfrank
robeenf.com
GoRebootCamp.com
slideshare.net/robeen
pinterest.com/robeen

Creating a Social Strategy
Recommendation:
Twitter
73

5 Ways to Improve Your Instagram
Marketing

Add a Link to Your Instagram
Profile
• The only place where you can put a clickable
link on Instagram is in your profile, below
your bio description
• If you’re going to see any success with
Instagram, you must use this link effectively
• The most important thing to link to is your
website URL - but could be your blog page,
your product page, a custom landing page, a
lead generation page too
• Want people to go to a specific product page
for two weeks and then change it to a new
product page after that? Just change the link.
If you’re running a contest and want people to
opt in or register on your website, make this
page the link in your Instagram profile. Then
change it back to your default page when the
contest is over.

Track Traffic From Instagram
• Google Analytics won’t recognize mobile
traffic that comes from Instagram. It has
to do with the process of having to select
a browser when navigating away from
Instagram. Therefore, when someone
clicks on the link in your Instagram bio,
Google Analytics records the traffic as
direct, not a referral from Instagram.
• This can cause confusion when you check
analytics
• The best fix is to use a trackable link in
your Instagram profile. Instead of listing
the full URL, get a Bit.ly or goo.gl link that
allows you to track clicks. Use a trackable
link for each of your Instagram URLs - so
you know how much traffic each link is
driving to your website

Showcase Products and Services
• Tell your business story through images
and videos
• Put your products and services in context
so your audience connects with them
• An image of a new necklace on a
counter doesn’t convey the same
feeling as a photo of someone wearing
that same necklace with a coordinated,
styled outfit
• Take it a step further: put that person
in an environment, such as at a party,
with family, in a park or all of the
above
• Michael Kors does an excellent job of
showcasing their products in a familiar
environment with someone wearing them

Share UGC/Non-Product Photos
• If customers post photos with
your products, share them as
user-generated content (UGC)
• A reposting app will allow you
to give the original user
credit, while showing your
audience how others enjoy
your product
• Photo Repost, Repost,
Iconosquare

If You Don’t Sell a Product/Service
• Companies that don’t have
tangible products to sell can
still use Instagram to
showcase their services
• Take photos and videos of
key employees, customer
interactions or other related
actions such as navigating
your website.
79

Before/After Photos
• If you travel for work, visit
different branches of your
company or even interact with
people around town, and take
photos of real-life encounters
to showcase who you are
• Ask questions of the locals to
increase engagement too.

Use Text Overlays on Images
• Another way to add pizzazz to
your Instagram photos is to put a
text overlay on your image - you
can use this to share tips, promote
a sale or brand a pic
• Use a desktop tool like Photoshop
or PowerPoint or a website like
Canva or PicMonkey to create text
overlays on your images
• Use the text overlay to list the
price or options for a product,
advertise a sale or limited-time
offer or promote an event

Use Clear Calls to Action in Post
Captions
• Use the post caption to enhance your post and
convey a clear message to your audience
• Make sure your CTA sure it’s clear and of value to
your followers - the simpler the action, the
better the results
• No matter how many subsequent comments are
added, the original caption will always remain
complete and visible beneath the post
• While you’re allowed up to 2,200 characters in
your Instagram caption, 200 to 300 characters is
usually ideal
• If you want people to visit your website, ask them
to “Click on the link in the bio” or write some
other message requesting they navigate to your
profile to access the direct link
• If you want people to call, email or visit your
store, make that request clear in the message.
• Also, engage your audience with incentives in
your post caption call to action. For example,
Nordstrom did a “Like it to lower the price”
campaign. For every 10,000 likes they’d lower the
price 10%, up to 30% off.

Add Hashtags
• Relevant hashtags on your Instagram posts will help
increase your reach, engagement and overall visibility
• Add hashtags that are related to your business, your
post and your target audience. (Avoid popular hashtags
or completely unrelated descriptions in an attempt to
get on a popular search; these will not help your
brand.)
• Try to use 10 to 15 hashtags per post - you can use up
to 30 hashtags per post, but there’s rarely a situation
where that many are needed.
• Mix highly popular hashtags (those with hundreds of
thousands or more images), moderately popular
hashtags (those with thousands of images), less
popular (those with fewer than 1,000 images) and your
own custom hashtags
• When you incorporate your own custom hashtags, you
create a virtual gallery of all of your content - when
someone searches that hashtag, they’ll find all of your
Instagram posts

Share an Instagram Photo to
Another Site After Uploading
• You probably know that you can share your Instagram post
to Facebook or Twitter at the same you upload it to
Instagram
• You can also go back and share an Instagram post after
you’ve already uploaded it.
• Find the Instagram post in your gallery that you want to
share. Click on the three-dot button at the bottom of the
post and select “Share”. The photo and caption will appear
as how it will be shared. The original Instagram caption is
listed. If you want to edit the caption to say something else,
you can edit it here.
• Choose the account to share the post to and proceed with

Instagram Analytics
• Iconosquare
• Free platform to use and the only setup required is connecting your Instagram account
• Your analytics are updated daily so that you can easily keep track of your information
• You can even set up email notifications to receive an alert every time your Instagram
analytics are updated.

Analytics on Iconosquare
• You can see how many followers you have, how many people you are following,
and the total number of likes and comments you’ve received
• You can see a graph of how your community is growing broken down into three
categories: Followers You Don’t Follow Back, Reciprocal relationships, and
Followings Who Don’t Follow You Back
• Ideally, you want to have a lot of reciprocal relationships and you want to
minimize the number who don’t follow you back. We all have plenty of people
(celebrities, businesses, etc) who we follow and who don’t follow us back. But if
your goal is to foster relationships and build a community on Instagram, you
want to connect with people who have an interest in you as well.
• You can see all the people in a category - this is an easy way to go through and
manage your connections, whether to follow someone new or to unfollow
someone
• You can also see your week’s newest followers and your lost followers
• At the bottom of the page you can see the people you follow who you are most
active with and how many of your “likes” given were to those you follow or not

Optimize Your Posts
•To determine how your posts are performing or how you can improve them, click on the “Optimization” tab on the
left menu.
•Here you can see when your audience is most actively engaging with your posts, the average lifespan of your posts,
and what hashtags you’re actively using compared with the most popular hashtags on Instagram.
•Use the Best Times To Post graph Your posts times and frequency are represented by black circles outside the
graph. Your audience’s engagement is represented by grey circles inside the graph. The larger the circle, the more
frequently that time is active
87

Post Engagement
• Click on the “Engagement” tab on the left menu to see your monthly
levels of engagement.
• You can see how many total likes your posts receive every month and
the average number of likes you receive per post
• You can also see you most liked photos of all time
• You can see how many total comments your posts receive every month
and the average number of comments you receive per post.
• You can see your most commented posts ever
• If you want to boost your level of engagement with comments try
different methods: including CTAs on the image itself, asking
questions in your post caption, polling your audience for answers,
and other methods
• To see your most engaged followers every month, look at the “Rolling
Month Analysis” to find the list of your 10 most engaged followers
88

Post at Off-peak Hours
• During times when fewer people are sharing content on Facebook, your chances of
getting noticed are higher
• Typically the best time to post on Facebook is 3 pm
• But, you can try posting at different times, depending on when your fans are online.
• Go to your Facebook Insights to check out when your fans are logged into the network
• Then choose the hours when the majority of your fans are online and your
competitors aren’t posting

Creating a Killer Social Strategy

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