social media and online communities

Social Media Communities

To Build or To Join?

Andrew AbendM is for Marketing

The Answer

• Should you join an existing community or build your own?

YES

Your Questions

• How can online communities benefit our clients?

• Is it worth the time to build a presence in an online community?

• Where to get started? Does a directory exist?• Legal issues regarding privacy and ownership

of content

HOW ARE YOU USING SOCIAL MEDIA?

Social Media Channels Used

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Measuring Social Media

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Blog Mentions

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How Social Media Helps Business

• Generate Leads/Sales• Change Perception• Brand Management• Provide Transparency• Network• Gain Insight• Corporate Promotion

How Social Media Helps Business

• Active Social Media• Passive Social Media

Active Usage

• Actively promoting your company through:– Direct promotion– Education– Pay Per Click content ads– Behavioral targeting– Encouraging third party endorsement via blogs with

strong followings• Active usage allows you to control your message

and reach an interested or related audience

Purposes of Active Social Media

• Generate Leads/Sales• Brand Management/Changes Perception• Broadcast News Releases• Networking• Corporate Promotion

Challenges with Active

• Your audience must actually use social media on a regular basis

• Need to create an environment in which consumers want to receive your self-promotion

• Requires right balance of updates so people are not inundated with information yet still receive your message

• Requires commitment to provide information on a consistent basis

• Expectations that anything put on the web will become “viral”

Passive Social Media

• Using audience insight gleaned from social media to change your brand and/or business

• Tools include:– Forums– Review Sites (Yelp, Rip-Off Report, Kudzu, etc)– Fan Pages– YouTube Videos– Twitter

Passive Usage

• Monitoring online activity to understand what consumers are saying about your product

• Interaction with customers creates a stronger bond with them

• Information gathered can be used to improve products and customer service

• Makes sure your product and brands are being represented correctly

Challenges with Passive

• Information overload - companies often react to every comment instead of identifying trends

• The opposite of information overload is dismissing what your customers are saying because they “don’t understand what we are trying to do”

• Requires time to monitor online activities

STRATEGYUsing Social Media Effectively

Strategies

• Deploy a combination of active and passive strategies utilizing social media

• Active– To build a strong following of evangelists– Use for promotions, special offers and announcements to

loyal fans– To educate people on brand/products

• Passive– Understand what audience is saying about your brand– Gain ideas for new products and uses– Provide transparency and accessibility to the brand

ACTIVE STRATEGY

Blogs

• First Person– Blog directly from your brand– To build strong following content needs to be beneficial to

your audience• Can not be solely self-promotion

– Ensure posts have the ability to be linked to interest sites like Digg, De.li.cious, and StumbleUpon

• Benefits– Let’s you provide useful information to an interested audience– Good information tends to be disseminated by readers to

their friends

Blogs

• Third Party Endorsement– Reach out to bloggers who are relevant to your

target audience with information regarding the services you provide

– Use Technorati or BlogSearch to find blogs• Benefits– Taps into established audience to which your brand

can receive exposure– Bloggers have credibility with their audience and an

endorsement goes a long way

Social Networking Sites• Facebook is the dominant social networking site with over 300

million users• It is the only consumer focused social networking site worth the time

to manage• Create a “fan” page in which people can become fans of your brand• Fan pages allows:

– People to interact with your brand– The opportunity to learn about new products, contests and events before

they become public– Provide online specials to fans– Fans to easily recommend your brand to friends– Link to relevant fan pages– Received blog and Twitter feeds

Facebook

• Growing a fan base– Include Facebook button on website– Promote via microblogging (to be discussed later)– Tap into employees who are on Facebook promote to their

friends– Public Relations– Use Facebook’s audience targeted ads to drive traffic

• Benefits:– Creates evangelists by giving “fans” access to something the

general public does not receive– Provides inexpensive venue for marketing

MicroBlogs• Twitter is the dominant MicroBlog at this time• Use of Twitter should be for three things:

– Drive traffic to website by promoting new blog topics– Drive traffic to Facebook by promoting contests, events, promotions– Create evangelists by announcing offers for Twitter-followers only

• Promotion of Twitter presence will come through:– Facebook fan page– Twitter button on web site and blogs– Employee emails/networks

• Benefits:– Inexpensive way to drive traffic to website/Facebook– Creates loyal followers and customers

Sharing

• Sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr will be good tools for contests and promotions

• Your brand should set up company pages for future promotions and, on YouTube,

• Employees should promote any video or photos to their friends via Facebook, Twitter and email

Additional Active Activities

• Cost per click search ads can be purchased two ways – by search terms or by content

• Search terms bring up your ads when people search your specific terms

• Content ads are delivered in blogs, news, etc when people are reading about a topic that is related to your product

• Cost per click ads to drive people directly to your client’s site

PASSIVE STRATEGY

Passive Strategy

• The ongoing monitoring of all social media channels• Understand what is being said about your brand

and responding when necessary• Monitor blogs and comment when appropriate– All responses must be positive and grateful, not

defensive• When a trend is noticed that your brand chooses to

respond to, reach out to the channel(s) that made you aware of it, acknowledging them and the result of their feedback

TRACKINGMeasuring Your Effort

Web Analytics

• Google web analytics allow you to see which social marketing activities are driving people to your web site and what people are doing on the site when they get there

• Google Analytics is a free tool that should be programmed into your website regardless of your social media activity

Social Media Tracking

• ViTrue or Techrigy– Track mentions across various social media like

Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc– Both have a limited free service– Techrigy allows you to track by demographics,

geography and positive/negative comments– ViTrue allows you to compare social media activity

versus a competitor

Fans and Followers

• Simplest measure is the number of “fans” and “followers” that your brand gains on Facebook and Twitter respectively

ONLINE COMMUNITIES

Active and Passive Communications

Community Measurement

• Key to either online community is setting up measurable metrics– Increased visits to your client’s web site • Especially direct links from online community

– Change in tenor of comments – Online Mentions– Fans & Followers• Special codes & coupons

Online Communities

• User-Generated – Created by people to connect with others with like interests and share ideas

• Self-Generated – Created by a company to create dialogue, provide transparency, share ideas in an effort to create evangelists

User Generated • Pros

– Already established– Group protocol exists– Easy to learn about the group

make-up through existing discussions

– Will gain objectivity regarding topics in which you are interested

– Potential source for great customer insight

– Provides platform to address negative comments in a productive manner

• Cons– View corporate

participants skeptically– Will “flame” your brand

if your purpose is disguised

– No control over content– Time consuming

Self-Generated

• Pros– Ability to lead conversations– Attracts fans of the brand– Provides transparency– Platform to move fans to

zealots– Platform to award fans for

their support– Learn what questions your

best fans have knowing others will have them as well

– Invites corporate promotion

• Cons– Takes time to establish

large, active following– Requires ongoing

nurturing– Lose objectivity by

regularly speaking to the converted

– Will be held accountable for promises and comments

Are You Ready To Create A Community?

• A Simple Test:– Do you have a Facebook page for your client?– How many fans does it have?– Does the page encourage conversation? – What percentage of page communications is press

announcements?– Are fans creating their own discussions?– Are fans responding to discussions you post?– Do people regularly comment on your blog or

tweets?

Join or Create?

• Yes - Join– Find a few highly

targeted user generated communities and begin to monitor

– Participate when appropriate

– Always identify yourself– Track efforts– Measure ROI

• Yes – Create– Start simply with

Facebook Fan page– Follow Test– If it proves successful,

expand to a private community

– Track efforts– Measure ROI

QUESTIONS?

Your Questions

• How can online communities benefit our clients?

• Is it worth the time to build a presence in an online community?

• Where to get started? Does a directory exist?• Legal issues regarding privacy and ownership

of content

Andy AbendM is for Marketing

aabend@MarketSmarter.bizTwitter:@MarketSmarterhttp://MarketSmarter.biz

http://SmarterMarketing.Wordpress.com404.316.4820