Creating a Social Media Strategy

Presented by:Kate Bradstreet, Managing Director

Kate Bradstreet Communicationshttp://Katebradstreetcommunications.com.au

Agenda

The current digital landscapeWhy is Social Media so important?What do you want to achieve using Social Media?Linking your Social Media Strategy to your business objectivesGetting it right!Measuring your success

Who is Confused?

The Social Media Revolution

Australians are the most prolific social media users in the worldAustralians spend more time on social media per monthRoughly 1/3 use social media every day Social media brands are consistently among Australia’s Top 15 sites

The importance of Social Media

“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO Social Media, the question is how well we do it,”

-Eric Qualman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SuNx0UrnEo

What do we use Social Media for?

Sourced from - Yellow Social Media Report , Censis 2012

What do people search for?

Sourced from - Yellow Social Media Report , Censis 2012

Offers and feedback

Sourced from - Yellow Social Media Report , Censis 2012

Consumer use & purpose

Why, What and How?

How well we do it comes down to knowing why we are doing it, what is the best approach to it

and evaluating the outcome =

STRATEGY

Strategy versus Tactics

Strategy: a plan to achieve a long term

goal

Tactics: a series of actions to achieve

those goals

Why this is a new approach

Social Media is not like other channels. As a marketer you can’t just talk about your own brand and expect people to listen.

The KEY difference is YOU have to earn the right to talk and drive conversations. You have to first listen and then respond.

What can my business use?

Facebook – 845 million usersTwitter – 300 million users

LinkedIn – 135 million usersYouTube – 3 billion views per day

Google + – 62 million usersBlogs

Planning your Strategy

This simple checklist of questions should guide your thinking when planning social media strategies for your business:

What is the social aspect of it? How does it capture the imagination? Why would someone share this? How does it fulfil your brand’s goals? Where could it fall down?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQd_DlkdQ1w

What’s the point? – Top 10 tips1. Increase loyalty by showing the real you2. Get feedback3. Answer and address complaints quickly4. Create product incentives5. Capitalize on and boost your word of mouth marketing6. Share photos and content to increase location and product

awareness (Influencers)7. Grow your mailing list = growing your potential customer base8. Promote new products or promote an event9. Hold contests or offer incentives to increase your following 10. Look at what others are doing and copy.

Connect with your customers

As far as deciding which platform works best, it's a simple matter of asking customers: “Do you use Twitter? Are you on LinkedIn?

What about Facebook?" Business owners cannot be afraid to ask their customers how they would like to communicate with the company What motivates your customers?

Facebook

Customers use Facebook for two reasons:

1. Connections and Conversations. Any marketing efforts made on Facebook must be cognisant of these two fundamental aspects.

2. Customer engagement is key to your success on Facebook. Unless your customers are clicking links to your Facebook page, liking or commenting on your photos and posts, voting in your polls or using your apps, your page will have minimal visibility

Check-in deals on Facebook

Why use a Blog?

Popular Blog platforms: Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, Posterous

Popularity: o Over 156 million blogs in existence o About 175,000 new blogs are created each day

How marketers can use it:

o Add a human touch & personality to brands o Demonstrate thought leadership & subject-matter expertise o SEO benefits – Linkages to your website

Shopping around Blog style

63% of online Australians read blogs to find out what other people think about products or services they are interested in People read an average of 6 blogs before making a purchase decision

Twitter for business

Support your customers

Most research on the reasons why Twitter users follow brands shows that being an existing customer is high on the listThis explains why Twitter is used by many brands as a customer support channel

Sharing for success

Social bookmarking is increasing in size because of its sharabilityPinterest is currently the fastest-growing platform (May 2012)

Crowd sourcing campaign

One Big Switch wanted to empower Aussie consumers to get better deals for the regular household bills using mass consumer power A campaign to cut the cost of mortgages using the power of group switching - 40,000 Australians took part Now has 300,000+ members Thousands of One Big Switch members have cut the cost of their household bills

It’s not all about your product

Endota Spa, Canberra Salsabor Dance Studio

Creating interest

Me & Mrs Jones Visit Canberra

Developing an effective strategy

Begin with the End in MindIf business goals aren't dictating your social media activities, then you're wasting your time, effort and moneyBecause your goals dictate how you organize your daily activities or short-term tactics. So it doesn't matter how many times you update Twitter, or what hashtags you use if you don't understand why you're using Twitter in the first place

What do you want to achieve?

People often want to get started on the tactical side of things without giving due consideration to the key task of understanding and defining Goals & ObjectivesAnswer the WHAT and WHY rather than straight into the HOW. Without doing this you end up with a lot of activity, but none of it is directed back to the higher objective

The 101 of strategy

1. Conduct a Situation Analysis2. What are your goals?3. What are your objectives to reach your goals?4. Who are your target audiences?5. What message are you trying to get out?6. What tactics/channels will you use?7. How will you implement it?8. Evaluation – How will you know you have been

successful?

Setting communication goals

Goals are broad statements of what needs to be done.

Goals deal with:o Reputationo Relationshipso Task

Setting your objectives

Precise, measureable statements about what needs to be done to achieve your goalObjectives deal with changes:

o Increase brand awarenesso Build acceptanceo Encourage actiono Are outcome specific

Who are you?

Dairy Australia

The national services body for dairy farmers and the industry. Our role is to help farmers adapt to a changing operating environment and achieve a profitable, sustainable dairy industry

Goals & Objectives

Goal – To promote the health benefits of low fat milk

o This is a broad goal but it covers identity, image, perceptions, recognition and reputation

Objectives = Change + % + TimeObjective – To create awareness among 50% of Australia’s early childhood nurses that low fat milk has the same calcium properties as full cream milk within 12 months

Tactics and channels

Key – Determining appropriate and effective tactics to reach audiences

o Reach and coverage of audiences provided by the channels

o Creative match of message and channelo Control over the message (ability to turn off

comments on Facebook/YouTube)

What to consider

The competitor’s use of the channelThe ability of the channel to enable discussion and interaction with your target audienceNo point in using Facebook to generate discussion if that’s not what you want to doRESOURCING – Is it worth doing if you don’t have the resources to do it properly?

Now let’s try it out

What does your business do, or want to do? Keep it simple. It might be your mission for the 2013 – 2014 financial year

o Who is your target audience?o What is one of your communication goals?o What are your objectives?o Now let’s think about which is the best social

media channel/or channels to use and why

Has your strategy worked?

What did you expect would happen?

What did happen?

How do we attribute the impact of each channel?

What does success look like?

Most evaluations should be based on four measurement categories

Input Output - What you put into the strategy - What tactics were- Research/resourcing used/frequency of

use

Outcome Outtake- What did the audience do? - Did they change behaviour?- Did they take action? - Share content/buy your product

Keep it simple!

Use and re-use the same content on multiple channels. You don’t always have to create new material!Be prepared to try it out and be prepared for criticism. Embrace it and respond promptly Get your tone and frequency right – be personableBe authentic and engage in two-way conversations with your audience

Questions ?