SOCIAL MEDIAREBECCA L. COONEY, MSClinical Associate Professor

ENGAGMENT STRATEGY

“Why use social media? Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make,

but about the stories you tell.”

-Seth GodinAuthor, entrepreneur, marketer, and public speaker

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A “Day in the Life” of a Social Media Marketer

In Marketo’s “Definitive Guide to Social Marketing,” they provide a snapshot of a “day in the life” of a social media manager (Rothman, Pergolino, Miller and Miller, n.d.).

Here (left) is an illustration of activities and frequency of posts the individual responsible for digital engagement would accomplish on an average day

Rothman, D., Pergolino, M., Miller, J, and Miller, J. (n.d.). The definitive guide to social marketing: A Marketo Workbook. (pgs. 13, 16, 32-33, 37, 51, 42-43, 47-48, 57).

Social Media Engagement

The main goal in social media engagement in business is to motivate or inspire visitors and fans to do something in response to a post. This comes in the form of likes, emoticon reaction, comments, watching a video, looking at a photo, sharing, clicking on a link or contributing additional (and original) content to add to the chain of discussion and flow of engagement.

Marketing today is difficult. There are 200 million people on the U.S. ‘Do Not Call’ list. Over 86% of TV viewers admit to skipping commercials. Forty-four percent of direct marketing is never opened. Roughly 99.9% of online banners are never clicked. Buyers wait until they have completed 60-80% of their research before reaching out to vendors.”

- Michael Brenner: Senior Director of Global Marketing at SAPC

Snapchat is on a growth trajectory and only 5% of

marketers are using Snapchat, yet 16% plan

on increasing their Snapchat activities and

28% of marketers want to learn more about

Snapchat.

Facebook is the most important social network for marketers by a long shot! When asked to select their most important platform,

55% of marketers chose Facebook, followed by LinkedIn at 18%. Plus,

67% of marketers plan on increasing their Facebook

marketing activities.

60% of marketers use video in their marketing

and 73% plan on increasing their use of

video. A significant 50% of marketers plan on

using live video services such as Facebook Live

and Periscope, and 50% want to learn more about

live video.Quick FactsFrom Social Media Examiner’s 2016 report (Stelzner, 2016):

Stelzner, M. (2016, May). 2016 social media marketing industry report: How marketers are using social media to grow their business. Social Media Examiner.

Social Tactics & Theory

Benefits to having a solid social media tactical plan as a roadmap in a digital campaign (Klein, n.d.):

• Optimize your time spent on content management

• Ensure on-brand communication and content

• Keep daily execution in line with your social media objectives

• Build a narrative around your brand

• Increase the amount of interactions and consumption

• Track performance and improve contentKlein, M. (n.d.). How to create a social content strategy for your business (handbook). Falcon Social.

It’s important that content is carefully planned out to ensure that you reach your objectives for social. When content is created on an ad-hoc basis, you risk communicating content that’s off-brand, or off target for your long-term objectives. Planned content promotes regular posting, and allows for a consistent workflow to maintain the quality of the content that you create. Most people working in social media have busy schedules, and benefit from routines and established workflows; great content flourishes from this consistency.“

- Helle Tyllesen, Head of Customer Strategy, Falcon Social

Creating an integrated digital campaignSocial Content Strategy

In “How to Create a Social Content Strategy for your Business Guide” by Falcon Social, they highlight the following benefits to having a solid social media tactical plan as a roadmap in a digital campaign:

• Optimize your time spent on content management

• Ensure on-brand communication and content

• Keep daily execution in line with your social media objectives

• Build a narrative around your brand

• Increase the amount of interactions and consumption

• Track performance and improve content

The Content Marketing Institutesuggests organizations create a variety of content types to share on social channels, websites and other public-facing mediums. They call it the “Content Mix Pyramid”

Content Types

Entertain (monthly)

Inspire (bi-weekly)

Spark dialogue (weekly)

Teach something new (2x/week)

Be relevant (3x/week)

Source: FalconSocial

How to Create a Social Media Engagement Strategy

1 Purpose of your content

• Reach (paid promotions)• Engagement (comments, shares, likes)• Consumption (photo views, video plays, etc.)• Insight (product feedback, customer reviews)• Conversion (sign ups, filling out forms or surveys)• Traffic (getting people to visit website)

2 Tone of voice

• What language supports your vision?• What is your brand “about”? For example – ‘our restaurant is about family and

making everyone feel welcome”• Decide about use of jargon and slang and setting policies around language use

3 Content planning and creation

• Map content to your audience – use a mix of content that specifically targets active customers vs. generic content that targets those not yet familiar with your company

• Craft content themes you can weave into your content strategy. For example – “Fire it up!” (Applebees – burgers), “You vs. You” (Nike on taking on personal challenges), and “Wisdom in Wealth” (bank targeting retirees)

4 Content Calendar

Maps content over a select period of time. Useful when using a scheduling tool within a channel or resource like Hootsuite or SproutSocial. Calendar includes:

• Creative (photo, video, link to website)• Date and time of posting (see slide 10 for Ragan.com best practices for timing for posting)• Purpose of content (goal, conversion metric)• Content theme (mapping back to content strategy)

5 Tracking performance

• Conversions (fiscal and non-fiscal)• Traffic (where people are coming from into social vs. where you are sending them)• Quality and value of traffic (how much do social media visitors contribute to KPIs and other

conversion goals?)• Reach (makeup of audience engaging with your social channels and geographic reach)

6Content performance management

• Negative feedback – policy for addressing/not addressing• Consumptions – looking past likes and shares and focusing more on photo views, video plays,

etc.• Engagement (likes, shares, retweets, comments)

How to Create a Social Media Engagement Strategy

Source: FalconSocial

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