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T? EX d! ADOPTION N ns gage S tio COMPANY-WIDE AT eac m en WH or r the Products p nit mo kee HR & Services Sales to
Customer Care Marketing
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INTEGRATING CHANNELS
DATA INTEGRATION
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social strategists are constantly assessing the best way they can plan successful social initiatives and optimize their programs as new opportunities arise. With an ever-changing landscape of platforms, tactics and technology, this list is seemingly endless. The dawn of social business is here, and what that means for anyone working in social media is that there are more opportunities and challenges to mature social efforts across the business. Here at Spredfast, weve spent some time talking with customers, partners and industry leaders on what the top opportunities and resolutions for social media practitioners are and what enterprises and agencies should work toward in 2012.
Business Time for Social in 2012 from the Spredfast Social Business blog
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Companies should focus less on marketing the brand externally; and instead, focus on creating shared value with customers, partners and employees
- Michael Brito SVP Social Business Planning, Edelman Digital
These may be opportunities youve talked about internally already. Or they may be ideas youre currently planning on bringing to the whiteboard to plot out further. Regardless of where you are in your planning cycles, weve pulled together the top seven areas all social media strategists should be thinking about with ideas on how to approach planning and assessment in each area and an action plan to get started. Who should attend these meetings? That will depend on the structure of your company and internal stakeholders. We suggest bringing the stakeholders that can help make these plans a reality and provide the buy-in needed to make your efforts successful. For most, that will mean your social strategist, heads of Marketing and Communication, team leads across the enterprise business units active in social and even members of your executive team. Brands, you have amazing stories to tell! Use video & multimedia to bring it across with emotion. Make em feel!
JD Lasica Founder, Socialbrite: Social tools for social change Founder, Socialmedia.biz
Table of Contents
1.
Gaining Insight About Your Social Customer....................................................................................................3
2. Adopting Social Media Company-Wide..............................................................................................................7 3. Operationalizing Social Media with Workflows and Processes...................................................................12 4. Getting the Most Out of Your Great Content...................................................................................................17 5. Delivering Better Customer Experiences.........................................................................................................21 6.
Integration..........................................................................................................................................................25
Meeting #1
RELATIONSHIP HISTORY
2009 2011 2010 2013 2012
customer
brand
IDENTIFYING AND EMBRACING ADVOCATES & INFLUENCERS @mentions retweets comments INFLUENCE
media coverage
NEXT STEPS:
what is being said about your brand? 2. Are you tracking the conversation histories of your network members? 3. Do you have an advocate program in place?
3
you take into consideration when publishing on social media channels. What value are they getting out of your initiatives? What messages resonate best with them? And do you have the context to know the full extent of your relationship with these people and to identify who is helping spread your social messages?
Monitoring what types of general conversations are taking place in your Following whats being said about your brand, your competitors and
industry trends on top of key issues in your space
Monitoring activity from industry leaders, pundits and analysts to stay Tracking what content you are sharing to understand what gets the
most engagement to better inform and optimize your content strategy in an ongoing way
RELA
custom
Larger networks and wider company participation in social help you reach more people and create a more @mentions social business. But it also means its more important to have context around the relationship with social retweets Gaining Deeper Insight Into certain person on Twitter customers. How will different team members know what has been said to athe Social Customer INFLUENC comments over the course of long periods of time? Should the Marketing team know that a certain member of your network has talked to your Care team multiple times on social channels before responding to new questions they ask about your brand? dive into
Meeting #1
BEHAVIOR & Having context around each of CONTENT ENGAGEMENT these interactions helps you
NEXT STEPS:
understand patterns and desires of each individual in your network monitor organic conversations and also helps ensure your communications are informed and follow dialog about your brand tailored to the needs of each person. Usually a core part of social media management systems, notes and conversation trends tune into industry histories are captured to help your team have a centralized location for this track content engagement interaction that can be accessed by all team members.
what is being said about your b RELATIONSHIP HISTORY 2. Are you tracking the conversa 2013 2009 2011 of your network members? 2012 3. 2010 an advocate progr customerDo you havebrand
INFLUENCE
BEHAVIOR & CONTENT ENGAGEMENT Brand advocacy is not a new concept. But social media advocacy is a new and growing area of opportunity
for brands. Certain people are organically talking about you and referringmonitor organic and services more RELATIONS your products conversations than others. Obviously youd like your entire network to follow suit, but identifying your top advocates can follow dialog about your brand 2009 2 help lead to specific outreach efforts and open the door for advocate programs. industry trends tune into 2010 A few ways to start identifying these people is to start asking and finding:
track content engagement customer
Who is mentioning your brand most often? Who is retweeting your content the most? Who is commenting most often on Facebook and your blogs?
The concept of influence is also an area of focus for many companies m Gaining Deeper Insight Into the Social Customer and brands that realize there is potential for a small number of people, who have a large voice, to help spread messages on their behalf. Like advocacy, the idea of using NEXT STEPS: influencers to help spread brand awareness and preference has also been long engrained and embraced. 1. Do you have a plan in place on assessin dive into What is new, is that its easier than ever before to identify people publicly who might have a larger share what is being said about your brand? BEHAVIOR & of voice or influence over their networks. This is no exact science, but by considering some of the following 2. Are you tracking the conversation his CONTENT ENGAGEMENT aspects of social media users, companies can discover people who have greater ability to influence or of your network members? monitor organic conversations share conversations on larger scale than others. RELATIONSHIP HISTORY Looking at the following areas while engaging across social media, you can determine who might carry a tune into industry trends 2012 customer 2010 brand stronger impact on their network to help amplify or advocate your brand message.
Audience size. While its not the sole metric you should focus on, the
Klout score. This is an aggregated scoreADVOCATES & INFLUENCERS that incorporates elements such
as network size, amplification effect and general influence to provide @mentions information on who carries more influence. It also includes the topics on retweets which people are most influential
audience size of a persons fans, followers and friends can help determine how much they can amplify your message if and when its shared EMBRACING IDENTIFYING AND
comments
INFLUENCE
Media coverage. Like blogs, more traditional media Are you tracking the conversation histories 2. outlets can also help
amplify your brand message by reaching a larger audience network members? of your
2012 Social Media Resolutions
brands as they want to spread their messages and news across digital outlets. By determining how large a blogs readership is and how often NEXT STEPS: they get shared or covered on other channels, you can determine who is best to target for sharing content and ideas. Starting small by leavingplan in place on assessing 1. Do you have a comments and raising visibility of your thoughts is the ideal way to start about your brand? what is being said
media coverage
Its important to note that no single metric or user trait signals influence or importance. And, of course, the best way to drive action on the part of your network is to be helpful, continuously provide value and deliver positive experiences. With that said, uncovering specific network members who have the power and desire to spread messages on behalf on your brand can be an effective technique. And aggregating all of the above information with a system that can help provide context around these areas streamlines the way your company can assess and act on this information.
2. From the content you are sharing and creating in social, what is receiving the most
interactions and engagement? Whether these are clicks, comments or retweets, how are you planning on using this information to assess its impact and to optimize it for your future content strategy?
3. Are you tracking the conversation histories of your network members with your
company to uncover context around specific users? If not, is it time to adopt a system that will allow you to do so?
4. Who are the users mentioning your brand name(s) and talking about your company
the most? Do you have an advocate program in place to reach out and build a relationship with these people?
5. Who in your network carries the most influence? Are there specific ways to target
these people with the biggest audience and potential influence to help propel positive social activity and amplification?
Meeting #2
HR CORPORATE BUY-IN
Sales
Customer Care
Marketing
ORGANIZING TEAMS
identify participants outline goals define roles
ONGOING GUIDANCE
I m a pro! classes curriculum webinars tech training
NEXT STEPS:
1. Is your company ready, culturally, to expand social media into all parts of the business? 2. Who are the internal teams that should be utilizing social media? 3. Who is/ are the best people to serve as internal stakeholders for training and guidance?
The concept of social business is quickly becoming a reality for companies, and the
advantages of adopting social media as a company are vast. More people can share the opportunity and responsibility of communicating on behalf of your company. Not only marketing, but customer care, sales, HR and even your services or product teams can share interesting news and developments. And perhaps more important to consider, is that your customers and prospects expect to be able to connect with your brand for things other than just marketing efforts. Underutilizing social for all aspects of the business is not just a missed opportunity; its also an expectation that, if overlooked, puts you behind in business. Chances are, youre probably already starting think about or do some of the above. But unless its been approached in an organized way, highly disparate social efforts can create a fragmented brand presence.
READ MORE
Evolving Social Media from Spredfast on How business are
B u y In a t t h e C o rp o ra t e Level
Adopting social media across the entire enterprise isnt something that can be achieved without stakeholder buy in. For many businesses this means having sign off from the executive team. More often, it involves having a conversation and agreement with management from the various internal departments who need to see value in social media for their specific business needs. Proven approaches on how to achieve this often include:
Comparing social media to other known media types to help people Illustrating competitors who are utilizing social in areas where you are Highlighting the various ways social media can be used for areas
not, or who are embracing social media in innovative ways outside of communications including sales prospecting by finding unhappy customers of competition, customer service through answering questions shared on social channels and even recruiting for new talent by sharing job opportunities with your active network opportunities that are already taking place in the above mentioned areas understand how it compares
CORPORATE BUY-IN
Auditing social media activity for your brand and showing missed
Businesses should resolve to stop using social media as corporate media & instead start engaging + delivering & gleaning value
- Brian Solis, Author, The End of Business of Usual and Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
Meeting #2
Pr o p er l y O rg a n izin g Te am s
One of the biggest challenges for many companies is properly organizing teams to engage in social media beyond one department. Moving beyond one team who coordinates all social activity can get messy, fast. There is no one, single way to properly organize company activity in social. Rather, this should be personalized by taking into account the people, business goals and levels of activity and responsibility of ADOPTION different business units.
Decide which departments will be active in social media Find the key stakeholders on each team who can serve as the lead in
HR
Sales
Meeting #2
CORPORATE BUY-IN helping to manage and triage social media activity for their area
Customer Care
Marketing
ORGANIZING TEAMS
identify participants
curriculum HR Identify the goals of each team and make these success milestones part Sales SOCIAL MEDIA of their ongoing performance metrics best practices webinars TRAINING Outline the levels of communication that need to take place across social activity and create a plan for engagement and response. For example, CORPORATE BUY-IN Customer Care communication tech training etiquette Marketing
simple content creation and sharing may be Level 1. Level 2 may be simple responses to questions and requests. Whereas Level 3 may be answering compare media types complex questions or require a higher level of thought or collaboration for check out competitors response. Each of these should be mapped for the appropriate process
classes
Pr o v i di ng P ro p e r T ra in ing identify participants 2. Who are the internal teams that should be utilizing
Social media best practices change constantly. And to expect that the entire organization will be social media? define roles equipped with the knowledge to is/ 3. Who appropriately participate would be, in most cases, incorrect. Companies are the best people to serve as internal must assess the must dos to share with employees such as compliance outline goals and ethical considerations, I stakeholders for training and guidance? with new ideas and best m a to keep employees inspired by refreshing them pro! and they also, increasingly, need practices in the social space.
NEXT STEPS:
ONGOING GUIDANCE
curriculum
NEXT STEPS:
Train for social media etiquette bestwhat your company feels are the best ways to communicate practices Decide webinars in social media. This may be always responding within a certain time communication to questionstraining answered frame, only responding tech that can be publicly or even teaching employees how to use the most popular channels for maximum impact. When more people become involved in social media activity, more personalities and communication
classes
1. Is your 2012 Social Media Resolutions company ready, culturally, to expand social media into all parts of the business?
styles become representative of your brand. Equip these people with the proper ways to speak and respond on social channels, as well as the expectations and preferences of your online networks. Train for social media business goals This may sound self-serving, but the communication of various internal teams should, when appropriate, tie back to the roles and goals they have as employees. The sales team should not be responding to members of the media asking questions about corporate news, and the HR team should not try to answer product or service inquiries. Defining the ways that each group can best help further business goals while also helping to communicate with networks to create positive experiences helps both your company and your networks.
ADOP COMPAN
Train for social media management A huge aspect of rolling out social media across the enterprise entails being able to manage this activityHR in a coordinated way. For most companies, this means having the tools and systems to scale activity. Using CORPORATE BUY-IN a social media management platform offers the opportunity to scale, coordinate and be efficient but it Customer Ca also means employees must know how to use the technology effectively to do their jobs. compare media types
Offer i n g O n g o in g G u id a n ce
Helping your company use social media at the corporate level doesnt stop once the plans have been rolled out and the initial areas of training have taken place. What about when new team members get involved? Or, how do new social media trends impact how your company uses the channels? Think about how ongoing guidance can be provided in a way that helps the overall company, individual employees and ensures your networks needs are being met. This may include:
ORGA
ONGOING GUIDANCE
I m a pro! classes curriculum webinars tech training
NEXT STEPS:
A baseline curriculum your company creates on the best ways to engage in Regular training sessions like in-person classes or on-demand webinars to A communication plan to aggregate and share external resources like Technical training on how to use social media platforms and the social
to assess success upcoming conferences, third party webinars and industry articles and resources to help further social media knowledge share internal successes and ongoing best practices social channels
1. Is your company ready, culturally, to expand s media into all parts of the business? 2. Who are the internal teams that should be ut social media? 3. Who is/ are the best people to serve as inter stakeholders for training and guidance?
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2. Which internal teams should be utilizing social media? 3. Is social media already being utilized by multiple areas of the company with seemingly
no plan? And could this disparate activity lead to customer confusion?
4. Who is/ are the best people to serve as internal stakeholders for training and guidance? 5. What types of programs can be created to help teach internal teams to use social
media properly?
6.
How can your company coordinate and scale all this new activity to ensure its being done in an efficient way?
management system or Social CRM to scale your social media presence? (assess with the Social CRM Checklist)
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Meeting #3
judgement
copyrights responsibility
creating content
CHAMPION team A
person B
NEXT STEPS:
social activity across internal departments? 2. What team is responsible for what type of social content and engagement? 3. Has your organization done a social audit of all social accounts being used across channels?
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workflows and processes need to be implemented to ensure success. Figuring out how to coordinate and manage social activity quickly becomes complex when a company has hundreds of social accounts across several different networks all being monitored and updated by different internal teams. Creating new processes isnt exactly most peoples idea of fun, especially in social media, but creating the right procedures can allow brands to be more active, more coordinated and more successful in building thriving online communities. It also ensures a brands reputation can be protected, while also protecting employees.
5 Steps to Operationalizing from Spredfast on the Social Media
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Operationalizing
ORGANIZE SOCIAL PRESENCE BY...
By service offering. Similar to brands, different services require different By geography. Even when the same brand or service is offered in
content and engagement in social media different locations, there are obvious reasons, such as audience, language and team structure, that require it to have its own social media presence or organization structure using social media to achieve several different business objectives. From brand awareness to customer care, these activities should be differentiated when thinking about how to organize and operationalize social media Team structure varies in different companies and can overlap with objectives, geographies and brands accounts representing a brand often serve as a way to organize activity between people and the strategies that fuel their activity
brands they represent which need different social media plans and activities to be successful
Internal Workfl
brand service offering geography business goals teams accounts
SOCIAL
SET RES
cr
ov
Specific teams.
Accounts. Stemming from all of the above, the specific social media
CHAMPION
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Once the above considerations have been outlined, companies can better decide on which accounts and strategies correspond best to organizing ongoing activity. Companies must first get their internal foundations ready --before social media proliferation forces perpetual clean up.
- Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst Partner, Customer Strategy Altimeter Group
Who needs to only be able to create content to share across social media? Who should oversee this activity? Are there types of content that need to be approved before sharing, and Who should manage the administrative rights to social media accounts Are there people who need to be able to view social activity, but not
like passwords and access to specific channels? necessarily have the right to create and engage across the channels? if so, who needs to be the approver of this? Is it one person or a team of people (like legal staff, product experts, etc)?
creating content
D ev el op a S o cia l M e d ia P oli cy
The best way to allow more people to participate in social media across the company is to have a policy in place that outlines the best ways to use social media on an individual and corporate level. This joint agreement of sorts can be as short as one page or lengthy to cover communication examples and best practices. No one policy fits all companies, but at the least you should contemplate including:
Ethics of engaging in social media What channels it should cover Exercising good judgment and parameters of what that entails Respecting copyrights Protecting sensitive company information Personal responsibility of employees RESPONSIBILITIES Encouraging honesty and transparency Consequences of actions and how to seek permission/help when needed
DEVELOP POLICY
ethics
judgement
copyrights responsibility
overseeing process
For more ideas on what to include in your policy and how to include the elements most important to your company, see templates and ideas from Socialmedia.org and WOMMA.
2012 Social Media Resolutions 14
geography
business goals Where should different types of content be routed? This should be based overseeing process on the area of focus for different employees and what they can speak approving content best to with your audience administration frequently asked questions, issues or topics that your teams find they accounts with customers in social? If so, could they be helped regularly talk about viewing only by having common responses or even a content library to aid them in better responding to your network?
If more than one person is running social initiatives on behalf of your CHAMPION a way to triage or assess the proper company, you will need people and approach to respond in order to be efficient in managing responses and content sharing with your network. Marketing might be the first to see a product-related question, but the team will need an easy way to alert the Product or Sales team to respond. The more social conversations you have about your brand online, the more important this will become
creating content
responsibility
teams
COORDINATING
team A
person B
NEXT STEPS:
I d e n t i f y i n g ( o r a s s i g n i n g) Social Media 2. What team is responsible for what type of social content SOCIAL Cha m p i o n s I n t e rn a l l y
Who 3.going to your organization done for achieving audit is Has lead the charge within each team a social their respective social media goals? Who is ultimately responsible for accounts being used across channels? driving strategy, creating content and approving responses (and delegating it out accordingly) in Marketing, Customer Care, HR and Product? Identifying who these people are internally will help ensure youre addressing your networks needs and that timely conversations are taking place.
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O perationalizing Social Media With Internal Workflows and Processes N ext Steps
1.
Jump-start your whiteboard session on how to operationalize social by addressing these questions and formulating an action plan: Has your organization done a social audit of all social accounts being used across channels?
2. What are the workflows needed to implement and manage social activity across
internal departments?
3. Does your organization have a written Social Media Policy that outlines roles and
responsibilities for using social media within each department?
4. What team is responsible for what type of social content and engagement?
(Publishing support tips and responding to customer care inquiries versus publishing corporate news and updates?)
16
Meeting #4
increases frequency of shares reduces red tape improves ease of access fuels efficiency
blog post
tweet
NEXT STEPS:
1. How can you centralize content? 2. What regular sets of activity can be planned in advance? 3. How can you be tying your content to business goals?
17
and in social that may be more true than on any other channel. Conversations and engagement stem from content, and responses are a type of content themselves. Social media channels offer a unique opportunity in that content can be shared from existing communication channels, created for social specifically and can be created by you or your network.
6 ways to use social media for business with proven tactics for success Business blog
READ MORE
Companies face challenges in using content well in social, though. How can this be effectively planned in advance to allow time for real-time engagement? How can protection be ensured so that teams dont say or use the wrong, or even unapproved, content on accident? And how can they learn what content is actually most effective in building brand awareness and initiating engagement?
Pl a n n i n g O u t C o n t e n t Proact i vely
The power of social media is that it offers two-way communication. So if all your time is spent creating and sharing strategic content throughout the day, you miss the opportunity to monitor, engage and respond. One of the best ways a brand can ensure they arent missing these opportunities and are actually providing value in real-time is by planning out proactive content. Just like the planned messages and multimedia that come from corporate channels, content published on social media channels can be mapped out in advance so proactive engagement is incorporated into the publishing mix. Centralizing this social editorial calendar so that its accessible by the entire team running any given social media initiative allows for insight into frequency of messaging, channel distribution of content and who on the team is planning to contribute. It also ensures no messages are overlapping and that no oversights are taking place on missed opportunities.
PLAN CONTENT PROACTIVELY
In 2012, businesses will rise about the din of mediocrity and retool their content efforts to create a sustainable, workable model that produces stuff that has merit.
- Ann Handley Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
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A few common areas where relevant and existing content can be repurposed often include:
Information on corporate events or events your team is planning to attend Sales promotions or discounts, including coupons Content marketing pieces like whitepapers or positioning papers Product updates and launches and collateral that corresponds to it Videos and pictures used in PR efforts Job postings in your HR department Frequently asked questions your Customer Care team hears
If youre extending social media beyond one person or team, you know that having a good content plan is half the battle. The other half is enabling employees with content to use so that they can PLAN CONTENT PROACTIVELY share more often, not have to get each message or file approved for sharing and to make the entire REP process more fluid. Having a content library with approved responses, timely messages and files like EXIS images and videos to share can help provide a solution to these roadblocks. Meeting centralized editorial roadmap!#4
Ideally, these assets can be centralized in a management system Most Out of Your Great Content Getting the CENTRALIZED CONTENT being used to run social activity so that employees can easily access increases frequency of shares the right message at the right time when they are engaging on social channels. Faster responses to customer questions, pre-approved PROACTIVELY red tape reduces PLAN CONTENT content that can be shared by numerous company locations and improves ease of access REPURPOSE BUILD IN SOC geographies and timely messages to be used across the organization fuels efficiency CONTENT EXISTING TO LARGER centralized editorial roadmap! equate to efficiency and relevancy for your networks.
CENTRALIZED CONTENT B u i l d In S o c ia l T a c t ic s to Larger Cam pai gn P lans AS NEEDED :
increases frequency of shares s being shared? what When trying to achieve larger business objectives, social media usage reduces red tape cannot be an afterthought. Repurposing content can improves ease of access who s @mentioning? be a great way activity driving downloads? to do this, but building in various social media components into larger BUILD IN SOCIAL TACTICS fuels efficiency time with most traffic? TO LARGER CAMPAIGNS campaign initiatives will help ensure content is being utilized across
ASSESS & ADJUST off that dust blog post old whitepaper
product
demo on YouTube
all appropriate channels. When a new product is ASSESS & ADJUST launched, dont just blog post product launch post photos NEXT STEPS: AS base, create issue a press release and send an email to the customerNEEDED : to Flickr 1. How can you centralize content? what s being shared? a short product demo video and publish it to YouTube, tweet about the demo on 2. What regular sets of activity can be plan tweet news with a link to the press release, post photos of who s @mentioning? the new product YouTube be tying your content to bus 3. How can you activity driving downloads? on the company Flickr account and write a blog post about how the time new product is addressing a certain industry pain point.with most traffic?
NEXT STEPS:
Once content is posted or published on a social channel, acan you be tying your content to of utilizing content 3. How teams work isnt done. Part business goals? well is monitoring and analyzing what type of content is the most effective whether that be reaching a large audience or creating engagement in your network. Companies can gain social intelligence by keeping track of how various types of content perform and then assessing that performance to ensure whats being published is resonating with the community.
2012 Social Media Resolutions 19
fuels efficiency
Content shared most often People who are mentioning you most often What messages receive the most clicks Social impressions gained from activity Referring traffic to your corporate website Activity that results in conversions like downloads or purchases What time of day social activity receives the most engagement What channels receive the most interactions
BU TO
blog pos
NEXT STEPS:
1. How can you centralize conte 2. What regular sets of activity 3. How can you be tying your con
Jump-start your whiteboard session on using content well by addressing these questions and formulating an action plan: How can you centralize content to be used by your entire team and do you need a management system to help coordinate this?
2. What regular sets of activity can be planned in advance to ensure you are providing
your network with relevant and timely information?
3. How often should you regularly assess content performance and what information
can help you make more informed decisions around content strategy like sharing metrics, identifying brand advocates and tactical assessments like performance by time of day?
4. How can you be tying your content to business goals and larger campaigns to
ensure the most success of your efforts?
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Meeting #5
questions ask
incentives
welcome opinions
answer
EXPERIENCES
BE DIFFERENT
NEXT STEPS:
e tom s rs ff
cu
fre
tu es
your audience? 2. How can your social channels be leveraged to enable and prompt engagement? 3. Can you utilize F acebook to move beyond status updates to incorporate interactive experiences?
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other services and other products vying for attention and the personal networks of your customers and prospects. Delivering positive experiences whether that entails answering questions in a timely fashion or creating custom experiences on platforms like Facebook continues to be a major factor in the success of big brands in social. In the age of now, people want experiences in real-time that can help them immediately or provide a fulfilling interaction.
The Accidental Customer from the Spredfast Social Business blog Care Team
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M ea n i n g f u l En g a g e m e n t
Engagement, like ROI, is a loaded term. Does that mean creating and interacting in existing conversations? Helping customers when they ask questions on social channels? Or providing enlightening and dynamic content that activates your community? For most companies the answer is yes to all of the above. At the end of the day, the main goal should be to make this engagement meaningful to your brands social constituents customers, partners and even employees. To do this, consider the following tactics:
Ask questions. Do you know why customers interact with you on social?
Is it to get a deal or discount? Is it to report a problem? Proactively asking what customers want from a brand on social will only help build stronger customer relationships and loyalty if theyre engaged with in an expected or desired way.
Pre-empt questions. Dont wait for the flood of questions you know will Welcome opinions.
make their way onto social channels after a new product launch, big event or other noteworthy occurrence. Ask about what your network(s) thinks, wants or cares about. Open a discussion and help moderate and curate new thoughts and perspectives. with your brand typically do so to get some type of personal satisfaction. It may be sharing their opinion or getting help with a personal issue. Regardless of motivation, providing incentives for engagement is one more way brands can help create a positive experience for customers and also increase the chance for interaction.
MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENT
questions ask
incentives
welcome opinions
answer
INTERAC
consisten across
CMOs will finally stop asking Are we using platform X and start asking Are we there for our customers, anytime and anywhere they want us to be?
- Andy Sernovitz Author, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking
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Meeting #5 BE DIFFEREN
Many people consider engagement to be the end goal of their social media efforts. But in order to start having these conversations with social customers, brands should consider creating a singular, compelling presence across the various social channels that also closely ties back to other digital presences like the corporate websites and online channels. Facebook Pages are becoming an integral part of businesss social strategy, but how do you ensure that visitors find what theyre looking for and that you achieve the social goals that will propel your business? MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENT Expanding beyond the notion of getting questions of great content, the most out you should be thinking about how to leverage Facebook to create truly ask answer interactive experiences. Instead of asking an open-ended question welcome opinions as a Facebook status, create a dynamic poll that aggregates and incentives shares the feedback results with voters. Allow fans to submit their own multimedia by running photo contests on your personalized Facebook Tab. And increase the size of your network by giving extra BE DIFFERENT information and incentives for users who like your Page.
EXPERIENCES
NEXT S
Meeting
These types of engagement strategies present a keep opportunity valuable WHAT S NEXT? for brands to share information with their social social in an audience monitor reactions interactive, and often entertaining, way. Companies can also create weird MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENTthem engaged! to keep a more dynamic Facebook presence by integrating videos, photo libraries, Twitter feeds and even slides curating the best multimedia questions content for a relevant and interesting user experience.
W ha t s N e x t ?
your audience? When social customers become part of your network by liking your Facebook page or following you incentives Howand marketing is achannels beexpectation. 2. can your social part of that leveraged on Twitter, it signals they want to follow s consistent, compelling pres mer your activity sto your brand, yourenable and prompton the market, and most to products, your take engagement? These individuals want to learn u cabout across all social channels importantly they want to consume information on relevant topics. F 3. Can you utilize acebook to move beyond status uff
When brands start barraging their audience with posts that are too frequent, of little value, or off topic, community members will unlike or unfollow your brand without question. By watching your keep audiences reactions, you can start to hone in on whats important social to them, what content doesnt resonate with them, and how to keep them engaged on a regular basis. Listening to the heartbeat weird of actual network behavior will allow you to make more informed decisions and be more relevant, and thus successful, in resonating with your target audiences.
ask
fre
tu es
e fre
st
BE DIFFERENT
St r i v e t o b e D if f e re n t
Social strategies have started evolving and expanding beyond the singular goal of attaining the Like, and 1. What type of engagement resonates with rightfully so. While its great for your audience to passively consume content, companies have realized that keeping customers actively engaged is even more your audience? valuable. Facebook Pages in particular give the ability to create interactive experiences to encourage repeat activity your social channels be leveraged 2. How can and engagement. rs
2012 Social Media Resolutions
NEXT STEPS:
t cus
ome
fre
tu es
ff
to enable and prompt engagement? 23 3. Can you utilize F acebook to move beyond st updates to incorporate interactive experien
incentives
If your brand can maintain a dynamic Facebook presence and educate their audience at the same time, your customers will reward you by purchasing your goods, sharing your Facebook experience with their network, or by becoming a brand champion and an advocate over time.
co a
BE DIFFERENT
NEXT STEPS:
your audience? 2. How can your social rs ome Delivering Better Customer t to enable and prom cus 3. Can you utilize F ac Experiences Next Steps stuff ee updates to incorpor Jump-start your whiteboard session on how to deliverfr better customer experiences by
addressing these questions and formulating an action plan:
1.
2. How can your social channels be leveraged to enable and prompt engagement
between you and your network?
3. Can you utilize Facebook to move beyond status updates to incorporate interactive
experiences?
4. Is entertainment a reason your network follows you and engages with your brand?
If so, list out ideas and tactics that may provide entertainment in a meaningful way to your brand and its followers.
5. How is your brand differentiated in social media? What are the specific values you
add to fans and followers in comparison to the competition and similar companies?
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Integration
INTEGRATING CHANNELS
Meeting #6
website
WEB ANALYTICS
DATA INTEGRATION
NEXT STEPS:
have social media integrated? 2. Can you integrate your web analytics with the management system you are using? 3. Should you be exporting social media activity to keep a record of interactions?
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Social media is not an island unto itself; its part of a larger picture. Integrating social
media, both with other channels and with the technical systems you use as a company, help exponentially drive success and provide insight into performance. It can also help collect data and information that can be used in different ways across the business.
In t egr a t in g S o c ia l I n t o O t h er Ch an nels
Your network doesnt lose their social tendencies when they leave their social media accounts. They also look for, or are at least open to, opportunities to interact with you via other avenues. Integrating social into all the touch points you have with customers helps not only build these networks, but also enables interaction and engagement. On the following channels, you can link to social accounts, embed options for people to share information with their networks, present relevant social activity offline and share social media activity that corresponds with the respective experience:
Your website In-person and virtual events Online documents Print collateral Corporate email messages Personal email signatures
INTEGRATING CHANNELS
website
Social Media Explorers resolution for 2012 is to refine our lead generation and customer acquisition system to tie social media connections of mine and the companys to our database so that we can segment and trigger email outreach for our various products. You can call it marketing automation and CRM if you like. Were calling it making our marketing more relevant to our customers.
- Jason Falls CEO, Social Media Explorer
Web A na l y t ics
The corporate website is often the hub of information and conversions for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies. Its rich with contextual information about what you offer and is optimized for converting visitors into prospects or customers. One of the best ways to make a correlation between social media initiatives and web activity is by integrating it with your current web analytics packages. Common in most social media management systems, this integration can illustrate the exact impact the two have on each other. It can even report on what activity is truly resulting into whatever conversions or goals you have set up in your system. If youre not currently integrating social activity with your corporate web analytics, here are a few areas where this integration can shed light:
Traffic from social media links to the corporate website or blog New visits from social media The value of activity resulting from social traffic, as defined within Goals and/or conversions completed from social media traffic
2012 Social Media Resolutions
WEB ANALYTICS
DATA INTEG
Integration
D a t a Int e g ra t io n INTEGRATING CHANNELS
Data is a powerful tool for any company. Social media data can help shed light on customers, provide link, embed, share social activity information to perform business analysis and also help protect your organization by keeping a record of all activity thats taken place across social media channels. Social media platforms may keep record of all this data, but its not provided in a way that companies can keep for themselves. This is something that, today, website documents only third party platforms and management systems can offer. email If retaining information over long periods of time like records of social media posts, mentions of your brand name on social platforms, audit trails of team responses and all the analytics of your social initiatives is important to you, your company should be asking:
events
How can you integrate this social data into your traditional CRM
system or database?
traffic from social links DATA INTEGRATION new this information social media Is there an option to export all ofvisits fromin bulk so that you can traditional CRM always own your data? value of activity & conversions Will you lose activity after a certain amount of time or can it be archived export bulk info
Will these mounds of data be easily searchable within the system
you are using? to access at any point in the future when you may need it?
WEB ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS:
have social media integrated? 2. Can you integrate your web Integrationmanagement system youanalytics with Next Steps are using? the Jump-start your whiteboard session on how to integrate social media by addressing 3. Should you be exporting social media activity these questions and formulating an action plan to keep a record of interactions?
1.
What communication channels dont currently integrate with social media data?
2. What communication efforts could have an enhanced social media element? 3. Can you integrate your web analytics with the management system you are using
for social media? What are the most important metrics to show conversion here?
4. Should you be exporting social media activity to keep a record of interaction taking
place about your brand and customers?
5.
How can you integrate known customer engagement data into your CRM or database?
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Meeting #7
Brand Awareness +
Measurement
emails
tweets
ACTIVITY by Team
REACH
= # people touched
campaigns
INDUSTRY BENCHMARKS
ENGAGEMENT
retweets @mentions
socialbusinessindex.com
NEXT STEPS:
1. What are your business objectives for the social media initiative you are planning? 2. What are the metrics that show the impact on your stated objective? 3. Can you assess where you started and where you are now? 28
the term itself is vague and can mean many things to many people, often focusing attention on defining the unattainable versus illustrating business value. Do you care more about how much money social media is bringing into your company? Or the awareness that social media is helping build from a brand perspective? Among many other factors, centralizing analytics and measurement of social media activity in one place will be one of the biggest opportunities for companies and agencies in 2012. Technology will obviously play a large role in aggregating and helping to analyze this data, but social media activity and social intelligence can be thought of in a few main areas.
The return on social media in Determine the ROI of Social Media Activation Business blog 8 Essential Systems to
F years now, the topic of the ROI, or return on investment, of social has been a hot topic. But or
READ MORE
Reach
The area of reach is an important measurement to help illustrate how many people you are reaching with your companys social media activity. Data pertaining to your organizations reach on Social Return within social channels can be used to help prove success in accomplishing larger business goals such as VAGUE brand awareness and customer care. A few important and common metrics to keep in mind when analyzing reach include:
??
$$$
Analytic
Brand A +
Measur
Growth in current network(s) Mentions by Audience Content shared by your networks (number of retweets or number of
Facebook shares and the size of their audiences)
emails
tweets
AC
REACH
= # people touched
facebook posts
Meeting #7
A ct i v i t y
To fully understand the investment you are making in social media, and its implications on success, BENCHMARKS retweets knowing the activity your team is putting forth is another key metric to assess. Having insight into how socialbusinessindex.com @ment often your teams are posting to and engaging with community members on social networks can help $$$ key stakeholders better plan for personnel resources and technology that might be needed to better coordinate and manage activity more efficiently. Brand Awareness NEXT STEPS: social media outcomes +
community
ENGAGEM
1. What are your business ob social media initiative you When trying to get a pulse on the activity thats taking place on social on behalf of your brand, a few Analytics VAGUE 2. What are the metrics th metrics to consider are: on your stated objective? Measurement 3. Can you assess where y Total amount of content published across social channels within a where you are now? given timeframe
business objectives
Number of posts published per team or employee emails tweets Amount of content published by type (sales related content versus
product or support questions versus job people touched = # inquiry responses)
ACTIVITY by Team
REACH
campaigns
facebook posts
2012 Social Media Resolutions
community
INDUSTRY
ENGAGEMENT
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E n ga g em e n t
The ultimate hope for most companies is that after the team has created compelling activity and the content has been shared widely, that community members engage. And while not all engagement is necessarily valued the same, it shows people are interacting with your activity and that, in some way, it resonates enough with them to take action. Measuring customer engagement is also essential. Whether they are active on more established networks like Twitter or Facebook or are exploring newer channels, customers are finding a way to voice their opinion and interact with brands on a scale once unheard of. Measuring social media interactions specifically taking place with a companys customer base can be a great metric for showing success in customer care and sales objectives. Metrics to keep an eye on include:
Number of retweets on Twitter Number of mentions on Twitter Number of clicks on a blog post, a link in a tweet or a Facebook Growth in your network(s) Number of influencers sharing your content or having interactions Number of conversations with customers Average response time to customer inquiry on social Average time to close a support-related problem/ticket on social Number of customers following, friending, liking, etc. the organization on
with your brand status update
community
ENGAGEMENT
retweets @mentions
In du st r y Be n ch m a rks
Aside from your own goals and performance, insight into what other organizations of similar size, within the same industry or other parallel attributes to you can be helpful in determining what the expected or aspired overall performance of your social should be. The Dachis Group, a global advisory practice focused on Social Business Design for enterprise companies, offers an open resource that aggregates ongoing real-time ranking, analysis and benchmarking of social business performance of companies. For ideas
2012 Social Media Resolutions
social media
Conversions to corporate website by clicking through links shared in Conversions to a completed action including online sales and online forms
Social needs to have a purpose, that purpose being to help your business achieve those goals more effectively, efficiently and competitively. The return on your social media investment can be both tangible and intangible, but without defined purpose and specific goals you have no opportunity to measure success.
Ben Smith Principal, Social: IRL @benasmith
social channels
INDUSTRY BENCHMARKS
socialbusinessindex.com
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BENCHMARKS
on how your company is performing next to others in social media, visit www.socialbusinessindex.com to incorporate another angle of measurement into your assessment of return on social. The most important factor in assessing return on social is how social media outcomes tie back to the business objectives at hand. Without knowing what the goal of activity is, proving success is near impossible. From customer care to lead generation and PR, connecting social media measurement to the desired outcome will be key in reporting the success of social media campaigns and efforts.
socialbusinessindex.com
NEXT
2. What are the metrics that show the impact on your stated objective? 3. Can you assess where you started and where you are now in terms of metrics? 4. How can you prepare your social media measurement tools to properly measure
where you currently stand in reaching your desired objectives before you get started with new efforts?
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Platform that allows you to coordinate team activity in a scalable way Centralized solution where you can engage, monitor, and manage your Way to analyze your social activities to understand how successful Partner that can keep up with shifting landscape of social media over
time to ensure your success campaigns have been and how to refine your approach over time social presence over time
The Spredfast platform can help you do all of this and more, enabling you to unlock your social business potential over time. No matter what your social goals are, Spredfasts unique and complete set of features will help you take your social business to the next level.
In i t i a t i v e D a s h b o a rd
The Spredfast social media management platform tracks and measures the most complete set of analytics and impactful trends across your network. This customizable dashboard also helps businesses learn over time about the people, content and channels most effective for reaching a broader audience and creating an engaging experience.
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Un i fi ed V o ice & T a rg e t ed P ub li s h i ng
To create a cohesive online presence, Spredfast lets you manage all of the accounts belonging to your department or business unit. This includes multiple corporate accounts, departments, geographies, brands, and personal accounts. Spredfast also allows you to use Facebook targeting in order to tailor your publishing to different locations or languages. This functionality allows you to optimize messaging for different audiences.
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Soci a l Inb o x
Monitoring and sifting through online content to learn whats being said about your organization and when to respond is crucial for building a strong online presence. Spredfast has a highly customizable area for listening where users can translate content, prioritize conversations, assign action to team members, and organize conversations through labeling across multiple channels including Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Google, and Blogs.
Analytics
Spredfast allows you to look for specific trends around network size, channels, engagement, as well as sentiment. Key data points like total Confirmed Impressions versus total Potential Impressions give you a clear picture of what kind of content is performing successfully on which channels so you can fine-tune your social strategy over time.
Fa ceb ook T a b s
In order to engage with an audience over time, businesses need to create incentive. Facebook Tabs allow organizations to run promotions, contests, sweepstakes, and other forms of engagement that keep an audience coming back for more. Tabs also provide a great opportunity to collect feedback and input on specific brands or offerings.
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Con t en t L ib ra ry
Coordinating what available content or acceptable answers can be communicated publicly can be time consuming and confusing for employees across your organization. To make responses consistent, repeatable and quick, Spredfast users can make use of the Content Library where approved images, documents, and videos can be organized
Ta k e t h e N e x t S t e p s f or S oci al Med i a S ucces s Learn more about Spredfast Social CRM - www.spredfast.com Follow Spredfast for regular updates on social marketing - @Spredfast Contact Spredfast - info@spredfast.com | 888-212-2216 A b o u t S p re d f a s t
Spredfast is a software company that helps companies manage their social media initiatives better. We provide a Social CRM system (sCRM) companies use to monitor, manage and measure activity and engagement across multiple social channels. Spredfast sCRM delivers a single workspace for listening to current activity, managing multiple social accounts and voices, planning and publishing content, participating in conversation, and measuring engagement across all major social platforms. Since most social media initiatives are part of broader company campaigns, Spredfast integrates with popular enterprise tools including salesforce.com, Google Analytics, Omniture Analytics, and Social Mention. The majority of our customers use Spredfast across multiple departments, brands and geographies in their enterprise. Our corporate customers span virtually every industry and include such companies and agencies as AOL, Bayer, Nokia, AARP, Porter Novelli, AGAIN Interactive, ING Direct, and HomeAway.
and www.facebook.com/Spredfast
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