6 social media strategy tips

qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyui

opasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfgh

jklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvb

nmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwer

tyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopas

dfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzx

cvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmq

wertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuio

pasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghj

klzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbn

mqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwerty

uiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdf

ghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxc

vbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmrty

uiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdf

ghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxc

vbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqw

6 Social Media Strategy Tips

for Market Leadership

2 6 Social Media Strategy Tips for Market Leadership

www.socialmediahq.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Intro...........................................................................................3

Socialize and Benchmark............................................................4-6

Discover.....................................................................................7-9

Assign Goals and Accountability.................................................10-12

Test............................................................................................13-16

Measure.....................................................................................17-19

Learn..........................................................................................20-21

Conclusion..................................................................................22

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://blog.socialmediahq.com/download-6-social-media-strategy-tips-ebook/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=white%20paper%20share&utm_campaign=strategy%20steps

http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Download%20%E2%80%9C6%20Strategy%20Tips%20for%20Market%20Leadership%E2%80%9D%20http://ow.ly/8ziIr%20by%20@social_media_hq

http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http://blog.socialmediahq.com/download-6-social-media-strategy-tips-ebook/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=white%20paper%20share&utm_campaign=strategy%20steps

https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/confirm?hl=en&url=http://blog.socialmediahq.com/download-6-social-media-strategy-tips-ebook/?utm_source=google%20plus&utm_medium=white%20paper%20share&utm_campaign=strategy%20steps



Intro

For many, coming up with a strategy is a foreign process. But it doesn't have to be.

In this e-book, you will learn about the 6 exercises that you will need to

accomplish in order to form a full-fledged social media strategy. For small

businesses, this task will be somewhat easier, but for enterprise businesses, this

process could take some time depending on the complexity of the organizational

structure, data, communication, flexibility, among other factors.

This e-book is divided into 6 sections:

Socialize - collect different points of view

Discover - establish company goals

Plan - get it on paper

Test - experimentation

Measure - tie data to company goals

Learn - iterate and keep testing

After reading, you will be able to manage human resources, budget, return on

investment, daily operations, and continuous improvement. Continue reading to

become your company's social media leader....







Socialize and Benchmark: "Take the time to understand the needs of stakeholders and

your audience"







Before you can write a plan, you need to gather the appropriate information from

all the parties that will have a stake in your social media program. This is

especially true if you are a multi-department business. If this step is skipped, you

will set yourself up for failure, so take the time in the beginning to speak with

people and gather historical information. In doing this, you will set proper

benchmarks that you will measure against when you deploy your social media

program

Speak with all internal stakeholders

C-Suite

These are the big picture thinkers and are most concerned with the bottom

line. They are going to be concerned with lifting revenue or decreasing

costs. Understand what their concerns are before making any type of

recommendation. Note: This could include legal staff or compliance staff

as well.

Managers

Managers have a different set of concerns. Most likely, they are more

concerned about the performance of their individual team or function

within the business, which doesn't necessarily equate to bottom line

reporting. For example, managers are concerned about the metrics that will

make them look good like decreased time to resolution for the customer

service department or increased leads from the marketing department.

Front Line Staff

Front Line Staff are going to be concerned about optimizing their

performance. For example, call center staff will be concerned about

relevant information to give to the customer at a quicker rate. Another

example is human resources staff will need more efficient ways of weeding

through job applicants.

Gather feedback and document it

Upon interviewing each stakeholder, make sure to record and report on the

current needs of the organization. Outline the top priorities.







Look at analytics and data for all marketing activities

Web analytics

To create a business case, you will need to bench mark where the firm

stands without social media. How much traffic is the site generating?

Where is the traffic coming from? Is the site converting visitors into leads?

CRM data

Now you will have to dig into your customer relationship management

reports. How many people that are website leads turn into prospects? What

is the average sales cycle? What is the lifetime value of the customer. Most

CRM software can provide an array of marketing reports that are specific

to your business goals.

Read industry reports

There are countless white papers and reports delivered by companies

within your industry. Use this data to create benchmarks and opportunities

for capturing market share.

Surveying Customers and Preliminary Listening

Email a survey

This may seem counterintuitive, since social media is a great channel for

low cost-high value market research, but you will need to figure out what

your customers desire when engaging with your brand in social media

Conduct Preliminary Listening

Through the use of special software, you can figure out where your

prospects and customers are hanging out online, what they are talking

about, who is hanging out online, how they feel about you, and why are

they talking about you.







Discover:

"Identify Goals"







Each department of the business has specific goals, and the advice that we would

give is to focus in the beginning on 1 or 2 goals. Then as the program rolls out,

expand your goal setting to other areas of the business. In this section, we will

explain some of the goals you can focus on.

Lower customer service costs

If your proposed strategy revolves around customer service, you can

benefit greatly from social media's impact on customer service costs.

Comparing the cost of accessibility and quicker response rates through

online content and social networking communication, you will come to

rely on phone calls less, which are historically higher cost.

Increased Leads and Sales at Lower Cost per Lead/Sale

Over time, your content library will accumulate and produce ongoing leads

and sales at a fraction of the cost of advertising. In addition, by sharing

your content on social networks, you can strengthen the reach of your

messages.

Lower market research costs

One of the most efficient ways of gathering feedback on what your

prospects and customers want is by asking them before building out a

product, service, marketing campaign, among other business initiatives.

Focus groups and other types of market research can be quite expensive, so

you can compliment this research with high value insights from your

current audience. The only issue with gathering feedback from social

networks is that the samples and feedback could tend to be biased and

statistically insignificant. Therefore, complimenting your current market

research with social media will garner the best results.

Lower recruiting costs

The cost of attending recruiting events in-person can also run up a

potentially large tab if you account for travel, accommodations,

registration fees, materials, etc. Digital recruiting is more cost efficient,

and you will be able to pick out the best applicants through public

information that they provide on the internet.







Increase brand awareness

Since many social networks have built in viral capabilities, your content

and messages can potentially spread far and wide if you have something

valuable to share. You can track brand awareness by issuing special link

tracking and calculate the word of mouth multiplier. The formula is:

(number of direct clicks + number of clicks from

recommendations)/number of direct clicks. Of course there are other tools

and formulas to help you gauge brand awareness within social media.

Note: the true answer to brand awareness is by conducting survey research

to find out if people are "more likely to buy from you after interacting or

seeing your content". But social networks make this question a little easier

by looking at the data.

Increase Loyalty and Lower Churn

When providing exceptional content and social customer service, your

customers will form a community of loyalists. If you can reward this

community for being active members of your brand, your retention rate for

these customers should theoretically be higher than customers who are not

part of the community. The only way you would be able to measure this is

through connecting social data into your customer relationship

management software.







Plan:

"Assign goals, dates and

responsibilities"







In order for any plan to succeed, accountability is vital. In this section, we will

present several questions that you will need to ask of one another. People carry out

plans, so management will come into play here.

Who is going to be held accountable for results?

After you identify the business goals, picking a department head or

manager that is responsible for results is important for taking your social

media program forward. Without accountability, nothing will happen.

This responsibility will most likely rest on one person's shoulders in the

beginning and expand to multiple people as the program scales. The

program champions will then communicate goals and priorities to their

team.

Who is going to handle the content production?

Content production will need to be planned, and this responsibility will be

given out by department heads, or for smaller companies, the social media

manager will also be responsible for content production. Scheduling will

be important at this phase.

Remember to account for pre-production, creation, and post-production.

This concept is the same whether you're writing, filming, recording sound,

performing webinars, among other content types.

Who is going to handle the community management?

You will want to choose your community managers wisely, as they will

be the voice of your company on the front lines. Most likely, you will

want to hire someone with the same characteristics and interests as your

target audiences.

Determine how much time will be devoted to community management if

the employee has other duties within the organization. At what point will

they need to be transitioned into full time community management? This

is where benchmarking and milestones will be important to establish in

the planning phase.







Who is going to handle the analytics and reporting duties?

After figuring out what you are going to measure, who is going to be

responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting these numbers? Do

they have the required skill set? Do you need to outsource this duty? How

much time should they take out of their day to perform these duties?

What technology are you going to use to collect data about

customers?

If you don't have the technology to generate accurate reports on how

social media is affecting your bottom line, you will need to invest some

money. Some of the things you will need to think about are connecting all

of these things into one dashboard: customer relationship management,

web analytics, social media monitoring, plus social analytics from all the

platforms where you are active. Then you need to organize this

information into a way that management will be able to equate to positive

or negative return on investment. If you are reporting to community

managers and social media managers, you will have to present a different

set of information, so that they can optimize their efforts.







Test:

"Don’t promise the stars and

deliver the moon"







In this section, we are going to discuss the roll out of a social media program.

Some of the items that you will need to pay attention to are channels and tools to

use, testing methods, and relationship building. Naturally, it will be more tactical.

Create a communication schedule involving all channels that will

support your strategy

After you have planned what type of content you will produce, this is

where you will produce your editorial calendar. You will need to consider

all variables within content production and distribution. For example, if

you are shooting video, document when production will start, and when

the video will be posted. What social channels will the video be posted

on?

Social networks, landing pages, e-mail, content development, off-line

tactics, public relations such as blogger outreach, search engine

marketing

You will need to make sure that social media is integrated into all

marketing tactics. Here is a real world example: You have a 1 year goal of

increasing qualified sales leads by 100%. At the top of the funnel you will

be creating daily blog posts that will be optimized for search engines and

shared on your social network profiles. You will also be guest blogging on

other blogs. In the former and latter, at the end of every blog post, you

will have a call to action for downloading a premium piece of content like

an e-book or a video. After the content is downloaded, a sequence of e-

mails will be triggered to nurture the lead through the sales funnel.

To support the process, you will be attending conferences and events

where the goal is to collect e-mail addresses, so that you can send them

premium content and to get them into the sales funnel. Also you will test

pay per click advertising on search engines and social networks.

Test which social networks drive the most engagement, traffic,

leads, and sales to your organization over a 1 year period

You will need some type of web analytics program like Google Analytics

or Omniture to help you measure website traffic being driven from social







media sites. You can then make monetary and time budget decisions

based off of this data.

Conduct a/b and multivariate tests on your website and e-mails.

If you want to continue to increase marketing success, the best way to

achieve this is by conducting a/b and multivariate testing on your landing

pages. The essence of these tests is creating variations of the web page

and using testing services to see if the changes result in a lift in leads or

other types of performance criteria. A great testing platform is Google

Website Optimizer or Visual Website Optimizer.

Testing can also be performed with your e-mail program. Make sure to

test subject lines, body copy, time windows, and calls to action.

Test different types of content and timing

While you create your editorial calendar, make sure to account for testing

different types of content formats when sharing to social networks. You

will never know if one piece of content works better than the other if

you're not testing.

Timing is an important step in reach your audience for a couple of

reasons. The first reason is that every company's audience has different

social networking habits. Second, most people do not use social networks

during regular hours, so you will have to test different posting times,

collect the data, and determine the appropriate time windows for future

content distribution.

Test which types of offline marketing activities are best supported

by social media (i.e. speaking engagements, workshops, networking

events, print advertising, radio, and TV)

Most likely, many offline marketing tactics are easily complimented by

social media tactics. For example, events can be live tweeted and blog

posts can be written during the event. Lately, you have probably seen

social networks being promoted in print, radio, and TV. This is an







excellent tactic for building an audience and providing a place to create a

deeper relationship with your target market.

Create relationships with a number of bloggers in your industry and

narrow down the list over a 1 year period for blogs that drive the

most qualified traffic to your website.

Blogger outreach is one of the best ways to establish credibility and drive

business growth. The point of this tactic is to access the audience of these

influential figures. Their audiences are highly influenced by their

endorsements, so it could prove to be the most crucial thing you do in

social media. After all, the essence of blogger outreach is being "social"

and creating "real relationships". Just be careful not to be too pushy or go

for the quick sale with influential bloggers. They are bombarded with e-

mails, link requests, and pitches every day. The best way to look at blogger

outreach is the slow and steady route. You'll win in the end.







Measure:

"It’s not one size fits all"







In this section, we will help guide you through the often misunderstood world of

social media measurement. It's not cut and dry, and it takes work to collect the

appropriate information. After reading the section, you will have a better idea of

what you need to do.

Identify areas where data is readily available (i.e. Google Analytics

or customer relationship management reports)

When you are first starting out in social media, you will need to

demonstrate some type of movement, whether that is increased

conversions, or correlation of engagement metrics to lower costs, revenue,

or market insights. That is the best you will be able to do in the beginning.

Find the data that is easily captured and present it to management. You

will need to show management that numbers are trending in a positive

light. You can use social analytics tools like Hootsuite combined with

Google Analytics to show the initial performance. From here, you can ask

for budget to expand your measurement capabilities by integrating data

sources into one dashboard, or a social crm.

Align data collection with your business goals

If you don't specify what your business goals are then you will be buried

in a pile of useless data. For example, if increased sales leads is the goal,

then retweets or likes might not be the best data source to present to

management. A better data source would be referral traffic from social

sites that convert into downloads or event registrations. At the operational

level, retweets and likes might be a signal of driving more referral traffic,

but this is something that should be reported on the functional/operational

level.

Create control groups for measuring lift in sales or cost reduction

attributed to social media.

To see where social media impacts bottom line metrics, you will need to

compare the results of actions that are taken in social media to actions

without social media. Nichole Kelly of Full Frontal ROI explains this in-

depth on Social Media Examiner.

http://fullfrontalroi.com/







For example, if you want to see if people convert to sales better when

originating from social media compared to people that originate from

offline events like tradeshows, you will compare the two channels side by

side in your CRM software.







Learn:

"Move quickly, fail fast, and

iterate"







The last stage of your social media rollout plan should be focused on taking

calculated risks. If certain tactics don't work, that's ok. There's room to iterate.

Finally give your program some time to materialize. It is advisable to give

programs at least 1 year to mold into a business asset.

Test and iterate tactics, and present the results of the winning

tactics over a 1 year period.

Since social media is a long term aspect of any business, you will need

test and gather data for at least 1 year. After collecting the relevant data,

you will be able to spot patterns, with the winning and losing tactics

within a social media program.

After the 1 year period of testing, budget by quarter for strategies

supported by the winning tactics from the prior year

Now you can take what works and continue to test and further optimize

your social media presence. Taking this approach, you will continue to

build upon your success, thus creating assets that compound themselves.







Conclusion

Coming up with a social media strategy is no easy task, especially if you

have to gather information from and work with multiple stakeholders

within your organization. By following the advice of this e-book, you

should have the correct framework for creating an asset for your

organization. We hope you enjoyed reading, and best of luck to you in

your social media adventures!







Questions?

Need more in-depth discussions of what we covered in this e-book, or Need

help with your social media strategy? Feel free to reach out to us at

[email protected].

Enjoyed Reading? Please Share by Clicking on the Buttons Below!

http://socialmediahq.com/contact.php?utm_source=white paper&utm_campaign=strategy steps

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://blog.socialmediahq.com/download-6-social-media-strategy-tips-ebook/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=white paper share&utm_campaign=strategy steps

http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Download “6 Strategy Tips for Market Leadership” http://ow.ly/8ziIr by @social_media_hq

http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http://blog.socialmediahq.com/download-6-social-media-strategy-tips-ebook/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=white paper share&utm_campaign=strategy steps

https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/confirm?hl=en&url=http://blog.socialmediahq.com/download-6-social-media-strategy-tips-ebook/?utm_source=google plus&utm_medium=white paper share&utm_campaign=strategy steps





6 social media strategy tips

Business

social media program

market leadership

companys social media

company goals plan

enterprise businesses

small businesses

foreign process

historical information