the what & the why: small business social web strategy

The What & The WhySmall Business Social Web Strategy

Before we try to make choices, let’s learn what

kinds of choices need to be made...

The Scope

1. Consumer Social Web Tools

• What Are They?

• Who’s Doing This?

The Scope2. Consumer-Facing Social Web Engagements

• What are the business objectives?

• How should we segment our customers’ behavior?

• What are differences between real small business (under $1M) and big brands?

• Where does email fit in?

The Scope

3. Consumer Social Web Strategy

• How do we do it?

• How much is this gonna cost?

• How do we measure return-on-investment and other important metrics?

• How do we delegate the day-to-day?

• What are the next steps?

Your Customers & Prospects

Active

Inactive

Your Customers & Prospects (25-34)

Active

Inactive

Your Customers & Prospects (18-24)

Active

Inactive

3 Reasons Social Web Will Potentially Not Matter For Your Brand

• Most customers do not have Internet access (includes no mobile)

• Most customers/prospects over the age of 65

• Pre-literate customer base

Part One

• Consumer social web tools

• What are they?

What Are Consumer Social Web Tools?• These are the tools that your customers and prospects use on the social

Internet to create and share content

• We’re not talking about brands, we’re talking about types of technologies

• “Is it a social web tool?”

1. Can consumers talk to other consumers using it?

2. Can consumers submit original, uncensored content?

• This content can later generally be edited by consumers

Facebook is not a social web tool. A social network

service is a social web tool.

“I can edit this anytime”

“anyone can comment here”

What Are Consumer Social Web Tools?Tool Consumer-Editable C2C Conversation?

Social Network Profile Page Yes Yes

Wiki Page Yes Yes

Blog Entry Yes Yes

Amazon Review Yes Yes

Review Site Review (e.g. Yelp, TripAdvisor) Yes Yes

The Eight Buckets of Consumer Social Web Tools

Blogs PodcastsSocial

NetworkServices

Wikis MicroBlogsOnline Video

Discussion Forums

Online Reviews &

Ratings

Why Aren’t Video Games Included Here? It’s a $9.5B Industry!

• Consumers rarely create this type of content

• Content shared by consumers within these games cannot typically be accessed by all game players

• “Is World Of Warcraft a social network service?”

• Yes, but it has limited functionality for your purposes, and engagements scale poorly.

Part Two

• Consumer-facing social web engagements

• How should we examine our customers behavior?

• What is The Fork and why do we use behavioral targeting?

• What are the business objectives?

• What are differences between small business and big brands?

What are the communications objectives in using social web strategies?

• Listening - “We’re figuring out what people are saying about us and our space.”

• Talking - “We’re talking with our customers and listening to them.”

• Energizing - “We’re working with our customer base to create an army of raving fans who will evangelize our brand.”

• Embracing - “We’re working with our customers to create new products and services by utilizing the social web.”

Entry-levelObjectives

Late-STAGEObjectives

How Should We Examine Our Customers Behavior?

• There are two types of customers/prospects:

• Talkers: These are people who go online and say things. They’re the only people we’re concerned with in our social web strategy.

• Everybody else: Don’t worry about them. Some portion of them will eventually become Talkers. The rest will just read/listen to whatever the Talkers say, and make their own decisions.

The Social Technographic Ladder

Inactives

None of the above

Spectators

Read blogsWatch video from other usersListen to podcastsRead online forums and customer ratings/reviews

JoinersMaintain profile on social networking websites and visit social networking sites

Collectors Use RSS FeedsAdd “tags” to websites or pages (folksonomies)“Vote” for websites online

Critics Post ratings/reviews of products/servicesComment on someone elseʼs blogContribute to online forumsContribute to/edit articles in a wiki

Source: Forrester Analytst Report, 02/08

CreatorsPublish a blogPublish their own web pagesUpload video they createdUpload audio/music they createdWrite articles or stories and post them1x monthly

You’re all a bunch of talkers!

Why do we use behavioral targeting?

• We don’t know who the person REALLY is on the other end of the screen.

• People aren’t always who we say they are on the Internet.

• Online behaviors guide social web tool usage reliably, not age, gender or locality.

• It’s way more accurate than demographic targeting.

The Fork

The Fork

• The brand has an important choice

• I call it The Fork

• Goal: To create a behavioral target, in order to develop a strategy

• Challenge: Can’t choose a tool (or two) until you’ve chosen a strategy

The ForkBrand may wish to choose:

A. Behaviorally target the current demographic set, at the “rungs” that they’re most comfortable with

OR

B. Engage new base of prospectives with behaviorally high social media aptitude/usage

What are the communications objectives in using social web strategies?

• Listening - “We’re figuring out what people are saying about us and our space.”

• Talking - “We’re talking with our customers and listening to them.”

• Energizing - “We’re working with our customer base to create an army of raving fans who will evangelize our brand.”

• Embracing - “We’re working with our customers to create new products and services by utilizing the social web.”

Entry-levelObjectives

Late-STAGEObjectives

What Are The Business Objectives?

• Listening: To find out what people are saying about the brand so that we can develop a solid strategy to increase brand awareness and sales and brand equity

• Talking: Increase brand awareness, brand equity and sales

• Energizing: Increase brand awareness, brand equity and sales

• Embracing: Create totally innovative, customer-centric products or services

What Are Differences Between Small Businesses and Big Brands?

• Less total collateral out there in the market and less content to monitor

• Less total tools needed

• Less time needed to make big wins over your current situation

• Much easier to “know your market” and know your customers

Social Email?

• Use email to draw older adults (45-75) into social media

• Include key social web property linkage on all corporate email

• Rebrand all company assets (letterhead, business cards) to reflect social web collateral that’s important

• If email can’t be easily forwarded, fix it

Carrot & Stick

• Offer much deeper discounts on social web properties; motivates users with carrot, pushes with stick

• When someone unsubscribes, it may be because they’re a “friend”

• Read email analytics, all the time

There’s a reason this slide is redDon’t do any of the following:

• Pay your customer evangelists after they’ve evangelized for you for free

• Use paid services to get people to write about your brand

• Use shills or buzz agents

• Market on your competitors sites unless you’d like them to return the favor

• Start a fight with a major content property (e.g. Yelp, Tripadvisor, etc.) unless you have an army of hundreds of customers who can back you up

Part Three• Consumer Social Web Strategy

• How do we do it?

• How much is this gonna cost?

• How do we measure ROI/ROP?

• How do we delegate the day-to-day?

• What are the next steps?

How Do We Do The Strategy?1. Spend a month or two listening

2. Bring in a pro to write the 90-day or 120-day strategy document based on the results of your “market surveillance”

• Use the behavioral targeting based on The Fork when choosing your tool

3. Execute against the document

4. Run monthly reports and a final report

What’s the methodology, again?• POSTm Methodology

• People: We pick our stakeholder set first.

• Objectives: We then decide upon a communications and a business objective.

• Strategy: We write a strategic document, and execute against it, spelling out the exact gains we wish to achieve in terms of metrics.

• Tools: We pick our tools last, using behavioral targeting.

• Measure: We measure the key metrics, and iterate the plan based on our measurements.

How Much Is This Going To Cost?

• Use the 90/10 rule

• 90% of your investment should be in people

• This will cost 10-15% of the marketing budget

• If you spend an annual total of $300 on reputation monitoring and blog software, spend $2700 on paying an intern to use this stuff

• If you up the tool spend, up the “people spend”

• If you’re spending over $500 on tools, something’s fishy

What is ROP?• Return-on-participation

• It’s what we get for participating in the social web

• It’s the number of social web responses (reviews, comments, sales, etc.) you get in return for your efforts

• You should see this rate increase over time, and eventually level off

• A low engagement rate is 3x, and a high one is 15x

How do we measure this stuff?

• Analytics solution: Google Analytics (free); can also be used for basic eCommerce.

• Buy one good book on Google Analytics: One-Hour-A-Day by Avinash Kaushik

• Reputation Monitoring Solution: Trackur ($18)

• Plain old counting (review sites): ($0)

Can’t We Just Copy What Our Competitors are Using?

• No. They might be doing it all wrong

• They might not have listened

• They’re maybe not as ethical as you are

How Do We Delegate The Day-to-Day?• After doing the listening yourself, get assistance writing the

plan.

• Explain plan carefully to the staff and interns

• Check for comprehension

• Explain metrics to staff and interns

• Possibly bonus the staff for certain levels of improvement

• Read monthly reports with intern

What Are The Next Steps?

• Begin listening phase

• Get strategy written

• See how it impacted sales and the number of results that come up in Trackur

• Look at where the hits are coming from - are they coming from the right markets?

Digging Deeper• My first strategy book, “There Is No Secret Sauce”

• www.adammetz.com

• adam@adammetz.com

• Available for consulting

• Read my blog to get up to speed, and other recommended reading is for sale in my bookstore and on my blogroll

The Book

10 Social Media Mistakes

I’ve Got The Budget, How Do I Spend It

http://tinyurl.com/metzbook

Consulting

www.adammetz.com