scmd 140 workbook online community

SCMD 140: Growing an Online Community

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How to amplify your customer stories to help your brand

How your customers can contribute to your company

Why community is important for keeping company culture alive

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What You Will Learn

How do you define community? How do you think an online community can help your organization?

You can also tweet us your answer using the class hashtag, #SCMD140

1. Understanding Your AudienceIn SCMD 140: Growing an Online Community, you’ll learn the fundamentals of growing your online community. HootSuite’s VP of Community, Dave Olson, guides you through lessons and case studies from years on the job.

In the first of four lessons, you’ll learn where community fits into your existing organization, how to get to know your audience, and where to amplify your message.

Have a question as you’re going through the course? No problem! Tag your tweets with#SCMD140 to hear from fellow students and @HootSuite_U. Don’t forget to say hello to our speaker @daveohoots!

Community & Your CompanyCommunity means a lot of different things for different organizations - so where does it fit within your company? In this video, learn how you can define community and create one with your existing customers.


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How to utilize different social networks to address specific problems

How to set and measure your baseline for success

Why it’s important to fix one problem at a time

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What You Will Learn

What do you think the main difference is between Facebook and Twitter? Is one more valuable to your business than the other?

Understanding Your Company’s ChallengesYou’ve already learned how community touches every department, so now’s the time to see how you can become the problem solvers in your organization. In this video, learn how social media can help community managers overcome company-wide challenges.


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Why identifying internal stakeholders is vital to your company’s success

What you should cover in meetings with different departments

How to create and measure the success of an editorial calendar

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What You Will Learn

How can you empower different people or departments in your company using social media? What new communities could you create for more engagement?

Identifying Your Company’s GoalsAvoid becoming the miscellaneous department and take charge of your community role. In this video you will learn how to develop a scalable process to grow different departments in your organization into self-sufficient communities.


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How to easily research each member of your community

How to learn what your customers are talking about

Why the Insight tab in the HootSuite dashboard is a hidden weapon

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What You Will Learn

How many members of your community are you familiar with? Where is the greatest opportunity to get to know them on a more personal basis?

Researching & Understanding Your AudienceWhat’s the best way to build your community? Taking time to get to know them! In this video you’ll learn how Dave gets up close and personal with HootSuite fans.


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How to define what an influencer is for your company (hint: it’s not all followers and Klout scores!)

How you can retain influencers through early access and other perks

Why finding people who care about your brand makes your job easier - and more fun!

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What You Will Learn

Do you know who your influential customers are? How can you seek them out?

The Power of InfluencersAs you start to get to know your audience, you’ll begin to see recurring faces. In this video you will learn to leverage influencers for your brand, whether they’re helping with support, sharing opinions, or raising their hands.


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Why finding out where your audience lives online is important for your messaging

How to respect the nuances of different social networks to remain authentic

How to tailor your messaging lengths and multimedia

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What You Will Learn

Do you create your messaging for different channels? Does it affect your customer engagement?

Creating a Unique Messaging PlanNow it’s time to start working on your messaging plan - what are you trying to say, and who are the people who care to hear it? Learn how to write your messaging specifically for each social channel.


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Why you need to have the resources to scale before you plant new seeds

How to scale your social media accounts with intention and purpose

How you can utilize HootSuite’s App Directory to manage all your networks in one place

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What You Will Learn

What are you trying to accomplish with each social network? Go through your profiles and write down your target audience and objectives for each network.

Nurturing Your Social ChannelsYou’ve got the social media basics down, and you’re thinking about expanding your social media presences to further amplify your content. Dave uses personal HootSuite case studies to show you how you can leverage different networks for different purposes in a scalable way.

Great work! Now that you have a grasp on how to get started building your online community, it’s time to become a messaging expert in our next lesson: Strategies for Communication.


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Why social profiles should be treated as intellectual property

Why having current profiles is integral to your brand

How to manage your social media team’s secure passwords

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What You Will Learn

How many people do you think should have password access to your social media accounts? How often should you be changing your passwords?

Bonus! Using a program like LastPass can allow you to share log-in credentials for your blog, newsletter client, and more without compromising your security

You can also tweet us your answer using the class hashtag, #SCMD140

2. Strategies for CommunicationNow that you’ve seen how social media can help you solve problems, it’s time to dive into how you can best communicate with your customers on social media. Dave walks you through what it takes to handle social media security, team collaboration, negative sentiment, and email marketing within your organization.

Creating Secure Company ProfilesIn this video, you’ll learn how to ensure that your social media profiles are accurately reflecting your organization, by maintaining control and avoiding embarrassing social media blunders.


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How to acknowledge, thank, and then hand off social messaging to the best resources

Why you should jump into online conversations and how you can assign tweets

How to coordinate your social media responses with your team

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What You Will Learn

What is the best way to create clear communication with your other departments to hand off social media requests? What do you need to know in order to achieve success?

Increasing Efficiency Through CollaborationYour community is the centre of your organization, and often times responding to inquiries and messages can be an overwhelming experience. In this video, you’ll learn how to reduce confusion and increase efficiency on social media.


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How to acknowledge customers and steer conversations towards the positive

Why you should monitor more than just social media messaging online

How to prepare messaging in advance and why feedback channels are important

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What You Will Learn

Do you have a social media crisis plan in place? What do you think should be included in it?

Dealing With Negative SentimentDespite your marketing, what really matters to your search results and reputation is what your audience is saying. Learn from Dave’s personal experience dealing with negative sentiment, and how he coordinated with HootSuite’s support team to deliver customer happiness.


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How to repurpose newsletter content into social media posts

Why social share buttons and links are crucial to your email marketing

How you can leverage your email signature to promote your social channels

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What You Will Learn

What else can you do to improve your email marketing and align it with your social media channels?

Using Email in Addition to Your Social ChannelsLearn how email can act as the glue that ties your social media together. Keep track of those lost conversations and see how email complements your social media activity

Awesome job, you’re now halfway through the course! Keep learning in our next lesson: Monitoring & Filtering.


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Why tracking keywords associated with your brand is important

Why geo-locating your search can help with events & community building

Why sharing streams with your team can help with responses

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What You Will Learn

What keywords should you be tracking in addition to your company name? Is there an opportunity to geo-locate your tweets?

3. Monitoring & FilteringGet the most out of what your audience is saying! In this lesson you will learn how to effectively listen to your community while also filtering your content to get the right information at the right time.

Dave Olson leads you through strategies for monitoring social chatter across multiple channels, networks, lists, and hashtags.

The Value of Online MonitoringIn this video, you’ll learn tactical tips and tricks for setting up your online monitoring. Don’t forget to track variations of your brand name and misspellings!


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Why lists are integral to your social media success

How you can organize your lists by vertical, industry, or event

How you can utilize private lists to track your competitors

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What You Will Learn

What kind of lists could you create for your account? Who are the people or companies that you should be paying close attention to?

The Power of Twitter ListsLearn how to keep track of all the conversations you want while filtering out the noise. As Dave explains, lists are becoming more and more popular. In this video, learn how to take advantage of Twitter lists and how to organize them to make sense for your company.


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What a hashtag is and how you can utilize them for your business

What types of content hashtags are centered around

How to use hashtags for your social media campaigns

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What You Will Learn

What hashtags do you currently use? What are others you could be creating or following?

Utilizing HashtagsFind out how you can use hashtags for your business and for your social media campaigns. A #hashtag is a powerful tool for filtering conversations on Twitter to get more of what you want as it denotes context within tweets.


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How to find out what vocabulary your customers are using to describe your company

How to gather information from your community and experiment with your messaging

How to create valuable resources out of archived tweets

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What You Will Learn

What are some unique words or phrases that your customers use to describe your organization? How do they differ from your branding?

Optimizing Your VocabularyNow that you’ve learned how to use lists, hashtags, and searches, you’ll begin to start gathering valuable information on marketing and positioning. In this video, see how you can use unique, popular words to talk about what your company is building.

Keep it up! Just one more lesson to go until you’ve completed the course. Learn how to make it count in the next lesson: Measuring Success.


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How to measure your success against your original goals

What you should look at beyond the retweets and likes

How you can combine analytics from social campaigns, company goals, and Google Analytics

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What You Will Learn

How has your company stacked up against its original goals? How can you improve how you track your success?

4. Measuring SuccessNow that you have applied Dave’s tips and tricks for growing your community, it’s time to learn to measure what matters. How can your company define the impact of your online community?

In the last of four lessons, you’ll see how to look at the bigger picture and how social media can play a role in creating customer happiness.

What Defines Success?In this video, learn the difference between measuring charts and graphs vs. measuring what your community has done for you. You’ll see how to recognize what channels sparked growth and what audiences your messaging resonated with.


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Why sentiment is important

How to handle a crisis and turn it around

The most important thing you can track to determine your success

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What You Will Learn

Set up a stream to track sentiment for your company - is it mainly positive or negative? What can you do to foster more happiness within your community?

The Happiness BarometerLearn the key to measuring customer happiness as Dave explains how to track online sentiment about your company. In this video, he’ll talk about his experience dealing with a social media crisis and how they were able to turn sentiment around.

Hoot Hoot, you’re all done! Congratulations on finishing this course. Don’t forget to keep all your owls in a row and take the exam for Growing Your Online Community.

Excited as we are about #SCMD140? Tweet us at @HootSuite_U to let us know that you’ve finished this course and let us know your thoughts!

scmd 140 workbook online community

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