social media the integrated approach (autosaved)

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1 Social Media the Integrated Approach By, Mason Kenny Table of Contents Page 3…………………………………………………………………………………….The Fundamentals of Social Media Page 4………………………………………………………………………………………………….U.S. Water and Instagram Page 5……………………………………………………….Instagram Hashtags/How to track success on Twitter Page 6……………………………………………………………………………………………..Twitter Advertising/LinkedIn Page 7………………………………………………………………………………………....Why we should use SlideShare Page 8……………………………………….How to increase Reach on SlideShare/Real results on SlideShare Page 9……………………………………………………………………………………..U.S. Water’s Website and HTML5 Page 10……………………………………………………………………………………………………Website Fundamentals

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Page 1: Social Media the Integrated Approach (Autosaved)

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Social Media the Integrated Approach

By, Mason Kenny

Table of ContentsPage 3…………………………………………………………………………………….The Fundamentals of Social Media

Page 4………………………………………………………………………………………………….U.S. Water and Instagram

Page 5……………………………………………………….Instagram Hashtags/How to track success on Twitter

Page 6……………………………………………………………………………………………..Twitter Advertising/LinkedIn

Page 7………………………………………………………………………………………....Why we should use SlideShare

Page 8……………………………………….How to increase Reach on SlideShare/Real results on SlideShare

Page 9……………………………………………………………………………………..U.S. Water’s Website and HTML5

Page 10……………………………………………………………………………………………………Website Fundamentals

Page 11.......................Being careful on social media/How to improve our social media campaign

Page 12………………………………………………………………………………………Social media campaign checklist

Page 13………………………………………………………………..Grow your community/Engage your followers

Page 14……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Conclusion

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Color Key: For Finding Unique Social Media Functions/Strategies

“Social media isn’t about creating a great brand. It’s about acting as if you already have one.”

~Unknown

What does social media mean to us?

How social media applies to us/business and what to expect in the future.

Twitter

LinkedIn

SlideShare

Instagram

U.S. Water’s Website

Why to be careful with social media/How to improve our social media campaign

Social media campaign checklist/conclusion

Red

Green

Blue

Purple

Gold

Pink

Dark Blue

Dark Green

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To wrap your head around the idea of social media is something that takes a great deal of understanding and prior knowledge. It has changed the way we communicate and has revolutionized every aspect of publicity. Altering the way we communicate as a society has been somewhat difficult for the older generation to adapt too, since they had to acclimate simply because they weren’t born into it. Regardless if you are a social media guru or just a Neanderthal to this new technology acclimating it into your life is inevitable.

Historic social media campaigns include the (ALS) challenge engineered in 2014 by the ALS Association, which fights Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Known more commonly as Lou Gehrig’s disease. This involved getting ice cold water poured on yourself or someone else to raise money, then you would tag the applicable hashtags and then donate to the cause. This was a massively prosperous raising more than $100 million. Another primitive example of an effective social media campaign was after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, nonprofits used social media to organize rescue efforts to support the area. This was closely related to the tsunami that nailed Japan on March 11 th, 2011, millions around the globe used social media to search for family and friends, as well as get updates. Social media has extensively transposed the way people talk about politics and how we put together political causes. President Obama’s election in 2008 and 2012 used social media to formulate supporters and issue out the vote campaigns. Social media has even changed politics, now that is revolutionary!

What does social media mean to business?

Along with the release of social media a new form of workplace communication has developed called “Social Business”. But what is the difference between business and Social Business? The difference between them is a business that uses social media and one that uses it to fund their connections and functions. Some companies post pictures and tweets of their products and this is strictly it. But true social businesses use social media to influence the ways employees and members interact and conglomerate. Social Times a big reviewer of social media in relation to business addresses five things any business should be aware of when utilizing social media in their business. These include:

Check the keywords that you’re content is optimized for to ensure they match customer searches

Be consistent with keywords to ensure you rank for relevant terms Encourage “Likes” and sharing on social platforms for greater visibility (more people and

more search results) Make sure you are being reviewed and that reviews of your services are shareable Monitor for negative mentions and deal with them quickly to bypass negative search

legacy

What to expect in the future

While estimates through 2039 are not yet available, the experts agree social media will be integrated into wearables that record our habits, and virtual experiences will have been put into action. The challenge will be trying to cope with the massive amounts of data that will be of great quantity to the masses. Social media is undeniably not short on fuel. Every year, almost 200 million people are signing up, and by 2016, we are set to have around two billion social media users. Real – time, Real – time allows an audience to watch their every move as it transpires in the present over social media. This is revolutionary and will open many new doors for social media to enlarge more into our lives. Social

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media is also on its way to begin swapping from creation and entertainment purposes to advertising purposes.

U.S Water and Instagram

We are unquestionably on the right track to great utilization possibilities but definitely need some fine tuning. Currently we are only utilizing Twitter, LinkedIn with very little occupation in Google+ for social media platforms. This leaves out numerous other very fitting alternatives that could notably aid us and our social media presence.

Something I really want us to push for is to utilize Instagram. Instagram is one of the biggest thriving social media platforms and to just miss out on this would be ludicrous. Instagram has reached 300 million active users, this is faster than any other social media platform (except Google+). One of the big trends for 2014 is visual marketing. A good bulk of the social media sites have made modifications to increase the presence of the amount of visual content, as well as making it more accessible to access the content. As visual content becomes increasingly more important, Instagram will feel the need to create high quality, original content. Instagram in addition enables us to produce photos and videos which can be shared to other social media platforms and this can also be engraved into our website or even our blog. Instagram allows us to set filters and essentially construct our company touch to all the photos we post which then establishes a trend. Obviously an arising inquiry is, isn’t Instagram only for product based companies? So how do we use Instagram to market our products?

To really break it down plain and simple Instagram is not just for product based businesses. The obvious assumption is that a photo based platform like Instagram is only for businesses that distribute products for consumption. Most certainly product based businesses have more “product” which can be captured and shared on Instagram. In retrospect service based companies have a lot to offer too, it just takes a bit more creativity. We are both a service and product based company, we can most certainly make Instagram a feasible option.

Picture options that we can post on Instagram include:

Images of products we are working on Scenic pictures of the locations our company has facilities in Locations our sales representatives have sold products to Pictures of our office/headquarter settings Employee birthdays/employee promotion pictures Pictures of our products making a difference around the world

Tracking Instagram

Unlike other social media platforms Instagram doesn’t use any third party trackers such as Edgerank to influence what our audience sees. Every single post on Instagram shows up and every single post remains active in your gallery for future views. Instagram’s newest feature, Instagram Direct, is a direct messaging function which resides within Instagram. This feature can be used creatively to address customer service support issues directly with our customers in a private conversation rather than for the public to see. This is like Twitter’s DM (Direct Messaging) feature. This allows for private messaging on Twitter as well. There is also a proposal on the introduction of ads (currently in early release phase) this

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will also allow businesses to reach out and target even more users. Not to mention Instagram is a very interactive site which enables us to connect to our audience very clearly. This is done through comments on pictures and what we choose to display to our audience through videos as well. Asking questions is a solid way to get audience feedback and maybe even possible customer feedback.

Track our analytics. Currently there are no in – app analytics with Instagram. However, a site we can use to track our data with is Statigram. Statigram allows us to analyze our best posting times, when our audience is most active, our gained and lost followers, our most popular posts, plus much more. If we decide to use Instagram as part of our social media strategy, knowing our data and analytics is most definitely important.

How U.S. Water will utilize hashtags on Instagram

Perhaps the single best way to get our photos and videos viewed on Instagram is to add hashtags. The nice thing about Instagram is we can tag with relevant, popular hashtags or we can start our hash tagging with branded hashtags. The pertinent, popular hashtags are the ones that may be relevant for the keywords in our photo description or popular among the community. A quick way to see which tags might be the best for our photo is do a search with the tags that you have in mind. This can help set you in the right guidance on the popularity of a certain hashtag and where our photo will fit in the competition. Branded hashtags can be quite profitable when it comes to curating user – generated content. Here’s how:

Step 1.) A company creates a campaign encouraging its audience to submit photos.

Step 2.) Fans are asked to tag their photos with a branded hashtag that the company chooses.

Step 3.) The marketing team can track this hashtag to see what’s submitted, and the submissions then become a steady source of user – generated content.

A side note is when it comes to hashtags the golden rule of hashtags is to stop at five. This keeps the photo clean and professional. Hash tagging is the backbone of this social media platform, so a hashtag is imperative for you to see success on Instagram.

How we can further track U.S Water’s success on Twitter

Currently we are using no known tracking applications to track our progress on Twitter. A good contender is the Twitter Activity Dashboard to track our analytics. This is all done through the Twitter webpage, it is both safe and user friendly. It allows for in depth analytics from what goes on the moment you post a Tweet. To access the Activity Dashboard on our desktop type analytics.twitter.com and click on Tweets and from there on it is pretty self-explanatory. On mobile tap one of our Tweets to get the Tweet detail, then tap View Tweet activity. Make sure we have installed the latest version of Twitter for IPhone or Twitter for Android. This is probably the most straightforward and conducive way we can track Twitter analytics.

Twitter Advertising

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The Twitter advertising campaign is a great option for effective and reliable marketing found simply on the Twitter website. Being very affordable Promoted Tweets and promoted accounts cost anywhere between $.50 - $4.00 per engagement. According to Melissa Mackey writing for Search Engine Watch, first off this is good targeting. One of the biggest advantages to Twitter Ads is its flexible targeting options. Advertisers can pick and choose a promoted account, which appears above non – promoted accounts inside the “Who to follow” list. Lead Generation Cards are a new advertising feature that lets companies build their email marketing lists right within Twitter. In August, Twitter opened up the feature to all advertisers, and digital marketing agency Webtrends jumped on the opportunity to drive more qualified leads for its B2B Company. A Business – to – Business (B2B) refers to a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another.

Another great tool is Website cards, a Website card enables us to feature our website content within a Tweet and allows the user to click through our website. This should help drive even more traffic from Twitter to our website. Both of these innovations allow users to take action within a tweet, eliminating the need to use valuable tweet characters for a destination URL. Some advantages that seem to stick out are good campaign controls, this application even lets us schedule down to a minute. The nicest feature of all is they have actual representatives we can talk to about campaign performance and optimization. They’re launching innovative ad formats that make it easier for advertisers to achieve their goal. The pros far outweigh the cons when utilizing this great tool, so utilization would most definitely be applicable.

U.S. Water and LinkedIn

I undeniably think our LinkedIn account is much more robust than our Twitter account. But one distinct issue I see with our LinkedIn page is that we don’t broadcast our company as a whole. I think instead of just having “Case Studies and “White Papers” saturating our feed we can have pictures of company photos or product accomplishments (finished products) something to spice it up and draw user attention. I am thrilled we utilize LinkedIn and here are some reasons why it is such a great platform. Amy Adkins from small business.chron an online review article addresses LinkedIn and how it is one of the largest professional networks in the world. It Attracts New Talent, Connects You with Top Prospects, Establishes Credibility, as well as Expands Marketing. I think that we are a growing business and so many businesses are already on LinkedIn, keeping this social media platform as a priority is our best bet.

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads is a self – service advertising solution that allows us to create and place ads on prominent pages on the LinkedIn.com website. People click on our ads which is then followed by visiting our website. You can specify which LinkedIn members view our ads by selecting a target audience: by job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size, or LinkedIn Group. Control our advertising costs by setting a budget and only pay for clicks or impressions that we receive. To get started all we need is a LinkedIn Account and a credit card. Create an ad, select a target audience, as well as set your budget and bid and you are good to go. Our ad will be reviewed by a member of their customer support team, usually within 24 hours. If our ad meets their guidelines and is approved, it will become active on the LinkedIn.com website. Ads consist of these elements:

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Headline: (up to 25 characters of text) Description: (up to 75 characters of text) From: (our name or any company) Image: (50x50 pixel image) URL: (website people visit once they click on our ad).

Also a text – only version of the ad may be shown in locations such as the top of the LinkedIn.com home page. Our ads will be eligible to appear on a variety of prominent pages on the LinkedIn.com website. Our ads may appear in various positions on any or all of the pages listed:

Profile Page: (when users view the profile of other LinkedIn members)

Home Page: (the page that users see when they log in to LinkedIn): Inbox (the page where users see messages and invitations to connect)

Search Results Page: (the page that results when we search for a member by name) Groups: (on pages in LinkedIn Groups)

An Example: is on a user’s Home Page, (1) our ad text may appear in a single line across the top of the page or (2) both our image and ad text may appear with us up to 2 other ads in the rectangular ad unit in the right column of the page.

Cost really comes down to two main options. Pay per Click (CPC) and Pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM). Most people choose CPC, which means that we pay when someone clicks on our ad. This payment method allows us to specify a bid – the maximum amount we’re willing to pay for each click (for example, $3.00 per click). Each click will cost between $2.00 (the minimum cost per click) and our bid. A Suggested Bid Range will be provided so we can really nail down and finalize the best option that fits our business. If we’re less interested in clicks and care more about the number of times our ad is shown, we can choose to pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM). In this payment option, we pay a set cost for each 1,000 times our ad is shown, no matter how many clicks we receive. They only recommend this bidding option for people with past experience advertising on a CPM basis. Other things to take in to account is that there is a one – time $5 activation fee, we also can upload and have our ads written in different languages supported by LinkedIn. This is a revolutionary way to reach so many business professional profiles, I really think this is exactly what will allow us to advertise in the best way possible.

Why we should use SlideShare

But what is SlideShare? According to SlideShare.net, SlideShare began with a simple goal: To share knowledge online. Since then, SlideShare has grown to become the world’s largest community for sharing presentations and other professional content. Slideshare was founded on October 2006 and acquired by LinkedIn in May 2012. It allows users to easily upload and share presentations, infographics, documents, videos, PDFs, and webinars. In Q4 of 2013, the site averaged 60 million unique visitors a month and 125 million page views. SlideShare is among the top 120 most – visited websites in the world. Some options for what we can post on SlideShare combine:

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White Papers and Case studies into separate SlideShare presentations Conference/Tradeshow presentations Internal articles (“Loop”) Recent product releases News about the company (what are we accomplishing) Promotions Hiring opportunities Special offers Useful tips/Advice about our business or industry Fun and creative also engaging content (could be produced by the marketing

department). Not everything we post even has to be relevant to our company just has to be interesting and creative.

To create an effective SlideShare presentation takes a great deal of effort on our part, but here are some steps to take when creating our masterpiece.

1.) Work on Our Content Show something shocking Explain useful information Evoke emotions

2.) Construct a Clear and Linear Structure: they need to build each other, one on top of another. List or stories are the best way to present our content, the purpose is to deliver our message.

3.) Create Marvelous Slides: your presentation is like a cake: it could be delicious; but if it’s not visually appealing no one will eat it.

How to Increase your reach on SlideShare

Twitter: Sharing it on our Twitter page it then has the potential to be inserted on the “Hot on Twitter” box (on SlideShare’s homepage under the “Hot on Facebook” box). This really puts power in our upload and people have more interest to an upload on SlideShare that is trending.

LinkedIn: If we get enough views on LinkedIn, our presentation will be inserted in the “Hot on LinkedIn” box. (Under the “Hot on Twitter” box).

Blog: We want to insert our presentation in our blog to increase the number of views it gets. If our presentation happens to be the one that gets the highest number of views on a given day, we’ll be featured on SlideShare’s homepage. Combining all our social media platforms into one is like a one stop shop for users to see what we are posting.

How to get real results on SlideShare

Slideshare doesn’t allow live links in the description of the presentation. Which is inconvenient but there is ways to win people’s hearts and minds over. We are able to insert a live link inside our presentation which is a solution to this problem. Assuming that people are engaged with our great presentation, we have just one place to insert our link and still keep getting clicks. That place is our last

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slide. We have to understand that many people don’t know about the presence of live links in our presentations. But you are still able to solve this problem with two simple tricks.

1.) Insert a URL= insert a URL in your call to action. Avoid “Click here” links and such. If you decide to insert your URL, people who are interested (but don’t realize that there is a live link in the presentation) can insert that URL right into their navigation browser.

2.) Insert an Arrow toward the Link= Even if someone doesn’t know about the live links inside the presentation, people will wonder what the arrow is all about. Then the magic will happen once the user moves his/her mouse over the link the cursor will magically change from normal to link cursor, both intriguing and effective. I think we give it a shot, use what I provided such as what to post and use SlideShare to show our company image.

U.S. Water’s Website

Our website isn’t atrocious by any means, I just think it can be enhanced to look more professional and less painless to read. We shove a bunch of words on the first page of our website which really bogs down the smoothness of the read for the users. The first page is the first thing users see, having this being the most attractive attracts their attention than pushes them to explore our website even more. But some urgent fundamentals we lack are, we don’t utilize that many visually stunning graphics or videos. Pairing your website with media makes it feel more interactive, specifically in this day of age people are not really prone to read the fine print anymore. Our society has swapped from time being something we are aware of, but now it is something we consistently keep track of. Switching the feel and look of our website I have faith that it won’t only grow traffic, but improve our company image as a whole and I am here to tell you why.

HTML 5

Moving from our current website writer XHTML (Hyper Text Mark – up Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) to HTML5 I think will pick us up and push us past the competition. HTML5 is the newest and greatest website writer in the market today. HTML5 comes with:

1.) Built – in Video/Audio Playback: which is improved video playing. 2.) Offline caching: as long as visitors have visited our webpage in the past, they can load our

website without an internet connection. 3.) Cleaner Code: this is better equipped for search engine readability. Which is easier for

users to find exactly what they are searching for, say it happens to be our website or something specific to our website.

4.) Browser Cross – Compatibility: it can be viewed on all major websites which include Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Opera. This doesn’t mean that all of these browsers will support every new element introduced in HTML5, but they will be able to read the Doctype (Doctype= an instruction to the web browser about what version of HTML the page is written in.) at the very least.

5.) Mobile Optimization: it’s optimized for the creation of mobile websites and application. Responsive websites are easily built using HTML5, offering full functionality across all types of devices. Without the need for horizontal scrolling, mobile users can browse websites

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more efficiently. Adobe has discontinued support for their mobile Flash Player, paving the way for HTML5 to handle interactive tasks on mobile devices.

The consistent updating and upgrading of website writing is not economical by any means. Roughly our costs would be around $60,000. Now let that figure lock in, the way I look at $60,000 is not at how many zeros there are, but how there could be 60,000 people this could possibly affect. U.S. Water is developing and with growth comes renovation, paying the lump sum now and then watching a company thrive from here on out is exactly the protocol. I understand that stuff like this constantly is being released but HTML5 is here to stay for a while. This is due to the colossal amounts of updates and software rewrites that puts it way ahead than ever before. The effort and capacity that has been put into HTML5 is something that really does leave a mark. I am not saying this is a requirement by any means, but it definitely deserves to be placed on the back burner at the very least for further speculation.

Website fundamentals

Obviously when addressing a company website we have to be aware of the standards. When I say standards I mean that we must always keep in mind the purpose of our website and what it is trying to accomplish. Establishing a company image and purpose is also something that should always be kept in mind when creating or improving a company website. Here are 10 fundamentals websuccessteam.com addresses about online marketing:

1.) Re – Defining Our Goals and Objectives: first we need to reexamine our reason for being in business. Keep being competitive.

2.) The Impact of Keywords: are we using the most effective keywords for our business? Figure out what keywords fits our company the best.

3.) The Importance of Search Engine Optimization: it is essential that our site be optimized for the search engines. Make sure our website can be organically searched for when they are addressing our specific industry.

4.) Our Unique Selling Proposition: what makes our company, its products and services stand out from the competition.

5.) Promote, Promote, Promote: our site should be attractive to viewers and it should also offer incentives and take – a – ways to keep them on our pages as well as guide them to our conversion pages. Make a way for our users to remember our identity.

6.) Increase Our Conversion Rate: a certain amount of our hits must have a desired outcome. Whether it’s to buy a product, fill out a form, or perform any other desired action (click on an advertisement or stay on the site for a specified period of time). Increased conversion rates turn more visitors into customers. And if the site is designed correctly, instead of leaving our site, visitors will stay and find the information they want. And of course we want more return business. Draw our customers back to our site with newsletters, special offers, and other campaigns that will dramatically increase our back end sales.

7.) Social Search Optimized Marketing: to be successful online requires implementing SSOM strategies and techniques that include online PR, blog, Pay Per Click, Niche Micro Sites: (Niche Micro

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Sites= a webpage with few pages and its Niche because it focuses on a specific keyword), social media networking, building and communicating with our email list, submitting to directories, search engines and local search, special offers, e-zines: (E-zine= a magazine that is published only in electronic form on a computer network) and viral marketing.

8.) Analyze Our Statistics: another key component of the online marketing mix is to constantly review our statistics, analytics help take the guesswork out of a website’s effectiveness and is hard concrete evidence if a page or promotion is working.

9.) Understand Our Online Competition: often times our competition can help us succeed, analyze what they are doing and use their effectiveness to further keep up and excel past them.

10.) Setting Realistic Budgets for Optimum Results: and finally, we need to budget for success. We can’t put all our eggs in to one basket. We should set a realistic budget to allocate our marketing dollars. Skimping on marketing is like yelling in a vacuum.

Why we need to be careful with Social Media

A source from socialsongbird.com talks about how companies can utilize the advantages of social media but there are risks associated with social media as well. First off is the vast audience, whatever we post or Tweet can be seen by millions in a matter of seconds. In society years ago we used to only have one email address, but now, we are required to have several profiles, each displaying different qualities we have e.g. LinkedIn for employment attributes, and Facebook displaying social qualities. These identities exist beyond our initial interest in pursuing them, and as we neglect the old profiles, to create newer versions of ourselves online, we forget that the older ones exist somewhere in the digital world, and millions of users still have access to these profiles. The other side to this is that a lot of businesses have liberated employees where social media is concerned, and ended up in court for failing to control what is said. This can lead to more money being spent on solicitors, and in this instance social media can be seen as a risk too far too many companies. Letting employees roam free on social media is risky on break or whenever throughout the work day, so having a way to incorporate this in the work setting is key. The reality is that social media is here to stay. It has been written off far too many times, and still it continues to dominate the online world. People are simply too reliant on social media these days, but this helps capitalists pounce on the vulnerabilities of the human being.

How to improve U.S. Water’s Social Media Campaign

I think we do well with our campaigns for our tradeshow events and our social media platforms as well. One thing I see is where we lack is our follow up when the campaign is over. A quote that I thought related perfectly about when creating a social media campaign was shared with me by my cross-country coach about racing. “Start strong, finish fast” –Chris Humbert. Think of it as a race, start strong with visually appealing ads and graphics. But then finish fast taking people off their feet with even more impressive content than what you first started with, like speeding through the finish line. The pressure is off, but what you do after a social media campaign is just as important as the campaign itself. We put in all this work for a reason.

If our reason was to gather leads, it’s time to push those leads into the funnel and start targeting our prospects. Add the leads to our customer relationship management (CRM) tool and tag them with the

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campaign name so we know what attracted them to our business. Thank anyone who responded to our campaign, through their email address if we have that information. Our thanks creates goodwill and gives us a reasonable excuse for another touch point with these users/prospects. If our purpose was to drive website traffic, social media mentions, or sales, gather your final metrics for the entire campaign period in each of those areas. Compare them to our targets and how much we invested in the campaign and try and come to a conclusion about whether it was a success or a failure. Make sure to deeply analyze our campaign when it is over to see what went well and what could be improved and make positive corrections from there on.

Social Media Campaign checklist:

Before

Choose our goals Establish a timeline Have a clear promotion strategy Know our target audience Choose a campaign hashtag Set up monitoring streams Establish our campaigns platform

During

Monitor streams for any issues, resolve them Track mentions to judge campaign popularity Use analytics to track our KPIs (A performance indicator or key performance indicator is a type

of performance measurement). KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity in which it engages.

Adjust the campaign strategy if necessary Ensure all our tracking is functional Engage participants Engage the media

After

Push leads into our CRM system. (CRM is an approach to managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support).

Gather all our KPI metrics Conduct a campaign retrospective Present your retrospective to your team/superiors

Wrap up is of the up most importance if we want to see a successful campaign, so remembering to have an arsenal of follow up Tweets ready is essential.

When it really comes down to it, the value of a follower on any social media platform really shows how popular our account or profile is to the public. Having a large follower base allows for larger amounts of

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content we post to then be shared. When someone follows you on Twitter, they not only opt in to see your Tweets – they also take actions that provide value to our business. In fact, the findings from “Small Business Customer Insights Study” (2014) shows that followers can help us achieve reach, sales and word of mouth.

Grow our community

Add a follow button to our website: this tactic can drive awareness for our Twitter account while making it easy for people to follow our business by clicking on any of our web pages.

Promote our @username everywhere: Don’t just expect people to find us on Twitter. Give them visual cues by putting our @username on online and offline collateral like business cards or store signage.

Tap into our existing customer base: Sync our email contacts with Twitter. Get found with hashtags: Join industry – related conversations and connect with influencers

through hashtags like #smallbiz or #shopsmall. Collaborate with others: Double our return without doubling our effort. If we’ve developed a

promotion with another business, share content back and forth between our respective Twitter accounts (only if we decide to have more than one Twitter account though).

Do more with a follower’s campaign: Utilize online campaign tracking websites to get the most out of our campaign. Track our traffic and understand what went well and what needs to be improved.

Engage our followers

Collect feedback to build a better business: make it a two – way conversation by posing open – ended questions. Ask which products or services our followers want to see more of, then reply back with our appreciation for their input.

Tap into real time programming: be relevant with our Tweets, make sure we are Tweeting with what is relevant in society. Or at least has some relation to this day of age.

Feature seasonal, cultural and industry events: shared experiences cause natural spikes in real – time conversations so broaden our content strategy to include holidays, trade shows, conferences, sporting events and other occasions that are relevant to large groups of users on Twitter.

Launch a product on Twitter: plan our Tweets a couple of weeks out and build momentum by counting down to the big day. Include photos and videos to give followers a sneak peek of the launch then follow up after the reveal with additional information.

Twixclusives: simply put, it’s an exclusive offer on Twitter that our followers can’t find anywhere else. If our content is really compelling, we’re more likely to get Retweets that could attract new followers.

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Conclusion

Bottling up our professional persona from social media is something that can be regulated. In order to seem appealing or interesting on social media we have to let our creative juices flow. There is a fine line of balance between having a business professional persona and a profile that is too blatant and childlike. Finding the right touch for our profile just comes with practice and analyzing what goes well and what could be improved once a campaign is over with. Finding our touch could take some time, but each time we execute a social media campaign we have to perform it with a set plan beforehand. The immense size of social media calls for an immense size of brainstorming before actually publishing a post or Tweet. Essentially when you post something people receive that as our voice, the way we talk on the other side. So having the most clear and constructive communication over social media is a definite necessity.

To get the best results on social media it really comes down to how much emotion we can produce in someone from a post. Now like I said earlier the new fad in today’s society is visual entertainment this comes down to two main contender’s photos and videos. Showing off our company is really the intended purpose, holding back on creativity isn’t going to get us anywhere. We must post with creativity and ingenuity. Here is six concrete ideas that can be used in any social media platform.

When it comes to social media we can post:

Photos of our products Pictures of our employees Pictures of facilities and locations where our products are being utilized Pictures of our newly engineered products Pictures of our trade shows and public events Pictures of creative content that we as a company has to offer, this includes our tradeshow

items, also our online apparel website

Now notice how I used our in each one of those ideas. This is our company including every spec and microscopic detail that our company can offer to our customers. I still have a hard time understanding why people are in business if they just want to benefit themselves. Making money from something that isn’t just benefiting you, but creating something that benefits society is really the true test of character. My goal for our social media presence is to be able to show a team of our employees and our products not just a CEO. “CEO”, seems funny a tittle so big is just three simple letters. Show our company on social media and well the rest is success.