Tag Archives: social media strategy

Jan 04 2012
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Social Media

Here’s Your Social Strategy for 2012

 

Need a place to start while you create your ‘social media’ strategy for 2012? I have it for you. You see, it’s relatively simple if you think about it and Matt Briton has given us a baseline to go by – and it applies to any brand at any point in their social journey. Matt gives us the five “need states” that brands need to address and I’m going to elaborate here with my thoughts & opinions:

  • Utility: Matt said that “Utility means creating something the Millennial Generation needs”. I think this applies to a broader audience then just the Millennials, but lets think about that. Giving your consumers something they need (whether they know they need it or not). In the case of consumer technology – something they need could be a focused around an app (Briton gives the example of Intel’s ‘Museum of me’ app which allows teens to connect a Facebook app to their profile to create a museum of their lives). For anyone else this can be: tutorials, tips, tricks – basically anything the consumer needs that will allow them to use your product better, or allows them to utilize something new you have created to make their (online) lives better in some way.
  • Entertainment: “Entertainment used to be as simple as dialing up a celebrity as a spokesperson or sponsor but that now, celebrity could be a YouTube sensation like Kelly, picked up by Marshalls for a promotion”. The key to consumers hearts has always lived in entertainment. I mean you can’t even see a Proactive commercial without Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, or the like in it. Now it’s just easier, cheaper, to get at these people – and to get them to speak on behalf of your brand. Now, if you don’t have the massive budgets to get celebrities – there is a simple place to start. Your people. Your people could be your customers, your employees – or anyone else in your arsenal. Sure, they may not be famous, but it’s a way of entertaining your audience. Whether they follow these people through events, posts, or any of the like – they are a simple and easy way to create an entertaining persona for people to pay attention to. I mean, if Coca-cola can make the nobodies who started their Facebook page entertainment, and Axe can entertain through their ‘Danwithaxe’-like persona’s, there are easier ways to create entertainment out of existing (non-famous) people.
  • Information: “It’s not always about product or service, but about the customer”. We live and breathe vanity in this day and age. Everything from Facebook profile pictures to Klout scores scream LOOK AT ME! We want to be catered to, and sometimes it’s as easy as information. Think not about your products (for once) and think about bigger thought categories. If you sell vacuum cleaners, give information about cleaning or maybe information about what happens before you even start cleaning (NYE parties, anyone?). If you sell deodorant, give information about activity (partying, sports, dating etc.) that requires you to smell good. If you sell software, think about the computer or devices and interest categories that are used before someone even opens your software. Think about a wider scope than your own niche category.
  • Rewards: “Brands often try to reward for acquisition, but now brands realize they have to reward for loyalty. Doing that brings organic growth” I remember hearing while I was selling cars that the most important time for a customer and for a business is not at the point of purchase, but between transactions. I cannot think of an instance that this is not true. It is cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to go out and find a new one – so why does this go unnoticed? You must know yourself that when you’re loyal to a brand or service – you (to a certain degree) expect to be rewarded for it. It’s like when you sign with a particular insurance company – you expect that if you’re with that same company for 5 years you should get some kind of loyalty discount on your premium, right? This kind of program has become easier to facilitate with social. You can have a fan-only contest, exclusive perks once someone is a ‘member’ and ongoing discounts and promotions. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of variations of loyalty programs but they don’t have to be huge or expensive, they just have to be right.
  • Recognition: “It’s looking at what consumers care about and fitting in that framework”. All recognition means is spotlighting consumers involvement in brand equity. Recognition can be as simple as engagement on posts, tweets, videos, what have you – all the way to going above and beyond to recognize your best customers. Matt gives the example of Wheat Thins showing up unannounced at the houses of one of the brand’s social media ambassadors with a pallet of the crackers and filming their response. It’s the little things we will do to recognize the few special people who are nice to us and treat us like we (almost always) don’t deserve to be treated.

So that’s that. I know this isn’t a strategy all lined up per se, but if you cater to the 5 basic needs, I assume that you will be successful in social.

You can read the original article here .

Happy New Year!

 

-m.

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Nov 29 2011
7 Comments
Social Media

How to be better at social media

Many marketers have NO idea how to tie social media into relevant business goals – and this is hurting everyone involved. What I do know is that social media is a channel, a channel for marketing, a channel for communications. The same way the telephone, the fax machine, and the internet were introduced – so is social media. What can be really intimidating for marketers, supporters, and advocates of social media – is the different directions that all of our “leaders” are pointing us in. This is a huge problem because while most of them have very relevant points; they criticize the views of others whom also have relevant advice to give.

People tend to name-call (social media purists, tree-huggers, money-hungry-marketers, etc.). You see the problem with name-calling is that none of these people are justified to say that the other is wrong. Here is a brain dump on strategy and thinking in regards to social:

  • Engagement is important. Yes people want coupons and deals – in fact, this is a driver as to why people ‘Like’ or follow brands in the first place. In the same breath, people also want to be acknowledged, and whether or not they know they are looking for it – they want conversation. Engagement as a word can mean a lot of things, but it is important to understand that in order to achieve your business goals, you have to engage people so that they’ll stay loyal to your brand, redeem those coupons, and be interested in your products at all. It, however, is not all about engagement – there are other things that come into play when trying to determine your strategy.
  • You NEED objectives. Simply “dabbling” in social media is not enough, nor is it a standalone objective. If you don’t know what you want to accomplish, you will forever wander aimlessly through the social media amazon. What’s even more important is tying these objectives to business/company objectives. Do you want to increase loyalty? Okay, now how are you going to do that? How are you going to measure that at the end of the year? How can you prove/disprove that social media can even do this? Figure it out. Make sure your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely), and set out exactly how you are going to achieve those objectives. It is no longer enough to focus your efforts on hollow metrics and fan counts, you need to include business objectives.
  • Figure out who your audience is. This is extremely important – in any marketing or communications plan, you always have a target audience. The brilliant thing about social is that you have an unbiased, not made up, not assumed target audience. These are your customers, your leads. Social is one of the best market research tools out there nowadays – you really just have to figure out how to dissect that data and determine, exactly, who your audience is. Everything afterwards will be easier; optimizing your content, campaigns, communications, customer support.
  • Social is not free. No matter what hub-bub agencies or gurus try to sell you, social media is not, and never will be “free” or exceptionally cheap. Any “best practice” or case study that you look at definitely came with a dollar sign attached to it. Advertising, research, campaigns, content creation, third-party apps, they all cost money. Social is an investment. Write that down.
  • Have social be a part of your integrated marketing mix. I really think this is enough said, however, for those of you who don’t know: social media should be intertwined into your company’s integrated marketing mix. It is the best place to gauge conversation & feedback on your campaigns.
  • Educate and inform. Platforms are always changing. Do not let this hinder your efforts, or leave you dumbfounded. Have someone keep tabs on platform changes (ex: introduction of Facebook Timeline for brands, should that happen) and educate your team and company on these changes. You should also make sure that everyone understands the implications of social media and the objectives you have set forth.

This post is a little scattered, sorry if I gave you a headache – but I truly think these little tidbits are going to make you more successful in whatever position you hold that involves social media. You need to understand the who, what, why, how & when. The mediums will always change, but we must keep our strengths the same.

If you think I have missed or overlooked something I would be happy to discuss in the comments!

-m.

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Jul 26 2011
2 Comments
Best Practices, Events, Social Media, Social Media Measurement

REPORT: The Comic-Con effect. #sdcc and Social Media.

Comic-Con International San Diego Logo

Image via Wikipedia

The more I learn about numbers, tracking, and analyzing social media stuff, the more I love it. Yesterday, I posted the analytics from a conference that I attended and was really humbled by the responses I got. Some, pointing out my errors, and others showing interest. I want to do the same thing but on a much bigger scale for one of the most popular conferences on the planet. San Diego Comic-Con International. This conference is HUGE, it sells out every year without fail and brings about the most interesting people, in full costume, might I add.

My colleague Lucas was doing some investigation into the event and the impact that it has on social media. When he started monitoring the event hashtags (#sdcc & #comiccon) on around July 5th, we were all blown away at the sheer mass of mentions on Twitter. There were 19,00 mentions in the previous 30 days which is massive. I think we both assumed that by the time the conference had actually begun, there would be close to 19,000 mentions per day.

Boy, were we wrong.

On the preview night alone there were just over 26,000 mentions of the #sdcc hashtag. Sheesh.

Here is a word cloud from the conversations that were happening on Day One.

Word cloud (Day One). The bigger the word, the more volume it has.

You can see by looking at the wordcloud that the most popular term was “#comiccon”. In combination with the #sdcc hashtag there were 14,855 mentions.  There was also a lot of mentions of the smash hit show Dexter (one of my favorite shows) on the first day. So it would be interesting to see what the themes of those conversations are:

What you do notice from digging deeper in the individual keywords is that you can actually learn what happened that day (sifting through the hundreds of thousands of Comic-Con tweets a week later would be no easy feat). There was about 2000 posts in relation to Dexter on day one – some announcing the season six trailer, some about Mos Def joining the cast, and others complaining about traffic and such. What greater way to market a new TV show, though? Holding off until Comic-Con for these announcements is a brilliant marketing strategy for Showtime to out in place, because they create so much social media buzz around the premiere of the show.

Moving on…

Still thinking about day one, wouldn’t it be interesting to estimate how many of those 80,000 tweets came from the event itself? The reason I ask this question is because I think it’s equally important to look at how many people are enjoying the conference from the comfort of their own home and the power of Twitter. I’ve split up the mentions of that day by region, to put it all in context:

Breakdown of Tweets on Day One by region

If you click on the chart above you can see that the majority of the tweets came from the United States (about 65,000). This does not mean that every person in the US who tweeted about Comic-Con was actually there, but it’s tricky to tell. Let’s look at a completely different area, Brazil. 2,714 of the posts on Day One came from Brazil. So what were they talking about? Take a look:

Now, I don’t read Portuguese, but I cam tell you that Twitter fans of Comic-Con in Brazil were living the event through Twitter – not through a magazine 3 days later (Note: the above feed is sorted by highest amount of Twitter followers).

The first day of Comic-con generated 81,677 mentions of the #sdcc hashtag. One of the clear big winners in terms of buzz at Comic-Con was definitely Twilight. I hate to admit it, but I am a devoted fan to the series, no matter how corny it might seem That is why it is of particular interest to me to dig a little deeper and understand what news and exclusives were released.

#sdcc vs. Twilight keyword group

During that first day, mentions of Twilight, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Breaking Dawn were mentioned 7900 times out of the 82,000 tweets. That’s HUGE considering the other events that were going on that day. People were discussing the Twilight panel, Robert Pattinson’s hair, the Breaking Dawn trailer, all exciting things. What I find interesting, though, is that this panel is held every year at Comic-Con, pre-movie-release. Another excellent marketing strategy if you think about it. The two movies were filmed at the same time, but are releasing a year apart – in my opinion so that they can get another wildly successful panel at Comic-Con 2012.

Day two was filled with popular topics such as #trueblood (a cast-panel was held this day which generated 2476 mentions for the Trueblood hashtag). You can also combine this with the 169 RT’s of @TruebloodHBO’s tweet:

All in all, there were many topics covered at this year’s Comic-Con that I won’t get into for the sake of your eyes, but I just thought I would share a few more interesting insights:

Most ReTweeted Users at Comic-Con:

Conan O’Brien was the most retweeted Twitter user in relation to Comic-con saying things such as “I have arrived at @Comic_Con. The air is thick with the smell of Cheetos and celibacy #sdcc”

Summary of entire event:

Slide pictured above courtesy of @lucas_powell

The buzz was not isolated to Twitter, either. Comic-con also generated 912 blog posts (that included the keywords we had entered, I’m sure there was a LOT more), as well as various other media types.

Overall, Comic-Con International was a HUGE social media success, with over 400,000 tweets over the entire conference. As a marketer, I would suggest that if you can tie your product in ANY WAY to what happens at Comic-Con, you attend Comic-Con 2012 next year, and  be prepared to tweet… a lot.

What do you think of the impact of events like Comic-Con on social media?

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Jul 13 2011
2 Comments
Best Practices, Education, Social Media, Social Media Measurement

Social Media is about MORE than the tools

There are SO many tools out there that can help you manage, measure, and execute many of the functions that exist within social media. Just like you can have all the books in the world and not be the least bit intelligent; the same can be said of social media tools. You can have all of the listening tools – and still not hear anything. You can have all the management tools, and still be unorganized. You can have all the measurement tools, and still not understand. Even the venues like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are just tools. For people, for brands, they serve as the middleman between themselves and other people. Social media is about more than just the tools, it’s about being social by nature.

What I mean by that, is that some people instinctively get it – and thus they are successful. They can take to Twitter and Facebook the same way they take to a networking event. They can easily mingle, connect, and understand what they are doing and why – even if subconsciously. This is especially true for Gen Y. We grew up with the internet. When something new, or as different as Twitter was in the Facebook era comes out of the woodwork – we can use it without a second thought. We’ll spend 30 minutes playing with it and then we know more than some analysts do.

Do not take me out of context, I am not saying non-Gen Y’ers don’t instinctively get social media, because most of the superstars in the industry do not fall into the “millenial” range. A lot of people have years of experience in marketing, advertising, PR – and social media is a natural evolution for them. For others who have the same experience, social media may not be a natural evolution – they are not comfortable with it. In this instance, we should not force them to adapt – rather, we should let them learn at their own pace and evolve over time. Put the naturally social people on the front lines (regardless of their title or department) and put training in place to teach them not only about social media, but about the restrictions that they have in relation to the brand so that they understand.

What I am saying, though, is that you either get it – or you don’t. This is a problem that I see and deal with everyday. Sometimes I get frustrated when people don’t get what I’m talking about – or if I have to spend more time explaining something when it just seems like common sense in my head. What I have to remind myself is that this is not as easy for others as it can sometimes seem to me. Many brands are still battling the idea that social media is more than just a “nice to have” but is, instead, a need to have. Some brands are not, and will never be social by nature because the more traditional tools and strategies have worked for so long & they refuse to “fix what’s not broken”.

The word “social” by definition means:

so·cial/ˈsōSHəl/

Adjective: Needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities

  • - we are social beings as well as individuals
Companionship. Community. Those are hefty words with deep meanings. To be able to create friendships and bring people together around common interests, themes and goals is not a skill that comes naturally to just anyone. Just because you give someone a hammer does not mean they can build a house, so the tools mean nothing in comparison to the people and their abilities.
Social media is really about being social – more than the tools that so many claim make them qualified to be “gurus” :)
BTW I was lacking inspiration for a new blog post today, but thankfully someone gave me a little push in the right direction.
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