Almost every request for proposals we get these days asks us what we do with social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Rather than seeing social marketing as another separate project we recommend integrating it fully with all the other aspects of digital.
Create content worth talking about
Number one! There is no point in trying to find friends, getting people talking or engaging in social conversations unless you have something to say. Content has always been important in all media and content should be at the heart of your strategy. Produce a content plan - products, behind the scenes, controversy, offers, events, news, personality, expert opinion, horizon scanning - and create interesting rich articles, video, podcasts and downloadables. These will form the heart of what you will do online.
Listen more, talk less
The biggest shift in the digital landscape is about transforming your organisation from one that speaks to one that listens. Customers expect to talk about your brand, your values and your products and are doing so online now. You need to start listening and where appropriate responding, through new content, better products or better customer services. Select tools to help you listen.
Develop a voice
Conversations require a different voice from press releases, marketing blurb and “your call is important to us” customer service and your fans and detractors can tell the difference. Developing a natural, interested tone of voice for your organisation is perhaps the most difficult change that lies ahead but it is going to be vital. Learning to get different people in the organisation to speak with the same voice can be particularly hard. Take care if you are working with an external agency not to give up control of your personality.
Open up your organisation
As part of your conversations your customers and your critics will start asking hard questions. You need to start answering them honestly and openly even when this is uncomfortable. Trust has become the most powerful aspect of a brand and if we lie or obfuscate then we lose that trust and our brand is put in danger. This goes to the heart of the power of social media and requires collaboration from all corners of your organisation.
Go and meet your audience
Don’t assume that Facebook or Twitter is the answer. You will need to go and find where your customers or potential customers meet. If your audience is using YouTube then invest in videos, not Tweets. As you become more social you will find your audience in surprising places including, of course, offline. Don’t forget that your customers already interact in your stores or in your gallery. Start some of your social media actions offline.
Find many ways to engage
Plan ways to involve different audiences through different networks. This means different content, offers, incentives and media (including email). All these activities should share common messages but all should take advantages of characteristics of each channel. Brainstorm lots of different engagement strategies inside your business and keep an eye on what your competitors are up to. Don’t simply copy but adapt to your own brand personality. Remember to make it easy for your fans to pass on your message to their contacts (virally).
Find connectors and influencers
Every fan, customer or prospect is important but some are particularly important because they will connect you to their vast networks of friends, colleagues and other people they influence. These people are the new social stars and what they say, tweet, discuss and blog will affect how other people see your brand. Engage them in conversation and find out what they want to know about your company. Make it easy for them to pass the message on.
Learn from competitors
This is fairly new for all of us and part of improving your social presence is studying what your competitors are doing. Work out some criteria for studying them and then invest some real effort in understanding what they are doing well or badly. We tend to look at reach, voice, frequency, channels, impact, openness, participation, roles and mistakes.
Experiment
If you get the right people in your organisation together and run a workshop then you will be able to generate hundreds of ideas for social actions that you can take. Plan a calendar of actions and try different things every week or every month. Meet again with all your stakeholders and discuss success and failure.
Measure
As part of experimentation you need to track and measure how each experiment works. Make sure that you have set up your site with one of the analytics packages: Google Analytics will deliver more than most people need. Learn to look at the information you really need rather than being overwhelmed by the number of reports you can generate. We recommend focusing on traffic, traffic sources, top content, bounce rates and conversions.
Find tools to help you be effective
You will need to have a good content management system to publish content regularly on your site plus tools to monitor and manage your social presence. We use a wide range of analytical tools including TwitAlyzer and Scoutlabs to measure the impact of a campaign and to identify connectors.
Create visitor journeys
Every visitor who finds your site is on a journey. You may be piqued their interest through a social channel but what are you asking them to do once they arrive at your site. Think about different types of users and make sure that you have designed special journeys just for them. Track their journeys using your analytics tools and if they are bailing out part way through, think about changing the journeys. You may want to drive visitors from social channels onto specific landing pages and then test the effectiveness of these pages in converting them to customers, relationships or ambassadors.
Define KPIs
Work out what matters to your business: sign-ups, repeat visits, membership, sales. Make these Key Performance Indicators the focus of your thinking but don’t be blinded to looking solely at the final goal. Someone who engages with your brand today and becomes a fan may turn into a customer in 3 months time.
Making it easy to belong
Allow your fans to feel that they are really taking part in your conversations; not just in social channels but on your site and in your company. Show their ideas, capture their enthusiasm and demonstrate their value. Listen to suggestions for changes you might make.
Define clear messages
It is possible to lose sight of your brand in all of these conversations so make sure that you reaffirm your brand personality and values internally with your social teams and externally through social channels. Define a clear set of shared messages that can be used by the team to answer questions. Make sure that you use these messages to shape your content and your activities.
Don’t be spammy
It is easy and superficially attractive to automate some of your social behaviour but think twice before you rush to do this. Some companies push their PR stories automatically onto Twitter or Facebook. This feels more like a robot and less like someone interested in hearing what others have to say.
Offer value
Your fans are giving up their time to engage with you and you need to reward them with value in return. This can just be excellent exclusive content and servcies but find ways of making them feel they have an inside view or VIP access to your organisation.
Apologise when you make mistakes
From time to time most organisations will make mistakes and these tend to get picked up and magnified socially. You need to be ready for when this happens but turn it from a disaster into an opportunity by responding openly and honestly. Make sure that your organisation is ready for this. Remember that problems solved openly usually turn into good reputation.
Keep the conversations going
The hardest part of any social media strategy is keeping the momentum going after the initial buy-in has died down. Changing from selling to conversation is a big cultural shift and it has to be embedded in your culture slowly. This means workshops and listening within your company; internal conversations as well as external.
Find a partner to help you
Selecting a partner is harder than it looks if you are going to get this right. There are lots of specialist social agencies but it should not be about outsourcing social (your personality!) to someone else or separating this from your editorial, PR and web experiments.
You certainly need someone who understands your KPIs and can help you measure and interpret your success. You need someone who can help you make changes to your site and work with you to achieve your outcomes.
Jonathan Briggs
Co-founder
the OTHER media
www.othermedia.com
Twitter: @jonathanbriggs