The Role Social Media Plays in Business

Social Media’s Role in Business Becky Livingston President Royal Apple Marketing

#SMBrandCanisius

Becky Livingston—President, Royal Apple Marketing

! 20+ years of marketing, technology, and communications experience

! Trainer 6+ years

! Author, blogger, and avid Twitter fan!

! Big-Picture Thinker & Strategist

! Client list includes non-profits, small companies, and CPA firms

Twitter: @RoyalAppleMktg or @bmliving

Agenda

! Personal & Corporate Branding via Social Media

! Putting Social Media to Good Use – The Big 5

! Best Brand Social Media Examples

! How Social Media Impacts SEO

! Leadership’s Role in Social Media Marketing/Communications

! Crisis Communication for Social Media

Personal and Corporate Branding via Social Media

What is a brand?

! The emotional and psychological relationship you have with your customers, eliciting thoughts, emotions, and sometimes physiological responses from customers.

! The cornerstone of your product

! Blueprint for your customer experience

! Determines all conversations with your clients, customers, etc.

! Determines the position & strength of your marketing framework

! Truth

How to pick your brand… ! Brand personality is more important than ever ! Brand value to the marketplace

! Company point of view

! Publishing platform (socially)

! Content strategy

! Developing your brand ! Brainstorm brand identity with

other depts.

! Leverage the brand in all inbound and outbound marketing

Branding Questions to Ask

! What are your company strengths?

! What is the proof of those strengths?

! What specific needs does your company or product fulfill in the marketplace?

! What is the #1 reason that a customer would contact your company for help?

! What is your company value compared to others?

Branding Questions to Ask, cont.

! What differentiates you from similar companies?

! What makes your company approach different than others?

! What is your core promise?

! What are your company beliefs and values (mission/vision statements)?

! If your brand were a person, what type of person would it be?

How does Social impact brand?

How does Social impact brand?, cont.

Example of ZMOT

Preferred Source

Among those who share their brand experiences through social media, at least 41% say they do so to receive discounts.

Let’s Talk Stats

! 58% of social media users say they write product reviews to protect others from bad experiences

! Nearly 1 in 4 say they share their negative experiences to “punish companies”

! 42% of 18- to 34-year-olds acknowledging that they expect customer support within 12 hours of a complaint.

! 53% of active social networkers follow brands

Source: the Social Media Report recently published by Nielsen and NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company

Community Building

! Identify goals ! It’s not always about the # of followers as it is

about the connections you have with your followers and influencers

! Do you respond?

! If not, there could be a price to pay. ! Social media is SOCIAL, when responding in

< a social manner…you are saying something about your brand

Community Building, cont.

! Context NOT Content is king!

! Content lead generation

! Strategy ! Building networks ! Adding value

! Creating your brand in the social space

! Brand evangelism

Putting Social media to Good Use – The Big 5

The Big 5

! Facebook ! P!nterest ! Twitter ! Blogging ! LinkedIn

What’s missing?

By the #s

Social Platform

# of Users Gender Split M/F

Facebook 800 million 45/55

Twitter 250 million Tweets/Day

45/55

P!nterest 10 million 30/70

Blogging 70 million

LinkedIn 100 million 41/59

Other rising stars – Instagram, Sound Cloud, Foursquare

Making Sense of it All

! Ask yourself these questions: ! Where is my audience?

! How old is my target customer?

! Where should I be spending my time?

! How much of my budget is dedicated to social media?

! Do I need to hire this out?

! Do I need education to use social media?

Putting it to Good Use

! Don’t try to do it all at the same time

! Use a staggered approach to launching on each platform

! Learn about the tools and resources to effectively leverage social

! Measure….measure…measure!

! Establish a success metric timeline

! Leverage your network for help

Why? ! Increase website traffic

! Lead generation

! Expanding brand awareness

! Brand advocates

! Search Engine Optimization

! Networking

! Customer Engagement

! Reduce marketing expense

Where’s the Spend?

Source: Social Media Examiner 2012

0 20 40 60 80 100

Daily Deals

Geo-location

Bookmarking/News

Forums

Photo Sharing Sites

Google+

YouTube/Video

Blog

LinkedIn

Twitter

Facebook

What marketing efforts will stop?

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

TV ads Radio ads

Webinars Print Direct Mail

PPC Event SEO Email

Percentage

Source: Social Media Examiner 2012

Time Suck…

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

0 Hours

1 to 5

6 to 10

11 to 15

16 to 20

21 to 25

26 to 30

31 to 35

36 to 40

40+

Best Brand Social Media Examples

Examples

! Ford

! Best Buy

! Old Spice

Ford

Best Buy

43,079 followers

Old Spice > Top-viewed YouTube Brand Ever!

> 22 million views 1.7 million views

Sales increase 107%

How Social Impacts SEO

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the organic way your web site appears on search engine results pages.

It is based on several factors, including the # of searches for your site, the content on your site, web site code, keywords, and so much more!

ORGANIC

Google’s View

! How has this site gotten here?

! What social proof is there that this site is providing value?

! How many comments are on the site?

! How many Facebook likes can be tracked back?

! How many reTweets are there about what this site is doing?

Key Benefits of SEO

! Increased, targeted traffic to the website

! Greater brand name awareness/recognition

! Lead generation through inbound marketing

! Effective ROI

! Supplements and may reduce the need for traditional marketing efforts

How?

! Write great content that encourages debate.

! Produce shareable content.

! Make content easy to be shared.

! Be active on Social Media.

! Engage your audience.

! Share content that you find valuable.

! Give others the “thumbs up”.

Leadership’s Role in Social Media Marketing/Communications

What’s Needed

! Engagement

! Encouragement

! Excitement

! Emotion

! Education

! Embrace

! Enthusiasm

! Empowerment

! Execution

! Energy

Social Media Crisis Communication

Examples

"I find it ironic that that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f---ing drive."

And it's a four-alarm meltdown if, as happened last year, that employee accidentally tweets it from the official @ChryslerMotors account. (Yes, he was fired).

2011 Worst Blunders

! Weinergate

! Kenneth Cole Puts Foot in Mouth

! Quantas Grounds Dreams

! Kutcher Has Paterno's Back

! #McDstories hijacked

! Entenmann’s piggybacks #notguilty

Really???

! 52% companies do not have a social media crisis communications plan.

! 41% said that they were insured against a possible social media crisis.

! A whopping 88% felt that it was important to have a strategic social media communications plan in place.

How to Deal…

! Admit fault, attack it head on & turn a (-) into a (+)

! Build your community before you need it

! Incorporate face-to-face or take it offline

! Include a trained customer service person in your social media team

! Learn about the customer before responding

! I’m sorry goes a long way

How to Deal…, cont.

! Know your key players w/in your organization who will be involved

! Consistent messaging across all channels

! It’s okay to say you don’t know, but find out

! Have a plan! ! How, where, when, and who

! Social media policy

! Listen

The Plan – Who. Where. When. How.

1.  Choose and set up monitoring tools (e.g., Radian6)

2.  Determine your monitoring schedule 3.  Have local-language support teams 4.  Determine “what is a crisis” 5.  Identify what you “will/will not” respond to 6.  Form your digital crisis team 7.  Define your escalation ladder 8.  Who responds on the company’s behalf 9.  What to report on and how often 10.  Build support beams

Legally speaking…

! Employer crack-down on employee’s negative comments

! IBM's policy goes so far as to tell employees not to "pick fights" on social sites and that they must "speak in the first-person."

! In the United States, the federal government may be having a say as to when those policies infringe too much on freedom of speech.

Questions

Presentation resources   http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/how-social-media-impacts-brand-marketing/ http://911smallbiz.com/customer-service/social-medias-impact-on-brand-marketing http://blog.dgwb.com/2012/03/have-you-heard-of-zmot/ http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/library/studies/the-zero-moment-of-truth-macro-study/ http://blogs.boomerang.com/blog/2011/02/16/do-you-have-a-social-media-brand-identity/ http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/12/small-business-news-social-branding-basics.html http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/07/tech/social-media/companies-social-media/ http://adage.com/article/special-report-book-of-tens-2011/marketing-s-biggest-social-media-blunders-2011/231503/ http://www.radian6.com/blog/2011/11/16-best-practices-for-social-media-crisis-communications-from-blogworld/ http://blogs.position2.com/how-to-manage-a-social-media-crisis-design-a-communications-plan http://www.slideshare.net/Radian6/digital-crisis-communications-plan http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-whos-who_b18546 http://www.newfangled.com/how_many_blogs_are_there http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2166552/The-5-Ws-of-Social-Media-Marketing-Industry-Survey-Insights-Study http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663494/ideo-five-companies-that-mastered-social-medias-branding-potential http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/social-media-case-studies/ http://www.business2community.com/seo/the-social-media-effect-on-seo-give-yourself-the-thumbs-up-rather-than-the-vs-0128016 http://www.myseosoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/social-media-effect.png