Social Media Workbook - 9 Keys To Attract More Customers And Profits Through Social Media Marketing

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© Krishna De, 2011

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Let’s Get Social Workbook

9 Keys To Attract More Customers And Profits

Through Social Media Marketing

1.Your Purpose For Using Social Media

When considering using social media as part of your integrated marketing

programme, the first action you need to take is to determine what do you

want to achieve from your integration of social media marketing into your

business.

Some examples include:

increasing brand awareness of your company, products and services

positioning your company as thought leaders in your sector

extending your geographic and even international reach

lead generation and building your database of prospects

client attraction, client retention and referrals

enhancing your customer service processes and response time

greater online visibility in the search engines

creating a community of brand ambassadors

increasing the traffic to your website

increasing the time people spend on your website engaging your

your social content

connecting with the reporters in the media and strategic business

contacts



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and of course sales of your products and services.

Plan your investment in terms of the time and money you are prepared to

invest in your social media marketing programme. Remember that social

media is not free!

Notes and Action Plan:

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2. Your Social Media Objectives

Once you have identified your strategic purpose for using social media in

your organisation, your next step is to define the specific objectives so

that you know what success will look like for your social media

communications programme.

When defining your objectives, it is critical to identify and prioritise your

target audiences. This will determine the platforms and content plan that

will be the most effective in achieving your strategic priorities. Additional

information on this is found in Section 3.

If you have already started to use social media in your marketing

programmes, you can also identify your benchmark data to evaluate your

on-going success in using social media, charting your progress and

learning from experience of your previous plans.

It is critical that you ensure that your goals are S.M.A.R.T - Specific,

Measurable, Achievable, Results orientated, and are Time-bound with a

date when they will be completed by.


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3.The Which, What And Who Of Social Media

A common mistake that many businesses make when looking to integrate

social media channels into their marketing plan is failing to identify the

reason that people will join their community and engage with them

online.

The risk of this happening for your social media plan can be reduced by

taking the time to research and evaluate the following three areas:

Which platform - Research which platforms your target market is using,

be that your customers, prospects or potential business partners – once

you identify this you can determine where you need to be present to

connect with them.

Just because you see other organisations using multiple social media

platforms it is important to realise there are new platforms being

launched every day, which can cause social media overwhelm.

By developing your initial social media plan publishing to just one or two

social media channels at first, you will be able to refine your approach,

and will be able to learn from and build upon your experiences.

For example, rather than starting your own business blog, you could

contribute to an industry or sector specific blog or social network

positioning your company as an authority in your area of expertise, just as

you would be selective in your use of traditional media.

What will you post - Identify the kinds of content that your community

will find interesting and relevant to them.

For example this might be tips, expert guidance, the latest news that

relates to your community, help with customer support and even fun

activities such as social games, competitions and quizzes.



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You can build a highly engaging social media content plan using

multimedia content to bring your brand to life and include photo’s, white

papers or special reports, slide presentations, webinars, online video and

audio podcasts.

Do remember to comply with copyright and industry guidelines.

Who will be involved – Determine who will be responsible for your

content calendar. Additional information about your content plan can be

found in the Section 4.

This includes who will be responsible for creating, editing and posting

content to your social media channels. You also need to consider who will

be your community manager to monitor and respond to comments made

by your community in the different social media channels that you chose

to actively participate in.

As part of this process you should also ensure that you develop and

implement a social media policy to help you manage the reputation of

your company and provide a framework and training for your employees,

contractors and business partners.

When developing your social media policy, a best practice tip is to create

a steering group with cross representatives from the relevant stakeholder

groups, for example your legal representative, your HR advisor, your

customer services team, your sales department, your logistics team, your

sales team and of course your marketing team.


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4.How To Engage And Educate Using Social Media

As you consider how you will engage your community online, it is

important that you ensure that you determine the tone of voice for your

content.

Create your ‘social brand guidelines’ detailing what you will and will not

share in your social media channels to align with your brand values.

The tone and style of content may differ from your corporate brand

guidelines to ensure that it is relevant to your audience and social media

content channel. For example, when posting news such as a formal press

release to your Facebook Page, you need to adapt your message and style

to ensure that it is an engaging story you share about your lasted

developments that will encourage your community to ‘Like’ or comment

about it.

Do not however make the common mistake that you need to be ‘chatty’

and ‘colloquial’. Your style of content still needs to be congruent with

your brand. Your content needs to be relevant for your audience –

evaluate your content against whether it is engaging, informative,

educational and inspiring.

Develop your content calendar to align with your overall marketing, PR

and business development plan.

Be conversational; respond to questions and comments; ask questions of

your community to encourage more interaction with you and when

joining conversations don’t be intrusive – instead, add value to the

discussion.


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5.Managing Your Online Reputation

A common apprehension of many organisations who are looking to get

started using social media marketing, is how will they manage online

feedback which is critical about their brand, products, services or even

their people.

It has never been easier for people to post their feedback online with the

advent of social networks, blogs, online video sites, forums and review

sites.

An important element of your social media marketing plan is to monitor

who is talking about you, your products, services and competitors online.

You can then use the insights you can glean from this information to

change your online marketing programme, enhance your customer

service processes, explore new opportunities for your business and of

course share the positive feedback with your team.

Even if you do not wish to actively publish content or participate to the

social web, establishing your online monitoring programme is essential

for your business if you want to access both competitive insights and

feedback about your business.

Establish searches for the key words related to your products and

services, for example using Google Alerts, and content shared on Twitter,

Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, online video sites, blogs, forums, discussion

boards and review sites. By listening to the online conversation you will

start to understand who the positive influencers and key detractors are

about your business, the sentiment about your brand and your

competitor’s brand.

If you want to hyper-target content from specific geographies, you will

need to invest in paid social media monitoring platforms to assist you.



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Many of these premium platforms also enable you to create and export

reports to track your performance.

As part of your community guidelines, you will also need to develop a

process in relation to how you will respond to negative comments and

incorrect information. A best practice tip is to ensure that your

community guidelines are made easily accessible – for example publish

your comment policy on your blog and on your Facebook Page.

With the increased expectation from consumers that publishing a

comment onto a social media platform will mean that companies will

respond quickly and increasingly in ‘real time’ it is also important to

review your customer and client services processes. This in turn, may

result in a change of your internal businesses processes.

A best practice tip is to also create a service level agreement for response

times and to incorporate social media communications into your risk

management and crisis management processes.

If you are outsourcing the management of your social media channels to

your PR firm, digital agency or social media agency, it is critical for your

online reputation that they understand their responsibilities, including

when and to whom they should escalate an issue.


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6.Ten Social Media Content Creation Ideas

Now you have decided you are going to publish content to your social

media channels, you need to avoid is a catalogue of digital debris across

the web – for example creating a Facebook Page which is abandoned at

the end of a campaign or because your community manager moves onto

another role.

Developing your content plan and editorial guidelines will assist you in

avoiding this mistake. Here are ten content creation ideas for you

publishing calendar:

The 10 most frequently asked questions about your products or

services

Publish a survey or poll to engage your community and access

insights

Interview an expert or authority that your community would value

hearing from

Re-purpose your articles that you published in past ezines and

newsletters

Comment on relevant and topical issues

Review a book, special report or research relevant to your

community

Turn customer questions into content that can be accessed by your

whole community

Answer the top 10 questions that your prospects and customers

should ask you before investing your products and services

Host a competition

Create a list of relevant resources.



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7.Eleven Popular Social Media Platforms

As you explore the opportunities that social media communications

presents to your business to enhance your online visibility, reputation and

profits, you will need to consider which social media platforms are

relevant to your social marketing objectives.

As detailed in Section 3, the platforms you choose to use will depend on

your goals and where your target market is already connecting. Here are

ten ideas to consider for your social presence:

Bring inbound traffic to your website using social advertising

including placing adverts on Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and

relevant forums

Share your knowledge and expertise by publishing a business blog

or wiki

Participate in or create your own online discussion groups or

forums, for example creating a Facebook Business Page

Build and nurture a strategic network through micro blogs such as

Twitter

Engage prospects and clients through multimedia channels, for

example publishing photographs on Flickr, online video on YouTube,

online audio on Audioboo.fm, and presentations or live events on

SlideShare.net.


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8.Three Commonly Overlooked Social Media Tips

Social Sharing: In the event that you are not yet ready to post content to

social media channels, one of the areas many businesses forget to review

is their website and enabling visitors accessing your articles, resources

and even sales pages to share your great content to their online social

network connections.

Review your website and explore where you could add buttons to your

site to encourage your visitors to share content to Facebook, LinkedIn,

Twitter, social bookmarking sites and even email their friends.

Blogger Outreach: Perhaps you are not yet ready to author your own

business blog. If this is the case, you can engage with authors of blogs

that are read by your target audience.

It is important that you build a relationship with bloggers, just as you

would with journalists in traditional media. However, done well, a blogger

outreach programme can accelerate your online visibility and sales.

Turn Your Content into Profit: If you are publishing to the social web,

consider how you could repurpose your content into new streams of

revenue. For example, re-purpose your articles into a book or ebook or

re-publish your articles and reports as audio or video content that you

can use for lead generation or even sell in the form of a on online

download or a physical CD or DVD.


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9.Ten Ways To Promote Your Social Presence

Once you have decided to publish content to the social web, it’s

important to ensure you market your social presence – you don’t want to

be the web’s best kept secret! Here are ten actions you can take to

promote your social presence:

1. Add your social media profiles to your email footer

2. Mention your social media profile URL’s in your voicemail

3. Reference your social media profiles in your TV, radio and print

advertisements

4. Refer to your social media content in your online and offline

newsletters

5. Add links to your social media profiles on your website

6. Reference your social media profiles across your other social

networks

7. Publicise your social media profiles on your business cards

8. Add your social media profiles to your corporate letterhead and

compliment slips

9. Include your social media profiles in your brochures and offline

marketing

10. Use online adverts to drive traffic to your social profiles.


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Additional Resources

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