how to: building your social media presence

The digital agency.

Building Your Social Media Presence Strategy, Management & Analysis

Prepared by Britton Shinn Sr. Digital Strategist, D2 Creative October 2013

Look before you leap.

Before you jump into Social Media Marketing, here are a few simple principles you should follow:

+ Develop an implementable strategy

+ Plan for ongoing management

+ Perform an analysis of your efforts

Social Media Marketing is

Content Marketing

“Content marketing is the creation of high-quality, informative content that is distributed in an effort to reach a company's target audience. The content can relate directly to a brand's value proposition, relevant industry issues, or broader topics that align with your branding. The aim is to offer readers information that will result in them viewing your company more favorably or having a better understanding your brand identity.” iMedia Connection – Jacqueline McDermott Lisk

Strategy

Strategy: Scope

+ Identify the business function for which you are implementing a social media campaign

+ Properly implemented campaigns can be effective for: – Marketing

– Sales

– Customer service

– Research

– IT

– Human resources (recruiting)

– Executive management

Strategy: Needs

+ Determine your business’ needs – Needs can be one or many - Fewer will be easier to

manage

– How will Social Media help address your needs? - Don’t force it

+ Define your social media mission and purpose – Think of this like you would an email newsletter or print

advertisement – You are doing it for a reason

Strategy: Goals

+ Develop clear goals for your social media campaign: “Get feedback on our new product”

+ Identify 1 to 2 key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of each goal, like: – The number of replies or comments – i.e., Conversation

– The size of your audience – i.e., Reach

– The number of shares of your content – i.e., Amplification

– Follower reaction to your content – i.e., Sentiment

Strategy: Objectives

+ Your objectives should be reasonable, obtainable and measurable: – Increase blog subscribers by 5% in 2 weeks

– Get 500 new Facebook fans in 2 months

– Receive 125 views of my new product video on YouTube in a month

Strategy: Tactics

+ Know your “creative” limitations – Do you have writers, designers?

+ Understand your administrative capabilities – Staff resource availability

– Project a budget for your monthly efforts

+ Establish success metrics – Click-throughs, downloads, purchases, sign-ups, etc.

Management

Management: Platforms

+ Determine which platforms are right for you – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube

+ Consider that audiences behave differently on different networks, as users may be: – Active in the evenings

– More active on weekends

– Professionally focused

– Entertainment focused

Management: Content

+ Align content with your goals

+ What format(s) make the most sense? – News & information, text only (easiest to produce)

– Photos (increases engagement likelihood)

– Video (preferred, most shareable, most $)

Management: Publishing

+ Identify tools to manage publishing, listening & reporting: – HootSuite

– Simply Measured

– Wildfire

– Socialbakers

+ Create an editorial/publishing schedule – Don’t be afraid to supplement your schedule if the

“market” demands it

Management: Implementation

+ Assign responsibilities – Strategic & creative direction

– Content development (publishing, discovery)

+ Build out social presence(s) – Visual integration with your online presence

– Aligned with your brand/market positioning

+ Promote presence – Develop incentives (aligned with goals) to encourage

engagement (e.g., exclusive access to new products)

Analysis

Analysis: Check-in

+ Review your KPIs – Are you seeing any movement?

– Are they the right indicators of success?

+ Look at your metrics – What is “working”?

• Review tactics by network

• Results may not be the same across different networks

Analysis: Review & Advise

+ Did you achieve your goals? – Was it too easy?

+ Were your objectives difficult to measure? – Did you see an impact on your business?

+ Can you repeat or scale your successes? – Is infrastructure in place to support expansion?

+ Dump tactics that didn’t work, and don’t be afraid to try something different

Tools

Important Questions: Ask them!

You may be risking valuable organization resources if you can’t answer these questions:

+ What are we trying to accomplish?

+ How will we measure this effort?

+ Why are we using social media to do it?

+ Would other, less “popular” tactics be more effective?

Who we are D2 Creative is an independent digital agency that helps organizations increase reach, influence, and effectiveness through creative digital solutions.

Contact us to learn how we can help your organization achieve your goals.