Introduction to social media marketing

Luke MitchellReach Students – digital marketing consultancy

Blog: www.reachstudents.co.uk/blogTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/reachstudents

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lukemitchell

Slideshare note

These slides are an abridged version of those used in a one day training seminar

held at the University of Brighton.

The event took place on

20 September 2010.

Course contents

Morning session• What is social media marketing?• What opportunities does social media marketing

offer your organisation and what’s involved?• Risks v Rewards – does it suits my needs?• How social media is used by marketers to

achieve different aims• What are your aims, what value can you offer via

social media and where is your audience

Course contentsAfternoon session

• Designing your social media presence - what's required?• Managing and developing your pages• Using social media: talking, listening, responding and

maintaining corporate voice• Understanding social media behaviour• Marketing tactics to grow your audience • Evaluating and improving your success• Using advertising to stimulate activity• Monitoring and tracking success• A lexicon: Retweets, hashtags, pokes, feeds and more

Aim of course

• To provide an overview of social media marketing: what it is, how it’s used, what’s involved

• To provide practical tools and ideas that could be applied to your marketing

Objectives of course

By the end of today, participants should:

• Have clear understanding of what social media marketing is

• Have begun to evaluate their own situation and the potential value of social media to them

What is social media?

• “Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.” Google defines

• “Social media are works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment.” Google defines

What is social media?

• What types of sites do we think of? Eg social networking

• What site names come to mind?

What is marketing?

• “Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services” Wikipedia

What activities do we think of when we think of marketing? Eg Advertising

What is social media marketing?

Marketing using social media!

Using social media

As personal users:

What do we like about using social media? What do we get from it? What are our motivations?

New friendships

Entertainment

Knowledge & learning

Keeping in touch/developing relationshipsCreative expression

Resource finding

Using social media

As personal users:

What don’t we like? What risks and worries do we have?

Privacy

Time wasting

Spam

Embarrassing situations

Content theft

Platform changes

Using social media

As brands, businesses, organisations:

We seek similar rewards:Relationships, Networking, Resources, Expression

We are concerned about similar risks:Time wasting, embarrassment, platform changes, content theft

Acceptance: we have no control

First entry on Google under ‘Student experience Nottingham’

Risks v Rewards: Nestle

Risks v Rewards: Nestle

• Got Greenpeace YouTube video removed• Too late – duplicates and parodies were spawned and

went viral• Users flocked to Facebook to condemn• Nestle reacted defensively – problem aggravated• “There’s an obvious lesson here for companies: if you do

something wrong and people attack you in social media, being defensive gets you nowhere.” AllFacebook.com

• "Social media: as you can see we're learning as we go. Thanks for the comments."

Risks v Rewards: Habitat

Risks v Rewards: Habitat

• Used trending Twitter topics to promote products, including troubled Iran election

Risks v Rewards: Skittles

• Changed corporate website. All social media: Wiki (about), Facebook (contact) and Twitter stream as news showing mentions of Skittles

• “Skittles give you diabetes”

• 1332% increase in web visitors in one day

• Had 600k FB fans before campaign, up to 6.5 million 18 months later

Risks v Rewards: Dell

Risks v Rewards: Dell

• Coupon driven approach on Twitter has driven $3 million + sales

Risks v Rewards: Ikea

Video

Risks v Rewards: Chris Brown/Jive Records

• Claimed copyright through YouTube

• Optimised with links

• Song went to #3 and #4 in Amazon and Itunes bestsellers, over 12 months later

Maximise rewards, minimise risks

• Understanding codes of behaviour

• Being honest, ethical and open

• Being creative and embracing media

• Being in right place – with audience

• Listening and being active

• Being useful, interesting, entertaining to encourage good feeling

Evaluation – what are my aims?1. I want to increase awareness of my

product/organisation/personal brand2. I want to drive traffic to a website3. I want to get direct sales4. I want to market research and understand my

audience better5. I want to educate6. I want to create publicity/buzz7. I want to support customers8. I want to use it internally to improve

communications9. I want to keep existing customers informed

Remember the social in social media

• It’s a global social event online

• Like any social event, people are drawn to those that provide value

• Interesting, fun, skilled, entertaining, knowledgeable, exciting

• ….or serving up the free goodies

• Dell (goodies), Ikea (goodies and fun), Chris Brown (entertaining)

Evalution – what value do you bring?I am prepared to (how many can you tick?)

1. Be entertaining, informative or inspiring by publishing our own unique, free content

2. Be available daily to answer questions and talk3. Be useful by freely sharing some of our knowledge and resources4. Give away discounts, freebies and offers on our products5. Be controversial and outspoken about our area of expertise6. Organise and lead a campaign or cause that we believe in7. Allow and encourage debate and opinion about our work, and be authentic

and transparent8. Invest time and possibly money developing professional resources – eg

video9. Be prepared to experiment, explore and be patient10. Invest some budget in advertising on a steady basis, monitoring results

along the way

All the above factors can increase your chances of success in social media marketing

If you can’t offer any of these things, social media marketing is not for you

Suitable social media (your value)

• Facebook – being available, leading a campaign, advertising, up for debate

• Twitter – resource/info sharing, discounts• Blogs – regular unique content,

controversial• LinkedIn – business networking

(knowledge sharing)• YouTube – investment, advertising• Forums – discounts, knowledge sharing

Unsuitable social media (your value)

• LinkedIn – discounts, entertaining, controversial

• Facebook – video, depth of engagement low

• Twitter – limited publishing possibilities

Suitable social media (aims)

• Facebook – traffic driving, market research, buzz, keeping customers informed, awareness (with good mechanisms – eg tagging)

• Twitter – driving traffic, awareness, sales (incentivised), customer support

• Blogs – traffic (search), educate• LinkedIn – competitor analysis (MR) • YouTube – traffic (search), awareness• Forums – research, customer support• Wikis – internal comms

Unsuitable social media (aims)

• All – direct sales (but changing + twitter)

• YouTube – keeping customers informed (people don’t check in go to YT every day, unlike Twitter and FB)

• Forums – less brand friendly

Estimating our potential

• Do we have value to offer?• Do we know where to find our audience?• What are our aims and which social media suit them?• How well do these three align?

Good potentialAudience is on Twitter, we have offers and resources, we

want to drive traffic to our site

Bad potentialAudience is on YouTube, we don’t have resources to

create video, our aim is to support customers

Brand awareness campaign

Brand awareness campaign

186 personalised videos in two days

Bloggers, regular users and influencers: Gizmodo, Ellen, Biz Stone, GQ, Digg founder, Ashton Kutcher, Huffington Post

Designing effective social media assets

• Facebook – page or group?

• Facebook pages– what makes a good one

• Twitter – designing an effective account

• Other social media – talk 1-to-1

Facebook – page or group?

What makes a strong Facebook page?

1. Strong page image (200 pixels wide)

What makes a strong Facebook page?

2. Impacting landing page: subscribe, click, buy, join – call to action

What makes a strong Facebook page?

3. Look busy – tip: post photo with update

What makes a strong Facebook page?

4. Engaging apps: polls, notes, RSS

What makes a strong Facebook page?

5. User-friendly url

Go to facebook.com/username

Min 25 fans needed

Ideally same as page title

What makes a strong Facebook page?

6. Prioritised arrangement of tabs

Twitter – designing an effective account

1. Username

2. Photo

3. Background

4. Bio (up to 160 characters)

5. Include link for reference

6. Tweets

Twitter – designing an effective account

Twitter – designing an effective account

Marketing with our assets

• Finding our audience

• Engaging our audience

• Managing our audience communications and marketing to them

Twitter

Finding our audience:• Lists (eg tweepml.org)• Use of hashtags• Targeted follows via search (http://

search.twitter.com/advanced )• Other users’ audiences• Share on website, FB and other social media

TIP: Have a ‘landing’ tweet. Use lists to manage stream

Twitter

Engaging our audience – why?• To initially connect with them• To retain them• To achieve our marketing aim (drive traffic,

brand awareness, sales)

How do we engage them?• By showing our value to them (interesting,

knowledgeable, money-saving, entertaining etc)• By building a relationship (conversations,

retweets)

Twitter

Ideas for relationship building:

Answer questions and problems

Ask questions

RT (or blog) their work

Share news and useful info related to subject

Share photos (twitpic.com)

Recommend them (Follow Friday)

Special offers for them (reward engagement)

Your Twitter strategy

• Grow a big, quality audience

• Show your value

• Develop relationships

• Achieve your aims

Warning: Twitter is time-consuming!

Facebook

• Finding our audience

• Engaging our audience

• Managing our audience communications and marketing to them

Facebook

Finding our audience• Partnerships with other relevent Facebook asset owners

(groups and pages)• When appropriate, post on Facebook walls where same

audience connects (with subtlety)• Promote via external channels (Twitter, website, email,

offline) to existing audience• Use Facebook Connect (with developer): like buttons,

widgets, discussion• Advocates within demographic• Ask fans to suggest to others (updates) + viral calls-to-

action• All email signatures in company email• Advertising – email me for slides

Facebook

Engaging our audience – why?• To initially connect with them• To retain them• To achieve our marketing aim (drive traffic,

brand awareness, sales)

How do we engage them?• By showing our value to them (interesting,

knowledgeable, money-saving, entertaining etc)• By building a relationship (conversations,

mentions)

Facebook

Ideas for relationship building:

Post daily

Reply and share comments with others

Mix variety of posts (questions, statements, polls, resources, tips)

Users feel its their page – recognise this and let them know things happen with their input

LinkedIn - about

• Social networking for professionals. B2B not B2C. Individuals not mass Examples

• Mostly a place where partnerships and deals made, plus knowledge sharing. Sober environment

• Recruitment massive

LinkedIn – what you can do

Build trust and market your expertise:• Develop a full profile (use photo, keywords)• Get recommendations• Network like crazy (find ‘LION’s)• Answer LinkedIn questions• Join groups, start topics, respond• Search for prospects• Feed in your blog, Twitter• Increase search visibility, another platform for

audience, another place to seed links

Social media behaviour

Users more contrary, argumentative, subversive

1) Don’t fear them

2) Don’t rush in – others may moderate

3) Pick fights wisely and be mature, polite

4) Use block/remove if offensive

5) Remember you may be representing official voice of your organisation

Final session

• Tools to accelerate our success

• How we monitor and evaluate success

Tools – save time

Hootsuite http://www.hootsuite.com/• Free• Post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn + others• See feeds from all above• Analytics on links (shortened). See how many

clicks from which platforms• Schedule posts• Manage with team and one password

Tools – save time

Socialoomph http://www.socialoomph.com/

• It’s for Twitter

• Free or paid pro (£17 p/month)

• 7 day free pro trial

• Auto direct message

• Auto follow according to keywords

Tools - Ads to grow audience

YouTube

• Awareness and education – video views

• Set up via Google Adwords on CPC basis

Tools - Ads to grow audienceStumbleUpon - for cheap, relevant traffic499 views from 18-35s looking for bargains/coupons in UK4 pence per view

Monitoring success – how?

Driving traffic to site• See traffic arriving and know where it’s come

from: Google Analytics (Free)• For cursory look: bit.ly and Hootsuite• Tip: Use /?ref=http://www.reachstudents.co.uk/?ref=twithttp://www.reachstudents.co.uk/?ref=fbhttp://www.reachstudents.co.uk/?ref=disc

Tweaking? Use linkbait

Monitoring success – how?

Brand awareness and/or creating buzz• Observe own pages: retweets, replies, comments,

shares, likes, views – is this getting seen, talked about passed around?

• Use Google Alerts and SocialMention.com to monitor keywords discussed in blogs, tweets, comments as they happen + Backtype (image)

• Use Google Search (Updates, Discussions, News)

Tweaking? Examine what gets best reaction - and do more

Monitoring success – how?

Educate• Stronger evidence of engagement – questions,

behavioural change. Use surveys and polls• Good ratio of followers to interactions – learn from those

that create conversations (follow other pages)Tweaking? Push harder with questions, demand more

Sales• If online, use analytics. If offline, ask customers• Use codes to track eg Quote ‘FB01’Tweaking? Add time limits, restrictions

Evaluating ROI – is SMM worth it?

Compare against your usual ROI: What do you normally do?How much does it cost (time and money)?What returns?

But also consider:Customer demands and satisfaction – can you afford not to

use?Digital legacy created – people will find you without effortUse social media to monitor competitors, understand

customer needs, see new opportunities, respond to criticism

You are being invisible online (social search)

Thank you

Resources list at: reachstudents.co.uk/blog

Feel free to keep in touch by email,

Twitter or LinkedIn.

Happy to answer follow up questions.

Good luck!