Losing The “Social” of Social Media

Bonjour my friend, I was asked today (and just about every day) to join some organization’s facebook fan page by someone I know. This presumes: A) I like the person making the suggestion. B) I like the organization that has the fan page. C) That joining the fan page has some benefit, which admittedly some do but many don’t.

I know there are some excellent and informative “fan” pages on face book but we often lose the “social” part of social media when we transfer over to a “fan” page.

I believe that the key to brand promotion on social media is making a connection and getting to know and respecting individuals who, by the way, happen to work for a particular brand. We are allowed to get to know these people with an “ambient intimacy”. With a profile page we learn to virtually know and respect that person and then we have a better chance of accepting the brand. Having only a “fan” page is just not going to do that for some of us, there is no virtual intimacy.

Many organizations that I know and respect (and some I have worked with) have fan pages on facebook. I have recommended to them that this was the safe way to go to avoid the facebook police closing their profile pages. Some of them are doing some interesting things such as events, polls and special announcements, all of which creates value when you go to their fan page. However, we have to ask, how will a fan page effect the brand Web site’s analytics? Will people get enough information from a well developed fan page so that they will not want to move onto a brand’s Web site?

 Here is what we suggest: If you are thinking of opening a face book fan page: 1) Make sure that there is value in the fan page 2) Keep your profile page and increase the number of brand angels that have profile pages and have them help people find the “fan” page by promoting the “value proposition” not the page. 3) : Make sure the fan page sells the brand’s Web site?

Here is what I recommend for brand managers: Maintain you brand’s personal profile pages for brand angels but limit the brand message and number of friends to under 1,000 and increase the social networking aspect of profile pages. When people like a person they are more likely to be receptive to the brand.

Yes, I am starting a brand page for HPR Public Relations & Social Media but I won’t give up my personal facebook page because that’s how people get to know me

Please let me know your thoughts and comments, thanks for reading.

 

Public Relations & Social Media..The Hook

Bom dia my friend. Today I want to seseseses you about the “Public Relations” aspect of social media and social networking.

As I have written in past posts, social media falls under the marketing category of “Public Relations”. In my book “How to Market Tourism in the 21st Century” (shameless plug), I define Public Relations as “the development of social, political and market capital through third party endorsements.”  I believe few other marketing tools are better equipped to accomplish this task than Social Media and Social Networking.

The direction of this post is concentrated on developing “hooks” in your writing whether it be blogs or tweets or a press releases.

Public Relations does not refer to one “public” but to at least seven:

1. Media relations
2. Employee relations
3. Community relations
4. Educator relations
5. Consumer relations
6. Stakeholder relations
7. Management relations

Let’s start this series of blogs by talking about media relations.

The rise of the Internet, and in particular the rise of “search” has effected all seven “publics” but perhaps none more than media relations. (It is strange that media has effected media). This is happening while traditional media is in serious decline. In the following few paragraphs I will be using a couple of slides from an excellent Webinar from PRWeb. 

There are more people getting their news from the Internet sources and bloggers than from newspapers and TV today as SEO guru Greg Jarboe demonstrated at a PRWeb Webinar in November with the following slides:

Circulation Dropping

Blogs vs Mainstream

As Greg Jarboe explained; a Web media release generates 3 times more Web site visits than the same report on ABC News.

You have to ask yourself, are you looking for interested eyeballs that actually “open” your release and read it or the possibility of an “impression” by someone who is interested in a magazine or a certain TV show but not necessarily your product.

Magazines don’t have staff writers any more (or very few), and the free-lance stringers will very rarely even interview you in person. In fact most questions are being asked and answered over Twitter.

However, obtaining media attention has not changed. What has changed in public relations are the platforms. In PR using social media, you still want to influence and engage the media and you still want to gain authenticity through third-party endorsements..this requires the use of “hooks”. 

Hooks:
I am going to quote from an excellent article about hooks by Pam Lontos regarding how can you differentiate yourself from your competitors in troubled economic times?

The best way, Pam claims,  to attract more clients and customers is to create a level of celebrity for your brand that only the media can bring, and because today’s media are more fragmented than ever before, you will need to reach out via many different platforms.

While each media do things a bit differently and cover different topics, one thing will remain consistent when it comes to you getting coverage: The hook.

Even though one publication may appeal to a narrow audience, or an Internet news site may focus on a single topic, or a radio talk show treat just one subject line – even with that reality, you can still appeal to them all if you have a great hook.

 What is a hook? It’s the angle, the concept that can be boiled down to a few words that make the reader or listener tingle with anticipation about what comes next. In a way, your hook is the bait, like a headline that makes someone want to read the whole story.

 You may adapt your hook when moving from one medium to the next, but its core essence will remain the same. Suppose, for instance, your expertise is in helping business and organization leaders produce better results through a focused, fired-up and capably led workforce.

For a press release about why business leaders should consider corporate culture and employees’ perspectives during mergers and acquisitions, the merger of Northwest and Delta became the hook. The release was successfully pitched as “Why Delta/Northwest Merger is a Bad Idea.” This hook resulted in two interviews with major city newspapers according to Pam Lontos .

 But that same hook could also be used to approach a syndicated how-to columnist or a general-interest magazine editor with a more consumer-oriented twist on the idea, such as “How to Reduce Your Pink-Slip Chances When Your Company Merges.” Or you could write a feature or op-ed article such as “The Delta/Northwest Merger: What They Didn’t See Coming.”

 You can get a lot of mileage from a single hook. Just remember to keep your hook angled to what the media are looking for.  (End of Pam’s excellent article).

I have used hooks for many key promotions over the years. Let’s face it, most products are basically boring, except to their owners, it’s the hook that makes it interesting. Sometimes I feel I should buy a stamp that says “boring” and bang it down on silly, boring products. The hook is what makes it sizzle.

The product when presented to the media either over the Internet or by old-time press releases needs to be presented with the angle of a hook.

Back in the day I had to promote the opening of a beautiful night club called “Darlings” at a Four Seasons Hotel. Now you would think that just letting the press know that a new night club was opening, especially at a Four Seasons Hotel, would bring the press out. Well, possibly but the article would come out after the event and the opening is what creates biz buzz.  Also, there were two other clubs opening almost at the same time hence diluting our story. What would our hook be?

Our hook was a pre-opening promotion playing on the name of the club “Darlings” that generated a lot of “buzz” and press all by itself.

 Three months prior to opening we created two mailing lists; first list consisted of upwardly mobile young men; the second, of upwardly mobile young women.

After creating the two lists we mailed what looked like hand written little notes (they were actually printed) to each sex, saying “I miss you Darling” and the next, “I want you Darling” and the next; “Meet me Darling”.  The final mailing was a beautiful invitation that said “Meet Me Tuesday Night for the opening of “Darlings”.

We didn’t have to generate press, the public flooded the post office to find out who was mailing these notes. Couples threatened to sue if they found out. Headlines read “Public Want’s to Know Who is Sending Love Notes?”

There were 2,700 people lined up to get into the Darlings night club on opening night (club only would hold 500). It was the hook that created the press and the buzz.

More on PR and Social Media next week. Thanks for reading the blog and please leave a comment of any great “hook” stories you might have.

Virtual Town Hall Meetings

Good day: I enjoy writing to you each week about social media at the 45,000 ft level, but I have to confess that I am not as comfortable writing about the day to day use of the social media platforms. I have wonderful people working with me who are far more knowledgeable about creating good facebook pages etc.

However, a friend of mine is trying to develop a town hall meeting format for his constituents and it made me wonder which social media platforms would work best for him?

Preaching to the masses:

People using social media for town hall gatherings sometimes consider that facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc., are mass media, which they are not! They are designed more for a rifle approach.

I am not speaking about your 2,000 friends on facebook or your 1,400 followers on Twitter. A shout-out about something like a town hall meeting would certainly hit a lot of people but you are preaching to the choir.

For most of our sermons, (to follow the preaching analogy), this is fine, but if we want to hit a bunch of folks we have never met before and have them join us in a one time conversation, it doesn’t work all that well.

I expect you have been doing social networking all your life. You most likely have belonged to a civic club or a young professional’s organization, something that allows you to meet new people and develop business contacts. These are great, but would you call them “mass marketing”? All that the new social media, powered by search technology, has done is placed your civic club on steroids, that’s all.

If you are going to want to reach the masses and ask them to have a dialogue, you are going to need to begin by using mass media, (TV, Newspaper, e-newsletters etc). You will use it to announce your intentions to have a town hall meeting and ask them if they would like to join you this Sunday at 3pm and to please send questions.

President Obama advanced the concept of virtual town hall meetings by using video streaming and perhaps it is one of the best ways to have a town hall.  A simple way of doing it is via http://www.ustream.tv/ using a simple Web cam and laptop and it can be shared on facebook and other social media platforms. Questions can come in via phone or via text (suggest text, easier to edit).

However, you still need to shout-out to the masses that you are going to be on- line, unless you just want the choir.

Preaching to the Choir:

If preaching to the choir is exactly what you want to do (and not the masses), how do you develop a reasonable number of followers?

I add 10-20 new friends or followers onto my social media platforms on a daily basis. How do I find these new people? I am madly in love with http://search.twitter.com/advanced  this is the advanced search engine for twitter and allows me to find tweets that related to social media strategy. I can even drill down and only find people who are asking questions about social media strategy, then I can help them.

If you know of someone and want to follow them, and have them eventually follow you, then Twellow Pages from Twitter is a great search tool for you.

After I give a speech, I will quite often search for key people at the conference via Twellow pages, or facebook’s search , or, although it’s rather unfriendly, facebook’s advanced search.

 I hope you have found this to be of some small use. Please leave a comment or a suggestion for a better way to reach the masses for a town hall or build you own critical number of followers.

Next week, Public Relations and Social Media. I really appreciate you reading this blog and hope you will come back again.

Measuring Social Media Performance Pt.2

John Hope-Johnstone

 

Hola my friend, in the last post we discussed “one way” of reporting the positive effects of your social media campaign. 

I suggested to you that to be effective with your social media campaign, the increased number of friends, followers or subscribers in social media should be affecting the number of unique users of your brand Web site, as recorded by your Web analytics. If this can’t be proved then I would suggest that the social media department will someday be in trouble. You must prove that you create a positive effect on the bottom line.

I recommended that your report could begin with a “Value Statement” that would read something like this:

September Value Statement:

“During the month of September 2009, the social media department increased social media (SM) followers by 43% compared to September 2008, which drove and additional 750 new SM users to the brand Web site compared to a year ago or a 35% increase in SM conversion to the Web site.

Using the standard 20% conversion rate for the site, this means that the social media department increased sales by a possible 150 units at an average of $720 per unit resulting in $108,000 in new revenue. 

Social Media Report

Ok, so you have a “Value Statement” and you have shown the increase (or decrease growth) in the numbers that drive people to the mother ship (brand Web site) to hopefully convert into a sale. Now you need to go into your Analytics and find the numbers for each of the SM platforms and show that you are not speaking incorrectly. The following “snap” does NOT relate to the above spread sheet but it will give you an idea of what I am speaking about, you just need to repeat it for the other SM platforms and you have got yourself a nice little report:

Facebook Stats

Now my friend, let me repeat, the numbers you see at the left snapshot from Google Analytics will not measure up to the Excel spreadsheet at the top. It is just offered as an example, so no comments about “bad math” etc.

Is this the definitive report for SM, nope, but it is a really good start. This is your bottom line report. This is the one that will keep the bean counters happy and upper management off your back.

Next week we need to talk about some of the softer reporting tools. Social media can do so much to enhance a reputation of a brand as being a great corporate and world citizen that this MUST be pursued and quantified. More next week.

If you would like a one on one coaching Webinar to help prepare a Social Media Strategy and develop a reporting tool for your organization then shoot me an email. It is very cost effective. johnhopejohnstone@gmail.com

 

 Many thanks for reading, please leave a comment or a suggestion. You are the best!!!

HPR

How to Measure Social Media Performance

John Hope-Johnstone

Greetings! As I have written in other posts of this blog, the bottom line for social media is “buzz.” How much chat around the water cooler is your social media creating? There are also a million other ways to monitor the effects of your social media campaign but I have found the following to be well accepted by upper management clients.

Starting Your Social Media Report:
At the bottom of your reporting pyramid are the lower tier statistics: How many communities? How many friends on facebook? How many followers on Twitter or subscribers on YouTube? How many key influencers have become friends and how many of your messages have they followed? You can also follow how many “buzz” strings you started and how far they went.

All of the above stats are important indicators of the success of your social media efforts. However, if social media is to survive in the corporate world, the hungry beasts known as “number crunchers” must be satisfied and I don’t think feeding them a steady diet of the above campaign numbers alone is going to satisfy their insatiable appetite.

In the corporate world any business activity that is not part of a sale is fluff….yes fluff! Marketing is any business activity that affects the transfer of goods, products or services, (forget this to your own peril). Social media and social networking fall under the umbrella of marketing in the category of Public Relations. Public Relations, in and of itself, has often been considered a little “fluffy” because it sometimes lacks the ability to prove it really helped sell the product or service.

So a question: Where does the final sale of the product or service take place on the Internet? Well in most cases you would have to say the brand’s Web site. So the query really is; does your social media help drive people to your brand Web site?

After you drive them from your social media to your Web site, how many people convert after visiting your Web site is a whole other story and most likely belongs on someone else’s shoulders (yipee).

This is why I believe in expressing social media as a logical “pathway.”

Click to Enlarge

The pathway:
The path, (shown as a pyramid on the right), takes you from micro blogs such as: Twitter, facebook; My Space etc. which have the purpose of pointing you to macro blogs (such as this one). Your macro blogs display “thought leadership” in the field of expertise and then points you to a brand Web site.

In short, your micro blogs tell people “who you are”. The macro blogs tell people “what you know”and your brand Web site tells people “what you do”.

Now, I am cute, but not stupid (well, not too stupid), I know that people don’t follow logical paths in social media, they randomly snack on all the content. Still, it makes sense to think of social media as a logical pathway as you herd your faithful followers up the path to your point of sale….which is your brand Web site.

So to be effective with your social media campaign, the increased number of friends, followers or subscribers should be affecting the number of unique users of your brand Web site as recorded by your Web analytics.

Click to enlarge

As you can see from my little brand Web site,  (chart on left) the majority of the top 13 referrers come from my blog.

This will not be so with a large brand site…but the social media should show in the analytics, although perhaps further down the list.

Side note, it has always interested me how popular my Web site is in other countries (see below).

Click to enlarge

Now, if my theory is correct and we take a look at my blog analytics then the top referrers should come from my micro-blogs like Twitter and facebook and Linkedin. The following chart (below) shows this Buzz Master blog’s stats.

 

Click to enlarge

Soooo, the chart to the right basically proves my point that pointing from micro-blogs to macro-blogs and then to brand Web sites actually works and the results can be proven by an increase in users on the brand Web site which is where the products are sold.

 

This post has just been a start to your monthly social media report. We will have more next week. To summarize, your new Social Media Performance Report might start with a summary page that reads like this: 

Monthly Social Media Report Statement for September 2009

The social media department increased followers by 23% which drove 2,700 new users on the brand site over the past 30 days. Using the standard 20% conversion rate for the site, this means that the social media department increased sales by a possible 540 units at an average of $720 per unit resulting in $388,800 in revenue.

Click to enlarge

Now, I can hear a thousand people saying, “it won’t work in my company because….blah blah blah” Of course you are right. I cannot write a blog post that is going to cover every contingency but use example of a social media value statement and make something out of it that DOES work for you.

The pages following the summary page would contain the analytics from your micro blogs and macro blogs and Web site that support the above value statement and pyramid.

Next Sunday I will create a post that will complete the rest of this monthly report for Social Media. Hope to see you next week. Thanks for reading, make a comment or a suggestion please.

Podcasts, where do they fit?

John Hope-Johnstone

Aloha my friend: 
One of the social media platforms given the least attention these days are Podcasts. Podcasts are an audio or video program (yes the concept of ICarly.com could be considered a Podcast), they are formatted to be played back on iPods or MP3 Players or off a Web site and made available for free or for purchase over the Internet.

Podcasts are shows, similar to radio or TV shows, that are produced by professionals or amateurs and posted to the Internet for download and listening or viewing. Many podcasts are made available for free, though some ask to be purchased.

The name Podcasts derives from the combination of broadcast and iPod.

Podcasts can be downloaded individually or subscribed to so that each new episode of the podcast is automatically downloaded to the subscriber’s computer. You can subscribe to a podcast at the iTunes Store or websites for the podcasts. Podcast subscriptions are usually facilitated using RSS feeds.

Podcasts are one more way you can promote your brand message. It is especially effective when placed on your Web site  (like this Cisco Web site)and when it expands on your knowledge leadership.

It’s major advantage over a V-log is the time and expense that it takes to produce the content and the ease with which it can be transported by its consumers (i-pods and MP3).

Because of its ease to produce and distribute many Podcast channels have been established this is one example.

I am a great fan of www.commoncraft.com which produce simple videos on many subjects and one of their best is on understanding podcasting in plain English.

Fiting Podcasts into your social media strategy for brand promotion is an important question. We call facebook and MySpace, Linkedin and Twitter etc., ”Micro Blogs” because of their limited writing wall space and the fact that they are used often to point people to additional sources of information through tiny URLs. However, a V-log (video) and a Podcast can also act as a Macro Blog if you remember to point them in the direction of your Web site at the end.

Marketing Your Social Media Content

John Hope-Johnstone

Bon Jour:  So you’ve created a twitter account and a facebook fan page for your organization. Your Community Managers are being busy little bees writing blogs. You’re posting videos on your YouTube channel and photos of your publicity events on Flickr, but…..no one knows about it!!

Most people using social media know how to promote each individual platform. Twitter for example you can use directory sites like Twellow and Just Tweet It.

The first key to improving your social media marketing is an understanding that each platform needs to cross promote.

My Web site is where I want people to end up. So the Micro Blogs like Twitter, facebook, MySpace etc., point to the Macro blogs (real blogs) which  point to my Web site.

So in my crazy little world I dream that Micro Blogs (Twitter, facebook, Linkedin etc) point to my Macro Blogs like www.buzzmaster.wordpress.com which then point to my Web site www.johnhopejohnstone.com. In reality they all point to each other because in the real world  people enter and exit from many different directions.

Social Media Progression

The  .johnhopejohnstone.com Web site analytics, shown below, prove that quite often my crazy dreams are actually followed. The top referrer on this day was from my blog, and that is just what I wanted. Positions 1,3,4,6,7 all came from my blog www.buzzmaster.wordpress.com to my Web site. Position number 5 shows that my “shout-outs” from Twitter pointing to my Web site were also effective.

Web Stats

 

So cross promotion of platforms is vitally important.

To promote your business’ Facebook page, grab an official badge from Facebook to incorporate into your site. Don’t forget that your E-newsletters can deliver to your social media an audience who have already indicated that they want to get to know you better by opting in.

However, all these actions to market your media content are speaking to the converted. What about those who have never heard about you? Here we need to add a strategy involving Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

I am a big believer in making sure that my topics are being searched a lot (no brain trust there). Now, it’s a bit easier for me because I write about Social Media and at the moment, that is a pretty popular topic.

So my next step is to make sure that the title and key words I am using are being searched by lots of people. Finding out how many people have searched your topic on the search engines you can pay some money and get some nice little bells and whistles from www.wordtracker.com or get the basics free from Google at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal  which basically tells you how many people roughly have used the key word or key phrases.

If you don’t have a topic to write about (poor you), you can get all the hot topics from www.alltop.com (all the top stories) or the hottest stories on the internet www.popurls.com  or www.digg.com (best stories). They will help you develop popular content that is.

Remember make sure you are writing about a topic in which people have an interest. It is a wonderful world where you can actually check this out using Word Tracker or WEB CEO or Google to find the number of searches that have taken place using your title.

Now that you have refined your topic and title of your blog or even your Tweet or V-log you need to create a Google Adwords and Yahoo pay per click campaign. You will only spend money for actually clicks through to your blog or your video channel.

Does it work? Well here is a good example of the analytics for my blog www.buzzmaster.wordpress.com . You can see that I opened a pay per click campaign around September 1^st 2009 and then again at the end of September. 

Buzzmaster stats

Notice that my readership which usually plugs along at about 20-30 readers a day (and I am quite happy with that) suddenly zooms to between 60 to 100 readers a day when I turn on the PPC campaign.

Just to make sure you believe me, below is a chart from my Google Adwords campaign for the same time period:

Google PPC Campaign

 

So you easily see that when I turn this engine on. With the right advertisement, written correctly, and with search words that are popular in the search engines wonderful things happen to my blog readership.

To quote Steve Glauberman on June 12, 2009 in one of my favorite Web sites http://www.imediaconnection.com

“Social media has been embraced by businesses big and small, and that’s both promising and commendable. As you continue to invest in fleshing out these initiatives, though, keep the importance of promoting them in mind. Consider your cross-media marketing campaign as a whole, and look for ways each channel could potentially accommodate advertising for your social efforts. By increasing your visibility, you stand to directly increase the number of current and potential customers who choose to maintain an ongoing social dialogue with your company and brand.”

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Social Media Strategy (A sample plan)

 

John Hope-Johnstone

 

Hello, we have been speaking in the last three posts about “strategy”. In the last post about how to develop a strategy about your social media use and networking. We spoke about how 70% of all social media is wasted effort due to a lack of strategy.

 

Well, we have heard back that you would like us to put our money where our mouth is, so here is our social media strategy for the coming year. Yes, there are a few deleted sections but most of it is there, if it helps you then use it as a template with our love.

Social Media Strategy 2010-2011 (Example Only)

Company Goals from Social Media:

HPR is a Public Relations coaching firm with heavy emphasis on social media and social networking. Our social media goals are to create a “buzz” that HPR is knowledgeable in Public Relations and would be a good coaching partner to develop a social media strategy.

Company Objectives from Social Media:

HPR will obtain 5 speaking engagements and 7 new coaching clients through social media during the calendar year.

Communities of Common Interest:

HPR will become involved in the following communities (not in order of importance):

• Destination Marketing Organizations
• Lodging Associations
• Restaurant Associations
• Tourism Organizations
• Speakers Guilds
• Tourism industry bloggers and E-Zine publishers
• Public Relations Society of America
• Other marketing experts in a similar position as myself who can back link to us
• University and Community College New Media Programs

 Key Influencer List:

HPR has developed a key influencer list of 172 key people (total) in each of the above communities (sorry, not available for public viewing). These will be added to on a daily basis as the year unfolds.

 The following social media platforms have been isolated as containing a majority of the people on the key influencer lists:

Linkedin         114
facebook        132
Twitter            74
My Space        12
Flickr              27
You Tube        7

The key influencer list also connects and names mutual “friends” for each of the key influencers. It also indicates that 42 of the key influencers do not have mutual friends on any of the platform and will need to be reached through other means.

Community Managers:

The following are assigned to be social media community managers because of their expertise and contacts within each of the communities listed:

John Hope-Johnstone                       Destination Marketing Organizations

                                                                     Lodging Associations

                                                                     Tourism Organizations

                                                                     Other Marketing Experts

 

XXXXXXXX                                            Restaurant Association

                                                                    Public Relations Society of America

 XXXXXXXX                                           New Media Programs                                                                      Travel Industry Bloggers and E-Zine  

Zoya Bondaruk                                     Speaker Guilds and Speaker Agents

 

Communication Platforms:

Relating to the numbers of key influencers found on each social media platform as listed above HPR will develop or expand its presence on the following social media platforms:

1. facebook fan page
2. Linkedin
3. Twitter
4. Buzz Master Blog
5. You Tube  HPR Channel

We will make sure that all of our platforms provide a link and a progression to move the reader into a deeper understanding of HPR and our expertise. Moving from Twitter, facebook, Linkedin (micro blogs), to macro blogs and V-logs such as www.buzzmaster.wordpress.com and www.youtube.com/johnhopejohnstone to our Web site www.johnhopejohnstone.com  and book “How to Market Tourism in the 21^st Century.”

 Media Content and Messaging:

 (Sorry, not available for public viewing)

Reporting Measurements of Success:

facebook fan page:             500 fans by year end
Linkedin:                                300 Invites accepted by year end Twitter                                    200 followers (up from 74) Buzz Master Blog                                          100 readers per day average.
You Tube                               100 subscribers to channel
Johnhopejohnston.com:       5,000 hits per month and 2,000 unique users
E-Newsletter Opt Ins:              300 subscribers to Tsunami Report
Speaking Engagements:          5
New coaching clients:             7

 End

Is this the “be all” in a Social Media Strategy? I expect not, but it works for us. I hope this helps you and if you have any suggestions as to how to make it work better, please let us know and we will spread the word. Have a great week. Next week we will talk about promoting your social media work. 

Social Media Strategy Part 2

Hola my friend, this is the second post regarding developing your own social media strategy. 70% of people fail and abandon social media as a brand development tool because they have no strategy. Please read the last post to get a start on this.

This post goes deeper into “how” to develop a strategy and at the end gives a link to our own HPR strategy example.

Strategy isn’t the end it’s the path to get there. So, let’s put some goals out, and then talk through how to build a bunch of objectives to reach them.

Social media is just part of an overall customer experience. Social media does not have its own orbit rather it belongs under the heading of Public Relations. So, ask yourself, “What will I learn from our social media work that can be applied across all other areas of marketing — oh, and product development! — to make our customer experience more enjoyable, our content more accessible, and, ultimately, more conversion oriented?” A good social media strategy will extract insights from various social media platforms and leverage them to help improve both your own strategic view and the strategic plan for your business. (Adapted from the excellent work of Chris Brogan.)

Here is a side note: If you aren’t playing around in social media now, then just jump in and have fun. Try it out. Hire a teenager to help you understand the platforms…have fun! Remember, you don’t have to use it just because it is there, but you do have to understand what it is all about because, most likely, many of your customers are using it! Remember, if you aren’t at the table, you are likely to be part of the meal.

Your Social Media Strategy should help you develop the following:

• Increase customer base.

• Generate leads.

• Drive sales.

• Build awareness.

• Make money from your content.

• Establish thought leadership.

• Educate customers.

• Customer-source part of your product development.

• Reach new channels of customers.

• Improve internal communications.

• Increase buzz about your business

• Build social and political capital (remember it is part of Public Relations)

Did I miss any? Feel free to add some.

In the last post we explained about the four pillars of creating a social media strategy:

1. Communication

2. Collaboration

3. Education

4. Entertainment

You must keep in mind all four of these pillars as you create and activate your social media strategy.

Before we go too far down any one path, we should ask some questions:

• Are your customers likely to be online? Note that lots of people are online these days, but it might be that you have a product or service that isn’t as frequently purchased or researched via the web. What’s your story?

• Are you ready to handle negativity? Platforms like blogs and videos allow for negative comments, and some company cultures aren’t ready to engage with those opinions.

• How will you incorporate this into your staff’s (or your own) work load? Are you willing to take on some interns and train them?

• How will you measure results?

• How long are you willing to give it a try?

• What’s your willingness to experiment, take risks, and adjust your plans?

Just those answers might tell you a bit about your business, whether or not you decide to go forward with building a strategy using social media tools. Remember, it’s a lot easier to NOT listen to customers and just blast your messages out with no regard as to how they’re received.

Strategy Starters:

If we’re going to put a social media strategy into place, we need to align the path we’re going to take, and develop it with an understanding of how to reach our goals. Where are we going? How are we going to get there? How do we know we’ve arrived? Here are ten key actions to create a Social Media Strategy:

1. Communities: Most social media strategies have to address several “communities of common interest” and dividing your customers (present and future) up into several well defined communities that have common interests is important. Then how will you encourage these communities to gather around your social media content? Since social media is part of Public Relations in marketing we mustn’t forget that there are seven publics in Public Relations and these can be used as guidelines as you look into your community structure:

1: Press (media) relations (don’t forget bloggers)

2: Employee relations

3: Community relations

4: Educator relations

5: Consumer relations (*this is the biggie)

6: Stakeholder relations

7: Management relations

2. Key Influencers: From within these communities list out, with full contact information, the key influencers. Those are the people if you help them understand who you are and what you do may influence many others. (This is the most time consuming part of developing a strategy) but also the most important. It is critical to note that it is an ongoing process and should involve at least 10 new key people a day).

3. As best as possible try and track down the top key influencers from each community and see what social media platforms they are using. Also, don’t forget that the key word in Social Networking is “networking”. With programs like facebook and My Space, Linkedin and others, you can reach your key people by finding friends that you have in common. Then an introduction is easy.

Pause here to follow number four before moving on to the next part of the plan.

4. Spend several months just listening and seeing what the on-line conversations are all about; be a good little puppy and don’t bound into the pack all slobbering with enthusiasm.

5. If you have the resources, assign a Community Manager (paid and with good writing skills) to become part of, and to handle, a community (it is best if the Community Manager has an interest in that particular community). From within the community, cultivate an “Evangelist” to work with your Community Manager (unpaid).

6. Communications: Create your social media platforms so that they will bring people to an understanding of who you are, what you know and what you do: Micro blogs such as Twitter, facebook, My Space, Linkedin and E-Newsletters are commonly used to shout-out and point people to other information you want them to know about. The next step points to>>>> your blog, where you show your expertise and knowledge in a casual and friendly manner and certainly NOT in a sales-like manner. Blogs can also include V-Logs where you are showing your knowledge but on video (such as YouTube). Once convinced of your expertise, these blogs and V-logs can point towards >>>>Your Web site where finally they really understand what you have to offer. Please understand that although this is an ideal progression, people will jump in at any one point and go on to another (if they are interested), so you must cross reference your platforms at all points.

7. Listening: Implement rudimentary listening platforms such as Google Blogs or Technocrati or others.

8. Message: Determine the message and the mix of content you intend to create for each community, and build a calendar around it. Remember your bottom line is to create “buzz”. Learn how to build awareness and encourage conversations with the content you’re creating.

9. Measurement: How are you going to measure your success or failure in the social media arena? Remember, it is not the Return on Investment (ROI) that counts in social media, it is the Return on Engagement (ROE). Here are some suggestions:

• Buzz, (conversations that go three or more in depth)

• Friends, followers, joiners, eyeballs

• Readers of your blogs

• Comments on blogs

• Newsletter subscribers

• Unique Web site users that have come to your Web site from tweet links, or blog links etc.

• People who complete “conversion” activities on your Web site (you decide what those conversion activities are.)

10. Test: Try out your message with your peers and your consumers. Don’t be afraid to ask “what would think if I said this…” Continue asking that question all the way through your social media campaigns. “How am I doing” is the most neglected and important question in business.

Many of the answers cannot be received until you assimilate into the communities and conversations. But thinking of these situations ahead of time is no different than anticipating the hard questions from reporters before a press conference. Prepare yourself with answers, then read and react. It’s not the soup-to-nuts of a social media strategy, but the answers to these questions are at the core of successful ones.

Remember, there are as many paths to successful social networking as there are human beings. This is simply a guideline from which you can develop your own style.

See how HPR social media coaching has created its own Social Media Stratgy Example for you to use.

Thank you for reading this post. Please read past posts and forward on to your friends.

The next one will be posted next Sunday. Follow Twitter for shout-outs about new posts on The Buzz Master Blog.

Developing a Great Social Media Strategy

John Hope-Johnstone

Goede dag (Dutch for “good day”): Sorry about the two week gap in postings, I am just sure your week was ruined without it! I was enjoying great family and friends time at Beach Acres Resort, on Vancouver Island, (what a paradise!)

In the last post we promised you that we would talk about the most important part of social media and that is developing your strategy.

If I were to take a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess), I would have to say that at least 70% of people using social media for the exposure of their brand are wasting a chunk of their hard work and money because they haven’t asked the one key question..WHY?

A teacher once told me; “just because it exists doesn’t mean you have to use it.”  I think she said “grasshopper” after that statement but time clouds my memory. If you haven’t answered the question “why” about what you are doing in social media and developed a strategy then you are sailing into unfamiliar waters without a map.

I have written in past posts that Social Media belongs under the marketing heading of “Public Relations”. Public Relations are defined in my book “How to Market Tourism in the 21st Century”  as: “The development of social, political and marketing capital through third party endorsements. Part of the value of third party endorsements lies in reproducing them, so they can live forever”.

As a tool of PR, Social Media has great value in creating both social (facebook etc.,) and political (Linkedin etc.,) capital and by pulling comments and blogs about your brand into your Web site you can make them live forever.

We dedicated the July 19th post, to the act of developing a Key Influencer List which is a big part of developing your Social Media Strategy.

The content of today’s post comes, in part, from a great book, (although very thick), http://www.socialmediabible.com . In this book Lon Safko and David Brake encourage you to think of your social media strategy as a platform supported by four pillars. You really need all four pillars, they suggest, stabilizing the platform and making your strategy work:

1: Communication
2: Collaboration
3: Education
4: Entertainment

As we discussed in the July 12th Post  the bottom line of social networking is to create “buzz”. Buzz is any conversation that goes three or more conversations in depth about your brand. Developing a Social Media Strategy answers the question; “what are you trying to get them to buzz about?”

The four pillars are levels of engagement and before you can develop a strategy around them, perhaps it would be a good idea to review what you’re already doing and the results you have been getting.

How to Develop a Social Media Strategy:

1: Divide your consumers into “communities of common interest” in other words groups that revolve around some common interests, (perhaps a lifestyle interest?). Look at your present customer base and see how you can divide them into market segments based on common interests. Don’t know? Better find out. Or, perhaps you have to create a new community, although it’s easier to join one. Remember, communities succeed only if they meet the needs of their members. The concept of community is fairly broad and many of these communities will overlap or operate interdependently. Here are five broad categories of the term Community of Common Interest:

                                          1: Metropolis Communities: facebook and MySpace are examples of this category, they are small countries within themselves with millions of members.
                                          2: Affinity Communities: Some people are passionate about National Public Radio (NPR). If you visit www.npr.org, you will see a lot of rich media that allows you to interact with NPR become part of the NPR community.
                                          3: Intercompany Communities:  Using such platforms as Ning and Wiki apps and others, companies are creating their own communities that allow employees to contribute and interact and get to know each other in a whole new way.
                                          4: Vertical Communities: These are often industry specific communities where people with specialized skills and expertise interact with one another. A community of international petroleum engineers would be an example.
                                         5:  Horizontal Communities: These communities are not industry specific but focus on functional groups with expertise or interests that cut across a horizontal path of other communities or industries.     

2: Develop a list of a minimum of ten things you want each community to understand and buzz about your brand (personal or corporate). These are the communication and education pillars of your Strategy.

3:  Figure out which the best social media platforms are (i.e. facebook, My Space, Twitter, Linkedin etc) or a combination, to reach these communities. (Read August 8th 2009 blog post).

4:  Who are the leaders of each community? How do you want to influence them and which of the ten messages do you want them to understand about your brand. This is developing your Key Influencer List [past post].

5: Find and engage those key community leaders, ask these key influencers to contribute to your social media. Become friends on facebook, follow in Twitter, join their Linkedin group. Mention them in your blogs and videos. Promote them and they will promote you and hence influence their communities. 

6: Decide on which units of measurement of success or failure you are going to use to gauge your strategies performance. For example, friends from the community involve on facebook or eyeballs on You Tube or followers on Twitter from each community.

Lastly (aren’t you glad),

7:  Each community needs a party. You Tube throws actual parties where members get to actually have face time, exchange ideas and have fun. Why don’t you be the party planner for your various communities? If not a party at least some sort of human interaction. This can be the climax to your social media strategy for the year!

Sorry, this blog post is far too long but the subject is incredibly important to your social media success. Let’s follow up with next weeks post on the same subject of “Strategy Pt2″ but create a case study example. Ok?

Please comment on this blog love to get advice or embed it into your Web site or recommend to a friend. Thanks for reading Buzz Master.