Before we delve into the intricacies of social media marketing and the strategies for effective social media marketing, let us begin by looking at what social media means.
What is Social Media?
Before we go too far, let us take a deep breath and think about what social media is. Most people have been thinking of this too narrowly, it is actually much broader. It is more than just your usual Facebook and twitter. There are actually around 13 categories of social media. Here is the list:
1. Monitoring tools
2. Publishing tools
3. Social Networking Sites
4. Micro blogging sites
5. Widgets
6. Collaboration tools
7. Photo Sharing Sites
8. Video Sharing Sites
9. Personal Broadcasting tools
10. Virtual Worlds
11. Social Commerce
12. Location Based Services
13. Social Bookmarking and News Aggregation
So when you think about your social media marketing strategy, it is important to think broader and keep this list in mind.
Questions you should ask yourself
• What do you want to gain from a social media plan?
• What does your business offer that people are likely to want to discuss?
• What is your current business model and how can social media impact that?
• Do you sell through e-commerce, retail stores, third parties, OEMs?
Forrester’s POST Methodology
Forrester’s is a really good methodology. Mentioned below is an expansion of Forrester’s POST methodology:
• People: Who are you trying to target, and why do they care?
• Objectives: What are you trying to accomplish?
• Strategies: Define how you will accomplish this using Social media
• Technologies: Look into technologies that fit
If you keep an eye on POST, you will avoid a lot of hassles in life. Just saying For example, “I want to be on Facebook” is not a strategy. A strategy will be clear on what you want to accomplish by your presence on Facebook.
The Ignite Method of Social Media Strategy
There are six steps to it, but step 2 and step 4 are the most important.
Step 1: Discovery – Getting up to speed.
Step 2: Community Analysis – Get into a deep dive into the social space, in the process, you will uncover active target audiences, how they are engaging and interacting with each other. Also get into how they are interacting with brands, including what terminology they are using, etc. This also includes competitors.
Step 3: Goal Setting – Social media objectives are chosen for success metrics, activities, and a groundwork is laid down leading to a measurement plan.
Step 4: Engagement Plan – A plan that is detailed and a list of recommendations on social media resources, tactics, budgets and timelines that are in line to support the objectives of business and marketing.
Step 5: Metrics and Measurement Strategy – We come to an agreement on how objectives will get measured, which goals will be allocated and have reports and what will be the monitoring needs in the long term.
Step 6: Implementation/Training – Develop resources, specific teams’ trainings, putting the plans in motion and providing ongoing support.
The goals are set in step 3 but step 5 is the one that ensures that the goals are quantifiable, so they can be measured and mean the same to everyone involved.
Channel Analysis (Community Analysis)
• What Channels are currently being used by the brand?
o The first thing to look at in Channel Analysis is to figure out what channels, example: Facebook, Twitter, etc. are being used by the company/brand.
• Do they serve any clear social media needs for both the brand and audience?
• Are the resources in place to support all the channels (the puppy problem)?
o Having a social media presence is like having a puppy. If you get to have a puppy, you must feed him every day. If you cannot feed the puppy, just don’t have one!
Previous Campaign Analysis
Think of all the previous campaigns you have done and analyze them, see what the social spread of those campaigns was.
• What are the current strong points of campaigns? Weak points?
o How does the campaign get started?
o How strong is the social spread?
o How easy is the social spread?
o What are the short-term benefits of the brand?
o What are the long-term benefits of the brand?
o How does SEO support the campaign and/or how does the brand improve its SEO because of the campaign?
• How is the campaign supported by or supportive of other marketing channels?
Competitive Analysis
Take a look at your competitors and pay attention to what they are doing.
• Who are the competitors of the brand and what are they doing in the social space?
• How do the social media efforts of different brands support (or not support) the differentiation?
• What are the strong points of competitor’s campaigns using social media? Weak points?
Audience Analysis
The longest part of this is the Audience Analysis. The only superior source of competitive advantage is the knowledge about the customer. If you can get that superior information about the customer, you will be way ahead.
• Who is the target audience for the social media plan?
• What can we learn about the target audience so far?
o Which networks are they on (Composition and index)?
o What are their social behaviors (Creators, Joiners, Inactives)?
o What do they believe/watch/do that is different than non-targets?
• What do they want from the brand?
Social Strategy (Engagement Plan)
Strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. This is where all of the information from the Community Analysis is used to make a roadmap for the client to use social media to succeed.
Content Strategy
• What content will you be producing and in what formats (video updates, blog posts, tutorials)?
o How frequently will you create this content and what is the editorial calendar for the next few months?
• Who is producing this content, and do they have the time/ability to do so?
o Do they have access to the information to do so quickly and credibly?
• Who will care about this content, how will they find it and how/why will they share it?
Channel Strategy
• What channels will be used to implement the plan?
• Where is your target audience and how can you effectively engage them?
• Which channels are the brand ready to support (content and resources)?
Once you have been through the homework, the next steps are designing the actual campaign and launching it.
Category: Social Media Marketing
Keywords: Social Media, marketing, sharing
Tags: Social Media marketing, Sharing, Collaboration
