The social media strategy

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
notebook

Outline
o Social Media Initiative

o Social Media Strategy

o Marketing the brand social media strategy

Preamble
• Many businesses are quickly adopting social media as a new form of
communication with their customers. Proactive brands have already begun
tapping into this resource, and unmanned social networking communities have
sprung up.

• It is important to note the growing importance of using social media
networking as a way to communicate with the TG. This fundamental shift in
communication gives brand the opportunity to build brand equity and engage
its customers with a new channel of communication

• Social media allows the ability to deliver our marketing messages, promote
various company initiatives and attract brand enthusiasts

• Utilizing these various forms of media allows the brand create a community of
active and prospects customers who we can ask for direct feedback, learn
what issues are important to their businesses and learn how we can become
solution providers.

Your Customers and Social Media?
• Social Media is not intended to detract from using other forms of marketing
channels (Email, direct mail etc.) it is an additional tool to extend our reach with
those customers who want to interact.

• According to industry trends, more people are opting in to follow a brand or
business that interests them on a personal and business level. The lines between
where your work place ends and your personal space begins is becoming
increasingly difficult to define.

Why go “Social” ?
• Join the conversation

• Engage in beneficial conversation with customers

• Build brand loyalty

• Increase brand awareness

• Energize customers about our brand

• Increase NPS/VOC

• Competitors are already engaged

Psychic drift
B2B buying process is fundamentally changing. 93% of buyers use
search to begin their buying process and 37% post questions on
social networking sites when looking for suggestions

Here is what Business to Busines (B2B) buyers currently think

• 85% interact and engage online
• 93% companies should have social media presence
• 9:10 say when they are ready to buy, they’ll find you

What's in it for the (consumer)

• Anticipated reciprocity

• Increased recognition

• Sense of efficacy

• Communication

In it for brand
INCREASE
CUSTOMER
REVENUE
LOYALTY

RESOURCE FOR INCREASE BRAND
OUR CUSTOMERS AWARENESS

ENHANCE OUR MARKETING INCREASE COMPETITOR
OUTREACH INTELLIGENCE

Objectives
• Position brand as a thought leader in the industry

• Engage in direct customer feedback and conversation

• Increase traffic to the web and new customer acquisition via PPC and organic
search

• Educate customers on the benefits

• Increase product penetration and sales in its categories

• Increase brand awareness and customer loyalty

• Engage in online industry conversations with customers and key decision makers
via social media outlets

Strategy Direction

• Entering the social media environment can be intimidating
if you do not have a robust strategy in place.

• It is not recommended to join or start a conversation
online without conducting some initial research
(“listening”)

• understand how each social media platform can be
used to meet your overall social media objectives.

Tracking our Competitors

• Brands have started maintaining blogs,
Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. Monitoring
what they are promoting, important insights
can gain by looking carefully into what they
are interested in and where their business is
headed.

Our direction

Social Media Strategy Direction/ Business plan

• B

• A blog focusing on related industry content will not only anchor our social media
outreach, it will help position ourselves as a thought leader within the industry.

• The blog will focus on sustainable content that is related to all our customer
verticals and will consist of topics that will promote engagement and sharing such
as new market data, educational content, thought leadership.

• The more diverse and useful our posts are for our customers the more chances we
have to increase leads, and overall industry clout.

• A blog is also beneficial to helping your Search Engine Marketing strategy.

• Make business connections, cultivate leads and develop your brand image
among top professionals. This platform allows you to identify the types of
connections and lead discussions on various public forums.

• Participating and leading online discussions will help promote personnel
expertise

• position brand as a thought leader in industry.

• Making key connections with top business leaders online will extend our
relationship and lead to the possibility of contract negotiations and
increase of market share.

Twitter is great for crowd sourcing – when you’re following people in your industry and
people are following you, you’re aware of what they think about what you are doing and
what they are saying about it.
A Promotional Palace

Twitter is great for building influence on your business – the more content you produce
and market, the better you build your reputation as an expert in the industry.
Create Character in Your Brand

Twitter provides the platform for you to establish yourself as a trusted source of content.
Equity booster

Basically, it’s like having your own online focus group, 24/7.
Customer Service and Chit Chat

Branding and Free Advertising: With its over 600 million members worldwide, Facebook is a
great way to generate brand awareness. Free advertising occurs when your fans will “like”
your page and recommend them to their friends.

Customer Interaction: Facebook is a good medium to interact with your customers. You can
communicate promotions, events and contests. You can ask for ideas from them on how you
can improve your products or services.

Networking: You can search for people or businesses in the Facebook platform who are involved
in your industry and become a fan of a page or profile. By being connected to them you
increase your visibility to your target customers.

Drive web traffic and Lead generation: With the recent updates in the Facebook system,
websites can now be linked to Facebook profiles and pages. You can review your fans profile
and find future prospects to aid in lead qualifying process.

Reputation Management: Facebook, as an interactive media can be used for reputation
management by answering back to those bad publicity and clarifying some misguided
information.

Free advertising

Short term gains - gain immediate visitors.

Long terms gains - attracts visitors for years to come.

Causes exponential growth – reaches a large audience. Automate your marketing methods -
set it up once and forget about it.

Inexpensive to set-up – it primarily involves some investment of time. Viral marketing tools
are easy to develop i.e. you can create an e-book without knowing how to write.

Quickly build your reputation.

Easy to combine with other marketing methods – i.e. include as a bonus with other
products.

Increase targeted traffic to your web site.

Customers can almost always be reached and interrupted

Reduced targeting errors and improved data management

Improved time relevance: The always-on and always-aware nature of mobile devices
provides more timely communications than any other channel.

Location awareness: Knowing someone’s geographic location can be critical to engaging
in a relevant conversation with them.

Increased intimacy with the device and via the device: Sharing of mobile devices is not
unheard of, but is less common than sharing of personal computers.

Social Media 6 month Goals
•Attract 100 subscribers to the blog in 6 months
•Drive traffic from blog to homepage

•Generate 2 comments or re-tweets/month
•Direct traffic to the blog page with Twitter

orums Stimulate thought provoking conversation on QA forums

Achieve 100 likes/month

Accomplish multiple views and downloads of content

Achieve 1000 clicks /month on mobile link prompts

Marketing the brand social media strategy

Communication Plan
• To drive customers to your social media channels and
encourage conversation, there is need to promote your
strategy in a variety of external and internal communication
methods.

• An editorial and media calendar which could include items to
promote topics and blog posts internally would be ignited

• A comprehensive public relations strategy that will include
targeting key media and industry contacts, and sustainability
bloggers should be initiated.

Internal Communication Plan

Promote the Blog and Twitter feed internally via:

• Corporate E-mails

• Intranet

• What’s Update

• Salesforce.com

External Communication Plan
Event Marketing, Core Direct Mail, A Strategic Marketing and E-business unit should be
assigned to coordinate a robust marketing strategy that can promote social media
efforts in a variety of marketing channels including:

• Vertical Homepages

• Customer E-mails

• E-spots on all outgoing e-mails

• Press releases to trade publications and leading industry relevant bloggers

• Print advertising Call To Action

• Tradeshow booth graphics, and collateral including QR codes and pre/post show mailers

• All direct mail collateral where appropriate (Tabloid, sustainability guide, Basic Stuff)

• Industry associations.

Ext. Communication Contd……
In order to continue to driving customers back to our social media channels the blog
should include a subscription box to allow followers to receive updates via e-mail.

Each channel (where applicable) will also have an area for customers to follow brand on
Twitter and LinkedIn.

• Blog Roll

• Social Media widgets

• -Facebook “Like”

• -Subscribe to blog

• -Social bookmarking (Stumble, Digg!, etc)

• -“Follow us” Twitter, LinkedIn

The social media strategy

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