Developing a Social Media
Strategy
What is social media?
Social media comes in many shapes and sizes but in essence
revolves around building two-way conversations between
an organisation and its stakeholders or between individuals.
It’s not about technology…it’s about relationships
• Social sharing sites – YouTube, Flickr, iTunes, Pinterest, Slideshare
• Social networking sites – F
• book, Twitter, LinkedIn
• Social news sites – Digg, Reddit, Newsvine
• Social bookmarking – Delicious, StumbleUpon
• Social review sites – TripAdvisor, Amazon
Where does social media fit?
•
Social media activity can complement strategy in many
areas:
- PR/Media/Marcomms
- Member/customer communication - Event marketing
- Member recruitment
- Policy formation/ influencing - Campaign development
- Corporate profile raising
For social media to be effective it must be adopted broadly by the whole organisation. How can we ensure this happens?
Social media benefits
Social media adds value to relationships between
organisations and their audiences:
- Better group decision making, through greater access to resources - Deeper relationships and commitment to your brand through
knowing the people, from sales to service and support
- Stronger brand voice - Communication that helps tell brand and industry stories, shares information and builds/augments
relationships with members, stakeholders, influencers, media etc. - More effective peer-to-peer dialogue – More options for direct
communication without intermediary filter
- Enhanced brand advocate network – Communication that helps support and build a referral community
What’s the objective?
•
Market intelligence?
•
Enhancing customer service?
•
Extending PR outreach?
•
Winning new business?
•
Thought leadership?
•
Driving share-of-voice, profile raising campaigns?
•
Crisis management?
•
Promoting key events/ programmes?
Where do we start?
•
What is the buy in within your organisation?
•
Start small with a test and learn approach
•
What’s being said about the organisation across social
media?
•
How can we ‘listen’ to the conversations online?
•
Where are our customers engaging in conversations?
•
What are similar organisations doing in social media?
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Which channels should the organisation actively develop
– consider a ‘stress test’ approach?
Social media strategy
•
Define social media activity by corporate
objective and audience relevance:
- Create social media matrix that links objectives to primary and
secondary audiences, with a channel justification statement
arising from ‘stress test’ research
Objective Measurement Tactics Tools
Increase sales Leads Contact more prospects Blog
Raise profile Media mentions Media relations Hire PR agency
Create thought leadership Speaking opportunities Meet channel partners Video podcasts
Which ‘off-website’ channels?
• Tool selection should be the natural outcome of a process that
begins with goals and works through to tactics and tools.
- LinkedIn – perhaps a members-only main group with sub-groups for each region; individual exec accounts
- Twitter – news and info distribution via corporate; policy; media and events accounts (with link to content)
- Flickr – for event photo sharing
- YouTube/ Vimeo – channels and (perhaps) member video content sharing
- FaceBook – growing in b2b space for day-to-day news, information and awareness campaigns targeting wider audiences, with a
‘On-website’ channels
•
Use social networking to engage ‘on-website’
through a community area…
-
Community forums
– sector group discussions for
subscribed members
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Blogs
-
multiple staff blogs that discuss relevant
problems, solutions and technologies. Designed to
use selected key words for optimised search
The right content for social media
Help create content that is relevant, timely and interesting
- Useful content that anticipates and solves your potential
customers problems should be the focus of online content
- Become a trusted source of advice for you customers
- Use interesting topics to get engagement
For media:
Social media challenges
- Building momentum and social media position takes time
- Internal resource needed to develop and maintain content
and monitor/manage responses
- Channel proliferation can overload resources (let others
spread the word)
- Create an engagement policy for staff
- Create engagement rules for members
- Create a crisis plan to respond to negative comment
- Create a review methodology measuring social media impact
vs. key objectives
Social media case study
•
Rebranding of online rail booking service
Project: Engage with key stakeholders using traditional and social media channels at trade show
Activity:
- Video filmed at show, uploaded to Youtube, shared via branded e-news to subscribers and
links tweeted to followers and media
- Customer event photos uploaded to Flickr channel and tweeted
- Media information distributed via online news channels, tweeted to industry journalists and
delivered via RSS and email media packs
- Creation of LinkedIn User Group for customers
- Follow-on e-newsletters issued to customer base with links to new demo videos available on
the company’s YouTube channel and website
Outcomes:
- 500 YouTube hits in 24 hours
- Extensive online and traditional media coverage
- Contribution to immediate system awareness and knowledge among target audience
- Positive feedback on corporate perception as a result of social media campaign
Current Clients
- Honeywell Turbo Technologies - Honeywell Speciality Materials - Rowner Renewal Partnership - Parkeon Plc
- Schaefer - Groundwork - Evolvi
- Sentinel Housing - Fedden USP - Ferryspeed - Island Stone
Harvest Marketing Communications Ltd 33 Broadmarsh Innovation Centre Havant
Hampshire PO9 1HS www.harvestpr.co.uk @harvestcomms 023 9244 9655
- Eco Friendly Tiles - My Accident Solicitor - Red Lantern
- Spectrum Housing
- Sensus Metering Systems - DHM Stallard
- Manufacturing Advisory Service - Bluelite Graphics
