Social Media Strategy Notes

Why You Need A Social Media Strategy

  • It helps expand other marketing efforts.
  • It helps build brand awareness.
  • It is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your audience.
  • You can use social media to attract buyers.

Statistics

  • 67% of consumers are more likely to spend more on a brand they follow. Source: Sprout Social.
  • 78% of consumers say they will visit the physical retail store of a brand they follow. Source: Sprout Social.
  • 84% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand they follow. Source: Sprout Social.

Buyer Persona

  • A buyer persona helps determine who your ideal customer is.

Example Buyer Persona: Marketing Michelle

  • BACKGROUND:
    • Manages a marketing department with 3-5 employees.
    • Married with a couple of children.
    • Has been in her role for five years.
  • IDENTIFIERS:
    • Drives a modest vehicle.
    • Achiever.
    • Determined individual and a natural leader.
    • Stylish trend-setter.
  • GOALS:
    • Has high ambitions for her team.
    • Wants to exceed expectations for driving ROI.
    • Likes to be her own boss.
  • CHALLENGES:
    • Generating enough leads for the sales team.
    • Managing brand communications.
    • Looking for ways to streamline processes.
    • “I never feel like I have enough time.”
  • FAVORITE BRANDS:
    • Apple
    • Sephora
    • Volkswagen
    • Zappos
  • FAVORITE WEBSITES:
    • Vanity Fair
    • Fast Company
    • Mashable
    • AdWeek
  • DEMOGRAPHICS:
    • Late 30s-early 40s
    • Income 70K+70K+
  • SPENDS ONLINE TIME ON:
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Etsy
  • FAVORITE TECH:
    • Kindle
    • iPhone
    • Amazon Echo
    • MacBook
    • Fitbit
  • INTERESTS:
    • Pop music
    • Romantic comedies (movies & TV)

SMART Goals

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Timely

To Build Your Social Media Strategy, You’ll Need:

  • To be able to explain each social media channel.
  • To understand the impact of social listening and engagement.
  • To develop a content strategy for your social media plan.
  • To be able to identify ways metrics are crucial to your success.
  • To integrate social media into your other inbound efforts.

Social Media Channels Explained

Facebook

  • 2.45 Billion people are using Facebook. Source: Statista
  • Facebook engagement rates have rapidly declined.
  • Facebook requires businesses to use a business page.
Facebook Business Page Benefits:
  • Personal pages have a 5K friend limit while business pages can have millions of followers.
  • Access to analytics (Insights).
  • Ability to categorize company for search, add mission statement, product catalog, awards, and give customers a chance to do reviews.
  • The most important reason is for advertising.
  • Facebook Stories is a form of microcontent, designed to disappear after 24 hours.
  • 400 Million people belong to a Facebook Group. Source: Statista.

YouTube

  • 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Source: Statista.
  • 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day. Source: Statista.
  • YouTube offers interstitial advertising-short clips that appear before a video.
  • Over half of YouTube users use the site to learn how to do things they’ve never done before.
  • YouTube has some of the highest referral traffic rates of all the platforms.

Instagram

  • 75% of Instagram's audience is between the ages of 18-24. Source: Pew Research Center.
  • 90% of Instagram users follow at least one brand account. Source: Pew Research Center.
  • 23x is how much higher Instagram engagement is than on Facebook. Source: Business of Apps.

Twitter

  • 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: Twitter.
  • 23x is how much higher Instagram engagement is than on Facebook. Source: Business of Apps.
  • Twitter says 80% of their advertisers' inbound social customer service requests happen on Twitter.
  • 350 million hours of live video are streamed on Twitter every day. Source: Omnicore Agency.

LinkedIn Benefits

  • Look up individuals you are meeting with.
  • Find out more about a prospect.
  • Build thought leadership.
  • Offer value through targeted advertising.
  • To network in LinkedIn groups.
  • Share content with links back to your website properties.

Pinterest

  • 3 months is the average life of a Pinterest Pin. Source: WebPageFX.
  • 79.5% of Pinterest users are female. Source: Statista.

Snapchat

  • Age 15-25 is the largest demographic of Snapchat users

TikTok

  • 400 million users on TikTok. Source: Statista.
  • 52 minutes is the amount of time the average user spends on TikTok per day. Source: MediaKix.

Setting Social Media Goals

  • KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR: A quantifiable measure used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, or project in meeting objectives for performance.
  • VANITY METRIC: A surface-level metric: numbers or statistics that look great on paper but don’t correlate to business success.
  • Remember your business goals.

Social Media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

  • Reach
  • Engagement
  • Return on investment (ROI)
  • Retention and loyalty
KPIs: Reach
  • Follower count: how many individuals follow your social channels.
  • Impressions: how often your content is viewed.
  • Mentions: how many times your brand is mentioned across social channels.
  • Share of voice: how many people are talking about your brand vs. the competition.
KPIs: Engagement
  • Likes or favorites: an indication that your viewers appreciate the content.
  • Comments: direct engagement with your content.
  • Sharing and retweets: a demonstration that your audience cares enough about your content to let others know about it.
  • Ratings and reviews: a demonstration of strong engagement and opinion.
  • Inbound website links: An indication that your content is interesting enough to click through to your site.
KPIs: Return on Investment
  • Direct sales revenue
  • Lead conversions
  • Support costs per customer
  • Lifetime value
KPIs: Retention and Loyalty
  • Reviews and ratings
  • Issues resolved
  • Service-level agreement
  • Time to resolution
  • Customer Satisfaction
  • Sentiment
  • Revisit your KPIs every six to twelve months.

Structuring Your Social Media Team

  • 62% of respondents do social media on top of other duties. Source: HubSpot.
  • 37% work on teams of five people or fewer. Source: HubSpot.
  • Always start with business goals.

Who Are Your Stakeholders?

  • Human Resources
  • Public Relations
  • Corporate Comms
  • Investor Relations
  • Social Marketing/Brand
  • Executive Team
  • R&D
  • Product Marketing
  • Business Dev/Sales
  • Will you be international?
  • Do you have executive buy-in?
  • What are your roadblocks?

What are you trying to accomplish?

  • Service Customers
  • Monitor Conversations
  • Manage Reputation
  • Lead Generation
  • Brand Awareness
  • Sales
  • Product Feedback
  • Recruit New Employees
  • Solicit Product Feedback
  • Public Relations
  • Educate/Share Information

Social Media Roles

  • Strategist
  • Analyst
  • Project Manager
  • Community Manager
  • Education/Training
  • Content Manager
  • Designer/Developer
  • Blogger/Copywriter
  • Influencer Relations
  • Photographer/Videographer
  • Business Unit Liaison

Internal vs. External Teams

  • Social Media Agency
  • Moderation Agency
  • Digital Media Agency
  • PR Agency

Social Media Team Models

  • Decentralized: No one department manages or coordinates; efforts bubble up from the edges of the company.
  • Centralized: One department (like Corp Communications) manages all social activities.
  • Hub and Spoke: A cross-functional team sits in a centralized position and helps various nodes such as business units.
  • Dandelion: Similar to Hub and Spoke but applicable to multinational companies where "companies within companies" act nearly autonomously from each other under a common brand.
  • Holistic: Everyone in the company uses social media safely and consistently across all of the organizations
Map Out A Plan For The Future
  • Plan business and social goals one to three years out. Consider your stakeholders’ needs.
  • Identify possible social media roles based on those goals.
  • Develop a timeline for reaching those goals and building the team.
  • Allocate or advocate for resources.
  • Evangelize your plan throughout the organization.

Evaluating the Best Tools for the Job

  • There are hundreds of options for social media tools and services. Source: 2020 Marketing Technology Landscape, Scott Brinker, chiefmartec.com

Social Listening

  • Review comments and mentions.
  • Follow conversations about your brand.
  • Watch hashtags.
  • Keep track of influencers, customers, and prospects

Publishing and Community Management Tools

  • Managing multiple social services in one place
  • Scheduling content
  • Cloning posts for resharing
  • Managing multiple users who need access and publishing rights

Selecting a Social Media Tool:

  1. Write down the top 25 most important features you need.
  2. Review the list and circle your top five features.
  3. Use these two lists to evaluate potential tools. SOURCE: BUFFER

Developing Budget and Garnering Buy-In

  • Organic reach is down.

Budget Considerations

  • What social content do you need to create?
  • Will you need to hire freelancers or a digital, social, or ad agency?
  • What’s your ideal mix of organic and paid advertising?
  • How much advertising do you think you will require?
  • Are you considering paying influencers to promote your products?
  • Do you have the right staffing for your plan?
  • Which services and tools do you need? How much will they cost?
  • Gather industry data to provide justification.
  • Senior leaders care about:
    • New avenues for revenue
    • Cost savings and efficiency
    • Competitive advantage.
    • Protecting brand reputation
    • Customer satisfaction

Position your idea as an experiment

  1. Start with your business goals.
  2. Explain your hypothesis and how social media will help those business goals.
  3. Demonstrate how you will test that hypothesis and for what duration.
  4. Share the results back to the leadership team.
  5. Have a modified budget for the experiment to prove value first.
  • Plan future scenarios.