In this post I’ll pull apart and discuss a fourteen-step strategy for generating sales leads using social media. Topics/steps are:
How To Use This Strategy
Step 1 – Establish Clear Business Goals
Step 2 – Profile Setup & Platform Monitoring
Step 3 – Create a Clear Conversion Strategy
Step 4 – Create and Promote your Community Value Proposition
Step 5 – Create A Social Media Style Guide
Step 6 – Locate Content Sources, Create aContent Calendar
Step 7 – Create and Maintain a Blog
Step 8 – Execute Organic Social Media Marketing Strategies
Step 9 – Execute Paid Social Media Marketing Campaigns
Step 10 – Integrate Your Website & Existing Campaigns
Step 11 – Monitor for Mentions of your Brand, Competitors and Industry
Step 12 – Measure and Track Results
Step 13 – Plan and Execute A Social Media Campaign
Step 14 – Create a Social Media Policy
How To Use This Strategy
This is a systematic social media marketing strategy for lead generation.
This post can be used in two ways:
- By following each step in sequential order (recommended).
This will ensure you have ‘covered all bases’ and have performed the necessary groundwork for each step. - By jumping to any step as required.
Use this process if you are already established in the social web and you’re only looking for tips or guidance for specific social media marketing deliverables or activities.
Getting The Most From This Strategy
The following tips will help you achieve strong results from this post:
- Follow instructions carefully
Follow each step carefully. This post has been designed to walk through each step in a clear and logical order. - Allocate adequate time
Make sure the executor of your social media marketing dedicates at least half an hour per day to your social profiles. Fundamentally speaking, achieving strong results in social media relies on the creation of relationships between your brand and your followers. This takes time to create (similar to any normal ‘face to face’ relationships). - Systematise everything you can
When you conduct your own social media marketing, try to createsystems that follow a repeatable process (which therefore allows you to repeat them quickly, every time). The templates and checklists in this package are designed to help you systematise your social media marketing as much as possible. - Consistently test, optimise and adjust strategies
Always test, question, analyse, optimise and adjust your strategies and tactics. Optimising and adjusting (by testing and tweaking strategies) is a golden rule in any marketing discipline – and social media is no different. Optimising and adjusting strategies should be a regular and consistent action item in your daily, weekly and monthly checklists.
Step 1: Establish Clear Business Goals
Before you begin posting, sharing, interacting and building relationships on the social web, it’s essential that you establish clear business goals for your social media marketing.
Here’s why you should you set goals:
- You can engineer your social media marketing tactics towards these goals, instead of ‘working in the dark’ or using social media profiles aimlessly
- You can measure results against these goals, and can calculate a ‘social media ROI’ statistic
- You won’t find yourself wasting time or questioning why you’re using social media
Marketing your business on the social web is no different from traditional channels: you need clear and specific goals to provide strategic direction.
It’s important to make sure these goals are actual business goals like increased sales, increased brand awareness, improved customer service, shorter sales cycles or higher customer lifetime value. It’s easy to set goals such as ‘collect 10,000 followers’ however these vanity goals may not translate into actual, tangible business performance.
It’s also very easy to lose hours and hours on the social web (as you have probably found). Setting goals and objectives will help you retain focus.
Designate Key Performance Indicators
Once you have chosen your business goals, it’s important to designate KPIs to each goal so you can quickly and efficiently measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing strategies and campaigns.
Be wary of vanity KPIs such as ‘number of followers’ or ‘post engagement’ rates. Define KPIs that are easy to translate into traditional business metrics, such as conversion rate, sales etc. See Step 12 for more information on tracking and measuring your KPIs.
You may also want to set targets for your KPIs, although this may not be possible if your goals are new or you are unaware of how your social media marketing will contribute to each KPI. Once you are experienced in social media marketing, you may have a greater understanding of your KPIs and will be able to set goals for yourself or your social media marketing team.
Examples of Business Goals, Strategies & KPIs
Here are some traditional business goals and strategies to achieve them, followed by suggested Key Performance Indicators:
Traditional Business Goal: Increased Sales
Increase sales by using social media (and social communications) to influence transactional behaviour.
This is done by executing community engagement strategies and offering premium digital customer service.
Aim to influence transactional behaviour by:
- Increasing frequency of purchases (the number of times a customer buys from you in their lifetime)
- Increasing brand/product awareness (reach wider markets, or make more consumers aware of your brand or product)
- Increasing average sale value (increase the amount consumers spend each time they purchase from you)
Use social communications to convince and convert your followers – use social media to (a) inspire consumers to purchase and (b) help overcome any conscious or subconscious mental ‘roadblocks’ that may be preventing consumers from purchasing from you.
Sales Method 1: Increase Frequency Of Purchases
Use the following strategies to influence the number of times a consumer purchases from you over time. The end goal is to collect as many consumers as possible into your digital community so you can retain mindshare, increase awareness of your products or services and nurture existing customers to re-purchase. This strategy will differ depending on the value of each sale and the general purchase frequency of your product.
Example strategies include:
- Invite existing customers to connect with you on social media. Offer them a unique value proposition or incentive for them to join. This could be a free digital/physical item or general community value (similar to your Community Value Proposition). Conduct organic social media marketing strategies like content curation, value-provision and the discussion of common passions. This will contribute to mindshare and will help persuade customers to re-purchase.
- Share your Community Value Proposition and social profile URLs on till dockets, invoices or other post-sale collateral.
- Depending on your product or service, follow up with new customers via social media channels. Ask them if they are happy with your product and offer further assistance.
- Use your customer database to invite existing customers to your social profiles. Convince and convert them with organic social media marketing strategies.
- Lever positive comments from other followers as social proof. In Facebook, create sponsored posts with posts containing praise or positive comments from existing customers.
- Make it as simple as possible for your consumers to purchase from you. If possible, add an e-commerce/shopping cart page or tab to your Facebook profile.
Sales Method Two: Increase Awareness
Use the following strategies to increase awareness of your products or services. This will help you increase mindshare and reach wider markets. The end goal is to use social communications and the power of the social web to make more consumers aware of your products and services.
Example strategies include:
- Use Facebook advertising to increase awareness of your brand, your products/services or events that occur in your community. Provide links to either (a) your profile page (to grow your community and nurture your followers) or (b) directly to your product, service or lead capture page on your website (this is a traditional direct response scenario). Consider Facebook advertising as the mechanism for collecting new followers, and organic social media marketing as the mechanism for converting these followers into customers.
- Use Twitter’s ‘Promoted Tweets’ to increase awareness of your brand or your products/services on Twitter.
- Use LinkedIn advertising to increase awareness of your brand or your products/services.
- Visit other Facebook pages with a similar customer base/target market to your own. Provide value to these pages in the form of comments and constructive conversation without promoting your products.
- Conduct a social media campaign, or a campaign that uses a social profile as the campaign engine. Ensure you include links to your social conversion path in your campaign. Promote this campaign via digital and traditional channels.
- Conduct high-engagement organic social media marketing strategies like content curation, value-provision and the discussion of common passions in your community. This will increase awareness of your brand to your existing followers and will expose your brand to your followers’ personal networks. High engagement strategies have the potential to virally grow your community. Ensure you make your social conversion path as visible as possible on your wall and in posts (where possible).
- Promote your Community Value Proposition (and links or URLs to your profile pages) in as many places as possible, including:
- On your website
- In email marketing
- In email signatures
- On business cards
- On product packaging
- On designated hardcopy marketing collateral
- In other traditional marketing campaigns
Sales Method Three: Increase Purchase Value
Use the following strategies to increase average purchase value. The end goal is to persuade consumers to either (a) purchase items of higher value or (b) purchase multiple items per transaction.
Example strategies include:
- Promote awareness of items of higher value (or multiple items in ‘package deals’) via paid advertising on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or via organic social media marketing strategies (although don’t promote too heavily in organic social media marketing).
- Capture warm leads on a Facebook lead-capture page (name and email address) as an entry to a sales funnel that promotes your items of higher value.
- Make it as simple as possible for your consumers to purchase from you. If possible, add an e-commerce/shopping cart page/tab to your Facebook profile. Add an upsell funnel to your checkout process.
Traditional Business Goal: Increase Sales Leads
Increase sales leads by executing community engagement strategies and offering premium digital customer service. Also ensure you have a clearly defined social conversion/conversion path.
Also increase sales leads using Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns (using traditional ‘direct response’ marketing strategy).
Use the following strategies to increase lead flow. The end goal is to increase awareness of your brand and convert as many visitors or followers into leads (i.e. by collecting them into the top of your sales funnel or persuading them to purchase).
Example strategies include:
- Create a sales funnel (email autoresponders work as a great sales funnel) and use paid advertising on Facebook or LinkedIn to collect new leads into the funnel. Offer a free report or other item of value as a lead magnet.
- Integrate your social conversion path into your organic social media marketing as much as possible (although don’t promote too heavily in organic social media marketing). Add a tab on your Facebook page (under your splash image) containing a direct link to your lead capture page or ‘contact us’ form.
- Make it as simple as possible for consumers to express interest in your product or service. As above, add a tab on your Facebook page (under your splash image) containing a direct link to your lead capture page or ‘contact us’ form.
- Use organic social media marketing strategies to persuade consumers through their decision making process. Address any preconceived conscious or unconscious objections they may have about your product or service.
- Visit other Facebook pages with a similar customer base/target market to your own. Provide value to these pages in the form of comments and constructive conversation without promoting your products.
Note: If you are sending traffic to a page on your website, use shortened URLs, Google Analytics tracked links and goals. This will allow you to track which posts provide the most conversion goals.
Create a higher average customer lifetime value by building more profitable relationships with new and existing customers. This is done by executing community engagement strategies and offering premium digital customer service.
Traditional Business Goal: Increase Customer Lifetime Value
Use the following strategies to increase customer lifetime value. Similar to increasing the frequency of sales, the end goal is to draw as many consumers into your digital community so you can retain mindshare, increase awareness of your products or services and nurture existing customers to re-purchase. Note: this strategy will differ depending on the value of each sale and the general purchase frequency of your product.
Similar to increasing the frequency of sales, example strategies include:
- Invite existing customers to connect with you on social media. Offer them a unique value proposition or incentive for them to join. This could be a free digital/physical item or general community value (similar to your Community Value Proposition). Conduct ‘high-engagement’ organic social media marketing strategies such as content curation, value-provision and the discussion of common passions. This will contribute to mindshare and will help persuade customers to re-purchase.
- Share your Community Value Proposition and social profile URLs on till dockets, invoices or other post-sale collateral.
- Depending on your product or service, follow up with new customers via social media channels. Ask them if they are happy with your product and offer further assistance.
- Use your customer database to invite existing customers to your social profiles. Convince and convert them with ‘high-engagement’ organic social media marketing strategies.
- Lever positive comments from other followers as ‘social proof’. In Facebook, create ‘sponsored posts’ with posts containing praise or positive comments from existing customers.
- Make it as simple as possible for your consumers to purchase from you. If possible, add an e-commerce/shopping cart page or tab to your Facebook profile.
Shorten sales cycles by convincing and converting leads and prospects in shorter periods of time. Use social media to (a) inspire consumers to purchase and (b) help overcome any conscious or subconscious mental roadblocks that may be preventing consumers from purchasing from you.
This is done by executing community engagement strategies and offering premium digital customer service.
Traditional Business Goal: Shorten Sales Cycles
The end goal is to shorten the purchase decision-making process using organic social media marketing strategies.
Example strategies include:
- Invite prospects and leads to follow your social profiles. Conduct ‘high-engagement’ organic social media marketing strategies such as content curation, value-provision and the discussion of common passions in your community (remember consumers buy from those they like and trust).
- Respond to inquiries as soon as possible.
- Make it as simple as possible for your consumers to purchase from you. If possible, add an e-commerce/shopping cart page/tab to your Facebook profile.
Improve your online customer service by executing community engagement strategies and offering premium digital customer service.
Traditional Business Goal: Improve Online Customer Service
Use the following strategies to improve your online (digital) customer service. Digital customer service is similar to traditional customer service: a brand must be actively visible and responsive to positive and negative comments from consumers.
The end goal is to use social channels to increase customer service standards.
Example strategies include:
- Promote your Facebook page as an area where consumers can ‘ask you anything about your products or services’. This will directly assist the consumer and will also be a source of information to other consumers.
- Respond to inquiries as soon as possible.
- Monitor for complaints/issues, respond to them as soon as possible.
- Provide traditional customer service by answering questions, being actively visible etc.
- Monitor the social web for indirect complaints (as consumers often complain in areas not directly visible on a brand’s wall or community).
Traditional Business Goal: Increase Search Engine Results
Increase your organic/natural (i.e. non-paid) search engine results by increasing the social signals around your website. This means sharing links to pages on your website in your social media profiles.
The end goal is to increase your organic search results using ‘social link authority’ produced by social activity.
Example strategies include:
- Share links to your website in all social networks.
- Focus on sharing links to your website on Google+.
- Aim to have your tweets re-tweeted, discussed and shared virally.
Traditional Business Goal: Improve General Marketing ROI
Produce a greater marketing ROI by using the social web to amplify the reach and influence of your existing marketing strategies and campaigns.
The end goal is to use the reach and influence of the social web to amplify the effectiveness of traditional campaigns.
Example strategies include:
- Share offline and other digital campaigns with your digital community.
- Extend offline and other digital campaigns using the reach of the social web.
- Gain valuable insights from your followers (either by asking them directly or by observing as a third person).
- Gain valuable insights from other conversations occurring on the social web.
Step 2: Profile Setup & Platform Monitoring
The profile setup process varies between platforms, so I won’t explain how to tactically set up each one. You don’t have to use all profiles, however it’s a good idea to claim your username/business name on all profiles, so you have them for future use.
Profiles to create include:
- Facebook Business Page and Advertiser Account
- Google+
Setup Platform Management Tool
Sign up for a social media management tool. This will allow you to manage many of your social platforms from one interface.
Hootsuite is a free social profile management platform that allows you to post to many of your social profiles directly from the Hootsuite interface. You can also monitor Twitter for keywords of your choice directly from the interface.Visit www.hootsuite.com to get started. The tool is free and is simple to setup.
Setup ‘Google Alerts’
Sign up for Google Alerts, and create your first alert keywords.
Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google designed to alert a user (via email) when new content about a pre-defined keyword is found. This service is free and can be found at www.google.com/alerts.
Setup Google Alerts for the following information (you will be alerted by Google when new content is found for each keyword):
- Your brand name
- Three of your competitors brand names
- Five core keywords relevant to your industry
Setup ‘Twitter Alerts’
Sign up for a Twitter Alert service, and setup your first alert keywords.
There are many free services that allow you to be alerted via email when a particular keyword is discussed over Twitter. This is similar to Google Alerts.
An example of a free Twitter alert application is www.twilert.com
Setup a Twitter alerts for the following information:
- Your brand name
- Three of your competitors brand names
- Five core keywords relevant to your industry
Step 3: Create a Clear Conversion Strategy
A social media conversion strategy is a blueprint or guideline for producing traditional marketing conversions via the social web.
Traditionally speaking, a conversion is a desired goal or end-result of any marketing campaign or strategy. Most social media marketing campaigns should be geared towards the production of conversions(generally speaking, the success of a marketing strategy or campaign should be gauged on its ability to produce a conversion).
Why clearly define a social conversion strategy?
- You need somewhere to send your social traffic. You need a target destination where they can achieve a goal you want them to achieve (such as a sale, a sign up, or a contact form).
- You need to engineer your social media marketing towards a desired action (like all other forms of marketing).
- Depending on the type of conversion, you can use this information to establish a ROI.
A social media conversion strategy will have a clearly defined conversion and a strategic conversion path.
Create a ‘social conversion’
Your social conversion should be closely related (if not the same) to a ‘traditional’ digital marketing conversion. For example, if a traditional conversion on your website is to gain a new email list signup, or sell a product, then a social conversion should be a similar event.
Where possible, create a dedicated landing page for your social conversion. Using a dedicated landing page will allow you to specifically track how efficiently social media is contributing to your marketing and business goals.
Examples of a social conversion include:
- A landing page on your website with a lead capture form (possibly giving away a free report or something related to your business) designed to capture users into an email autoresponder sequence
- An ecommerce page/shopping cart
- A custom tab in Facebook with a similar landing page
- A contact form on your site or custom Facebook tab
- Another desired action, on a separate, dedicated web page or custom Facebook tab
Map your ideal conversion path
Design the path consumers will take as they move towards your social conversion.
Ultimately, think of social media as a funnel where your leads and prospects are nurtured from the moment they enter the funnel (i.e. the moment they ‘like’ or follow you) right through to the moment they convert (purchase, sign-up, contact etc.) Your social conversion path is the sequence of steps consumers will take on their journey from visiting a social media profile through to the final conversion event.
Here is an example of a conversion path:
- Entry Point
Consumers follow your brand on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and any other profile. Use your Community Value Proposition to attract new followers. Use an advertising channel such as Facebook Pay Per Click to promote your social profile and conversion page. - Stepping Stones/Visible Links
Add links to your conversion page/destination in very visible places. Try not to ‘over promote’. Visible places include:- A custom app button on your Facebook page
- Your Twitter bio link
- Links in the description of some images and videos
- The ‘About Us’ sections of all profiles
- Nurturing & Expansion
Use organic social media marketingto provide value, establish trust and grow relationships with your followers using community engagement and interaction strategies. For every nine messages you broadcast, soft-promote your desired conversion pageonce and once only (9:1 ratio). In these promotional messages, provide a link through to your conversion page (which could be on a social platform in the form of a specific app, or on your website). - Remarket using banner/text advertising
Use a third party remarketing tool (such as Google AdWords or Facebook Retargeting) to re-serve ads to consumers who have visited your website. This is a secondary nurturing tool. - Conversion
End result: Your social prospect converts via your website or custom Facebook tab.
Provide your followers with a ‘frictionless’ path to your conversion page. Make it extremely easy for them to convert.
Ensure you can track your social conversions
Make sure you can measure conversion source (where your conversions come from) and volume (how many conversions you are receiving). This will allow you to measure and optimise traffic sources (so you can determine which sources provide the highest volume and best quality conversions).
Here are some ways to track conversions:
- Use ‘Goals’ in Google Analytics. This will allow you to see which social platforms provide conversions
- Use Facebook tracking code. This is a feature of the Facebook advertising system that allows you to determine which ads provide conversions (and assist in the optimisation process).
- Use third party tracking, in your webforms (on your site and custom Facebook tabs).
Organic & Paid Conversion Integration
Organic Social Media Marketing
Your social conversion should be integrated into organic social media marketing strategies however should not be heavily promoted (traditional ‘hard selling’ and promotion do not work in news feeds and in general social conversation – in many cases they have a negative effect). Organic social media marketing should be geared to foster relationships, provide value and establish trust. It’s important to softly promote your social conversion instead of barraging your followers with constant direct response strategies. An example of soft promotion is:
“What do you think about the in this image? We like the XYZ. Want to learn more about the XYZ? Click here to signup to our free course about ABC (insert link)”
Paid Social Media Marketing
Paid social media marketing (in the form of Pay-Per-Click advertising) can be integrated in to a conversion path in two main ways:
- ‘Top of funnel’ entry (indirect)
Use paid advertising to collect more followers into your social profiles (into the top of the theoretical ‘nurturing funnel’). This will allow you to nurture followers towards your desired conversion using organic relationship building and nurturing strategies. This strategy is less efficient at producing direct conversions however also doubles as a community growth strategy. - Direct conversion page inject (direct)
Use paid advertising to inject consumers directly into your conversion page. This is PPC advertising in a traditional scenario and produces more direct conversions.
Paid social media marketing can be used to ‘hard sell’ your social conversion using traditional direct response strategies. For example, it’s acceptable to use paid advertising to directly promote a free email report, a shopping cart page or other conversion.
Step 4: Create and Promote your Community Value Proposition
A ‘Community Value Proposition’ (or ‘CVP’) is a written statement that clearly expresses the value your followers receive when they join your social community (by following your brand’s social profiles).
From a theoretical perspective, a Community Value Proposition is an incentive to attract consumers into your ‘social sales funnel’ – basically, it’s the promise you’ll give them if they follow one of your social profiles (and therefore gives you the ability to nurture them into leads or customers using organic social media marketing techniques).
It is no longer sufficient to simply say ‘Like Us On Facebook’ – as online and offline marketing channels become more and more saturated with social media integration, simply suggesting that consumers ‘follow you’ without strong reason will fail to differentiate you from your competitors.
Here are some Community Value Proposition examples:
‘Follow us on Facebook for industry tips and tricks’
Or:
‘Ask us anything about the XYZ industry on our Facebook Page’.
Or:
‘Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for small business management and productivity tips’
Or:
‘Follow Us On Facebook For Pro Rock-climbing Tips And Updates On Our Rock-climbing Events’
Or:
‘Join us on Facebook for commentary, tips and tricks for getting the most out of your XYZ’
Or:
‘Love XYZ? Follow us on Twitter for the latest on XYZ’
Would you rather follow a rock-climbing organisation if they said ‘Follow Us On Facebook” or “Follow Us On Facebook For Pro Rock-climbing Tips And Updates On Our Rock-Climbing Events”?
Your CVP is the written statement that clearly describes the value your followers receive when they follow your social profiles. Your CVP should tie into your business offering however should offer broader value to your community.
Questions to consider when determining your CVP
The process of determining your CVP is done by defining:
- The needs and wants of your target market,
- The value or attributes your target market needs to see in your brand before they purchase from you, and
- As much of (a) and (b) you can consistently offer for free (without any expectation of a transaction). The rule is to provide as much value as possible in your CVP.
Here are some questions to consider when determining your CVP:
- What is it that your ideal customers love the most about your products, brand or industry? How can you amplify this passion? What actions can you take to lever this passion to your advantage?
- What are your ideal customers generally passionate about? What actions can you take to lever these passions to your advantage?
- What do your ideal customers like to do in their spare time? How can you provide value to these things?
- What are your ideal customers interested in?
- What are some of your ideal customers’ needs, and how can you help them with these needs?
- What will make your ideal customers say ‘wow’?
- What kind of things do your ideal customers like to read about?
- What kind of things do your ideal customers like to share with their own networks?
- What do your ideal customers need to achieve success in their career or lives?
- What can you do or share to save your ideal customers money?
- How can you genuinely assist your ideal customers in their decision making process, even if it’s not for your own product?
- How can you go out of your way to make your ideal customers’ day?
- What wisdom or knowledge can you share that will make you an authority in the eyes of your ideal customers?
- What can you offer that is different to your competitors?
- What can you share or uncover that will greatly advantage your ideal customers?
Make sure you deliver your CVP. It’s important to deliver the promise you make in your Community Value Proposition. Offering more than you actually deliver may have a negative impact on your social reputation.
Community Value Proposition Creation Process
Your Community Value Proposition should be bridged with the real world as much as possible. Determining your Community Value Proposition requires an insight into your ideal customer and an understanding of your unique offering to your market and consumers.
Steps to follow when creating your Community Value Proposition:
- Establish what your ideal customers really want or need. Ask yourself:
- What’s going to genuinely assist your customers in their decision making process?
- What value can you provide that may make them decide to purchase from you and not your competitor?
- Establish your unique ‘social’ offering: pinpoint things you can share and donate to your community that your competitors may not be able to do.
The trick to designing a strong Community Value Proposition is to offer something that your target market needs or wants (even if it is NOT directly related to your product or service), and then providing value around these needs or wants.
Make sure you have the ability to deliver this value proposition – your followers are very critical whether they realise it or not. If you promise something and fail to deliver it, you could sabotage your reputation.
Promoting your Community Value Proposition
Promote your Community Value Proposition in the following places:
- On your website
- In email marketing
- In email signatures
- On business cards
- On product packaging
- On designated hardcopy marketing collateral (specifically for promoting your community value proposition)
- Any other advertising space
Step Five: Create a Social Media Style Guide
A social media style guide is a set of rules or guidelines that clearly define the consistency, style, and characteristics of the communications you create in your social media profiles.
A social media style guide is fundamentally similar to a traditional brand style guide (or ‘brand book’) by the way it dictates the ‘personality’ of your social profiles. In most scenarios, the social personality and brand personality of an organisation will be very similar.
It’s important to note that this twist on the traditional style guide won’t necessarily contain design rules or other traditional ‘visual instruction’ elements (unless you choose to use them). A social media style guide focuses on communication style as opposed to rules surrounding logo dimensions, colour variation etc.
Using a social media style guide will ensure your communications stay consistent, possess a clear personality and will ultimately deliver the strategic goal-driven message you wish to convey. Consider a social media style guide as your social media ‘book of etiquette’.
A social media style guide contains the following elements:
- Content Guidelines
Guidelines for the types of content you’ll share, including images, videos, links and posts. - Post Frequency Guidelines
Guidelines for the number of times per day/week that you will post, and descriptive information about daily, weekly or monthly posting cycles). - ‘About Us’ Guidelines
Guidelines for the written statement you will make in your ‘About Us’ sections of your profiles. - Profile/Splash Image Guidelines
Guidelines for your profile and splash images. - Shortened Link Guidelines
Describes the service you’ll use to shorten links. Will also describe where you keep track of these shortened links. - Hashtag Rules
Describes rules surrounding hashtag use on your Twitter account. - Tagging Rules
Describes rules surrounding the use of image tagging on your Facebook images. - Brand ‘Personality’ & Tone of Voice Statement
Describes the personality you’ll embody when speaking with the members of your community. Also includes your ‘tone of voice’ guidelines. - Specific Spelling and Grammar Rules
Rules for spelling and grammar. Includes preferred spelling for certain words, paragraph styles etc. - Recurring Theme/Story Guidelines
Guidelines and descriptive information surrounding any recurring themes or storylines that you will mention or include in your organic or paid social media marketing. - Facebook Rules Of Engagement
Rules of engagement specific to Facebook. - Twitter Rules Of Engagement
Rules of engagement specific to Twitter. - LinkedIn Rules Of Engagement
Rules of engagement specific to LinkedIn. - Google+ Rules Of Engagement
Rules of engagement specific to Google+. - Pinterest Rules Of Engagement
Rules of engagement specific to Pinterest.
Step 6: Locate Content Sources, Create a Content Calendar
Share great content to set your brand apart from your competitors. It’s the content you share that your followers will like, discuss and share with their own networks, so it pays to have strong sources of content that establish you as a source of news, ideas, inspiration and thought leadership in your industry.
It’s critical to find great content to share in your profiles. Ultimately you need to become respected as a source of information in your industry that, in due course, should influence transactional behaviour in your favour.
Identify strong content ‘themes’ and keywords
Using themes from your Community Value Proposition, choose five to ten keywords that you think will produce suitable content when searched online.
Use search engines to get a feel for these content keywords. You’ll quickly learn if you can locate shareable content for each keyword. If these content keywords are fruitful, use them in the strategies below.
Create a content calendar
Create a content calendar to store and track all of the content you wish to share in your social profiles.
Create a spreadsheet to assist you in this process.
Setup Google Alerts
Use Google’s free alert function (www.google.com/alerts) to alert you when new content is found online. You’ll be made aware via email of new content, as Google indexes it.
Use a social media search engine
Use a social media search engine such as Social Mention (www.socialmention.com) to search for your content keywords.
Bookmark the content source for future reference.
Use Pinterest as a content source
Follow Pinterest users who share material relevant to your content keywords.
Share this material in your own social media marketing.
Subscribe to industry blogs
Look for blogs relevant to your industry and share their content.
Where possible, use an RSS reader to streamline and aggregate all of your blog subscriptions.
Create web bookmarks
If you find a useful site, bookmark it using your browser’s bookmark tool.
Create a collection of bookmarks containing useful content sources.
Find other social media users who share great content
Subscribe to other social media users who share content similar to your own.
Share the content they share (either obviously, by sharing their post, or discreetly, by sharing the content directly from its source).
Create your own content
Create your own content in the form of:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- ‘How to’ videos or animations
- Podcasts
- E-Books or whitepapers (these double as a lead generation tool)
- Images or other media
Use your CVP to guide the themes or topics of the content you create.
Step 7: Create and Maintain a Blog
Maintaining a blog is a powerful and effective strategy for all types of business entities, and is often overlooked when developing a social media strategy.
Blogging is an essential part of tactical social media marketing, for a number of reasons:
- You (as a business owner or executive) have the power to establish yourself, or your business as a thought leader by discussing industry topics (and expressing your thoughts, analysis and opinions on those topics). Doing this builds credibility and authority.
- You demonstrate the fact that you understand your product, your market, your industry and your customers.
- You create content for your website which assist your prospects’ decision making process. Your blogs posts can be perceived as a sales tools to help convert prospects (by demonstrating thought leadership etc.).
- You create a place for your community to discuss topics relevant to your industry.
- You create shareable content (which can be shared amongst your social networks).
- Your blog posts appear in search engine searches, which increases your digital visibility.
- Other websites may link to your content, which will improve your organic ranking.
Add a blog to your website
If you don’t already have one, add a blogging platform to your website.
WordPress (www.wordpress.org) is a powerful blogging Content Management System that can be added to your website.
If you cannot add a blogging platform to your website, use a free external blogging platform like www.wordpress.com.
Create a blogging strategy
Create a blogging strategy by determining the following:
- How frequently will you write your posts? Weekly, fortnightly or monthly?
- What will you write about? News topics, opinion articles or industry analysis?
- What will your writing style be like? Funny, factual or technical?
Tips for powerful blogging:
- Make your content printworthy. Write as if your content is going to be printed. Your readers will love it, because you stand above the crowd, and search engines love it too.
- Stay consistent. Write regularly. Weekly or twice per week if you can.
- Make it easy to share your content. Add social media sharing functions to your blog.
Step 8: Execute Organic Social Media Marketing Strategies
Organic social media marketing is the process of marketing a product or offering via the social web without pay-per-click advertising and is different to traditional direct response marketing.
Organic social media marketing is based upon permission based marketing principles where consumers give permission for a brand to send them social communications (by following a profile). This means brands cannot deliver constant traditional marketing messages to achieve marketing goals, as consumers have the power to sever their connection with a brand (by unfollowing).
Instead, brands must provide value to build relationships and persuade consumers to purchase or take action by influencing transactional behaviour.
Organic social media marketing must be executed with the end-goal of building relationships and influencing transactional behaviour, not to directly increase sales, sign-ups or other business goals.
Increased sales, sign-ups and other business goals will occur as a natural by-product of building relationships and influencing transactional behaviour.
Establish how to persuade your ideal customers
Understand what motivates your customers to act. Before you start executing organic social media marketing strategies, it’s essential to have an understanding of your ‘ideal customers’.
Knowing the things your ideal customers like (and don’t like) is a very powerful piece of marketing intelligence – you’ll be able to say and do the right things to produce ‘wow’ moments and win the hearts and minds of those ideal customers (which means they’ll be more inclined to open their wallets). It’s important to remember that the words, actions and shared content you produce that will ultimately persuade these followers into becoming customers or advocates.
Similar to the questions used to determine your Community Value Proposition, here are some questions to consider when planning engagement strategies (in the form of posts etc.):
- What is it that your ideal customers love the most about your products, brand or industry? How can you amplify this passion? What actions can you take to lever this passion to your advantage?
- What are your ideal customers generally passionate about? What actions can you take to lever these passions to your advantage?
- What do your ideal customers like to do in their spare time? How can you provide value to these things?
- What are your ideal customers interested in?
- What are some of your ideal customers’ needs, and how can you help them with these needs?
- What will make your ideal customers say ‘wow’?
- What kind of things do your ideal customers like to read about?
- What kind of things do your ideal customers like to share with their own networks?
- What do your ideal customers need to achieve success in their career or lives?
- What can you do or share to save your ideal customers money?
- How can you genuinely assist your ideal customers in their decision making process, even if it’s not for your own product?
- How can you go out of your way to make your ideal customers’ day?
- What wisdom or knowledge can you share that will make you an authority in the eyes of your ideal customers?
- What can you offer that is different to your competitors?
- What can you share or uncover that will greatly advantage your ideal customers?
Use this information to strategically design your community engagement strategies. Use this information to provide transparent value and build relationships with your followers. Ensure you address the common themes that arise in the answers from the questions above.
Create a negative feedback strategy
Create a strategy for handling negative comments that may appear in your social media profiles.
While they strike fear into the heart of almost every business owner or marketing manager, the ‘negative comment’ or complaint can often be reverse-engineered to demonstrate your excellent customer service standards.
Here are step-by-step examples of how to respond when you receive a negative comment:
- Do NOT delete the negative comment. Deleting the negative comment could make the situation worse. Note: if the comment contains offensive language it may be appropriate to delete the comment. Use your judgement.
- Acknowledge the person and the comment with a short reply. Note that it may not be appropriate to apologise. Here are some examples:
“Hi Mr Smith, thanks for your message and I understand your concern regarding the XYZ situation. One of our customer service representatives will contact you as soon as possible to address this issue. – Your First Name”
Or:
“Hi Mr Smith, we are very sorry for the inconvenience you have experienced here. One of our customer service representatives will contact you directly to resolve this issue. – Your First Name”
Note: Be sure you put your name at the end of the comment. This is to make it clear that you are a human replying to the comment.
When you handle a complaint in this situation, make sure you do the following:
- Rapidly acknowledge that the complaint has been made. The worse thing you can do in this situation is ignore the comment, or delete the comment altogether.
- Be humble, but confident.
- Take the problem offline. Where possible, try and locate the customers contact information in your internal database. If they are not a customer yet (and you do not have their personal information), try and facilitate a private message session. In the private message, ask the person for their contact information so you (or your customer service team) can speak to them directly.
It’s important to have this strategy clearly defined in case of an emergency – this way you will not be ‘at a loss for words’ when a negative complaint is made on your profile.
Avoid a ‘cookie cutter’ approach to your replies – make sure you have a framework or outline for your reply but do not cut-and-paste replies word for word. Each situation will require a unique response.
The manner in which you handle this situation could even create a brand advocate. If you go above and beyond to resolve the situation, the customer could be so impressed that they spread the ‘good word’ to their own networks.
Create a positive feedback strategy
Create a strategy for handling positive feedback.
It’s important to respond to positive feedback – it demonstrates to your followers that you are listening (and engaging) with your social communities (remember: have a relationship building mindset). If somebody gave your organisation a compliment in real-life, you would acknowledge him or her, right? It is this recognition that can convert a happy customer into a brand advocate, and demonstrate to your followers that you are thankful for the positive energy.
When you reply to your positive comments, make sure you do the following:
- Thank the follower for the comment. Recognise that the consumer has taken time out of their day to send you a positive message. Keep the positive energy flowing.
- Where possible, offer the customer something extra, or provide extra value to them.
- Finish the comment with a further extension of your service. Ask if you can do anything else for them.
Here are some examples:
Thanks for your kind words Mr Smith. It’s always encouraging to hear positive feedback. While you’re doing XYZ, have you considered looking at ABC? This might make your stay even better. Let us know if we can do anything else.
Thanks for the feedback Mr Smith. We did some further research into XYZ and found ABC. It might make your stay even better? Thanks again. Let us know if we can help with anything else.
Remember to lever the positive energy the happy consumer is containing for your brand – these consumers will be the easiest to convert into brand advocates (and brand advocates will market your products or services for you).
Execute daily organic community engagement strategies
Execute community management and digital customer service strategies.
Refer to my social media management guide for tactics, ideas, inspiration and daily social media management routines.
Engage consumers with Location Based Services (where applicable)
Location Based Services are features of social media platforms that allow a user to interact with a particular geographic location, generally by ‘checking in’ at that location.
Where possible, take advantage of location based platforms/apps (such as Foursquare) and location-based features of social networks (such as Facebook). Location Based Services can greatly increase the engagement with your organisation, and can generate footfall (which increases sales).
Location Based Services will only apply to some organisations (retail, hospitality, food and beverage etc. – basically any service industry where consumers physically visit an organisation).
Reward users using coupons or discounts for ‘checking in’ to your location on Facebook, Instagram or Foursquare.
Use location based services to create incentives for people to physically visit your business.
Locate and nurture influencers
Locate and nurture industry influencers so they passively help you achieve your business goals.
Influencers are members of your industry (and often members of your social community) who have considerable social authority and command natural respect from those around them. These people commonly have vocal opinions which, when nurtured and managed strategically, can be of great benefit to your business. Locating influencers is a proactive activity: you need to make a concerted effort to find and nurture them.
When nurtured correctly, influencers can contribute to the achievement of your overall business goals. Influencers have the potential to provide you with the following (including business goals):
- Verbal recommendations, which increase referrals (increasing sales)
- Mentions of your brand on their blog, website or social profiles (increasing awareness)
- Backlinks to your website (increasing search engine results)
- Social media shares/Retweets (increasing awareness)
Influencers can be identified executing the following strategies:
- Use your content keywords determined in Step 6 to search for blog posts using Google, Yahoo! and social media search engines like SocialMention (socialmention.com). Examine the blog post and the authors of the blog posts – if the authors have many followers on Twitter, have many comments on their blog and hold a general sense of authority, they may be a suitable influencer.
- Use your content keywords to search Twitter for new potential followers. If they discuss your content keywords (or anything else similar to your industry) they may be a suitable influencer.
- Use a tool such as FollowerWonk (www.followerwonk.com) to search your current Twitter network and identify influencers.
- Look offline for influencers, and follow them online.
Influencers can be nurtured by executing the following strategies:
- Firstly, follow them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest (if applicable)
- Reach out to them on Twitter. Retweet their Tweets and say things such as:
- I liked your post on XYZ. Particularly… etc.
- Thanks for your post on XYZ. <Ask question>
- Comment on their blog posts
- Share their blog posts, give them praise and respect when sharing
Influencers should be treated with care and respect – when nurtured correctly, they can become beaming advocates for your brand. However, they could become your biggest nightmare if treated incorrectly.
Influencer Tips
- Remember to build a relationship with them first. You will need to give before you receive anything from them.
- Treat the person as if you met them at a cocktail party. Build rapport, give value, be a friend. You may even be able to meet them offline to build rapport.
- Make it obvious that you have taken the time to read through their website and understand their offering. Ask them questions or create a discussion around something they have said.
Step 9: Execute Paid Social Media Marketing Campaigns
When deployed correctly, paid social media marketing campaigns can amplify the effectiveness of organic social media marketing strategies to deliver greater campaign results (and therefore stronger ROI).
Social networks are large databases of consumers containing advanced and highly targetable advertising tools. Social media marketers can use these tools to reach specific consumers with ‘laser sharp’ accuracy.
Why use paid social media marketing?
- Paid social media marketing allows advertisers to vastly improve the reach and visibility of their brand.
- Facebook Advertising allows advertisers to promote different elements, including but not limited to:
- An internal Fan page
- A post on a Fan page
- An external web page
- Paid social media marketing facilitates traditional push marketing strategies: advertisers can use traditional direct-response ads to ‘hard sell’ (remember constant hard selling is a faux pas in organic social media marketing but can be used in paid social media marketing).
- Social conversions can be promoted specifically (sometimes shortening the conversion path).
- Conversion paths are more linear (generally speaking) than organic social media marketing. A user will click on an ad, be sent to a product page, and make a purchase. Organic social media marketing is less direct than paid social media marketing.
Facebook advertising is the most accessible ad platform. The entry barrier to Facebook advertising is very low: any normal Facebook user can advertise on the platform.
Simple Facebook advertising campaigns include:
- Promoting a page to new followers (therefore increasing brand awareness and collecting more followers into a brand’s social nurturing funnel)
- Promoting a Sponsored Story which promotes a post that someone in a user’s network has interacted with (this uses social proof to demonstrate that someone has interacted with the brand)
- Directly promoting a social conversion page
- Directly promoting a product sales page (or ecommerce page/shopping cart)
Tips for paid social media marketing:
- Incorporate a clear call to action into ad copy
- Focus on benefits, not just features of your products or services
- Try and incorporate your brand’s unique value proposition into ad copy
- Test different combinations of copy and images to establish high-performing ads. Try and beat these high-performing ads with other variations
- Use Google Analytics tracked links in each ad. This will allow you track website activity (conversions, time on site etc.) back to each individual ad
- Setup Facebook conversion tracking by adding Facebook’s proprietary tracking code (in the form of Javascript) to your website (you may need a developer to help with this)
Step 10: Integrate Your Website & Existing Campaigns
The following tasks will amplify the effectiveness of your social profiles: firstly by using your website to promote the existence of your social communities, secondly by using your social profiles to amplify the strength of your existing marketing campaigns.
Insert profile links on your website
Add links that point to your social profiles in the header or footer of your website (these are also called badges).
This demonstrates that you are using social platforms as part of your digital ecosystem. Engineer these badges so the social profiles open in a new window (which leaves your website open in another window/tab).
Add interactive Like/Follow buttons to your website
Add interactive Like/Follow buttons to your website.
These interactive buttons allows visitors to follow your profiles without having to leave your site. These buttons also allow you to display how many followers you have, which is a strong form of social proof.
Add sharing functions to your website
Add social sharing functions to your site, which let visitors like or share your pages without having to leave each page.
This will make it easy for your content to be shared.
State your Community Value Proposition
Clearly state your Community Value Proposition on your website.
This will give your visitors a stronger reason to join your social community.
Share existing marketing campaigns
Use the wide reach and inexpensive broadcasting features of the social web to share and therefore amplify your existing marketing campaigns. Here are some ways to integrate existing offline and online marketing strategies and campaigns into your social media profiles:
- Promote the awareness of these campaigns by sharing links to them (or mentioning them in status updates, if they are offline)
- Add an element of interactivity by using a social feature (such as a ‘Check In’ or a custom app on Facebook)
Lastly, design a hybrid online/offline campaign which utilises the strengths of both mediums
Step 11: Monitor for Mentions of your Brand, Competitors and Industry
The nature of the social web allows social media marketers to monitor for mentions of any keyword they specify, in a number of open streams like Twitter and Instagram. This has a number of applications – marketers can monitor conversations, news articles and any other web content for mentions of their brand, the name of their competitors or conversations surrounding their product, service or industry.
It is this unique function of the social web that offers a unique real-time perspective into brand loyalty and general attitudes towards products and services.
It’s important to use the social web to keep a finger on the pulse for a number of reasons:
- You’ll see if consumers are saying good or bad things about your brand
- You’ll see if consumers are saying good or bad things about your competitors
- You can learn about new trends (or trending topics) which could illuminate the need for a new product or service that you could offer
- You gain an insight into first hand opinions, feedback and other comments surrounding a particular topic, product, service or event
Think of the social web as a free, online platform for market research. It’s possible to search the web, Twitter, Google+ and some of Facebook (all depending on privacy settings, of course) for conversations about any topic.
You could use the information you gather to:
- Get an idea for a new product
- See what customers like and don’t like about something
- Identify a gap in the market
- Take the market’s temperature surrounding a particular event or topic
- Learn from the mistakes of other brands or organisations, so you don’t make the same mistake(s) yourself
Here are six ways to monitor the web and social web for keywords:
Create Google Alerts
Create Google Alerts using your designated keywords.
As mentioned earlier in this post, create a Google Alert for mentions of your brand name, your competitors name and keywords relevant to your industry.
Use a platform’s inbuilt search feature
Use the inbuilt search features in most social platforms to search for your designated keywords.
Facebook and Twitter have inbuilt search features, designed to search respective data streams for chosen keywords.
Use an integrated social media management platform
Use a proprietary social media management platform to perform regular searches on your specified keywords (in your specified channels).
These tools allow you to save regular searches (such as your brand name) in an easy to use, customizable interface. Commonly used monitoring platforms are:
- HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com)
- MarketMeSuite (www.marketmesuite.com)
- TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com)
These management platforms have other features designed to streamline your social media management systems and processes.
Use a Twitter alert email tool
Use a Twitter alert email tool to monitor Twitter.
There are many free services on the web that allow users to request email updates whenever a particular keyword is mentioned on Twitter. This is similar to Google Alerts, however instead of searching the web, the engine searches Twitter data only.
Some Twitter alert services include:
- Twilert (www.twilert.com)
- TweetBeep (www.tweetbeep.com)
Example: create a Twitter alert for mentions of your brand name. When new content is posted to Twittercontaining a mention of your brand, you’ll be alerted via email.
Use a social media search tool
Use a social media search tool to monitor the social web.
Similar to Google, Bing and other search engines, social media search tools exist purely to search the social web. These search engines are a geared towards social media and offer more social-centric features. Some social media search tools are:
Use a paid social media analytics tool
Consider a paid social media analytics tool to help you monitor the social web.
There are many premium social media analytics tools on the market. These tools use complex algorithms to determine social statistics such as positive/negative sentiment towards a search term and other social web analytics information. Some of these tools are:
Step 12: Measure and Track Results
Measuring results is an essential part of any marketing campaign, and social media marketing is no different. It’s important to measure all moving parts of a social media marketing campaign so they can be adjusted and optimized (or removed) to produce the strongest results and gain the highest return on investment as possible.
Why measure? Firstly, as a general rule of thumb, remember that all smart marketers measure (golden marketing rule: what gets measured, improves). Social media marketing (along with all digital marketing) can be measured and therefore optimized to perform as efficiently as possible.
Reasons to measure your social media marketing:
- You’ll learn which strategies and tactics provide the strongest results
- You save time and resources by removing ineffective or wasteful strategies
- You gain a better understanding of your community dynamics (you’ll learn what your followers like to click on, view and share)
- You’ll get more than just a gut feel for the things you say and do
- You can use the data you acquire through your social communities for use in other areas of your business, particularly research and development, and customer service
Elements to measure
Listed below are a handful of elements to measure when determining the performance of your social media marketing:
- Measure which social posts or links provide the highest conversion rate on your website. You’ll need Google Analytics or another web analytics tool setup for this (this relates to sales goals)
- Measure which social posts or links are shared the most (this relates to brand awareness)
- Measure which posts or links refer the most traffic to your site (this relates to sales goals)
The process of measuring organic social media marketing results is not as easy as it seems – due to the fragmented nature of the social web it is difficult to directly attribute a social media conversion to a single source.
There is no singular social media metric that applies to all organization types – success in social media will depend on the individual goals and targets surrounding every unique situation. Generally, it’s increased sales.
It’s important to use your website or measurable Facebook tab as the target for your social media marketing (as you can measure conversions on these platforms). Social platform metrics are useful, however by nature are not geared towards traditional conversion metrics.
There are two measurement scopes that can be applied to the measurement of the social web: vanity metrics and business metrics.
Difference between vanity metrics and business metrics
Vanity metrics are metrics found within social profiles and include the following:
- Number of followers
- Engagement/’Talking About’
- Reach
- Frequency
Vanity metrics are useful for determining the health of a social channel, although they do not necessarily dictate how well social media contributes to real business metrics like unique website visitors or conversion volume.
The most critical vanity metric to measure is your number of followers. Keep a watch over vanity metrics; however avoid basing business decisions on these metrics.
Business metrics are found external to social profiles and demonstrate how social traffic is contributing to overall business goals. Generally, they are metrics derived from the performance of your website which reflects the health of the marketing activity.
Some business metrics include:
- Unique visitors to website
- Goals/Conversion volume
Analysis of these metrics determines how traffic from your social profiles contributes to overall business health (by comparing them with traditional online metrics).
Ensure Your Goals & KPIs Are Clear
Define what you think social media should achieve for your business, depending on your business metrics. Make sure these goals are business goals such as increased conversions, greater brand visibility or greater website traffic, not vanity goals such as number of followers.
Setup Google Analytics
Install Google Analytics (or other web analytics software) to measure website conversions that originate from social traffic.
This means you’ll be able to see how many conversions are coming from websites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc.
If you use Google Analytics:
To do this, login to your Google Analytics account. Click on the ‘Traffic Sources’ tab, and then click on ‘Social’. This will provide you with data on traffic that comes from social profiles. Setup ‘Goals’ to track website conversions from social sources.
If you use another third party analytics provider:
Consult with your analytics provider on how to monitor traffic statistics from social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Create an account with a link shortener service
Open a free account with a link shortening service like Bit.ly or Goo.gl.
These tools allow you to shorten long links into short, tracked links. Using shortened links it’s possible to track how many people are clicking on the link (and also learn other statistics such as their country, their browser type etc.). Using shortened links allows you to see which posts your community members are clicking on. This gives you a greater insight into which content generates clicks – you can then use this insight to share more ‘clickable’ content.
Familiarise yourself with the Google Analytics URL Builder
Familiarise yourself with the Google Analytics URL Builder.
The Google Analytics URL builder is a tool for creating trackable links via Google Analytics, and allows you to specifically track the sources that provide traffic to your website.
The Google Analytics URL builder can be found by searching for ‘Google Analytics URL builder’.
It’s important to realize the difference between a link shortener and a URL builder. A link shortener shortens a link and allows a limited amount of tracking data to be collected. A link shortener can be used on ANY link (even if it is not your own), however the URL builder can be used on your website only (or any website you own that uses Google Analytics).
The URL builder is proprietary to Google Analytics and allows the following tracking data to be added to a URL pointing to your website:
- Campaign Source
- Campaign Medium
- Campaign Term
- Campaign Content
- Campaign Name
The above data allows you to specify certain labels or ‘tags’ to links to your site. This means you can track each inbound link specifically. This is useful for:
- Tracking and testing Facebook advertising (you can create a unique URL for each ad, which means you can test ads to see which provide the most conversions)
- Tracking and testing Twitter or Facebook post times-of-day (to see when people click through to your site at different times through out the day)
- Testing different links on your profile information (to specifically see where visitors are coming from)
- Adding unique links to your YouTube videos, to see exactly which video is providing the most traffic
Link Example:
Let’s assume we are using Facebook, and the link we are posting is on the 03rd Jan 2020. The parameters for the link will be:
- Campaign Source: facebook
- Campaign Medium: facebook
- Campaign Term: (leave empty)
- Campaign Content (leave empty)
- Campaign Name: post03012020
The above will create the following link:
http://flywheel:kaput-snow@dreary-tile.flywheelsites.com/ ?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=post03012020
You can see in the link above that the data you specified has been included in the tracked link.
How to use this information in Google Analytics
To access this information in Google Analytics, open your Analytics profile and then click on Traffic Sources, then ‘Sources’, then ‘Campaigns’. You’ll see the name of the campaign (set by you in the tracked URL). You can then drill down to obtain further information on each element of your campaigns.
Access Platform Data
Access the data contained inside social platforms.
Larger social platforms like Facebook have their own reporting dashboard that provides insights into internal metrics like daily active users, ‘Like’ sources, demographics, daily story feedback and daily page activity.
Use this data to determine which posts work the best – and optimize future posting based on this information. For example, you may notice that a particular post type (i.e. an image with a caption with a question) has a higher engagement level than another post type (i.e. a link to another site). This demonstrates that an ‘image with a question’ has a higher potential to increase brand awareness (and should be replicated again for similar results).
Step 13: Plan and Execute A Social Media Campaign
A social media campaign (also known as a SMC) is afocused social media marketing activity with anobjective of achieving a specific marketing goal. A social media campaign involves the use of social networks to achieve these goals and often employs unique creative elements to differentiate the campaign from general digital/social marketing techniques.
It is important to note the difference between social media marketing and a social media campaign: social media marketing is broader and includes day-to-day, ongoing community management and digital customer service strategies. A social media campaign is focused on the achievement of a particular marketing goal (discussed below) instead of general community management and digital customer service.
It’s also important to ensure you have the time and resources to maintain your social media campaigns – remember to factor the maintenance of your campaign(s) into your day-to-day social media marketing activities.
Social Media Campaign Examples
Social media campaigns can contribute to traditional business goals including increased ‘foot traffic’, greater brand awareness, stronger lead generation, increased consumer engagement, brand message demonstration, or increased customer lifetime value/referrals/sales. Here are eight campaign examples designed to contribute towards these goals:
Campaign Type: Photography competition on a Facebook page
Description: A custom app (sitting in a Facebook tab), which allows Facebook fans to submit their photos. The topic can be anything you specify, however should be related to your industry or the interests/passions of your target market. The app interface requests information such as name and email address and allows users to ‘like’ photos. The competition can be judged by number of ‘likes’ or other qualities.
Business goals: Awareness, community building, email list building, User Generated Content (UGC) production
Method: Install a custom app on a Facebook tab. This can be done by a freelance app developer (look on Freelancer.com, Odesk.com or similar). Promote the competition on your Facebook page, other social media channels, traditional digital marketing channels and offline marketing channels.
Other Notes: A custom Facebook application:
- Increases engagement with your brand, causes consumers to spend more time on your Facebook page
- Increases awareness of your brand and social presence in a unique way (cuts through the noise of ‘traditional’ promotions)
- Produces User Generated Content for you to use as marketing collateral (a disclaimer may be required in your fine print)
- Grows your email list (make sure this is a ‘required’ field on your form)
Campaign Type: Facebook PPC advertising campaign to promote a new product
Description: A Facebook Pay-Per-Click ad campaign designed to promote a product on your website. Uses multiple ad images/text descriptions with laser-focused demographic targeting to reach highly qualified buyers.
Business goals: Increased sales, increased awareness
Method: Create a Facebook PPC ad campaign in the Facebook Adverts Manager interface (or the Power Editor, for advanced users). Create different images and ad copy for each of your products. Test different combinations of ad copy, ad images and targeting.
Other Notes: The following notes may help in the creation and optimisation of your campaign:
- Use at least five different ads (text and image) with similar targeting features in your initial creation phase. This will allow you to determine which ads have the highest click through rate. When you have established the top performing ads, pause all others and try and beat your top performing ads.
- Use Google Analytics tracking to determine which ads provide sales (or clicks).
Campaign Type: ‘Check In’ Competition
Description: A competition where users are rewarded for ‘checking in’ on Facebook or Foursquare at your business location. Offer a small freebie or discount to a user when they check in. You could also offer a larger reward for the ‘Mayor’ of your location (A ‘Mayor’ is the title given to the Foursquare user who checks in the most at your location).
Business goals: Increased foot traffic, increased sales, increased engagement
Method: Monitor the check-ins at your location and reward a user when they do so. Promote this around your venue/location to increase awareness. Promote the campaign on your existing social profiles.
Campaign Type: Free Report Download
Description:An exclusive free PDF report or whitepaper that can only be accessed via a custom Facebook app tab. Make sure the free report is behind a ‘like gate’ (a ‘like gate’ is a tool designed to hide content until the user ‘likes’ your page. Using this allows you to collect a new follower as well as collecting name/email information for the free report). Promote the features and benefits of the report and offer it for immediate download in exchange for the user’s name and email address.
Business goals: Increased lead generation, email list building
Method: Use a tool like Shortstack (Shortstack.com) to create a ‘like gate’ and a free report download page. This can be done with some technical knowledge, however can also be outsourced to a freelancer on Freelancer.com or Odesk.com.
Other Notes: The following notes may help in the creation and optimisation of your campaign:
(a) Use an email autoresponder system to nurture your new followers. Provide them with transparent value in each email message (don’t deter them with excessive sales chatter).
Campaign Type: Facebook Store/E-Commerce
Description: A Facebook tab containing an e-commerce platform designed to sell products directly from the tab. Allows your Facebook followers to purchase directly via the Facebook page.
Business goals: Increased sales, increased customer lifetime value
Method: Install a custom Facebook tab using an ecommerce tool designed specifically for Facebook. This can be done using a proprietary app (Google search: “Facebook E-Commerce”) or via a customer developer found on Freelancer.com or Odesk.com.
Other Notes: The following notes may help in the creation and optimisation of your campaign:
- Remember not to oversell in your organic social media marketing.
- Offer promotions or offers specific to your Facebook shopping cart. This will draw consumers to your Facebook page (and will allow you to use organic social media marketing strategies to nurture them into purchasing again and again).
Campaign Type: Hashtag Promotion
Description: A print and/or digital campaign designed to promote a Twitter or Instagram hashtag. Promote a hashtag related to your industry with the aim of creating conversation around your products/services, brand and industry. Allows you to demonstrate thought leadership and appear active in the sphere surrounding your product or service, therefore increasing brand awareness.
Business goals: Brand awareness, lead generation
Method: Research and select a suitable hashtag. Promote it online and offline. Monitor the social web for mentions of the hashtag and respond quickly with genuine conversation. Don’t over promote your products or services: be seen as a thought leader, provider of information/knowledge and general facilitator of conversation.
Other Notes: The following notes may help in the creation and optimisation of your campaign:
- Remember to choose a hashtag that consumers will want to be involved with. For example, a hashtag like #yourbrandname is not ‘magnetic’ and consumers will rarely use it. A catchy and quirky hashtag works best in this situation.
- Ensure you have the resources to monitor the social web for mentions of the hashtag. Make sure your community managers have the ability to discuss any topics that may arise from the use of the hashtag.
- Choose this campaign type only if you believe there is sufficient cause for discussion around the hashtag. Promoting an unpopular or rarely used hashtag can produce undesirable results (i.e. may make a brand look unpopular).
Campaign Type: Other custom app or game on a Facebook Tab
Create a custom app or game on a Facebook tab designed to increase engagement with your brand. Design your app so your consumers say ‘wow’ when they use it. Provide value in a way not done by your competitors. Create an app or game that your followers will want to share around (and at the same time share around your brand name).
Campaign Type: Other User Generated Content (UGC) campaign, or integrated channel campaign
Create a campaign that levers the passion or interests of individuals your community. Encourage your community to submit their own content (called User Generated Content) that may simultaneously promote your brand or product. Consider an integrated campaign that uses multiple media channels.
Remember to ‘think outside the box’ when creating campaigns – create an original, clever campaign that will increase brand awareness, provide value to your community and solve common problems your consumers may have. If you can provide this for free, you’ll quickly make your consumers say ‘wow’ which will greatly increase the chance they’ll open their wallets for you (or even better: convince their friends to open their wallets too).
Establish your business goals and KPIs
Always establish goals before conceiving and planning your campaign.
This is a crucial part of the campaign planning process – use goals to build conversion paths and subsequent Key Performance Indicators surrounding the campaign. Use your goals to sculpt the actions and moving parts of the campaign.
Remember social media campaigns can contribute to traditional business goals including:
- Increased foot traffic,
- Greater brand awareness,
- Stronger lead generation,
- Increased consumer engagement,
- Brand message demonstration, and/or
- Increased customer lifetime value/referrals/sales.
Choose Key Performance Indicators that accurately indicate the performance of the campaign. You may choose to set numerous KPIs depending on the campaign type.
For example, a KPI for a Facebook Pay-Per-Click campaign could be CPA (cost per conversion). A KPI for a community building campaign could be ‘Number of likes’ or engagement rates (although remember to distil all results into traditional business goals such as ‘lead volume’ (where possible).
Campaign design tips
Use your business goals to determine the type of campaign, and the original and quirky elements that comprise the campaign. Consider this step the process of creating campaign blueprints. Look around at other social media campaigns in your industry.
A powerful social media campaign will have the following qualities:
- Geared to business goals
- Original and clever
- Measurable and integrated into realistic conversion paths
- Simple, easy to comprehend and share
- Share worthy/Viral
Use the eight examples above as examples or inspiration for your own campaign.
After creating your campaign blueprints, produce the collateral required to launch your campaign.
This includes the design, look-and-feel and technical ‘moving parts’ of your campaign. You may want to outsource this part of the process (try Freelancer.com or Odesk.com).
For example, if your campaign is a Facebook Pay-Per-Click campaign: create your ad images, ad copy and install tracking codes.
If your campaign is a custom Facebook application: create the application (you may need an external developer for this), create digital and print promotional collateral and incorporate the campaign into any other channels you have planned.
If possible, integrate your campaign into your regular social media conversion funnel.
This may not be possible for Pay-Per-Click campaigns or some User Generated Content campaigns.
Promote your campaign(s) online and offline
Promote your campaign via online and offline channels, where possible.
The nature of your campaign will dictate how the campaign will be promoted: a PPC campaign will not need promoting (as it promotes itself). A User Generated Content campaign will require direct promotion (to increase awareness).
Here are some ways you can promote a campaign (these will vary depending on campaign type):
- On designated print material (such as flyers, direct mail, inserts)
- On designated digital material such as banners, graphics on your homepage or shareable images (for sharing in your social media profiles)
- On your website
- In email marketing
- In email signatures
- On business cards
- On product packaging
Measure and Adjust Campaign Performance
Create a system for tracking and measuring the performance of your campaign.
Always measure and track results – doing so allows you to measure the effectiveness of the campaign, and adjust your strategies accordingly. Measuring and tracking is particularly important for pay-per-click or real-time performance campaigns (where the ‘moving parts’ of the campaign dictate how much the campaign spends or costs over time).
Here are more reasons to measure your campaigns:
- You’ll learn which strategies or elements provide strong results
- You’ll understand which campaigns or elements don’t work (this knowledge may be useful in other areas of your business)
- You can gain more than just a ‘gut feel’ for the strategies you deploy
For more on measuring and tracking results, see Step 12.
Step 14: Create a Social Media Policy
Note: This section is NOT to be considered as legal advice.
A social media policy is a set of guidelines or instructions designed to prevent employees from damaging the reputation of yourself, yourcompany or your competitors through improper use of your brand’s social media profiles (or in some cases, their own social media profiles).
A social media policy exists to act as a ‘code of conduct’ for staff and should also ensure that staff understand the ramifications of inappropriate social media use. A social media policy also demonstrates how the social web should be used appropriately (to benefit the brand).
Social media policies will vary from organization to organization, however many will contain guidelines and/or policies for:
- The purpose of social media in your organization (clearly defining how it will be used)
- ‘Reasonable use’ of the social web in your organization
- Employee use of company social media profiles
- Employee use of their own social media profiles
- Where social communications fit into your public relations strategies
- Crisis management/damage control (and how social media fits into this toolkit)
- Fair use, privacy and copyright laws
- Protecting confidential information and intellectual property
- Channel time restrictions (to ensure that online activities do not interfere with job performance)
- Personal accountability and the ramifications of inappropriate conduct on the social web
- Definitions of inappropriate conduct
- Disclaimers on employee’s own profiles (eg. “Opinions are my own, not my employers”)
How To Find Social Media Policy Examples
To find social media policy examples, enter: “social media policy examples” into Google. There’s plenty.
The best way to create a social media policy is to have one written by a legal professional.
I hope you’ve gained value from this post. -Ben