How To Create Social Media Strategy

Too often, people are swayed by smooth talking sales persons who
liberally use buzz words to create a magnificent facade of social
media, one they simply can’t live up to.

How to create social media strategy www.cygnismedia.com

Don’t get me wrong; social media is an incredible channel, one you
must pursue in order to keep up or improve your product’s visibility
in today’s world.

However, going into it blind and leaving the strategy in the hands of
these “experts” is not recommended.


Your preparedness not only helps you identify the truly good ideas
from the duds, but also helps foster a collaborative brainstorming
environment between you and the social media strategist.

This is how the truly remarkable strategies are created


Because ultimately, no one knows your product, brand or
service better than you.

Here, we hope to provide a few tips and tricks along with case
studies of popular, well-executed social media campaigns in an
effort to help you start thinking along these tangents.

1. Know your goal

The majority of people will answer the question “What is your goal
for this campaign?” with a simple “To boost sales”.

Fair enough.

Unfortunately it’s not always so cut and dry.

It is important here to ask the question, what will boost sales?
A few things spring to mind.

• Increased exposure of your product to newer markets
• Improved brand identity in existing markets
• Reacquiring ex-users by providing incentives such as discounts
• among other things.


If it is safe to say that reaching these targets will lead to increased
sales, then we can simply say that our goals for this social media
campaign are defined.


We have effectively broken down the ultimate goal into smaller,
more manageable and track-able goals.


Example

The Pepsi Refresh Challenge
www.facebook.com/pepsi

The Pepsi Refresh Celebrity Challenge has
clear cut goals and objectives. They want:

• People from Facebook to vote
• Submit ideas and
• Learn more about the project itself.


2. Define small measurable
metrics

Determining whether or not your campaign was a success is usually
the number one priority for any marketing manager, and success is
often measured by ROI.


Unfortunately, they end up measuring success by looking at overall
sales or other bottom line effecting results.


By setting realistic goals and milestones such as;

• Reach 10,000 fans in 3 months
• Create a giveaway for the 10,000 fans and collect their e-mail
addresses
• Give away a grand prize while providing others with discounted
rates on future purchases through newsletters with special
offers.

you break down the strategy into several measurable metrics which
will make it easy for you to calculate your ROI and determine if your
campaign was successful.


If through the aforementioned strategy (let’s say arbitrarily six
months in duration) the cost of developing, running the campaign
and prizes is outweighed by the value found in acquiring x amount
of new users, your campaign can be deemed a success with
respect to ROI.


Example

Chili’s Grill & Bar
www.facebook.com/Chilis

Chilis, together with Bud Light are giving
away 6 Port Paradise Cruises! If that won’t
entice people into joining their Facebook
page, nothing will.

They will be able to track the amount of
entries they got for the contest and gather
their e-mail addresses and zip code. They
can then reach out to them via e-mail at a
later point, offering them discounts or other
incentives to visit their restaurants.


3. Know your target market

Everything from the look & feel to the shape & sound of the strategy
depends on which market you are targeting.

The functionality it provides is largely based on what kind of users
can be expected to interact with the campaign.


Consider a Facebook Page promoting a graphic tablet.

In coordination with a clothing company, they hold a contest where
artists are asked to submit their designs.

The winner is set to receive a brand new MacBook Pro complete
with a state of the art graphic tablet and having the honor of their
T-shirt design printed and sold on a famous online clothing store.


Now let’s compare this to a Facebook
application which allows you to upload
a picture and give it a virtual makeover.

Selecting from a library of hair styles,
make-up accessories and more,
providing all the tools you would find at
a beauty salon to help you create your
masterpiece.

Ultimately one person with the best
entry would be the grand-prize winner.


Clearly both these applications, although having similar goals and
methods of going about attaining those goals, have very different
target markets.


Example

Target
www.facebook.com/Target

The Target College Checklist campaign is
perfectly aimed towards college students
and is launched during a time when the new
college year is starting.

With the Roommate App allowing you to
send messages, split bills, post to a calendar
and more, they have engaged users coming
together around a common subject matter.


4. Platform

It is important to define what platform(s) to use as some may
contain a higher abundance of your target market than others.

For example, Facebook is known to be a female-youth majority
platform while Twitter contains a larger number of young adult
males.


In many cases, entire campaigns have been brilliantly designed and
developed only to find that the response was lackluster at best,
leaving the strategists confused and the marketers frustrated.

The reason for these failures was as simple as not enabling the
campaign to reach the correct target market.


The better understanding you have of what market you wish to
capture, the more efficiently you and your social media strategist
will be able to define which platforms to utilize and make your
campaign appealing to those who frequently visit said platforms.


Example

Old Spice
www.facebook.com/oldspice

Old Spice recently launched a
campaign that took the Internet by
storm. Previously they had social
profiles that existed but were never
brought forward into the public eye
such as this. Their campaign ran
simultaneously on Facebook, Twitter &
YouTube, and less than a month later,
Old Spice has reported a 107%
increase in sales thanks to this
campaign.


5. Get the word out
(drive traffic)

It is incredible to see that sometimes after overcoming all the
hurdles successfully, campaigns stumble on this last, simple and
(arguably) the most important hurdle of all.


Once the campaign has been developed and deployed on the
platform(s) of choice, it needs traffic to thrive.

Social media strategists misuse the word viral growth far too much
and marketers eat into it too easily.


Although viral growth is most definitely an important and exciting
part of creating campaigns on the social media networks, it cannot
grow something out of nothing.

Viral growth of zero users will remain at zero.

In order for viral growth to actually work, the application needs seed
traffic.


There are several options available to drive traffic, from leveraging
your existing media spots such as billboards, print ads or web site
to purchasing banner advertisement spots on a pay-per-click basis.

All these factors play an important role in bringing traffic to the
campaign.


Conclusion

These are just some things to take into consideration when delving
into the social media world.

As you can probably gather, none of this is rocket science, yet
people make it out to be.

Don’t get intimidated and ask plenty of questions. There are logical
and reasonable answers to all of them.


Free Social Media Consultation

With over 200 applications worth of experience, our analyst will help you
determine how social media can best be applied to help you further your brand
or business by leveraging the social web..

Call us: 510-894-6651 Email: info@cygnismedia.com

How To Create Social Media Strategy

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