A primer for passive and active social media and the role of user generated and self generated online communities

1. Social Media Communities To Build or To Join? Andrew Abend M is for Marketing

2. The Answer Should you join an existing community or build your own? YES

3. Your Questions How can online communities benefit our clients? Is it worth the time to build a presence in an online community? Where to get started? Does a directory exist? Legal issues regarding privacy and ownership of content

4. How Are you using social media?

5. Social Media Channels Used

6. Using Social Media

7. Measuring Social Media

8. How Social Media Helps Business Generate Leads/Sales Change Perception Brand Management Provide Transparency Network Gain Insight Corporate Promotion

9. How Social Media Helps Business Active Social Media Passive Social Media

10. Active Usage Actively promoting your company through: Direct promotion Education Pay Per Click content ads Behavioral targeting Encouraging third party endorsement via blogs with strong followings Active usage allows you to control your message and reach an interested or related audience

11. Purposes of Active Social Media Generate Leads/Sales Brand Management/Changes Perception Broadcast News Releases Networking Corporate Promotion

12. Challenges with Active Your audience must actually use social media on a regular basis Need to create an environment in which consumers want to receive your self-promotion Requires right balance of updates so people are not inundated with information yet still receive your message Requires commitment to provide information on a consistent basis Expectations that anything put on the web will become “viral”

13. Passive Social Media Using audience insight gleaned from social media to change your brand and/or business Tools include: Forums Review Sites (Yelp, Rip-Off Report, Kudzu, etc) Fan Pages YouTube Videos Twitter

14. Passive Usage Monitoring online activity to understand what consumers are saying about your product Interaction with customers creates a stronger bond with them Information gathered can be used to improve products and customer service Makes sure your product and brands are being represented correctly

15. Challenges with Passive Information overload - companies often react to every comment instead of identifying trends The opposite of information overload is dismissing what your customers are saying because they “don’t understand what we are trying to do” Requires time to monitor online activities

16. Strategy Using Social Media Effectively

17. Strategies Deploy a combination of active and passive strategies utilizing social media Active To build a strong following of evangelists Use for promotions, special offers and announcements to loyal fans To educate people on brand/products Passive Understand what audience is saying about your brand Gain ideas for new products and uses Provide transparency and accessibility to the brand

18. Active Strategy

19. Blogs First Person Blog directly from your brand To build strong following content needs to be beneficial to your audience Can not be solely self-promotion Ensure posts have the ability to be linked to interest sites like Digg, De.li.cious, and StumbleUpon Benefits Let’s you provide useful information to an interested audience Good information tends to be disseminated by readers to their friends

20. Blogs Third Party Endorsement Reach out to bloggers who are relevant to your target audience with information regarding the services you provide Use Technorati or BlogSearch to find blogs Benefits Taps into established audience to which your brand can receive exposure Bloggers have credibility with their audience and an endorsement goes a long way

21. Social Networking Sites Facebook is the dominant social networking site with over 300 million users It is the only consumer focused social networking site worth the time to manage Create a “fan” page in which people can become fans of your brand Fan pages allows: People to interact with your brand The opportunity to learn about new products, contests and events before they become public Provide online specials to fans Fans to easily recommend your brand to friends Link to relevant fan pages Received blog and Twitter feeds

22. Facebook Growing a fan base Include Facebook button on website Promote via microblogging (to be discussed later) Tap into employees who are on Facebook promote to their friends Public Relations Use Facebook’s audience targeted ads to drive traffic Benefits: Creates evangelists by giving “fans” access to something the general public does not receive Provides inexpensive venue for marketing

23. MicroBlogs Twitter is the dominant MicroBlog at this time Use of Twitter should be for three things: Drive traffic to website by promoting new blog topics Drive traffic to Facebook by promoting contests, events, promotions Create evangelists by announcing offers for Twitter-followers only Promotion of Twitter presence will come through: Facebook fan page Twitter button on web site and blogs Employee emails/networks Benefits: Inexpensive way to drive traffic to website/Facebook Creates loyal followers and customers

24. Sharing Sharing sites like YouTube andFlickr will be good tools for contests and promotions Your brand should set up company pages for future promotions and, on YouTube, Employees should promote any video or photos to their friends via Facebook, Twitter and email

25. Additional Active Activities Cost per click search ads can be purchased two ways – by search terms or by content Search terms bring up your ads when people search your specific terms Content ads are delivered in blogs, news, etc when people are reading about a topic that is related to your product Cost per click ads to drive people directly to your client’s site

26. Passive strategy

27. Passive Strategy The ongoing monitoring of all social media channels Understand what is being said about your brand and responding when necessary Monitor blogs and comment when appropriate All responses must be positive and grateful, not defensive When a trend is noticed that your brand chooses to respond to, reach out to the channel(s) that made you aware of it, acknowledging them and the result of their feedback

28. Tracking Measuring Your Effort

29. Web Analytics Google web analytics allow you to see which social marketing activities are driving people to your web site and what people are doing on the site when they get there Google Analytics is a free tool that should be programmed into your website regardless of your social media activity

30. Social Media Tracking ViTrue or Techrigy Track mentions across various social media like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc Both have a limited free service Techrigy allows you to track by demographics, geography and positive/negative comments ViTrue allows you to compare social media activity versus a competitor

31. Fans and Followers Simplest measure is the number of “fans” and “followers” that your brand gains on Facebook and Twitter respectively

32. Online Communities Active and Passive Communications

33. Community Measurement Key to either online community is setting up measurable metrics Increased visits to your client’s web site Especially direct links from online community Change in tenor of comments Online Mentions Fans & Followers Special codes & coupons

34. Online Communities User-Generated – Created by people to connect with others with like interests and share ideas Self-Generated – Created by a company to create dialogue, provide transparency, share ideas in an effort to create evangelists

35. User Generated Pros Already established Group protocol exists Easy to learn about the group make-up through existing discussions Will gain objectivity regarding topics in which you are interested Potential source for great customer insight Provides platform to address negative comments in a productive manner Cons View corporate participants skeptically Will “flame” your brand if your purpose is disguised No control over content Time consuming

36. Self-Generated Pros Ability to lead conversations Attracts fans of the brand Provides transparency Platform to move fans to zealots Platform to award fans for their support Learn what questions your best fans have knowing others will have them as well Invites corporate promotion Cons Takes time to establish large, active following Requires ongoing nurturing Lose objectivity by regularly speaking to the converted Will be held accountable for promises and comments

37. Are You Ready To Create A Community? A Simple Test: Do you have a Facebook page for your client? How many fans does it have? Does the page encourage conversation? What percentage of page communications is press announcements? Are fans creating their own discussions? Are fans responding to discussions you post? Do people regularly comment on your blog or tweets?

38. Join or Create? Yes - Join Find a few highly targeted user generated communities and begin to monitor Participate when appropriate Always identify yourself Track efforts Measure ROI Yes – Create Start simply with Facebook Fan page Follow Test If it proves successful, expand to a private community Track efforts Measure ROI

39. Questions?

40. Your Questions How can online communities benefit our clients? Is it worth the time to build a presence in an online community? Where to get started? Does a directory exist? Legal issues regarding privacy and ownership of content

41. Andy Abend M is for Marketing aabend@MarketSmarter.biz Twitter:@MarketSmarter http://MarketSmarter.biz http://SmarterMarketing.Wordpress.com 404.316.4820