Why Social Media must become an integral part of the Strategic Planning Process

1. 14TH STRATEGIC PLANNING SKILLS
Bringing Social Media into the Strategic
Planning Tent
October 11th, 2011
Mike Rabinovici, LL.B Contact Information:rmation:
michael@ar-com.com
VP, Web & Social Media Marketing www.ar-com.com/blog
AR Communications Inc. Twitter.com/mikerabinovici
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/mikerabinovici
www.ar-com.com

2. Back to Basics
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its
strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its
resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people
Business Analysis Techniques include:
• SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats )
• STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and
Regulatory factors)
• EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological,
Economic and Legal).

3. Strategic Planning Framework

4. What is Social Media?
• The term Social Media refers to the use of web-
based and mobile technologies to turn
communication into an interactive dialogue
• “Social Media tools introduce substantial and
pervasive changes to communication between
organizations, communities, and individuals”
Kietzmann, Jan H.; Kris Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy, and Bruno S. Silvestre (2011). "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building
blocks of social media".
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5. Social Media Tools
• Blogging – www.blogger.com
• Microblogging – www.twitter.com
• RSS – www.feedburner.com
• Photo sharing – www.flickr.com
• Social News & Bookmarking – www.technorati.com
• Video Sharing – www.youtube.com
• Wikis – www.wikipedia.org

6. Social Networks
• LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com
• Facebook – www.facebook.com
• Foursquare – www.foursquare.com
And so many more…

7. Social Media Facts & Figures
Is it mostly buzz or is it the real thing? You be
the judge
• 46 percent of people globally access a social network every
day
• More than one million companies have LinkedIn Company
Pages. There were nearly 2 billion people searches on
LinkedIn during 2010
• The average profile age on LinkedIn is 40 years, Twitter 35
years. Facebook's biggest age group of followers is now in the
35-54 range

8. More Facts & Figures
• 53% of employers research potential job candidates
on social networks
• Every minute, 66,667 tweets are made on Twitter. -
95 million tweets are written each day
• Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to
YouTube. There are more than 2bn video views on
YouTube every 24 hours
• If Facebook were a country is would be the world’s
third largest, after China and India

9. Areas where Social Media has the
greatest impact on Strategic Planning
• Sales & Marketing
• Legal /Regulatory Issues:
• Human Resources/Recruiting
• Customer Service

10. Sales & Marketing
• B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than
those who do not. Source: Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing
Lead Generation Report, 2011
• 40% of corporate Twitter accounts engage in some kind of customer
service (Burson-Marsteller)
• 62 percent of Facebook users between 35-54 years of age have
liked a brand (eMarketer)
• 61 percent of Facebook users who have liked a brand note that they
are more likely to purchase from that brand (AllFacebook)

11. Legal /Regulatory Issues:
• New Canadian anti-spam legislation
• Privacy
• Social Media use by employees
• Public Company issues
• Advertising
• Copyrights

12. Human Resources/Recruiting
• 89% of companies will use social media in recruiting
in 2011
• 14.4 million people used social media to find their
last job in 2011
• 80% of companies use LinkedIn to find talent
• 45% of companies use Twitter to find talent
• 50% of companies use Facebook to find talent
Source: CareerEnlightment.com

13. Customer Service
• Delivered in real time which enhances customer satisfaction
• Cost effective and over time reduces the need for call centres
• Gives business a human face
• Listens to what customers are saying
• Proactively engages with prospects and customers
• Provides additional product-related content
• Answers product-related questions
• Supplies alternative contact channel
• Gives customers a channel to talk to each other
• Makes special offers
• Creates new purchase options
Social CRM Resource – www.socialmediaexaminer.com

14. Next Steps
Begin with a Social Media assessment:
• What has your company done with social media to
date?
• Was it done in accordance with a plan or ad hoc
• Are there any analytics for current social media
activities – you must establish a baseline
• Is there an employee social media policy in place?
• What are your competitors doing?

15. Key Elements of a Social Media
Strategic Plan
• Determine the audience you will focus on and where it
spends most of it’s time
• Set your goals – these can include number of visits, leads
generated, sales completed, etc., ROI expected
• Focus on the areas where we already know social media
has the greatest impact
• Set aside a budget that is reasonable in terms of the
goals you set
• Make sure to have a social media policy in place for
employees
• Deploy social media analysis tools to measure progress

16. Contact Information
Mike Rabinovici, LL.B
VP, Web & Social Media Marketing
AR Communications Inc.
www.ar-com.com
michael@ar-com.com
www.ar-com.com/blog
Twitter.com/mikerabinovici
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/mikerabinovici
416-720-5485
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