This is an example of the Social Media Assessment Workbook that you can

1. Social Media
Assessment Workbook
2011 edition
www.vocus.com/social-media-strategy

2. Social Media Assessment Workbook
Custom Report Generated for:
Tom Humbarger
Success in social media doesn’t come by chance – and it certainly doesn’t come
over night. It all starts with a plan; and the Vocus Social Media Tool will help you
formulate the perfect one.
Start with this worksheet. Work through it and identify your goals, find out where
your organization currently sits on the social media spectrum, and learn the
challenges you’ll have to overcome and tactics you’ll have to employ to achieve
your objectives and experience consistent success in social media.

3. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 1
What Do You Want To Accomplish
The first step to any strategic plan is defining specific objectives for what you want
to achieve.
Defining measureable and targeted objectives is also the only way to win over the
social marketing skeptics who control the budget. The best way to accomplish this
is to align objectives with metrics traceable back to financials such as ROI and
sales conversions.
Later in this workbook, you will align these objectives with target audiences and
corresponding metrics. This alignment is important because it enables an organization
to measure its progress in achieving the objectives and proving ROI whenever practical.
Seemingly obvious, this step is often overlooked.
Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa Social Marketing Benchmark Survey

4. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 1
Part 1: How You Ranked Your Objectives
IMPROVE BRAND OR PRODUCT AWARENESS
IMPROVE BRAND OR PRODUCT REPUTATION
INCREASE SALES REVENUE

5. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 1
Part 2: Good to Know
Winning financial support for social marketing is no different than winning support
for any other business initiative – you have to prove its value to the organization.
Chart: How organizations perceive social media marketing at budget time
Considering that social marketing is at a very early stage in its lifecycle, it’s outstanding
that it received a 7% confidence rating indicating it produces measurable ROI and
should be funded liberally.
Conservative budget increases by half of all organizations at budget time, based on
the promise that social media will eventually produce ROI, demonstrate another vote
of confidence in the tactic for the longer term.
The 17% of organizations who still believe social media marketing is basically free –
and should stay that way – are destined to get what they pay for.

6. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 2
Determine Where You Are In the
Social Media Lifecycle
1. How often do you gather research about your target audiences, social media use and
competition?
Sometimes, but not regularly.
2. Do you have a process for defining your social media goals and aligning them with
your target audiences and measurement strategies?
It's an informal process. I make it up as I go.
3. Do you have a process for creating social marketing strategies with a tactical plan of
action?
Occasionally, when a new initiative comes up.
4. Do you select platforms that fit within social marketing architecture and tactics?
Yes, but it's on a case-by-case basis.

7. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 2
Part 1: See How You Compare
See how you compare with others who took part in the MarketingSherpa survey.

8. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 3
Understand & Rank Challenges
Knowing the challenges you are likely to face when developing a social media
strategy can help your prioritize.
Here is how you ranked your challenges.
IMPROVING BRAND AWARENESS OR REPUTATION
CONVERTING SOCIAL MEDIA MEMBERS, FOLLOWERS, ETC. INTO PAYING
CUSTOMERS
INCREASING WEBSITE TRAFFIC THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION
INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING AND ANALYTICS INTO A SINGLE
DASHBOARD

9. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 3
Part 2: How You Stack Up
Here are the challenges you and your peers reported.

10. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 3
Part 3: Some Things To Consider
When Looking At Your Challenges
Why aren’t audiences engaging?
• Are you using social media channels for “push marketing/PR?”
• Are you sharing information that isn’t timely or relevant?
Why can’t you convert fans?
• Are you selling a commodity or an experience?
Why do you have an ineffective social media strategy?
• Have you completed audience research?
• Do you understand how your market uses social media channels?
• Have you tried to align your social media planning with organizational goals
and objectives?
Why can’t you measure ROI?
• Did you set up proper metrics for each tactic and/or campaign?
• Do you have analytics set up properly?
Why are you struggling to get budget for social media?
• Have you educated management internally?
• Have outside resources been brought in for educational purposes?
• Are there perceived risk challenges that can be addressed?
Why can’t you find solid social media practitioners?
• Is there a perception that social media is for kids?
• Are you hiring people who don’t have a solid PR or business background?
Why is your management resistant to sharing information online?
• Have you developed social media policies?
• Has key management and personnel been trained in social media best practices?

11. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 4
Monitoring Target Audiences and
Ranking by Social Media Behavior
A huge part of a successful social media strategy is doing the research up front to
determine who to monitor, and understand their role within the industry and social
media space. Continuing to monitor your target audiences will help you gain a
better understanding of the audiences in your social space, and what they are
saying about your company, brands and competition. Monitoring will help you
establish more defined metrics that are aligned to your public.

12. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 4
Part 1: What To Monitor –
A Sample and A Worksheet
Start by creating an inventory of the details, keywords, and people you should be
monitoring in the following categories. A sample is below.
Sample
WHAT DETAILS KEYWORDS /PHRASES PEOPLE TO WATCH
EX: Industry Marketing Social Media David Meerman Scott
Experts Social Media Online Marketing Brian Solis
PR Public Relations Deirdre Breakenridge
Community Relations Scott Stratten
Earned Marketing Lee Odden
Content Marketing Ann Handley
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Beth Harte
SEO

13. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 4
Part 2: Worksheet
Fill in the following worksheet with the details about the people/groups you are
trying to reach, and the topics that interest them.
WHAT DETAILS KEYWORDS / PEOPLE TO
PHRASES WATCH
Industry Sectors
Technologies
Companies
Brands
Products
Services
Key issues
Industry experts
Key employees

14. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 4
Part 3: Good to Know!
What to Look for When Monitoring
• Social Voice (or strength)
Determining the likelihood that your brand or search phrase is being discussed,
based on a comparison of how often mentions are made.
• Sentiment
Determining the amount of positive, neutral and negative commentary about
your brand or search phrase, or the ratio of positive to negative mentions.
• Passion
A measure of fewer individuals mentioning your brand or search phrase more
often as opposed to more individuals mentioning your brand or search phrase
fewer times.
• Unique Authors
Number of unique individuals mentioning your brand or search phrase.
• Social Reach
A measure of unique authors divided by the total number of mentions.
• Top Users
Identification and ranking of authors most frequently mentioning your brand or
search phrase.
• Top Keywords
Ranking of the keywords used most frequently in searches linking to your brand
or search phrase mentions.
• Content downloads
An indicator of subject matter interest, engagement and relevancy.
• Content sharing
How often content is being shared is another key indicator of subject matter
interest, engagement and relevancy.
• Reviews and Recommendations
The level of positive, negative or neutral reviews about your brand, products or
services is a strong indicator of individual opinion as well as an identifier of
potential brand ambassadors.

15. Social Media Assessment Workbook
• Platform Preferences
Identifying which social media sites your prospects and customers prefer to use,
and how they use them, will tell you which social media platforms to deploy. For
example, will the primary social network for your technical prospects be a LinkedIn
group or a Facebook brand page? Or does this audience prefer to participate in
a privately-branded forum or discussion group?
• Audience Segments
Segmenting groups and individuals by their social media behavior and influence
will help you determine content types and topics most relevant to targeted
segments. More on how to segment target audiences appears in a later section.
Source: ©2010 MarketingSherpa Social Marketing Benchmark Survey

16. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 4
Part 4: Vocus Can Help
Vocus can help you reach and influence more buyers across social networks, online
and through the media.
To show how Vocus software works, we have analyzed news, blog and social media
coverage of a major airline company during a strike.
1. Determine who is saying what and where they
are saying it
Let’s look at the news results, blog coverage and social conversation summaries for
our airline.
Based on these word clouds, journalists were talking about the impact that the strike
had on unions. Bloggers, however, didn’t discuss the strike, and across social
networks the strike was not particularly prominent. All this data provides an excellent
outline on how to address each audience based on what they are interested in.

17. Social Media Assessment Workbook
2. Find influencers
In our airline example, we see in the pie chart that Twitter is the biggest communica-
tion channel for this company at this time (and the channel that was least concerned
about the strike). We can also see that Social Forums (blogs, industry forums) are a
very active communication channel. These detailed charts highlight which channels
are getting the most traffic.
Drill down, and you can pinpoint individual tweeters and bloggers to see who you
need to follow, engage and watch.

18. Social Media Assessment Workbook
3. Understand Tone
Not only do you get insight into who’s talking, what they are saying and where they
are saying it, but Vocus also provides a quick snapshot of tone – positive, negative
and neutral. This is a far better indicator of how you are achieving brand awareness,
customer satisfaction and sales goals.

19. Social Media Assessment Workbook
4. Segment and Prioritize
Vocus helps you really narrow in on your audiences. And sometimes you may learn
things you didn’t realize. For example, this company can now see that their main
contributors of positive and negative content are employees (blue bar).
They can also see from the pie charts that traditional media is still keeping watch on
their industry.

20. Social Media Assessment Workbook
5. Track
You can track influencers and media to get a detailed history of how they have
talked about your company in the past. This screen shot shows the contact
information of a journalist and all the stories/tweets he wrote about the company.

21. Social Media Assessment Workbook
6. Engage
Vocus lets you engage influencers right from your console. Need to tweet to an
individual? You can. Need to send an email to a journalist? We’ve got you covered.
Our record media database of 1.4 million journalists, editors and bloggers includes
contact information and editorial opportunities of almost everyone in the business
– and is kept up to date by a team of researchers (most of whom were reporters
themselves).

22. Social Media Assessment Workbook
7. Activate
Too often with social media, companies do not interact or engage with their
audiences. Vocus offers a suite of Facebook applications that allows you to solicit
donations, sell services, provide coupons and promotions, showcase services and
engage right within your Facebook page.

23. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 4
Part 5: Segmenting Your Audience
One of the primary benefits of social media for marketing purposes is the viral
effect – exponentially increasing the reach of the message beyond your immediate
audience through conversation and content sharing. Understanding how different
segments of your target audience use social media will help you determine the
audiences to target and the content most likely to be shared with friends and peers.
This model is an example of an effective, yet simple way to segment target
audiences by social behavior and influence. The segments are called the Silent
Majority, Vocal Minority and Social Authority.
The Silent Majority and Vocal Minority can be characterized as information
downloaders and information uploaders, respectively. These opposing roles are
important considerations because, in terms of their impact on friends and peers for
marketing purposes, the Silent Majority has little influence while the Vocal Minority
has a strong influence.
The Social Authority is a different breed that often dominates a niche with
extraordinary influence. It deserves a one-to-one relationship approach, just as
traditional publicists would approach the editors and subject matter experts in
mainstream media.
Source: ©2010 MarketingSherpa Social Marketing Benchmark Survey

24. Social Media Assessment Workbook
Sample
Here is a sample of how a financial services organization segmented its audiences.
BRAND/ KEY TARGET WHERE DO WE HOW ARE THEY USING
PRODUCT/ AUDIENCE/SOCIAL FIND THEM? SOCIAL MEDIA? WHAT
SERVICE INFLUENCE LEVEL INTERESTS THEM
MARKETED
Financial Asset Managers / Facebook, Sharing brand information,
Services Silent Majority Twitter Lack of conversation,
(Ex: Vanguard) Subject to regulations
Individual Investors
/ Vocal Minority Facebook,
Twitter, Shares relevant and timely
Financial Advisors/ Forums, information, Engages in
Social Authority Blogs conversation around
investing, Etc.
Facebook,
Twitter,
YouTube, Generates content to drive
Forums, business & SEO, Shares
Blogs relevant information from
Asset Managers, Etc.

25. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 4
Part 6: Worksheet
Now it’s your turn. List your key influencers and targets, where to find them and
what their key interests are.
BRAND/ KEY TARGET WHERE DO WE HOW ARE THEY USING
PRODUCT/ AUDIENCE/SOCIAL FIND THEM? SOCIAL MEDIA? WHAT
SERVICE INFLUENCE LEVEL INTERESTS THEM?
MARKETED
Silent Majority
Vocal Minority
Social Authority

26. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 5
Aligning Objectives and Measurement
Part 1: Defining targeted and measureable
objectives for social marketing purposes
Defining specific objectives for a social marketing initiative is only half the battle.
The other half is aligning these objectives with target audiences and corresponding
metrics. This alignment is important because it enables an organization to measure
its progress in achieving the objectives and proving ROI.
In the previous section, we discussed profiling social media audiences to determine
which segments you want to target. Now it’s time to determine what you specifically
want from each of these segments. Do you want to increase the number of Vocal
Minority members in your user network? Do you want Social Authority bloggers that
are covering your industry to be more aware of your products?
The metrics you use to track progress in achieving objectives will depend on your
unique business. If your company is driven primarily by B2B leads, your metrics
should include lead generation, qualification and nurturing factors resulting in
success. If your organization is B2C and eCommerce-driven, then website traffic
origination, consumer reviews and sales conversions may be your focus.
Metrics related to financial objectives like ROI are the most beneficial, but are not
always practical to track. While it may be practical to track the ROI of sales
conversions on an eCommerce site, tracking more granular metrics, such as how a
blog referred customers to the site and contributed to ROI, will require substantially
more effort. It would require mapping the cost of blog traffic to the eCommerce site
and the resulting revenue. Balancing what is possible with what matters should
be considered.
Source: ©2010 MarketingSherpa Social Marketing Benchmark Survey

27. Social Media Assessment Workbook
Objectives Alignment Worksheet Sample
CATEGORY OBJECTIVE- TO ACHIEVE BY DOING WHO TO WHERE HOW TO
WHAT WE WHAT WHAT REACH TO FIND MEASURE
WANT TO THEM
DO
Brand Promote our Improved Delivering Silent Twitter Increase
Awareness/ brand brand needed Minority downloads by...
Thought awareness insights and Facebook
Leadership Monitor our know-how Prospects Increase
brand Increase social voice by…
search engine Providing
Increase rankings details about Increase
awareness our products/ placement by...
Increase services
Establish us Web traffic Increase
as leaders Identifying, sharing by…
Improve listening to
Engage in brand or and engaging Increase
communities product/ visitors by....
service
reputation Improve
sentiment by…
Improve PR
Increase top
social users by…
Improve reviews
and recommenda-
tions by...
Customer Provide Improve Monitoring the Customers
Support/ customer customer community
support support
Customer quality Servicing
Advocacy Create customers that
customer Reduce need help
advocates customer
support Creating cus-
Other costs tomer service
channels and
establishing
response
processes
Thanking
loyal fans
Other
Sales/Lead Generate Increase lead Use
Generation interest at all generation social media
levels of the channels for
sales cycle Reduce sales and
customer promotional
Lead acquisition campaigns
generation costs
Coupon
Other Increase offerings
sales revenue
Other

28. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 5
Part 2: Worksheet
Now it’s your turn. Complete the worksheet below to align your objectives with your audiences.
CATEGORY OBJECTIVE- TO ACHIEVE BY DOING WHO TO WHERE HOW TO
WHAT WE WHAT WHAT REACH TO FIND MEASURE
WANT TO THEM
DO
Brand
Awareness/
Thought
Leadership
Customer
Support/
Customer
Advocacy
Sales/Lead
Generation

29. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 5
Part 3: Metrics that Matter
For this process, we are highlighting the four main social media platforms – blogs,
microblogs, social networks and multimedia / content sharing sites – and the
metrics that matter in each.
• Blogs: In terms of measurement, blogs have the advantage of being able to utilize
many of the traditional Web analytics. As with a website, code can simply be added
to a blog to track visitor traffic, source, behavior and other metrics. However, there are
many social media metrics not applicable to traditional websites that provide a more
relevant indication of blogging success:
• Comments – tracking both the number and sentiment of opinions shared
• Subscribers – growth trends by email or RSS subscription
• Conversions – depending on your specific definition
• Inbound links – an indicator of blog authority
• SERPs – search engine ranking position for key terms on major search engines
• Blog Authority – blog ranking in relation to similar categories on blog directories
• Microblogs: While microblogging refers to the practice of blogging with posts of 140
characters or less, microblogs have more in common with social networks than blogs.
Like social networks, the value and focus of microblogs is on the network of friends or
followers. Metrics are, therefore, often related to social networking:
• Followers – the number of those opting-in to or following a microblog
• Downstream followers – the number of those following the followers
• Posts – referred to as “tweets” on the most predominant microblog, Twitter
• Velocity – the growth rate of the follower network in a given period
• Passion – the ratio of number of posts to number of followers
• Social Networks: As the name implies, social networks are primarily people-focused.
However, businesses have learned to adapt the features of social networks for the
purposes of marketing. This trend has not gone unnoticed by networks originally
intended for personal use, which have transformed their features into commercially-
viable marketing platforms like Facebook Fan Pages. While metrics are sometimes
limited by the data social networks decide to share, there is plenty of tracking-worthy
information available, including:
• Community – the number of fans, group members, contacts, etc.
• Demographics – profile information on community members
• Referrals – tracking the click stream from networks to content and conversion hubs
• Discussions – tracking both the number and sentiment of group discussions
• Applications – usage of widgets and social media applications by the
network community

30. Social Media Assessment Workbook
• Multimedia Content Sharing Sites: This category covers a number of multimedia
sharing sites for video, photography, documents, presentations and audio content.
These sites aggregate content and enable you to share it without having to rely on
IT via links posted on blogs, social networks, email campaigns and other commu-
nication channels. When it comes to content sharing, the metrics that matter most
are related to the viral impact of content distribution, including:
• Views – the number of content downloads
• SERPs – search engine ranking position for key terms on major search engines
• Subscribers – the number of those opting-in to the multimedia content stream
• Referrals – tracking the click stream from content to conversion
Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa Social Marketing Benchmark Survey

31. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 6
Finding the Right Tactics
Part 1: Dissecting a successful social
marketing architecture
The number of social media sites in your social marketing architecture is not
important. What is important is that they each have a clearly defined purpose that
supports your tactical plan of action.
Many of the most successful social marketing architectures have a common structure
based on a hub and spoke design. In a hub and spoke design, the sites at the center
of the architecture are destination points for content and conversion. The surrounding
sites are for building communities, engaging friends, fans and followers, and directing
them into the hub of the architecture to obtain content – eventually converting them
to a lead or customer.
The following is a dissection of a very successful social marketing architecture
developed by Cisco Systems for their Collaboration solutions.
Example
The hub and spoke architecture for Cisco’s Collaboration solutions
©2010 MarketingSherpa Social Marketing Benchmark Survey

32. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 6
Part 2: Worksheet: Constructing
your social marketing architecture
Define the purpose of platforms and brands selected and roll-out sequence.
HUB SITES PURPOSE OF HUB SITE ROLL-OUT
SPOKE SITES PURPOSE OF SPOKE SITE ROLL-OUT
Note: Your hub site does not have to be a web site, it could be a blog or Facebook page.

33. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 6
Part 3: Sample Sites to Choose From
• Website
• Blog
• Microblog
• Social Network
• Multimedia Sharing
• Bookmarking / News
• Community / Forums
• Partner / Third Party

34. Social Media Assessment Workbook
STEP 6
Part 4: Worksheet: Constructing your
social marketing architecture
Use this worksheet to create a tactical plan of action. Be realistic. Over-communicating
is fine unless you have nothing to say, which may contribute to losing fans/followers.
Q1 WEEK / FREQUENCY
TACTIC / TASK RESOURCE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Blogging
Microblogging
Social Networking
Multimedia Content Sharing
OTHER

35. Social Media Assessment Workbook
Resources
Your Social Media Fix: 50 Social Media Podcasts
5 Social Media Best Practices for Business
Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing
Risk-takers and Strategists: Jeremiah Owyang on Long-Term Social Media Planning
16 top podcasts . social media, marketing and more
5 Tips for Finding Time for Social Media
12 Steps To Hiring A Social Media Manager
Social Media Time Management: Resource Allocation
Answering the Social Phone
How to Answer the Social Phone
How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day
5 Objectives for Social Media Measurement
Social Media Planning & Measurement
8 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring
10 business blogging best practices
Top 10 YouTube tips for small businesses
How to use YouTube to drive business
Social Media + Multimedia = Social Multimedia