Intelligex social media conference developing a social media strategy by barbara davies

• After completingJohannesburg,&I Journalism at
the University of
a BA English
went on to
complete a Postgraduate Diploma in Business
Management at Wits Business School.
• After small PR & Marketing firm. as a publicist
for a
graduation I began working

• Iand have extensive experience in digital years
have been working in advertising for 6
and
“new media”.
• Inumber avid blogger and contributor to and a
am an
of blogs, a social media addict
a

communication junkie — people fascinate me
and I love nothing more than to watch the way
people interact with each other in different
situations

© Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday 26 April 12

• A strategy is defined as your majoroforaction, a
policy designed to achieve a
plan
overall
aim.
• Strategy is imperative to the success of any
endeavour.
• With the help of a strategist you need to define
the who’s, what’s, how’s, where’s, why’s and
when’s of your campaign or presence.
• It is of paramount importanceline with your
relevant to your brand and in
that these be

overall marketing strategy.
• Social media is 360, another spoke in the in
your marketing
merely another mechanism

wheel of marketing tools.
• Your social mediathe same overall goals as your
strive to achieve
strategy should ultimately

marketing strategy as a whole.

• Before you can start a social media presence
you need to determine which platforms you will
embark on and in order to do that, you must
first figure out where your audience is.
• Similarly, you can’tdon’t first know who you will
audience is if you
determine where your

be talking to.
• This is related to your bulls-eye demographic.
• It’s importantto talk to everyone,you can’t and
shouldn’t try
to remember that
you need only
engage with relevant stakeholders for your
brand and which stakeholders are relevant
depends on what you hope to achieve with
your social media presence.
• Once you’ve figured out who you’ll be they are.
engaging with you can find out where


• For example, if young, tech-savvy and socially
predominantly
your bulls-eye demographic is

aware, you will need to engage on multiple
platforms in order to meet their engagement
requirements.
• Nike Basketball for example has over 3,9m fans
on Facebook, approximately 250,000 followers
on twitter and over 57,000 subscribers to their
YouTube channel. They have hundreds of pins
and repins on Pintrest as well as around 150
followers on the fledgling social network.
• This group isthey expect near-constant updates
generation”,
the “instant gratification

and engagement on social media.
• They want youexpect talking behave like not just
to them, they
to be
you to
with them,
one of
their buddies.
• As such needs to bemediamuch more in depth
strategy
your social
that
engagement

in order to keep up with their time and content
demands. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• Conversely, if your bulls-eye demographic is more professional, over 55, top
LSM groups you will have a much smaller following on social media and
people will primarily look to your website for online interaction.
• These groups engage with a specific end-game in mind; they want
information, not conversation. When you phone your stock broker you don’t
ask him how his kids are or what the weather is like in Sandton, you ask how
your share portfolio is handling the news that Anglo has sold is shares in
SCAW Metals.
• Alexander Forbes for example has a (comparatively menial) 14,000 fans on
Facebook and no official twitter presence. Their CEO, Edward Kieswetter,
however has approximately 750 followers.
• For a brand like Alexander Forbes the CEO is the official voice of the brand
and his/her online presence has to behave accordingly. He/she shouldn’t be
excessively tweeting about his/her weekend activities — a few personal
tweets is acceptable, encouraged even as it gives the brand a face, but this
shouldn’t be the norm.
• Another example of a very successful CEO presence is that of FNB and
Michael Jordaan, it puts a face to the brand and allows people the
opportunity to engage on a one-to-one basis with the brand, which is exactly
what we want on social media.
• FNB’s other presence, RB Jacobs, is also a very successful presence, one
that has given a face to their customer service department and has improved
customer satisfaction exponentially. Despite the fact that everyone knows
RB Jacobs is not in fact a real person, they engage with the profile as if it
were and are therefore experiencing a “one-to-one” conversation dynamic
with a group of individuals
• Your strategy will define the direction your brand takes on social media and
therefore needs to be throughly and carefully thought out.
• The person who writes your strategy needs to have an intimate knowledge
of the brand as a whole, as well as in depth knowledge of the brand ethos
and positioning on traditional media.
• I reiterate, your social media strategy must be aligned to your overall brand
strategy. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• Now you know where your audience “hangs out” on social
media, now you need to listen to what they’re saying.
• Listen to what they’re saying not only about your brand but
about your competitors, your suppliers, each other and
themselves.
• If you are ultimately able to engage with them on a personal
level because of the insights you gained from listening to
their conversations you will set your brand apart. These
human insights you can gain will be invaluable in your future
engagements with your audience.
• Conversations start with listening. Listening is imperative to
the success of your social media presence.
• Listen to your competitors, this will help you determine what
works and what doesn’t.
• Listen to the types of messages your competitors are
putting to their audience, listen to the way the messages
are delivered — is the tone of voice friendly and casual or
more professional and formal?
• Then listen to the responses your competitors are getting
from their audience — are the responses positive or
negative? Did the audience enjoy that type of engagement?
• If the audience’s response is not favourable then your
engagement strategy needs to follow a different tack. This
will help to set your brand apart from it’s competitors, it
allows you to learn from their mistakes.

• You are probably wonderingengagements.
supposed to listen to these
how you are

• Obviously thosesuch as your competitors’on
open platforms,
engagements that occur

Facebook pages are easy to listen to but
engagements about your brand happen every
day on social media and you might find it
difficult to know where to go to listen for them.
• The answer is it’s weight in gold.management,
and it’s worth
online reputation

• There are numerous ORMyou can list custom
of the best is BrandsEye,
tools available, one

search-phrases relevant to your brand. It will
then report back to you, in real-time, what
people are saying about your brand across a
wide variety of platforms.


• Another way to listen to the conversation is to
seek out “influentials”, these are people who
drive or initiate conversation, people who have
a degree of authority and whose opinions are
respected on certain matters.
• If an influential recommends a to try it out.
service people are more likely
product or

• Peoplefar more than they respectsay about a
brand
respect what their peers
what a brand
says about itself.
• Love him or hate him, a local example of an
influential is Gareth Cliff.


• Gareth Cliff has over 300,000 fansan
Facebook and is considered to be
on

“authority” on a number of things.
• Gareth saw an influential and in early-2011 his
considered
the monetary value in being

social media rate card was featured in
numerous industry blog posts.
• According to his rate card,R20,000.featuring
your brand would run you
a tweet


• Similarly a tweet about your brand a tweetcost
you R15,000. When you consider
would
is a
maximum of 140 characters, that means you
would be paying almost R110 a character.
• But with over 250,000him each day twitter and
thousands listening to
followers on
on his
radio station, Gareth Cliff has a fairly extensive
audience, that hangs on his every word.
• The publication of Gareth’s rate card didn’t do
anything for the credibility of influentials
because people started questioning, “is that
really your opinion or is it paid adspace?”
• Recently Facebook and twitter have updated
their terms of service effectively outlawing the
practice of selling your posts to the highest
bidder and as such the credibility of influentials
is slowly returning.


• Finding the influentials you should be your industry
for most brands will be easy; think of
listening to

and off the the top of your head you can probably
come up with at least 10 people you would
consider influentials in your industry.
• If you were in the financial an influential,example, for
Bruce Whitfield would be
industry for
similarly
the advertising industry Andy Rice and Jeremy
Maggs are influentials we listen to.
• Influentials are very often industry journalists,
bloggers or writers.
• If you’rebe listening to ato figure out who is
should
still struggling
very helpful tool
you

WeFollow.com.
• WeFollowpeople whoto twitter but generally have
speaking
is tailored
are influential on twitter
a blog, Facebook page, Google+ page, etc.
• WeFollowortakes influentials and splitsdescending
category industry and lists them in
them by

order by number of followers.
• You can search by country, by city, by industry, etc. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• It is critically importantembark on a social
your goals before you
that you clearly define

media presence.
• To use an analogy, if your social media are
endeavour is a roadtrip, then your goals
your destination.
• Just like with a roadtrip your destination will
determine your route and the vehicles you
choose to get there.
• Your you intent to get from is your you are to
how
social media strategy
where
route map;

where you want to be.


• Defining your destination may seem like a daunting task and if
you look at it in isolation is will be.
• Marketing must be viewed holistically, your social media
presence is merely another marketing tool in your arsenal.
• As such, your social media goals need to be aligned to your
brand strategy objectives.
• Consider your brand strategy objectives, think about whether
social media can help you to achieve any of those objectives.
• Remember to be realistic, social media is a tool, another
spoke, not the be all and end all of your marketing strategy.
• Your goals should be SMART:
• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely
• It’s very important that you consider — like you would with any
goals — short-, medium- and long-term goals and assign the
appropriate timeframe to your goals.
• Even on social media, not everything happens overnight; it
will still take you months of hard work to gain a following that
you consider to be worthwhile.
• You wont’ sign up one day and have 100,000 fans the next. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• Make sure thataudience wants toisgo. least close
to where your
your destination at
If you’re
not going somewhere that’s of interest to them,
they won’t come along for the ride.
• This basicallypresence has to add value to their
social media
boils down to the fact that your

experience of your brand.
• You can add value in a number of ways, with
exclusive special offers or rewards, sneak
peeks, value add coupons or something as
simple as an express conduit for complaints or
customer service issues.
• You have toextra to ensure they come along for
something
give your social media audience

the journey.


• Now you know whoout, you’ve decided where you’re
those people hang
you’re talking to, you know where

going and now it’s time to figure out how you’re going
to get there.
• Remember, you don’t have to do everything at once.
• Youseveral platforms but first you want to test thebe
on
may decide that ultimately you would like to

water.
• There is rollout may nothingbest thing forthis strategy, a
phased
absolutely
be the
wrong with
your brand.
• Start with to you and to your are going to be most
beneficial
the platforms that
audience.
• Rememberaudience —to build an to have 10 fans who
than a big
it’s better
it’s better
engaged audience

are talking about your brand and engaging positively
than 100 fans who aren’t saying anything about your
brand.
• Because ofweek reached 901m Facebook users
(which this
the sheer volume of
users) and the
functionality the pages allow, this will often be the first
platform in a phased rollout. In fact, especially for
small brands, a Facebook page can (and often does)
replace a website. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• There are hundreds thesocial media platforms
to choose from and
of
number grows almost
daily.
• Not all of them are relevant to your brand or to
your message.
• It’s also important toto each platform, it’severy
message is suitable
remember that not
vital
that you tailor your messages to the specific
platform on which you plan to engage.
• Don’t think you havehave toon every platform,
this is a myth — you
to be
be on every
platform that is relevant to your brand but not
necessarily on every platform.
• Start both the you and your audience.the best
ROI;
with
for
ones that will give you


• Now you know who you’re talking to, you know where those
people hang out, you’ve decided where you’re going and how
you’re going to get there, now it’s time to figure what you’re
going to say along the way.
• First of all, determine your voice on each platform and
remember that not every message is suited to every platform
so your voice on one platform may be vastly different from your
voice on the next platform.
• Some messages work on Facebook, for example, but won’t
work on twitter and visa versa.
• It’s important to determine what each platform will be used for
and plan the content accordingly.
• Develop a content theme for each month (or week or
promotion period, depending on your brand and industry).
• These content themes can largely be drawn from your annual
marketing plan.
• Your content themes may or may not be the same across
platforms.
• Determining a content theme will help you to identify events,
etc. you can capitalise on — promos to run, product launches,
etc.
• All of these things affect the content you will be putting out
across platforms.
• Developing content themes is a similar process to developing a
media plan, in fact your traditional media plan will serve as a
good point of departure. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• Heremay look like. of what a content theme
plan
is an example


• Once you haveto develop your content plans. you
are now ready
developed your content themes

• To continue the platforms are your vehicles, are your
destination,
the journey analogy, your goals
your
audience represents your traveling companions, your
content themes are the national road maps you use to
plan your journey. That means that your content plans
are the individual town and city maps that show the
exact route you will take on your journey.
• By properly planning your route to take you through
key areas you will hopefully pick up more traveling
companions along the way.
• New traveling companions may affect your route
slightly; you may take a specific detour to
accommodate a certain group of traveling companions.
• The beauty of social media is thatgroups. enough to
accommodate the wants of new
it’s easy

• But may alienate you do itmembers of your drastically
you
remember, if
existing
too often or too
audience.
• By changing yourwhich means you may undermine your
your destination,
route may also inadvertently change

strategy and therefore your ability to achieve your
goals. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• One of the most important things to remember about
content is that it is on behalf of the brand, it is not your
personal opinion.
• Your brand’s page is not the place to air your personal
political views, it’s not the place to discuss your favourite
colour or fashion trend (unless you’re writing for a political
page or fashion house).
• You should steer clear of mentioning the weather because
not all of your audience members will be experiencing the
same thing you are. If you’re writing, for example, for the
City of Cape Town, you are free to discuss the weather in
Cape Town because your presence is unashamedly from
Cape Town.
• Stay away from person opinions and singular pronouns,
such as I, me, my, etc. rather use nondescript we, our
descriptions.
• Don’t make the mistake of writing for yourself or your peers,
always make sure you are writing on behalf of the brand.
• The person responsible for creation of content must be
extremely comfortable with the brand ethos and personality,
this person must be able to write on behalf of the brand.
• Make sure the person knows if your brand is fun-loving and
happy go lucky or a serious and conservative brand.
• This must be defined upfront, before anything is written for
the presence.

• There are athat will helpdifferentconstantly be
structures
number of
you to
content

coming up with fresh content. One that a
number of people advocate is 1/3 split.
• This means 1/3 of your content will 1/3specific
to the content theme of the period,
be
will be
general content about your brand and 1/3 will
be general industry content.
• By including general industrythat it’s not allare
able to show your audience
content you

about you, that you’re interested in more than
just selling a product, that in fact you’re
interested in having a conversation.
• It shows you as a thought-leader, a
conversation-started and and opinion-shaper in
your industry.
• Following acome up with new, will help content.
constantly
predefined recipe
relevant
you to


• Your content plan will includeinclude links and
wording of your posts, it will
the exact

photographs if relevant.
• You will need ato blanketplan per platform and
remember not
content
broadcast content
across platforms, as mentioned previously not
every message is relevant or appropriate to
every platform.
• Your audience on different platforms may bethe
vastly different so you’ll need to ensure that
content you’re posting on each platform is
relevant to that specific audience (this will be
mostly trial and error).


• All too often, companies makeresources to of
not committing the necessary
the mistake

their social media presence; they assign the
job to a junior member of the team or an intern
and often this person lacks the necessary
maturity and brand-investment to handle the
responsibility.
• Someone (or ina the case of larger has to
organisations, group of someones)
take responsibility for and ownership of the
ultimate success (or failure) of the endeavour.
• If you’re not able or willing to commit the
necessary resources, then it’s best not to
engage on social media. In some cases, social
media abstinence is the best strategy.
• Some media management, others keep it fully
social
brands choose to fully outsource their

in-house and others use a hybrid model.

• If you decide tothan onein-house,to the task, not
to assign more
keep it
person
you may need

only because of the volume of work that may
be required but also because of the type of
work.
• Onemanaging a Facebook page but may not
and
person may be fully adept at maintaining

have the necessary skills required to keep a
blog up to date with relevant, well-written
content.
• You maydepartments involvedain yourifsocial are
multiple
also need to assign team there

media presence; you may need a member from
HR, one from sales and marketing, one from
customer service, etc.


• If you decide to fully outsourceto ensure you
media management, you need
your social

have found the right fit because, ultimately, you
are entrusting the “voice” of your brand to an
outsider. As such you need to ensure that the
person preparing the content fully understands
the voice.
• Most social media management companies will
present content themes for approval but final
content plans are then at the management
company’s discretion.
• This is not necessarily a problem, provided you
have the right fit.
• All of the aboveaholds true whether you’re
outsourcing to social media management
company or hiring a new employee to handle
the management in-house.


• Personally, Iin which a the use of a hybrid
model, one
advocate
social media
management company or consultant and the
in-house team meet somewhere in the middle.
• Content themes and plans are drawnis left to
together and implementation thereof
up

the management company or consultant.
• It is imperativehas access to the right company
or consultant
that the management
people so
that should any queries need to be escalated,
they are escalated to the appropriate people.
• If the not have access to the or consultantthere
does
management company
right people
will be an unwanted and unnecessary delay in
response time, which will result in a less than
satisfying experience for your audience.


• Now you have everything in place; which
determined who your audience is,
you have

platforms they are engaging on, what you hope
to achieve with this venture and what your
content strategy will be going forward, now all
that remains is to “push the button.”


• Remember to stick to your schedule and be
consistent.
• Check your presences daily to ensure there are
no comments or queries that require
responses.
• Monitor and manage interactions and
engagements on a daily basis.
• Social provided you’re conversation generation
and –
media is about
doing it right – your
posts should generate conversation. If you
aren’t monitoring your presences daily, you are
effectively walking out on your audience mid-
conversation.
• Scheduling tools canThereto ensure you stick
to your content plan.
help
are a number of
such tools available.


• One of which is HootSuite. HootSuite is great because provided
you capture your content plan in the right format you can simply
upload your .csv or Excel spreadsheet and viola, your content is
scheduled. You can download a template from their website.
• Scheduling posts does not mean that you can now forget about
your presence, you still need to monitor the engagements daily
or you’ll miss out on vital parts of the conversation.

• The free version of HootSuite allows you to add up to 5
networks and HootSuite supports Facebook, twitter, Foursquare,
LinkedIn, MySpace, PingFM and WordPress.
• HootSuite is designed around feeds — newsfeeds, @mention
feeds, message feeds, etc and feeds are displayed on tabs,
which means you can have a consolidated view of your
presences in one place.
• This means that HootSuite is ideal for actively managed
accounts and multiple account managers (across brands or
across platforms).
• HootSuite also allows you to get information about fans and
followers because it can provide links to their social presences
as well as display their Klout scores.
• HootSuite also allows you to create lists of users you would like
to keep a closer eye on, which means that disgruntled customers
can be dealt with quickly providing a better social engagement
for all.
• HootSuite works on a subscription basis and subscriptions
range from free to $2000 per month. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• TweetDeck is, astwitter but it also supports
geared towards
the name implies, more

Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and MySpace.
• Like HootSuite content is arranged in feeds.
• For me, TweekDeck’s best feature isyou to track
keyword search feature, this allows
its

particular search phrases or keywords in real-
time, which makes it a brilliant entry-level ORM
tool.


• When we are thinking about traditional media, the first thing
we do is think about “how are we going to measure this?”
We ask, “what are the readership/listenership/viewership
figures of that magazine/radio/tv show?” We always want to
know what our ROI will be, and why should social media be
any different?
• Right in the beginning you decided what your objectives and
goals were for your presence, keeping those objectives in
mind you will need to determine your metrics for success.
• You need to constantly review everything, ask if the platforms
you’re on are still the right platforms to be on, ask if your
objectives are still relevant, is your management strategy still
the right one (outsource vs. in-house/hybrid), ask if your
audience is providing the engagement you had hoped for, is
it the audience you’d hoped for and whether or not you’re
keeping that audience happy.
• There are numerous different metrics for success you can
apply and the ones you choose will be determined by your
strategy and the objectives you hoped to achieve.
• If, for example, you wanted an online purchasing portal your
metrics for success would include the number of sales you
made via your portal. If you only wanted to raise brand
awareness, your metrics for success would include the
number of fans or followers you have gained.
• ROI measurement for social media is not an exact science,
nothing in social media is. A lot of your measurements will be
based on gut-feel and informed guesswork.

• Just like anyand if necessary revising constantly
reviewing it
strategy you need to be
it.
• You may need to tweak your your objectives, for
based on a slight change to
metrics for success
example. Or you may find that your original plan is
the exact opposite of what your audience hoped for
from your brand and you need to virtually start
again.
• The beauty ofeasily adjust, adapt or about-turnjust
that, you can
digital media is that you can do
your
social media strategy virtually overnight, it is a
constant evolution based on what’s happening on
your presences.
• Remember to set out your internal and public-facing
policies.
• Internal policies will include what your their personal
can and can’t say about the brand on
employees
profiles as well as what they say on the brand’s
profile or on behalf of the brand.
• External, or permissible from your audience onwhat
is and isn’t
public-facing, policies will set out
your
profile (e.g. profanity, hate speech, discrimination,
etc.) © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• To sum itwhat they’reneed to (about everything) and
listen to
all up, you
saying
find your audience and
find out where they’re saying it.
• Determine your and attainable.
they’re realistic
goals and objectives, make sure

• Figure out rollout strategy is. want to be on and
what your
which platforms you

• Determine your voice for for each platform, ensure
formalising your content
each platform and begin
that content is relevant to the platform, structured
according to the voice for that platform and in line
with the what the audience on that platform
expects.
• Engage with your audience, take negativity offline
wherever possible and try to keep the conversation
light.
• Have a look at how you’re doing, is it successful so
far?
• Once you’vetodone all that, go backisand start again
by listening how your audience reacting to your
conversation and see if you need to tweak or adjust
anything. © Barbara Davies 2012. All Rights Reserved.

• Remember, that whetheris beingyou engage on
social media your brand
or not
spoken about
out there on the world wide web.
• There are customersare both satisfied and
dissatisfied — there
—
suppliers and
competitors all talking and all engaging, with
each other and with your brand.
• If you’re not engaging in huge opportunity.you
are potentially missing a
the conversation

• If you have determined that social media
engagement is not in fact right for your brand,
you need — at very least — to be listening to the
conversation that is being had.


Intelligex social media conference developing a social media strategy by barbara davies

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Intelligex social media conference developing a social media strategy by barbara davies