#SocialMarketing
Planning Guide for 2015

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 2
Introduction
Social marketers, there’s plenty of good news for
the year ahead.
Social audiences have grown, and are less resistant to
branded messaging, according to our recent Instagram
and Twitter studies. Content and social marketing have
become such large focuses for organizations because
they work. The audience is there, and they’re excited
to engage.
Here’s a New Year’s-ready countdown of what has
changed in social marketing in 2014, what to expect
in 2015, and how to propel your brand to greatness
in social’s ever-evolving ecosystem.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 3
What Changed in 2014
Instagram has changed from a “Maybe we should” to a
“Must-have,” especially for retail brands.
The mobile photo-sharing app, which launched in October
of 2010, now reports over 200 million monthly active users,
60 million photos posted daily, and an average of 1.6 billion
Likes every single day.
As our Instagram Q3 Study pointed out, 86% of top brands
have Instagram accounts, up from 71% in Q3 2013. We can
only expect this trend upwards to continue.
#10INSTAGRAM IS NECESSARY

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 4
What to Do in 2015
Put some serious time and resources into your brand’s
Instagram presence, whether it’s a well-used social network
in your industry or not.
If most brands in your space use Instagram, conduct analysis
on successful competitors to discover what your target
audience responds to well and what falls flat.
If most brands in your space aren’t on Instagram, take
the opportunity to pave the way on the network. Here are
some current strategies we’re seeing successful brands use
on the network.
Tag another user handle in your captions.
On average, posts that include another user handle in the
caption net 56% more engagement. Mention influential
users to engage new audiences.
Tag a location for engagement growth.
Posts in our study that were tagged with
a location received 79% higher engagement.
Use hashtags.
Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more
engagement. Hashtags are an important discovery method
on Instagram, allowing brands to gain exposure to niche
groups and relevant areas of interest. These searchable
terms give audiences an organic way to find branded
content through topics that fascinate them.
“In 2015, you will see a big increase
in mobile social marketing with
mobile advertising, apps and
crowd sourced mobile driven
content. Brands and users will
leverage the power of the two key
obsessive technologies (Social and
mobile) to new heights. Instagram
which integrates social and mobile
will maintain its high growth rate.”
Jeff Bullas, Forbes Social Media
Power Influencer

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 5
What Changed in 2014
Facebook Sponsored Stories went away, and the new
“Behaviors” feature debuted. You can now target ads by
behavior within the following categories:
• Automotive (DLX Auto Powered by Polk)
• Charitable Donations
• Digital Activities
• Financial
• Mobile Device User
• Purchase Behavior
• Residential Profiles
• Travel
Within these categories, there are subcategories that allow
you to get even more specific about who you’re targeting
with your ads.
#9BEHAVIORAL TARGETING

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 6
What to Do in 2015
Since ad targeting on Facebook is better than ever,
take advantage of the Behaviors feature.
With behavior-based targeting, you can reach Facebook
users with characteristics more likely to drive engagement
from relevant social audience members and hit your
engagement and follower goals.
You can target users who are interested in motorcycles,
or in animal welfare. You can target users who are console
gamers, or who are seeking auto insurance policies, or who
are active credit card users, or who are new smartphone
and tablet owners, or who buy home and garden goods
frequently, or who are likely to move soon, or who are
business travelers – or users who fit into any combination
of the above behavioral categories.
“Facebook’s Behavioral targeting
allows advertisers to dive a level
deeper beyond some of the more
surface-level targeting methods
like Interests, Demographics, and
Locations. These methods make
inferences about users’ likelihood
of buying based on their
characteristics, but Behavioral
targeting identifies users who
have actually taken an action. Behavioral targeting finds
people who have recently invested their time and/or
money in something similar to what your product or
brand offers, which increases the likelihood that not
only are they interested in your product, but that they’re
willing to take action on that interest.”
Danie Pote, Marketing Manager
of Paid Media at Simply Measured

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 7
What Changed in 2014
Facebook debuted Trending Topics, which appear to the
right of your News Feed as a list of topics and hashtags that
are spiking in popularity on Facebook. This list is personalized
based on a number of factors, including Pages you’ve liked,
your location, and what’s trending across Facebook.
What to Do in 2015
When people click on a topic, they see relevant updates from
friends and brand pages. That means you.
Create content around current conversations.
Use Trending Topics to know what Facebook members
are talking about, and capitalize on that buzz by creating
content that fits with relevant keywords and/or hashtags
on a quick turnaround.
Invest in right-column ads.
You can purchase ads that appear directly below the Trending
Topics section. By knowing which topics are trending within
your target audience, you can make sure these ads fulfill a
need or answer a question that a trending topic surfaces.
Keep an eye on FB Techwire.
Facebook wants to be our go-to news source. With the
recent release of FB Techwire, the social giant has made
another step in that direction. Wherever your Trending
Topics-centric content creation forays take you, make sure
you’re paying attention to FB Techwire—a place for breaking
news before the topics get fully heated.
#8
“Brands now have the ability to
capitalize on trending topics on
Facebook just like on Twitter,
creating content based on what
the current conversation is and
reminding users of cultural
phenomena even if their own
friends aren’t talking about a
specific topic.”
Kevin Shively
Senior Content Marketing Manager
at Simply Measured
FACEBOOK AS A NEWS SOURCE

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What Changed in 2014
Brands created better integrated cross-channel campaigns
than ever.
What to Do in 2015
Fire on all cylinders. Depending on your industry and
budget, that might mean building campaigns with consistent
messaging across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, investing
in these networks in addition to traditional TV and radio ads,
or exploring growth networks like Pinterest and Wanelo.
From the Super Bowl to American Idol to the Oscars, this
year showed us that cross-channel social marketing efforts
offer brands major return worth devoting budget to.
Engage, engage, engage.
You don’t want your content to fall on deaf ears, but you
can’t expect your social audience to automatically engage
with your content. Give social users specific ways to get
involved in a dialogue, like asking them to post photos or
share opinions alongside a certain hashtag.
#7CROSS-CHANNEL CREATIVITY

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Remain consistent, but adapt.
Your messaging should remain consistent across all your active
social networks, but your delivery methods and what you
expect to receive from each network must be flexible. This
includes how you set goals and benchmarks
for outcomes on each network.
For instance, you might kick off a campaign on Facebook with
humorous video content, expand to Instagram mid-campaign
with product-oriented photographic content, and use Twitter
to conduct the chats associated with your campaign, but your
brand voice and message should reinforce itself no matter
which channel your social audiences are tuning into.
Measure across all your channels.
Looking at each network in a silo means missing out on
important trends and opportunities. By comparing channel-
specific metrics side-by-side, you can optimize your strategy
with detailed analytics for channel health, content performance,
and user engagement.
“In 2015, data-informed social
media content, promotion, and
engagement through more
sophisticated social marketing
platforms will also require trained
practitioners necessitating new
training, best practices, and
measurement.”
Lee Odden
CEO at TopRank Online Marketing

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 10
What Changed in 2014
In 2014, it became clear that the future of social media
marketing relies on influencer marketing. As per Nielsen,
90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while
only 33% trust ads. That means your popular friends and
followers, social audience members with high Klout scores,
bloggers, and journalists are more important than ever.
What to Do in 2015
Associating yourself with popular, brand-relevant influencers
gives you a unique opportunity to connect with fan groups
that are familiar with your brand, but may not have engaged
with you directly.
Identify the right influencers.
Use an agency that represents influencers and bloggers or
conduct a social media analysis of who’s interacting with your
brand already and organically reach out to the folks who
touch your target audience regularly.
Keep Brian Solis’s three R’s in mind.
When going influencer-hunting, digital analyst and author Brian
Solis suggest we think about Reach (the influencer’s popularity,
Klout score, and social audience size), Relevance (how well
the influencer’s expertise aligns with your goals and brand
identity), and Resonance (whether the influencer is having
meaningful, long, interactive conversations).
Reach out the right way.
According to KISSmetrics, the most effective way to recruit
influencers is via email, with contact on owned channels like
Twitter and Facebook a close second.
#6SAY YES TO INFLUENCERS

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What Changed in 2014
According to Digital Sherpa, videos increase people’s
understanding of your product or service by 74%. YouTube is
now the number two search engine in the world. One-third of
all online activity is spent watching videos. Shall we go on?
What to Do in 2015
It’s time to allocate some money to developing video
content. We know you’ve been talking about doing this
for a couple years now, but it’s really time.
Don’t go long.
45% of viewers stop watching a video after one minute.By the
two-minute mark, 60% of viewers have tuned out. This means
your content should not be lengthy. If more time is mandatory
to get your point across, make sure you’ve engaged your
target audience fully before sixty seconds comes along.
Add it to email.
Up your email marketing game and drive click-throughs
from your emails with video. An introductory company email
that includes a video receives an average click-through rate
increase of 96%.
Put it everywhere.
Don’t limit your video efforts to YouTube and Facebook. Post
snippets and teasers of longer videos on Instagram and Vine,
completely saturating your social presence and testing to see
which kind of video content is effective for your audience.
#5
“Video is going to be gigantic in
2015. The social content marketing
world will put more dollars there, and
YouTube and Vine will increase their
impact.”
Michael Walton
SVP of Marketing and Product
at Simply Measured
VIDEO TIME

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 12
What Changed in 2014
Podcasts are being taken more seriously in the social and
content marketing realms. According to Social Media
Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2014,
only 6% of marketers are involved with podcasting today,
but more than three times that plan on increasing their
podcasting activities in 2014, and 28% of marketers want
to learn more about it.
What to Do in 2015
Experiment with podcasts. What’s your brand’s expertise?
Find a unique way to educate and/or entertain people at
a regular cadence.
Figure out who you’re trying to reach.
A great way to do this? Analyzing the people who feel
strongly enough about you to engage with your brand on
social, and using those questions and discussions as starting
points for your podcast vision and topic pool.
Coordinate with your social efforts.
If podcasts fall into the social marketing bucket for your
brand, make sure all roads lead back to your social
commodities and getting listeners to become followers.
The ad alternative.
If you don’t want to devote the time and resources to creating
a podcast series, consider advertising on a popular podcasting
series that fits with your target audience. Package your
advertisement with a discount code and/or social offer to keep
track of how much business you drive from this endeavor.
#4
“Podcasts offer the opportunity
to both showcase expertise and
humanize your brand by letting the
brilliant people behind it speak.
They’re relatively low-budget
and easy to create. And, they’re
convenient for anyone who has
a smartphone, headphones, and
only a little bit of free time to learn
something new. That’ll be pretty
much everyone in 2015.”
Bridget Quigg, Director of Content at Simply Measured
EXPERIMENT WITH PODCASTS

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 13
What Changed in 2014
Leveraging major cultural and entertainment events
to promote brand awareness went big in 2014, with
successful bandwagon-jumping and organically sourced
campaigns around everything from Game of Thrones to
the #ALSIceBucketChallenge.
What to Do in 2015
Social strategy in 2015 will require more vigilance and pulse-
reading than ever before. Don’t miss an opportunity to get
your brand in front of the right people by capitalizing on
the success of social phenomena—but make sure you don’t
compromise your brand identity while you’re at it.
#3LEVERAGE EVENTS

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 14
Expect the unexpected.
Don’t stick so stringently to your social plan that you lose a
sense of spontaneity and the ability to make social magic from
what’s happening already.
In this landscape, your community manager is more important
than ever. If multiple brands live under your company umbrella,
invest in multiple community managers for optimal social
creativity and event-based involvement.
Crowdsource content.
Amplify existing behavior on social by creating campaigns
based on what people are saying around your brand already.
Surprise, but stay true.
Don’t stray so far away from your brand voice that you’re
unrecognizable, but take a chance, get creative, and get
involved in a cultural phenomenon people might not expect
from your brand for extra attention.
“Social identity will start to
become a challenge in 2015,
as brands attempt to tie offline
identity with online identity. Social
identity solutions will start to
emerge and some acquisition will
happen in that space.”
Uri Bar-Joseph
Director of Marketing
at Simply Measured

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015 15
What Changed in 2014
Social media is transforming customer service. A Nielsen
survey shows that more than half of all customers now turn to
social media for redress. Some 81% of Twitter users expect a
same-day response to questions and complaints.
What to Do in 2015
Invest resources into providing timely and efficient
customer service on Twitter.
Have a dedicated customer service handle.
By maintaining a separate main brand account and customer
service account, you can separate support inquiries from
marketing efforts. This means your customers get more direct
access to help and your marketing efforts remain undiluted.
Sign on, sign off.
The best-in-class in Twitter customer service let followers
know their customer service availability in their profiles and
send out Tweets at the beginning and close of business
hours. This makes sure community expectations are managed
and more often met.
Focus on response time and Tweet resolution.
Measure your progress by benchmarking with these two
metrics. How long does it take your customer service team to
respond on Twitter? How many Tweets are necessary to close
a customer service case? Create response time and Tweet
resolution goals based on your industry norms.
#2CUSTOMER SERVICE
“The concept of a social business is
here to stay. With the emergence of
social selling, employee advocacy,
and other social business initiatives,
companies and leaders will begin
to shift their focus from using
social media for marketing or
communication, and start using it for
connecting and growing communities.
This includes investing in employees’ personal brands
and empowering customers to have a voice while talking
with, not at, them.”
Brian Fanzo
Digital Strategist at Broadsuite

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What Changed in 2014
With a well-recognized evolution from basic listening and
monitoring to more sophisticated performance measurement
and market analysis, brand storytellers paid attention to data
to develop a stronger understanding of their audience, and
their competitors.
What to Do in 2015
Better measurement means better goal-hitting strategies
and tactics for digital teams. By increasing your brand’s
social understanding and self-knowledge, you can improve
everything from cross-platform strategy to org structure –
and make it very clear why you rocked that campaign.
Create your own ROI definition. What does social ROI mean
to you? The answer varies for every brand. Are you more
interested in brand awareness, driving your social audience
to your site, increasing engagement with customers? Find the
metrics that match your goals, and start benchmarking.
#1PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT

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Differentiate between owned, earned, and paid.
Which of your efforts are bearing fruit? Are you putting
your advertising dollars to their best use on social?
Target better.
Build your social content around your ideal social personas.
By knowing who’s already engaging with you, you’ll get a
pretty good idea of who you should be targeting or which
tweaks you have to make to your strategy to attract the
audience you actually want.
Analyze your competition.
Like in any other branch of your business, you need to know
what your competitors are doing well and not so well. Make
this social analysis a centerpiece of your measurement strategy.
“In 2014, social marketing got
dramatically more sophisticated.
In 2015, social analytics will
be a primary focus as brands
continue to scale social marketing
investments.”
Adam Schoenfeld
CEO of Simply Measured

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Conclusion
The social landscape is constantly changing, and as social
analytics experts, it’s our job to discover how and why those
evolutions are taking place. We know it’s crazy out there, but
we’ve been paying attention. You can put good money on
our top ten predictions and planning recommendations.
From investing in new content types to premium measurement
solutions to new ad buying ventures, it’s time to put a fresh
face on your social strategy and ring in the New Year right.
Lucy Hitz is a Social Media
Content Writer at Simply
Measured, where she works on
longform content and writes
for the award-winning social
analytics blog. Her favorite
musical artist is Taylor Swift. She
looks forward to seeing what
happens on social in 2015.

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