SOCIAL NEVER SLEEPS How to create a winning social media strategy Viewpoint Social never sleeps OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW Once upon a time a brand looking to increase sales could call up their agency, slap together a back-of-a-fag-packet radio commercial with a brash Buy! Buy! Buy! call-to-action and they were pretty much good to go. Today, things are different. Very different. Nowhere more so than in social. The interrupt-and-repeat mass advertising mode just doesn’t cut it. Of course, you know you can reach, engage and sell to your customers on social channels, but the environment is foreign: it’s personal, resource-intensive and hard to measure. So how do you get started? Fear not, a solution is at hand. With this handy guide, you can overcome the myriad of challenges you face. REBECCA HEARD Senior Planner Indicia If it’s social, we’ll help you weave your way across the minefield. Social never sleeps Viewpoint 1: Have a goal 2: Set your KPIs and benchmark What’s the point? What are you trying to do with social media? Your goal isn’t to be amazing at social: it’s to be amazing at your business with the help of social. All too often you can dive in without a clear road map or a vision what social media can do for you. Whether it’s to increase brand awareness, client engagement or decrease customer support inquiries, you will never get beyond tactical conversations without a defined goal. What KPIs will you use to assess the effectiveness of you social strategy? There are mind-boggling array of data points in social media. You need to think about what you want to measure from the onset. For an awareness strategy, you might consider: Reach Impressions Number of new fans Share of voice. Alternatively, for loyalty, you might measure: Brand sentiment Engaged social fans Word of mouth. Keep in mind that along with clear KPIs, you also need benchmarks for success. For some, the idea of reaching 100 fans is something to strive for, while others quickly reach 1,000, 10k, 100k and set their sights higher. There are many social benchmarking tools available. At Indicia, we use Fanpage Karma, but you might also use AgoraPulse or CScore. Viewpoint Social never sleeps 3: The brand story ‘‘ The best brands are built on great stories. Ian Rowden | Virgin Group Chief Marketing Officer It’s not about redefining your brand story, it’s about telling it in social. Disney isn’t about movies, it’s about magic. Apple isn’t about technology, it’s about innovation. Volvo isn’t about cars, it’s about safety. Every brand has a story. It’s your job to identify what your story is and communicate it in a compelling way. Ultimately, your story sets you apart from competitors and can never truly be replicated (if it’s the right story). Your brand story will act as the blueprint for all your communications in the social space. It needs to be at the heart of everything you do. 4: Know your audience It’s simple. Unless you know your audience and understand what makes them tick you’ll never be able to have a genuine conversation with them in the social space. It’s vital to do your research! What’s your audience’s demographic? What time of day are they online? What type of posts excite them? All valid questions you need to ask yourself before embarking on a social strategy. How do you get to know your audience? Data profiling can help. We assist our clients in developing enriched profiles with our in house tool Interact™. Without getting too technical, by combining your customer data with the wealth of behavioural, attitudinal, lifestyle and demographic consumer data found within Interact™, we can provide you with a rich profile of each of your customer segments. Viewpoint Social never sleeps 5: Listen and learn 6: Create engaging content Social marketing isn’t about gate-crashing a conversation you weren’t involved in. It’s about finding authentic conversations your audience are having about your brand story and adding to it. Content and conversation go hand-in-hand when creating a solid social-media strategy. Content generally takes the role of ignition, whereas conversation acts as the fuel to make any social media idea spread. Take the example of Nike. Their brand story is centred on inspiring athletes. Through campaigns like Find Your Greatness and Endless Possibilities, Nike gives the impression that it has as much of a stake in an individual’s athletic performance as the participant. To create compelling content which inspires your audience to listen, engage and take action, you need to tie what you know about your audience and your brand narrative into a content plan. The lesson is simple: only by understanding the conversations happening around your brand, can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter. In our experience, the best content plans contain a mix of: real-time content – with an onus on piggybacking on breaking-news events, key trends or memes pre-planned content – looking at key events, dates which you can plan content around. Keeping with the sports theme, key dates in the diary for Adidas could be the World Cup, Wimbledon or the London Marathon. For real time, they were out of the blocks like Usain Bolt to piggyback on the news of the London Tube Strike. Naturally they encouraged people to run to work. Nice. The key challenge is to evolve from simply being a company with a product to becoming a valuable source for interesting, entertaining and useful content. Viewpoint Social never sleeps 7: What channels? 8: Have a conversation Choose your channels based on the above research – if your user research and your story strategy reveal that your customers are active on Twitter or LinkedIn (if your business has a B2B focus) then focus on the social channels relevant to them. Don’t Snapchat or build a cool Tumblr just because it’s the done thing. Relevance is everything. I’m sure you’ve heard the dinner party metaphor – nobody wants to be sitting next to that guest who only talks about themselves and never listens to others. Boring. When it comes to channels, you need to remember that the way you engage with your audience in each channel should always be specific – they all require specific micro-strategies. To blanket them as collective social is a big mistake. Don’t let this be you! Planning time to respond to those who are engaging with your social content should be a top priority. Creating authentic, human conversations is easily the most impactful and effective action a brand can do. 9: Measure, test and continually improve You can only arrive at digital and social success after carefully measuring performance and engagement. To keep moving forward and evolving, you’ll need to continually monitor your metrics and test new initiatives. As Nike say: just do it! CONTACT If your brand needs to get closer to your customers and create greater engagement, give us a call: Name Janine Woodcock Call 07810 658 045 Email janine.woodcock@indicia.com Web indicia.com indicia.com © Indicia 2014