Social media

Problem: social media in business

Learning objectives (LO):

1. Which social media platform is suitable for which purpose? 

• B2B vs. B2C platforms
• Different tools for different industries

2. Strategy: social media plan

3. Measuring tools

• Techniques and tools to measure effectiveness

LO1: Which social media platform is suitable for which purpose? 

1.1 B2B vs. B2C platforms

3 Differences Between B2C and B2B Social Media Marketing

This article about the difference between B2B en B2C social media marketing made the difference between both completely clear for me. It gives a lot of examples and this makes it easier to understand that they're really has to be a difference between B2B and B2C marketing and that a company must really make a clear division between both marketing campaigns. They should keep the same look and feel but the target audience is clearly different and needs to be talked to differently. 

Differences between B2B and B2C social media marketing

When Facebook (then called The Facebook) first launched, it was a platform for college students to meet each other – nothing more. When twitter started, it was meant to be a miniature version of a personal blog.

Things have changed immensely in the years since. Over time, as the world started to realize the amazing potential of social media marketing, forward thinking organizations began incorporating social media marketing into their overall marketing mix. Generally speaking, these companies were almost exclusively B2C.

Even to this day B2B companies are still skeptical of the benefits of social media for their business. The reason for this hesitance is a perceived inability to measure the effectiveness of such marketing activities. On the other hand, B2C companies were the “early adopters” of social media marketing – this dichotomy perfectly demonstrates the strong differences between B2B and B2C marketing.

Here are 3 significant differences between social media marketing for B2B and B2C:

Content

Content is no longer just written words such as white papers, blog posts etc. It is also visual, audio, and interactive content. Furthermore, the messaging within a social post itself can now be considered content. The rules of content marketing, as stated so many times on this blog, include not being overtly promotional. Rather, content is supposed to provide value to the reader – no one cares about you or your company, they want to know what is in it for them. After providing value with your content, you will then be seen as a thought-leader. Your company will then be at the top of their mind when it comes time to make a purchasing decision.

B2C

In terms of the “classic” types of content, B2C companies should focus heavily on blog content. It’s important to think about how shareable a post will be when writing blog content. Make sure there are share buttons on your blog, so that readers can easily share your content across social channels with a single click.

B2C marketers can leverage the amazing viral effect of visual content as well. Creating entertaining videos, distributed through Youtube or other channels, is an excellent way to do this.

Content has evolved. Now the messaging within a social post itself is a type of content marketing. It’s important that this type of content is well thought out, specifically in terms of who the target audience is. As such, social content for B2C marketers should be more casual – including humor and even risque’ banter works as well.

B2B

B2B marketers have a vast arsenal to choose from when it comes to content marketing. While B2C marketers have the benefit of being more casual in the type of content they create, B2B marketers generally focus on more “professional” types of content.

Here are a few types of content that B2B marketers can leverage:

White Papers/eBooks

White papers, while extremely labor intensive, serve a plethora of beneficial purposes for a B2B marketer. First and foremost, white papers are a tool for lead generation. Given how in-depth a white paper can be, and how much information it provides to the reader, people are more willing to give their personal details to access it. Lead generation is the most important goal for B2B marketers, so the man hours required to write them are more than worth it.

Case Studies

According to a recent study, case studies are the most effective tool for lead generation. They also prove to your target market that your product or service is an effective choice for them. It helps if the case study focuses on a customer that is well known.

Webinars

Webinars are a great example of how content marketing now encompasses a wide array of media, not just blog posts. Creating a webinar not only serves the immediate goal of getting people to sign up, therefore getting their information for continued nurturing until they are ready to go to sales, they give you an amazing amount of content to repurpose. When recorded, webinars can be sliced and diced to create tons of different pieces of content. The content of a webinar can be used for multiple blog posts, podcasts, and even case studies.

One Pagers

The line between sales and marketing is not as clear as it used to be. One example of this is the materials sent to prospects to help them get a better idea of your product or service. One pagers generally give an easily digestible overview of the benefits and features of what your company offers. For best results, make sure your one pager is visually pleasing; using bullet points is also more effective than long paragraphs.

Infographics

When you think of infographics, you generally think of it as a B2C tactic. This is not the case. Infographics can actually be more beneficial to B2B companies. B2Bs tend to have a wealth of data and analytics that can be put into graphical form. Using internal data to create an awesome infographic is a powerful tool to get media coverage. There is nothing a blogger likes more than a well done infographic.

Channels

As mentioned earlier, social media was something entirely different than it is today at its inception. Today, we are seeing a proliferation of social channels. That is, we are now seeing niche social networks focusing on one form of communications or media. For example, Pinterest and Instagram focus on visuals while Soundcloud is for audio and Youtube and Vine are for videos.

With the wide variety of social channels available to marketers nowadays, it’s important to note the most effective channels for B2B and B2C.

B2C

Facebook

The gold standard for B2C social media marketing; it was the first social channel and remains a staple of any effective B2C social media strategy. Facebook, for B2C, is an amazing tool for community engagement, customer support, and promotion.

Twitter

Twitter is one of the only “open” social networks. This means that any tweet you create can be seen by anyone. However, it is important to understand how to make sure your tweets are getting the most visibility possible. Make sure to research hashtags, come up with creative campaigns, and engage with well known people in your field. Don’t forget to engage with your community on a regular basis as well!

Instagram

Visual content is an incredibly effective tool for B2C marketers. Instagram, as a social network focused on pictures, can be used to give a personal face to your company. Take pictures in the office and post them on a regular basis. Selfies are always a good choice.

Youtube

Video content is one of the best ways to capture your audience’s attention. Creating fun videos is something all B2C marketers should focus on. While production value is important, there certainly is value to a less polished video – it gives your company more personality.

B2B

There are three social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) that B2B marketers need to focus on. However, LinkedIn stands out as the absolute most important. Discussion Groups, in particular, should be leveraged as much as possible for not only engagement, but content distribution. Make sure that when distributing content through groups, you are not coming off as too promotional.

Goals and Metrics

This post has outlined the many differences between B2C and B2B social media marketing, but the one that sticks out the most is lead generation. Simply put, lead generation is the ultimate goal of B2B social media marketing, while B2C has different goals.

B2C

Given the nature of B2C marketing in general, B2C social media marketing focuses mainly on community engagement and awareness. Virality is the key stone to a B2C social media strategy. Creating viral content is a product of focusing on increasing awareness through social media.

B2B

The number one goal for B2B marketers with regards to their content is lead generation. However, the number one waythey measure their content’s effectiveness is web traffic. While this statistic seems to make no sense, it clearly shows the perception in the B2B community that there is no way to measure the real effectiveness of social media marketing.

By utilizing a social media marketing platform designed for B2B marketers, such as Oktopost, it is now possible to see the direct link between social posting and lead generation.

Source: http://www.oktopost.com/blog/differences-b2c-and-b2b-social-media-marketing/

1.1.1 B2C Versus B2B: The Most Important Social Media Platform [Research]

This is an interesting article about the Social media marketing industry report. This report shows the big trends in usage of social media. The results aren't that shocking for me but it's interesting to have clear figures. It's also easier to compare B2C and B2B companies using this article's charts. 


B2C and B2B marketers differ on the most important social media platform for marketing according to Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, a survey of both B2C and B2B businesses using social media in their marketing mix. This makes sense since each social media venue has a different focus.

Facebook is clearly the dominant platform for B2C marketers. It’s top ranked by 67% of B2C respondents while 11% of B2C respondents rank blogging top, and 10% of B2C respondents rank Twitter as top.

By contrast, LinkedIn and Facebook are tied with 29% of B2B respondents citing each as the top social media platform. Further 19% of B2B respondents rate blogging as their top venue and 16% of B2B respondents rate Twitter as their top venue.  

5 B2C versus B2B social media trends

Look beneath the surface of these results and you’ll find these five factors to consider in your marketing plans.

1. B2B marketers use a more diverse array of social media platforms than B2C marketers. Roughly two out of three B2C marketers put Facebook at the top of their social media list. Understand that in some countries, Facebook may be the only social media choice for marketers, B2C or B2B.
2. Both B2B and B2C marketers underutilize blogging – less than one out of five puts it at the top of their list. A blog should be a marketer’s first social media platform since it’s owned. Further it provides a continual stream of fresh content that feeds social media. 
3. Both B2B and B2C marketers don’t get the power of YouTube. While video can be expensive relative to other forms of content creation and social media, don’t let this keep you from building your presence on YouTube. It’s the second largest search engine! Since you need to be present to be found, consider low-cost alternatives. Also incorporate video creation into your television advertising creation budget. Both Orabrush, a B2C company, and Blendtec, a B2B company, built their brands based on low-cost YouTube videos.
4. B2C marketers, especially those targeting teens and twenty-somethings, are missing an opportunity with Tumblr. While Tumblr has been in the Nielsen top ten, social media sites for a couple of years, it’s still below the radar for most marketers. At a minimum, test this visual micro-blogging platform.
5. B2B marketers overlook the power of SlideShare. Owned by LinkedIn, Slideshare generates leads for B2B organizations. Start building your presence on this powerful social media entity for business.

B2C Versus B2B:  The Most Important Social Media Platform

Here’s how B2C versus B2B organizations view the most important social media platforms with related Actionable Social Media Tips.

B2C Versus B2B:  The Most Important Social Media Platform

Social Media Platform	% B2C RankTop Social Media Platform	B2CActionableSocial Media Tip	% B2B RankTop Social Media Platform	B2BActionableSocial Media Tip
Facebook	67%	Make your fans into stars with images on Facebook.	29%	Use Facebook advertising to target your audience.
Blogging	11%	Answer one customer question per post.	19%	Give prospects information related to their hot button issues.
Twitter	10%	Create a “Deal of the Day”account to promote one special a day.	16%	Integrate bite size tweets with easy to copy shortened URLs into presentations.
LinkedIn	5%	Leverage LinkedIn’s power to reduce hiring costs.	29%	Participate in relevant groups to build your network & distribute your content.
YouTube	4%	Establish YouTube presence by offering how to videos.	4%	Optimize videos for search by adding keyword rich text.
Pinterest	2%	Put your products in context for prospects with styling.	0%	Build a Pinterest presence by using visuals, inforgraphics, & presentations.
Google+	1%	Build your Google+ presence with a regular posting schedule.	3%	Claim Google authorship.

• Actionable Marketing Tips Source: ©2013 HeidiCohen.com
• Data Source: © 2013 Social Media Examiner

B2C marketers tend to engage with prospects while they’re on social media for personal reasons and B2B marketers tend to engage with prospects while they’re at work. Marketers must appreciate that customers, regardless of whether they’re purchasing for themselves, their family or their business, still use the same approach to seeking information. Therefore, while the product differs, the social media platforms don’t. This translates to opportunities for marketers willing to explore new social media entities.

Source: http://heidicohen.com/b2c-versus-b2b-the-most-important-social-media-platform-research/

1.1.2 Financemagnates

- Different social networks B2B and B2C

- Facebook top for B2C

- LinkedIn top for B2B content marketing

Why Facebook? 

- Availability of a personalized fan page: The fan page is quickly replacing the personal fun page. It is easier to personalize a fan page in more ways than a personal profile. Fan pages can be personalized in more ways than a personal profile, and, as of lately, anyone can post comments and even share stories under the company name rather than using an individual name. This is perfect for using several people to handle the communication of a business online.

- Easy communication with followers – Facebook is a game changer when it comes to interacting with followers – all you have to do is press the “Like” button or just add your comment to something in their News Feed, so they really don’t have to access your page.

Why linkedin?

- LinkedIn still stands to be more relevant for B2B marketers for several reasons, one: A bigger chance of targeting your audience. Devoid of the distractions Twitter and Facebook bring along, LinkedIn provides a much better platform on which to interact with the right prospects. Well, this is very important because you clearly want a more focused tactic in your campaigns when you are spending money.

- Sponsored Updates, the native ad feature. With this feature, you are able to launch more specific and targeted campaigns to your desired demographics than through regular advertisements. And of course, if your campaigns are more targeted, you stand a good chance of gaining from your marketing efforts since the ROI gets better.

- Cost-effectiveness is another reason why LinkedIn is still a better option. For example, on Twitter, one is charged for almost every interaction involved in a sponsored tweet. At the same time, LinkedIn does not charge you extra if anyone shares likes or even comments on your sponsored updates. Of course, all that additional sharing is always useful.

Important: try different social media channels and find out which one suits your business the best

Source:http://www.financemagnates.com/binary-options/analysis/what-is-the-best-social-media-platform-for-marketing-your-business/

1.1.3 How to Use Social Media to Drive Traffic for B2B Companies

This is an interesting blogpost about how a strategy can be developed. A B2B social media plan isn't something where I've learned about in Belgium but here I can see that the different stept to make a B2B plan are almost the same as the steps you take for a B2C plan. The difference is that you need to consider your target group which is completely different. Therefore the outcome of the plan will also be different. 

1. Figure out an unboring angle.

A lot of B2Bs are boring. At least they think they’re boring to the uninitiated. Their self-perception as a boring company becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because they think they are boring, they act boring. They write boring. They do social media boring.

Let’s talk about an example B2B. They sell large vivarium misting systems to zoos, animal theme parks, and research universities. That sounds pretty boring. What the heck is a vivarium misting system? B2B needs to get creative. A vivarium misting system helps reptiles to survive in an environment that is different from their native environment. It’s going to help pythons thrive in a research environment so scientists can understand them. Do you see the unboring angle emerging? There may not be a lot of people interested in vivarium misting systems, but there are a lot of people interested in pythons, or rainforest preservation…

Each B2B with an unintelligible product or service needs to develop an angle that is both understandable and appealing to a broader audience. This will allow them to create an initiative or idea that can gain traction on social media.

2. Feature a real person.

One of the major shortcomings of many B2Bs, especially in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, is the lack of a genuine human backing their efforts. The lack of real people makes the B2B company seem so distant and unreal. It’s like talking to a robot. It just doesn’t feel right. Every B2B needs to make an intense effort to humanize the brand on social media and content marketing. Here’s what this looks like:

• Using first person voice when writing updates, articles, etc.
• Using a brand front person to tweet, post updates, write articles, etc.
• Using real people with their names in customer service.
• Initiating engagement and outreach from a real person.

3. Hire someone good.

B2Bs are often challenged in social media, because they don’t hire the right person to manage their social media efforts. Here’s how this plays out from a negative angle.

B2Bs try to hire someone who’s experienced in their niche, not someone who is an expert at social media.

I think it’s important that anyone who’s leading a social media initiative needs familiarity with the industry. But B2Bs also need someone who is a social media ninja. Why? Because B2B social media is a hard nut to crack. It’s not inherently sexy or awesome. It doesn’t automatically generate buzz. It takes a social media expert to really unleash the hidden power in B2B social media.

B2Bs often hire someone to do social media functions rather than to create a social media movement.

Social media is not just about posting Twitter updates twice a day, or updating a Facebook status once a day. That’s a shortsighted and myopic view of social media. Social media is about much more. Many B2Bs, unaware of the deeper complexity of social media, are looking only for someone to update their status or create a Google+ page or whatever. That’s not going to cut it. Instead the company needs someone who can develop a movement on social media, shaping the brand’s voice and expanding their reach. It’s not just status updates. It’s an entire identity creation.

B2Bs don’t know how to engage a following that is directly related to their niche.

Many B2Bs go astray on social media, thinking that they need to find all the followers who are interested in their niche — automated vivarium misting systems! Unfortunately, there are only two people on Twitter who are interested in vivarium misting systems. That’s why the B2B company needs to develop something broader and more exciting than vivarium misting systems. The social following does not need to be directly related to or even interested in the niche. They can be indirectly related via the unboring angle.

B2Bs engage social media with the objective of leads first, rather than brand awareness.

If the first objective of social media is leads, then things have gotten off on the wrong foot. Leads don’t come first. Engagement and presence comes first. Leads are a byproduct. This goes back to the “unboring angle” I mentioned above. If a B2B can develop their unboring angle, they will be better able to use social media effectively. The ultimate objective of most social media efforts is leads, but that doesn’t mean that gaining leads should come first of all. First of all, the company should aim for presence. Leads will follow.

Here are a few tips to help a B2B hire the right person for social media:

• Hire an expert in social media. Look for someone that has social media success in a similar niche, but not necessarily in your own niche.
• Hire a social media consulting company or agency, not just an individual. Companies often have more resources at their disposal. For a lower price, they can help you engage on a lot more levels like creating social media graphics, writing content, etc.

4. Back your social media with your content marketing.

There is no such thing as a successful social media campaign without a successful content marketing campaign. They’re like two links in an indestructible chain.

Gratefully, most B2B are already doing content marketing, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

However, not every B2B is doing an effective job of content marketing.

The better a B2B company is at content marketing, the better they will become at social media.

5. Use LinkedIn

B2B marketers love LinkedIn. Nine out of every ten B2B companies are using it.

Image from Content Marketing Institute.

There’s a reason for this: LinkedIn is effective at securing leads. The social goal of most B2Bs isn’t just traffic. It’s the right kind of traffic. More specifically, it’s leads from that traffic. That’s why LinkedIn has been the social media sweet spot of most B2Bs.

Image from Mediabistro.com.

LinkedIn does for B2Bs what Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest have all failed to do. It forms professional connections based on a single goal. It’s not that Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest are more personal and less professional than LinkedIn. LinkedIn brands itself as a professional networking site. On LinkedIn, you see less baby pictures, fewer cat videos, and nothing about “Dave just checked in at Downtown Bar.” LinkedIn, devoid as it is from issues like “relationship status” and “favorite TV shows” is much more appealing to the world of B2B exchanges.

Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/social-media-for-b2b/

1.2 Different tools for different industries 

This bullet point is mainly covered in all the information above. 

Website with different tools for many different purposes

On this website you can find a lot of interesting different social media tools. The tools are very different from measuring tools to tools where you can plan your content with and much more. Every business can find social media tools that fit for their business. I think using them all is a bit too much but a good combination of a few tools can be very interesting.  

Source: http://blog.woorank.com/2014/08/list-of-50-free-social-media-tools/


Industries that benefit the most from social media 

I found a very interesting and recent about the 7 industries who get the most attention and who benefit most from using social media. The 7 industries are not always the one's i expected. I never thought that education would benefit from social media because I wasn't very conscious about education making advertisements on social media. But when I read the explanation I can understand why it's in the top 7. Very interesting article!  

7 Industries That Benefit Most from Social Media

June 16, 2015 Anthony Carranza

People make hundreds of decisions every day. Some of them are conscious, but most are unconsciously made based on information surrounding them.

Social media is one of the best examples of this. Exactly ninety-two percent of consumers reportthat they trust social media and word of mouth above all other forms of advertising. Because of this, some industries excel more than others.

There are individual brands within every industry that master social media, but few industries have as much widespread. Below are the seven industries that got social media right:

1. Entertainment

For the entertainment industry, social media comes naturally. In a study of Facebook posts from September 16 to December 15, 2015, the entertainment industry accounted for a whopping 63.2 percent of all posts across six different industries (retail, auto, telecom, financial services, food, and beverage). The industry with the second largest share was retail with only 12.4 percent.

When you look at the breakdown of those posts, something interesting stands out. Whereas photos and images account for the largest portion of posts in all five of the other industries, it only accounts for 11.2 percent in the entertainment industry. Traditional links, on the other hand, account for 79.3 percent of posts.

Is it possible that there’s a lesson to be gleaned from this data? While visual imagery is certainly powerful, this shows that social media followers are still enticed by informative written content.

2. Real Estate

Another one of the more socially active industries is real estate. Agents, brokers, developers, and property managers all use social media to get their properties in front of more people. These “virtual signs” prove far more lucrative than traditional “for sale” signs.

“You can use Facebook to create highly targeted advertisements, or simply ask friends to share properties on their profiles. This is an easy way to get people talking about your listings,” a Houston-based property management company points out. “Facebook is currently the most conducive social media platform for marketing rentals, but Instagram could also be leveraged in some markets.”

3. Marketing

In essence, everything a brand does on social media to connect with users is a form of marketing or advertising. Therefore, it logically follows that the marketing industry would be proficient at using social media. According to the 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report (in which more than 3,700 marketers were surveyed) social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn were critical components of their overall strategies.

As you probably know, video marketing has quickly become one of the highest returning forms of social media content and 57 percent of marketers are currently using it (with 72 percent claiming they plan to increase their use of video in the future). Other findings from the industry report include:

• 96 percent of marketers use social media as a marketing tool.
• 92 percent of marketers believe social media is important to their businesses and/or clients.
• 22 percent of marketers have been using social media for more than five years.
• 84 percent of marketers have integrated their social media and traditional marketing activities.

It’s no surprise that marketers get social media right, but it’s interesting to see such widespread agreement on key issues and strategies.

4. Retail

The retail industry will always be near the top of the social media food chain. Larger companies – like Target and Costco, for example – will always be successful, but it’s interesting to watch smaller retailers succeed, too. The biggest benefits for these companies include being able to get feedback on new products and fix customer complaints before they become major problems.

For daily deal sites like Groupon and Living Social, the viral nature of posts make for a very cost-effective advertising strategy. Positive word of mouth can go a long way and one user’s endorsement can lead to a number of subsequent sales.

5. Education

One of the most surprising industries on this list is education. Social networking sites like Facebook allow students, educators, and institutions to connect with one another in ways that were never possible in the past.

Universities and colleges, in particular, have mastered the use of social media. Many use organic and paid advertising on these sites to bolster application numbers and encourage campus visits. Once on campus, these same universities use social networking sites as platforms for advertising on-going events, new curriculum, and more.

After graduation, social media then becomes a tool for alumni fundraising. In fact, a new study shows that 57 percent of colleges surveyed used social media as a key component of fundraising. “We’re seeing a steady growth in the use of social media by practitioners who work in educational advancements, especially fundraising and alumni relations, who see these tools as increasingly important to their work,” said William Walker, the interim VP of advancement resources for CASE (the leader of the study).

6. Restaurants

Whereas many restaurants fail to build, monitor, and maintain functional websites, a large percentage are able to run highly-successful social media profiles. In fact, a recent survey suggests that more than 8 out of 10 restaurant operators either already use social media or plan on using it as a key marketing tool in the next 24 months.

Many of the restaurants using social media are focusing on creating viral campaigns and visually enticing posts. The major benefit for these restaurant operators is that they can quickly build a positive reputation with a large contingency, something that used to take months or years.

7. Fashion

Social media is an incredibly valuable asset to the fashion industry because of the lightening-fast speed at which content travels on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. New styles can be shared with millions of people in a matter of seconds.

The most successful fashion brands on social media are the ones that have mastered the task of creating visually stimulating images that produce an emotional response in the user. From another point of view, fashion brands find social media to be a very powerful research tool. They use it to find out what styles followers enjoy and what they’re wearing.

Don’t Ignore Social Media’s Power

At this point, it’s really quite shocking that any industry ignores social media. As these seven industries show, social media should be a key component of every brand’s overall marketing strategy. With the right amount of dedication, attention, and effort, any company can reap the benefits of social media marketing.

Source: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/anthonycarranza/2015-06-16/7-industries-benefit-most-social-media

LO2: Strategy: social media plan 


2.1 Where to think about when you make a social media strategy? 

This is a very interesting website about different infographics about developing a social media strategy. I choose the one that I thought was very clear and interesting.  

Source: http://barnraisersllc.com/2015/10/10-infographics-show-how-develop-social-media-strategy/

2.2 8 Step social media strategy

2.3 7 Steps for a winning social media strategy 

I like this article because it gives very clear but short case examples. It's less 'theoretical' than the previous article. It really tries to give you an answer to your questions. I could even recognize myself when I saw the different challenges. I was thinking of my youtube account where I would like to have a little bit more visitors and I could really find tips in the following article. It can help a big company but also a small starter because it gives an answer to problems that every company can have. 

7 Steps in Creating a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy

By Michael Patterson on March 4, 2015

Social media was often seen as the wild child of the marketing department—the place where interns started their careers and brands could say random things with little to no repercussions. But times have changed, and the industry has matured.

Yes, social media is still a wonderful place for brands to have a little fun, but it also has a real and measurable impact on a business’ bottom line. Thus, social media can no longer live in a silo; it must be work in tandem with the rest of your business strategy.

To ensure that your social media marketing campaigns contribute to your brand’s greater business objectives, we’ve put together a 7-step guide to coach you through the process. We’ve also incorporated a checklist you can use to make sure you’ve done it all right. Click here to jump right to it.

Step 1: Ensure Social Goals Solve Challenges

Goal setting is a staple of all marketing and business strategies. Social media is no exception. Of course, with a range of social capabilities, it can be difficult to determine exactly what your objectives should be. For guidance, look to the challenges before you.

• Has website traffic dipped?
• Is customer loyalty low?
• Do you need to do a better job of building a positive brand reputation?
• Do you just need to make people aware that your product exists?

A smart social media marketing campaign can answer each of these questions. Prove your team’s worth by tackling them head on. To get you started, we pulled together a few common business obstacles and social objectives that can help brands overcome them.

Challenge: Low Website Traffic

The world is online. A brand’s website, therefore, is one of its most important marketing tools. Low website traffic can mean fewer customers and lower profits.

To combat this challenge, your social team should focus its goals on creating links directly to the website (whether they’re from your own social posts or influencers’). Link to useful content, subpages and company images to position your website and your brand as a resource rather than just another cog in the corporate wheel. This traffic should increase leads and, in the long run, revenues.

Challenge: Decreasing Customer Retention

According to The Chartered Institute of Marketing, it costs 4 to 10 times more to acquire a customer than to retain one. To keep your customers around, use social as a tool to support, communicate and engage. A good social relationship with your customers should translate into a better perception and offline relationship with your brand. By developing a strong social bond, customers will be more likely to stick with your brand time and time again.

Challenge: Poor Customer Service

People turn to social to engage with businesses. Therefore, it is important for your brand to be ready to help customers on any channel they can contact you through. Arm your social media team with the materials, education and authority to respond to customer questions and issues. When you do so, you’ll be equipped to respond to your customers in a timely and accurate way, regardless of how they reach out to you.

Challenge: Weak Brand Awareness

Social allows you to reach a broad audience. But honing and perfecting that message takes brain power and time. To create authentic and lasting brand awareness, avoid a slew of promotional messages; instead, focus on creating meaningful content and a strong brand personality through your social channels. Determine relevant hashtags and industry influencers you can engage with, and tap into those resources to extend your brand’s overall awareness.

Step 2: Extend Efforts Throughout Your Organization

Social has long lived within the marketing department, but that doesn’t mean it can’t (and shouldn’t) have a hand in nearly every business function, from human resources to research and development. To create a fully integrated social media marketing campaign, you’ll need to involve and integrate multiple departments, especially if your goals have a direct impact on them. Work with all your teams to determine how you can best support their goals and what key performance indicators are important to them (we’ve outlined some ideas on both below).

Sales

Social selling is a term that has grown in popularity since the rise of social marketing. By searching for sales opportunities and then engaging in a helpful and authentic manner, social media can be a great way to prime the sales funnel and find new leads.

For example, someone started a LinkedIn chat, asking about social media tools. Sarah Nagel, Sprout’s Community Manager, jumped in to provide insight and offer a recommendation.

Customer Service

Social media is quickly becoming one of the most important channels through which companies interact with their current customers. Social is an easy and very public way for customers to air their grievances with your brand. If you aren’t responding, it can hurt your reputation and customer relationship.

GrubHub is an example of a company that is really succeeding in social customer care.

By taking the time to engage with a dissatisfied customer, GrubHub was able to turn a negative experience into a favorited Tweet!

Human Resources

While the HR team probably spends a good amount of its time on social media looking through the profiles of applicants, it can also use social as a way to increase overall application numbers. Showcase job postings on social media and encourage your employees to share them to their networks as well. Beyond just job postings, social is a useful tool in showcasing your company culture to the world. Highlight some behind-the-scenes images of what it is like to work for your company so you can improve the perception of your brand among candidates.

Research and Development

Your brand’s social audience represents a group that is highly engaged, invested and interested in your product or service. Why not leverage that to serve as an online focus group for your company? Asking for and listening to customer feedback on social media is a nimble and easy way to get instant feedback. Additionally, social media can help expose gaps in a product or service.

Marketing

The marketing department, specifically advertising and PR, traditionally has a strong role in the social media strategy. But there are always new ways to ensure people are aware of and excited about your brand through social. Whether you’re debuting a product, ad campaign or initiative, ensure that social has a strong hand in spreading the word.

Step 3: Focus on Networks That Add Value

Just because a network has billions of users doesn’t mean it will have a direct contribution to your brand’s objectives. Instead of trying to be everything to everybody, focus your efforts on networks that hold the key to your target audience and objectives.

Each network has its own strengths and weaknesses, and each social media marketer should carefully pick and choose which networks they want to take advantage of. Here are some of the most popular networks as well as what they’re best at.

Facebook

With an audience of 1.23 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers an opportunity to reach a broad range of customers and potential customers. The chart below breaks down Facebook’s demographic representation—your target audience is most likely represented in some way.

But how can Facebook contribute to your overall goals? Because Facebook’s News Feed is a very visible place for social posts, it’s one of the best places for you to distribute your content in order to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic and distinguish yourself as a thought leader. This strategy is even more effective when you take advantage of Facebook’s targeting capabilities that allow you to tailor your messages to users with certain interests.

Twitter

Where Facebook has the volume of users, Twitter has the volume of messages. In fact, there are over 500 million Tweets sent every day. With all those social messages, there is a great chance that someone is either mentioning your company or starting a conversation that you would be interested in joining.

That’s why Twitter is best to use as a customer service and business development channel. Monitor the network for inbound messages from dissatisfied customers, and quickly turn them into happy interactions. At the same time, look for prospective customers.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a robust network of over 332 million users, most of whom frequent the site with a “working” mindset. The advantage with this is that LinkedIn is an amazing network for B2B social media marketers. Whereas sites like Twitter and Facebook catch users more or less on their personal time, LinkedIn gives you access to customers when they’re at their professional best. Use this to build relationships with future customers.

Google+

One of the great things about Google+ is that if you have a strong presence on the site and someone searches for your company through Google, a snippet of your profile will appear on the results page.

Another great feature of Google+ is the ability to hyper-target your potential customers by Communities. Communities are groups of people who get together to discuss specific topics, so if you can find one that your customers are likely to be in, you can post content there that might interest them.

Step 4: Create Engaging Content

Once you’ve involved the right stakeholders, department and networks, it’s time to start building engaging content for your social channels. This content—whether a video, tip sheet or simple Tweet—should all ladder up into your business objectives. Below are just a few examples of good content for social and how to use that to support your goals.

Videos

• How-to videos can be a proactive approach to social customer care—answer your customers’ questions before they’re asked.
• Behind-the-scenes videos give your audience a sense of your company culture and brand personality.

Guides

• Position your organization as a thought leader and elevate your brand by developing engaging content that speaks to your customers.
• Guides should cater to your target audience, ensuring you’re actually adding value.

Infographics

• Internal or external data can be turned into a beautiful, insightful infographic.
• When done right, infographics can be some of the most socially shared pieces of content, so make them engaging and resourceful.

Get ahead of the game by planning your content in advance, using a social media editorial calendar. We’ve put together this 4-step guide for creating a social media editorial calendar that should help you get started. Sprout also has a full suite of social media publishing features that include the ability to schedule and queue posts.

Step 5: Identify Business Opportunities Through Social

With millions of messages being sent across social channels every day, there is no doubt conversation happening around your brand. Social media monitoring, therefore, should be an essential part of your social media marketing strategy. Below are some ways you can monitor social media to identify larger business opportunities for your brand.

Brand Mentions

People who are mentioning your brand on social are some of the highest quality leads you can drive. They’ve already proved they know your product/service and have an interest in reaching out to you. Engage with them, foster that relationship and potentially create a brand advocate. If the mention was less than positive, use the opportunity to showcase your stellar social customer care and prove that you are listening.

Industry Terms

Think of some of the words you use when discussing your brand, and look out for them on social. By monitoring these terms, you can identify relevant hashtags you should be using, conversations you should be having and influencers with whom you should be engaging.

Competitor Info

Keep a pulse on the competition. Social media can give you insights into your competitors’ marketing plans and help you identify gaps in your product or service.

Step 6: Engage Instead of Ignore

We can’t say it enough: Whether someone is commenting on a post you’ve made, writing on your wall or mentioning you on Twitter, it’s important to always stay engaged. Shockingly, our social study shows that 5 in 6 messages on social requiring response are not answered by brands. If customers are consistently ignored, they’ll eventually ditch your brand all together and look for an alternative.

Be sure to respond to customers who have left negative feedback about your brand as well. Too many companies have lost favor with their fans by trying to delete the messageand sweep it under the rug.

Here’s an example of how Jimmy John’s social team handled one such situation.

This was a situation where Jimmy John’s reached out to someone a bit frustrated with the store’s hours and turned it into a positive experience. Taylor even favorited the final tweet from Jimmy John’s!

Step 7: Track, Improve and Market Your Efforts

You won’t be able to really begin analyzing and improving your efforts until you’ve successfully got steps 1-6 operational. This final step is actually a step back, letting you figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Use a Tool to Track Success

Sprout Social was created with social media marketing in mind. Sprout offers a full suite of social media analytics, which help you pinpoint exactly which of your messages perform best. You also can use tools like Google Analytics, which integrates with Sprout, to see which of your posts are driving traffic, conversions and overall revenue.

Build on Success

Once you have a good understanding of which content is driving the most engagement, site visits and conversions, you can use that knowledge to increase your success. Write content and social media posts that are similar to the ones that have worked in the past. This is an ongoing process that will help you hone your unique social voice.

Share Your Success

The last step is to let the company know about the successes you’re finding—especially those who have a stake in the strategy. This allows you to prove the worth of social media and showcase its broader implications across your entire enterprise.

Source: http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-strategy/

LO3: Measuring tools

3.1 Techniques and tools to measure effectiveness

5 steps to measure your social media campaigns

This is an interesting article from a company that does measuring of social media. It's off course always a little bit an advertisement for the company but it's still very interesting. It's easy that they explain the whole 'measuring' with one example, that way I can really follow the story and apply it to my own company. 

The 5 Easy Steps To Measure Your Social Media Campaigns

If you’re using social media, you should be measuring it. But don’t measure just for the sake of having metrics. Instead, measure your social activities so that you can learn what’s successful, what isn’t, and how you can improve. 

In this post we will help you get started with social media measurement for your organization by addressing these questions:

• How do you know if your social media activities are effective?
• How do you decide what metrics you should be monitoring?
• How do you calculate those metrics?
• How do you interpret the numbers once you have them?

The Two Types of Social Media Measurement

The two types of social media measurement are:

1. Ongoing Analytics – Ongoing monitoring that tracks activity over time
2. Campaign-Focused Metrics – Campaign or event analytics with a clear beginning and end

Ongoing analytics are necessary for keeping up with the overall pulse of general conversation about your brand and company. Once your brand tracking is set up, you can just let it run and check in regularly to see how everything is going. 

Campaign-focused metrics, on the other hand, help you understand the impact of targeted marketing initiatives and will vary from campaign to campaign, depending on your goals for each. An effective social media measurement program will likely include both ongoing and campaign-specific measurement.

Let’s Start With An Example

Let’s say you work at a large consumer products company and are about to launch a new diaper brand. To accompany the big advertising and marketing push, you want to sponsor a one-hour Twitter party where parents and caregivers can discuss raising children, focused on issues around diapering and potty training. 

You’ve picked out a unique hashtag, contracted with an influential Twitterer who will pose questions and lead the conversation. You’re ready to go. But now you need to make sure you’re measuring this conversation so you can learn – and later tell your boss – how effective the chat was.

Step 1: Determine Your Social Goals

Before you jump into measuring every single tweet, photo and Facebook comment posted about your brand, first think about your goals with social media. What are you trying to accomplish or gain through these social channels? And which channels are most relevant to those goals? 

The first step in your measurement plan should be to generate a list of what you’re trying to achieve from your social media efforts. Social media can serve a variety of purposes, from broadcasting news and information, to answering customer questions and engaging with a community. What is your company trying to accomplish?

You’ve probably already started interacting on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram, depending on the type of information and the format of the content you’re sharing. You’ve probably also considered the audience you want to reach and the tools they’re using. So the next step is to think about what you want your audience to do with your content on these channels. Are you trying to get them to read, share, reply, click, purchase, engage? List out all your business goals for social media.

For our Twitter chat example, our goals are probably two-fold:

1. First, we want to spread awareness of the new product to potential customers
2. Second, we want to get to know the parenting community on Twitter, particularly the influencers in that community

Step 2: Create Metrics To Measure These Goals

The next step is to match your goals to actual metrics and behaviors you can measure. For example, if you’re trying to measure engagement, then what is the practical form of engagement you want to track? Is it retweets or reposts? Replies or comments? Clicks? Here are a few suggestions of behaviors to measure, based on a few common social media goals…

• If you want to measure awareness, then use metrics like volume, reach, exposure, and amplification. How far is your message spreading?
• If you want to measure engagement, then look for metrics around retweets, comments, replies, and participants. How many people are participating, how often are they participating, and in what forms are they participating?
• If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, then track URL shares, clicks and conversions. Are people moving through social media to your external site and what do they do once they’re on your site?
• If your goal is to find advocates and fans, then track contributors and influence. Who is participating and what kind of impact do they have?
• If your goal is to increase your brand’s share of voice, then track your volume relative to your closest competitors. How much of the overall conversation around your industry or product category is about your brand?

For our hypothetical Twitter chat, our first goal is awareness, so we want to measure:

1. The tweet volume and reach of our Twitter chat
2. How many unique people tweeted with our hashtag

We’re also interesting in getting to know this community, so we want to know more about the participants, including:

3. Any influence metrics we can find (like follower counts and Klout scores)
4. Relevant demographic information about them (gender, location, etc…)

Step 3: Measure

After you’ve listed the metrics you want to focus on, now you need to find tools that actually capture these metrics, and then start measuring. In some cases, social media channels themselves provide some form of analytics, in some cases you will need to use third party tools, and in some cases you can build your own using APIs. 

If you’re not sure which tools to use for which channels, ask around or do a quick Google search and you’ll find tons of options. SocDir is a useful and comprehensive source with a list of more than 300 social media metrics tools.

Many social analytics tools work in real-time, so if you can plan ahead and set up tracking before your campaign begins (and well before your report is due), it will be much easier to access the data you need later. 

On Twitter, for example, accessing tweets that are more than a few days old is very expensive, difficult, and far less reliable than collecting and archiving them in real time. When possible, set up your measurement tools before your campaign begins.

The measurement part of this may take some time, so let the tools do their work. Make sure they’re tracking the social posts you’re interested in, do what you can to filter out spam, and then come back in a few days for steps 4 and 5.

Step 4: Monitor And Report

The fourth step is to report your results. Use your initial findings to set a baseline or benchmark for future measurement, and share these early figures with your important stakeholders. Two important questions to nail down are:

• How do your numbers compare to what you expected?
• How do they compare to your competitors’ or related products and campaigns?

One of the great parts of social media analytics is that you can easily run reports about your competitors to see how they’re doing.

This is a also a good time to consider your schedule for regular reporting. Depending on your (and your organization’s) schedule, monthly or quarterly reporting may work best, but weekly reporting may work well for others. No matter the schedule, make sure you’re checking in regularly on your metrics. Don’t let your effort up to this point go to waste! And let your metrics accumulate over time; you’ll see how valuable this data will become after a few months have passed and you have older data to compare to your new data.

In your reports, be sure you highlight the important numbers:

• Include benchmarks or other contextual information so that your stakeholders can quickly understand what all the figures mean
• Consider including visualizations of your data; graphs can help communicate your results quickly and clearly to your audience
• Keep your graphs simple and clean

If you’re interested in reading more about data visualization, I highly recommend the work of Stephen Few; he has some excellent tips and examples.

Going back to our Twitter chat example, we’ll want to prepare a brief report to share internally. We don’t have baseline metrics yet to compare these to, but we probably started with a general idea of what we wanted to achieve with the chat. 

As you recall, our goals were increasing awareness of the new product and getting to know community influencers for future interactions. Let’s say our chat generated 750 tweets from 200 unique contributors and a reach of 500,000. Several participants had Klout scores over 60 and tweeted multiple times. 

So, even though this was our first chat, these are very respectable initial numbers. Half a million Twitter accounts were exposed to tweets with our hashtag, and we now have a list of 200 people who were talking about diapers, some of them very influential. We can build on this foundation in future initiatives, nurture relationships with these participants and continue to increase awareness of our new product.

Step 5: Adjust And Repeat

The final step is to carefully review your measurement program. How are these metrics doing? Are you missing anything? Was anything superfluous or unnecessary? Figure out what you can improve, make changes, and then measure some more. Check back in with the goals you set initially and make sure your new metrics actually help you address those goals.

In the case of our Twitter chat, we now realize that we also want to measure engagement around our chat hashtag. We’ve decided it’s important to know how many of our host’s tweets were retweeted and replied to, so we can understand what participants found most interesting. We can add this in and include it in our reporting next time.

If you’re participating in social media, you really need to understand how you’re doing. Is your content having the impact you want? Are you meeting your company’s goals with social media? This is why monitoring and measuring your social media activities is so crucial – you need reliable and consistent analytics that help you track your success on channels like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. 

Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/social-media-measurement/

Interesting youtube video about ROI in social media.

The person talking in this video tells very clearly about the unclearness of ROI in social media. For me it's been always a very unclear subject because I'm not the best person with financial matters. The man in the video gives clear figures and nice infographics to make clear where he's talking about. He gives a few interesting tips to help businesses to start measuring social media. He also gives a lot of examples where every business can find itself in which makes it very interesting for everyone. 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbSfZToMbM4

How to measure social media effectiveness 

This article shows once again that we can measure a million different things on social media. 

Social media is a great tool to communicate with your customers, to generate leads, sales, and to create customer loyalty. In addition, most of social media is free, easy to use, and available to all. Because of all of these reasons, some businesses do not feel the need to measure social media effectiveness: it’s free and it’s beneficial, so why bother? 

However, finding information to post, preparing the post, replying to customers are all essential steps to creating an online presence. So whether you do your own social media or hire someone to do it, you need to know if it’s increasing your revenue or not.

In a survey by Chief Marketer titled “2011 Social Marketing Survey”, we learn that 52% of marketing of professional survey think it is hard to measure ROI for social media, and 42% say it is difficult to track and see results. Nevertheless, all still continue with their social media campaigns.

Chief Marketer also asked – for those who do measure ROI – how they measure it. The results show us that 60% of marketers use the number of fans or followers. We will see at the end of the article why this is not a good idea.

To help the more than 52% who are having troubles calculating ROI, here are a few tips on measuring your campaign’s effectiveness.

Content being shared

How much your fans share and interact with your contents is one of the easiest ways to calculate your ROI. No matter what business you are in, you can share links, posts, news or other information that can be monitored. The more content is shared, the more customers interact with your brand, see your brand and will be more likely to buy your brand rather than your competitor’s.

There are two main ways you can go about to doing this:

1. Have your web developer set up an analytics account for your website. Your analytics account will tell you where visitors on your website come from (Google, Facebook, Twitter, directly from your address) and you will see how many visitors come to your site. You can cross reference the dates on your analytics account to the date of your social media postings, and analyze what pages they visit, how long they stay and conclude which type of posting works best for you. Another, more in-depth technique you can use is URL tagging. This is a little more complicated and time consuming so it’s best suited if you have a web marketing team. By “tagging” the links that you post on your social sites, you will be able to sort your analytics by type of post, content or campaign, and can even isolate individual posts. For example, if you launch a Christmas campaign, you will be able to differentiate it from your year-round campaign and measure its effectiveness, or compare different ads. Google Analytics is free and available to all.
2. You can use a social media management tool such as HootSuite, or TweetDeck that will automatically record your tweets, posts and links on different sites and provide you with statistics.

Measuring leads

Social media can be a great tool for lead generation… if you measure them. A lead can be a customer filling out a contact form, requesting a demo, visiting your online store, or just accessing your contact information. The best way to measure those leads is once again with a tool like Google Analytics and creating goals; if you have a marketing team, they will be the one responsible for goals. You can refer to our post on measuring your website’s ROI to know more about setting up goals.

To isolate the leads coming from social media, you can either use URL tagging, or you can also create custom segments comprised off all the social media sites you use. Both of these methods will allow you to see the leads generated only by your social media efforts. Tagging takes more time but it also more precise if you want to see results according to different campaigns. Don’t forget to give your lead a dollar value to know if the time and labor you spend on  the leads you are receiving offset social media.

Measuring sales

Measuring sales works the same way as measuring leads. For some types of business where sales volume is relatively low, measuring lead proves more accurate. However if you have a high sales volume, measuring sales made through your social media campaigns is the ultimate way to know if your efforts are really paying out.

The number of fan/followers/friends

The numbers of followers/fans/friends that you have is not an accurate way of calculating ROI. Some fans can be passive and completely overlook your marketing efforts, while others will be very responsive.