Omobono social media handbook

The Omobono Social Media HandbookSocial Media Marketing in B2B

#ContentsIntroduction 3

Strategy 4

Why social media?What constitutes success?The B2B Stigma

Conversation and governance

Approach 8

IntroductionCreating valueContentCustomer serviceCommunity manager(s)Thought leadership

TheThreeCs 15

Why?ContentConversation

Connections

ManagementPlatforms 22

StreamsSchedulingProcess and workflowOffline notificationsReportingGoing mobile - smartphones, apps and rich media

Listening 27

IntroductionMapping the landscape and segmenting the audienceHow can it be done for free?

Enterprise level and paid solutions

Tools 32

Browser extensions tools and time-saving tipsIn the cloudBrowser extensions

Content 35

Planning and calendarsRelevanceMaking the most of content – fragmentingBlogging and content creation

‘Think, think, think’

Reporting 41

As a rule of thumb, a social network’s core function is built on the capability of users to create content and interact with each other. Interaction is often based around a single topic such as sharing videos (YouTube), sharing photos (Flickr), or writing and sharing words (blogs). Other networks, such as Facebook, and increasingly Twitter, allow users to do all of this from one place.

There are also many sites that comprise a ‘social layer’, intended to facilitate interaction around content owned by the site. News sites such as The Guardian and prominent blogs including Mashable have built up communities in this fashion, allowing users almost the same functionality as a standalone social network, just excluding the ability to publish the site’s core content.

Strictly speaking, social networks were not originally intended to be marketplaces. In marketing terms, the first social networks allowed users to market themselves, connecting with friends, family, colleagues and anyone they desired through the medium of their own website. The earliest adopters

of social media for business came from the world of business to consumer and fast moving consumer goods, particularly entertainment brands; they saw the market for these sites as a channel to reach consumers on their own terms.

The earliest marketing on social networks came in the form of banner advertising, hosted on user’s web pages, although it was not long before industrious marketers began to make use of sites in the way they were intended; by building their own profiles. In the early days of social networking, music was very much a driving force behind adoption. MySpace in particular, which offered bands and artists customisable profile templates with music streaming functionality, saw incredible growth powered by musicians using pages to interact directly with fans in a way that had never been done before. Comedians, filmmakers, photographers and other high profile entertainment users were all critical in popularising the personal web.

Business to business marketers were slower to embrace the power of the mainstream

social web, instead looking to LinkedIn, ‘the professional social network’ launched in early 2003. In the same fashion as mainstream social media, LinkedIn’s growth began with individuals, who used the site to build a network of professional contacts, search for jobs and communicate across the world of business.

Jump to 2011 and social media has moved on significantly from when users simply built a personal webpage and communicated with others either in the public eye, using sites such as MySpace, or behind a wall, as with LinkedIn. Whilst this core functionality has remained, the scope for business use, on a personal, campaign and corporate level is now impossible to ignore. Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has more than 750 million users, and with the current number of connected internet users worldwide stands at more than 2.1 billion, meaning that more than a third of people using the internet visit this one site. These figures are astounding and grow all the time, arguably proving the social web to be the most important marketing channel available to us in terms of reach.

IntroductionSocialmediaisarelativelynewphenomenon,withthefirstsitesthatwerewidelyrecognisedassocialnetworkslandinginthelate1990s.MainstreamofferingssuchasthenowobsoleteFriendsterandMySpacearrivedonthescenein2002/3respectivelyandpublicadoptionof socialmediatookoff inabigway.

#Strategy

Why social media?What constitutes success?The B2B StigmaConversation and governance

The Omobono Social Media Handbook Page 5 of 44

Why social media?As important as it is to start engaging in social media activity, it’s equally important to have a clear idea of what you hope to achieve from a business perspective. Social media is not ‘the answer’ but it is a hugely important channel and a clear strategy is essential in order to make the most of social media. Equally, social media requires a significant commitment, not only in terms of human resource to manage the network, but also to allow time for the campaign to have an impact. Historically there have been many lazy attempts to use social media without a strategy and a neglected social media presence is frequently far worse than no social media presence at all.

In the past, many brands engaging in social media, without a clear strategy in place, have simply ended up creating a large forum for untended public customer complaints. It’s a fear many companies now have when entering the world of social media. If time and budget constraints don’t allow you to address such concerns, serious thought should be given to whether or not to delay a social media push.

A good example comes from everyone’s favourite corporate scapegoat, Ryanair, whose social media presence numbers more than 80,000 on Facebook alone. However, these ‘fans’ mostly use the page to complain about extortionate fees and poor customer service, unlike Ryanair themselves, who haven’t used the page for anything since mid-2009. Fortunately, not every company is as unpopular as Ryanair, but the message remains. Know what you want to achieve before you get started, and be prepared to maintain your commitment to social media channels, even if things don’t go according to plan at first.

There are dangers associated with social media and the need to have a process in place for dealing with them, a social media strategy is far too big of a concept to put on paper in a single chapter. Every business is different, every business’ marketing goals are different. The notion of ‘best practice’ in social media is so wide-reaching that it’s far better to aim for ‘good practice’ based on what has worked well for companies looking to achieve a similar goal.

A strategy needs to cover numerous areas including, but not limited to; content, approach, reasons for using social media, guidelines and the ultimate aim, that is to say what would be deemed a success. We will be touching on all these areas separately, but we will address some of the basics here.

What constitutes success?Early on in any social media strategy campaign plan, it’s important to consider what a successful campaign will be. Or, to put it another way; what do you hope to achieve by engaging in social media? The answer might not be immediately obvious, you don’t even need to finalise it before you start strategising, but it should always be at the forefront of your thinking and once established, should be at the core of everything you do.

In strategic terms, it’s essential to not just consider the ultimate aim of the campaign but to put a strategy in place to actively achieve this. Equally, as soon as it becomes evident, you’ll need to outline a set of goals and key performance indicators that will help you gauge whether the campaign is to be deemed a success. So what are these KPIs? The size and rate of growth of your audience? The number of retweets your key content receives? In short, yes; if these numbers are key to your success in social media.

Ultimately, every marketing channel should be tailored to achieve a positive return on investment, or to gain enough benefit from a channel to offset an un-recouped investment. In social media terms, we consider ‘return on engagement’ to be the key driver of any campaign. Broadly this is the same concept as ROI, but tailored to account for social media activity as an attempt to achieve engagement.


The B2B ‘Stigma’Before we continue; a quick note on the inherent differences between a business to business audience and a business to consumer audience and the ‘stigma’ that has previously surrounded social media activity in B2B. Much of the terminology associated with social media (+1, ‘Like’…) is inherently positive in sentiment and was historically consumer focused in this sense. Fortunately, since common social media terminology has been adopted into everyday conversation, so too, has the literal meaning of these terms diminshed – in the digital language at least. No longer does ‘liking’ a business refer explicitly to expressing a positive sentiment for the business, instead it is simply recognised as a desire to hear from or speak with the company. ‘Liking’ is now simply the process of engaging with the company, for whatever reason. Furthermore, recent announcements from Facebook dictate that the ‘Like’ functionality of the site will be replaced with a custom field that allows the user or business to change the term to better suit the action, audience or content.

So, whilst B2B marketers are no longer facing an uphill battle when it comes to actually gaining an audience, there are still different approaches for each audience, given the obvious differences between customers. If anything, the B2B marketer does still have a harder job than their B2C counterpart. As an example, the B2B audience is technically made up of consumers, just like the B2C audience, however, these consumers are in reality your customers, clients and numerous other stakeholders. Each of whom is interested in a specific part of your business and more than just a short-lived discount from their preferred coffee shop or the release date for a new phone.

“ No longer does ‘liking’ a business refer explicitly to expressing a positive sentiment, instead it is simply recognised as a desire to hear from them”


Conversation and GovernanceA one or two way street?There is no denying the fact that social media is a proverbial ‘two way street’, social media is built on the ability to converse and a conversation cannot be one sided - although a choice can be made to not engage in a conversation.

The approach chosen here is broadly a strategic decision as not responding to incoming messages, a purely ‘push’ approach, alienates customers’ ability to resolve an issue through the channel – and their ability to subsequently compliment you on a good service. Equally, responding to only certain messages will leave some users unsatisfied, which is potentially even worse. These are the key factors to consider at a strategic level.

The approach that will ultimately be taken to conversation and responses will be covered in more depth below, as guidelines for responses, including times, tone and resolution an essential part of any social media policy, especially in a business environment.

The major concern with engaging in a two way conversation is the possibility of ‘dangerous’ topics coming up and these ‘no-go’ areas need to be defined and considered long before the first post. Understanding what topics are dangerous to the company is essential when it comes to social media - and communications generally - so a

good starting point would be to look at corporate code of conduct, terms of employment and any existing media strategy.

These topics, depending on the nature of a business, could include competitor discussion, discussing certain individuals, products, areas of the business and much more depending on the industry. In each instance it’s also important to have a set of guidelines in place to dictate the response that should be made.

GovernanceWhen it comes to social media, governance is essential. Establishing a set of guidelines at an early stage will ensure you encounter far fewer questions in your day to day activities. The idea of a ‘community manager’ or group thereof, is that they will be able to manage a community, without having to stop and ask questions every five minutes. It’s also important that community managers know what their activities are intended to achieve, what boundaries they can and must not cross, what subjects are off limits and how to address or work around them.

Social media guidelines stem from the social media strategy; once you outline what you intend to achieve from social media, you can establish the means to get there. This goes all the way back to the first step; ‘Creating value from social media’. The basic aim of social media guidelines is to allow a community manager to work unheeded on their own. The aim should be to get

to a level that if a community manager needs to think about their response, they need to approve it with someone senior.

#Approach

Introduction

Creating value

Content

Customer service

Community manager(s)

Thought leadership


IntroductionIt’s important to realise the difference between strategy, guidelines and the overall approach taken to social media. There is some overlap, as each feeds into the other two, but what approach to take and how to make that decision is a significant topic all on its own and there are a number of considerations to be made.

Before making any decisions, it’s important to realise that social networks weren’t originally set up to be a marketplace and many users still see them as an exclusively private space. A space they don’t consider appropriate for businesses to target their attention. This applies particularly to Facebook users, whose pages frequently contain far more immediately personal data than a Twitter feed. In fact, ‘Liking’ a brand or product on Facebook publishes an update on the user’s feed which can be seen by all their contacts. Getting

a user to ‘like’ a brand is therefore tantamount to asking for a public personal recommendation to all of their friends, family and colleagues. Furthermore, in the world of B2B marketing, there’s a potential barrier between potential customers’ personal space and the businesses with which they work. Many would suggest users would be reticent to promote the businesses they work with/for in their private life. Much of the stigma associated with ‘Liking’ a brand on Facebook has now subsided, although it’s still a pressing issue in many people’s eyes. With this in mind, you might be asking yourself;

‘How can we connect with people using social media, without upsetting anyone and still make any kind of impact?’

“ Much of the stigma associated with ‘Liking’ a band on Facebook has now subsided, although it’s still a pressing issue in many people’s eyes”


Creating ValueThe ultimate aim in social media is to create value for your audience as an engaged audience will deliver a far greater ROI. This means that the first point of call must be to gain followers (ironic, I know), allowing you to increase ‘true reach’, establish a position of thought leadership and a network of engaged followers. Without this, social media activity is simply an ‘also-ran’, rather than something that ‘earns its keep’ or ‘pays for itself ’, so to speak. An engaged audience, regardless of size, is far more beneficial than a large audience with no interest in your company – which is sadly far easier to achieve.

In order to maximise value for your audience, consider what they would be most interested to hear from you. Consider the areas of your expertise or campaign that you would most intuitively imagine to be popular and you might come up with discounts. But think between the lines about the audience you want to reach, consider what you know about them, ‘listen’ and you might find that there’s a lot more interest in events and guides to using products and then, to a lesser extent, discounts – after all, why give people money off when they will happily pay full price. This approach has worked very well for Apple over the past decade.

It may seem obvious, but knowing what your audience wants from you allows you to tailor your social media activity to keep them engaged and promote yourself accordingly and appropriately. If your ultimate aim is to increase awareness, and increase sales, using ‘The 3 Cs’, the 80/20 approach (more on this in a moment) and engaging your audience will increase interaction across the board, including amplification of news releases and company updates. The message here is that social media success is not an exact science; you will need to learn how to use it to reach the goals you set.

Listen to your customers One way of establishing where the value might lie is through the study of analytics. One very simple way to understand what your customers want is to look at what they look at. To be more specific, studying website analytics to understand the pages of your website your external audience most frequently reach from natural search terms, the user journey once they reach them and the content they seek out. These are the parts of your business that your audience is most actively interested in and these are the areas your activities should initially be focused.

In addition to studying web analytics, it’s equally important to ‘listen’ to the social media discussion when making these decisions, nothing is more valuable than understanding if people are already discussing you on social media, and if so, who

and what are they discussing? This is an audience that is already in place, so it’s important to engage these users first, in the manor by which they’d prefer to be reached. Additionally, if there’s little or no discussion of your business or products on a particular social network, it’s unlikely your customers will be particularly receptive to your efforts to engage them here.


ContentThroughout this book we will continue to promote the importance of content and the approach taken to content. Content creation, amplification and curation is central to the day to day activity of your social media presence. Content is covered separately later as part of ‘The 3 Cs’ approach to social media and also in Chapter 8, so we will stick simply to picking an approach to content in this chapter, namely ‘The 80/20 Rule’.

Most social media practitioners preach an 80/20 rule of 20% promotional activity against 80% ‘community management’. Whilst social media, ultimately, is about promoting yourself, simply using it for that purpose will see your followers tire quickly. If you apply the 80/20 rule to a first date, which is ultimately what is happening when a user stumbles across your brand online, then you should end up with a phone number at the end of the night – or an email address/follow/like depending on what social network/website the date is taking place on.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re on real a first date with someone who spends 80% of the time discussing how much money they make (business results), their past lovers (deals and partnerships), and how fast their new Ferrari is (acquisitions), you’re going to see them as shallow, boastful and,

ultimately, boring. Reverse that ratio and things look a lot different. If your date subtly slips into conversation the fact that they recently bought a new Ferrari, make a lot of money and used to date a supermodel, you’ll likely be subliminally impressed at how successful they are. In short; imagine you want to date your followers and you’ll be on the right track.

Tone of voice While we’re on the subject of talking to your audience, it’s important to think about how you will be talking to them. Essentially, social media is a channel that broadcasts an entire company/division’s opinion within a short message, multiple times a day. It’s important to understand that whilst an account may be solely used for a single campaign to promote a project or report, audience segmentation means that to any individual, your messages could be their only touch point with the company. It is therefore essential that this touch point delivers them appropriate content professionally and in line with policy and their expectations. If different divisions run social media accounts that one user follows, this unified tone becomes arguably more important. There are many thoughts around the correct way to approach this but it should start with the business’ code of conduct and media spokesperson guidelines.

Tone of voice becomes even more important when utilising multiple account managers to run one account, as each account manager

must be aware of the on-going conversation, ownership, relationship, past/pending timeline and established tone. This is facilitated by the use of social media management platforms, which we covered in Chapter 5. When multiple account managers are used, which is an increasingly popular approach, especially in the customer service function, in much the same manner that a call centre operative would, the conversation is now being made in the public sphere, rather than directly to just one customer. As with strategy, goals and the overall approach, tone of voice should be a constant, pre-determined from day one and central to all activities. Each and every message is now a part of your brand footprint.


Customer ServiceWhen considering social media as a channel, it’s important to understand and consider all the options and variables. Social media is a two way street, regardless of how you choose to use it.

Adopting a broadcast mentality and strategy does not mean that you will not receive incoming messages. If your business provide a product or service that requires customer support, there’s a high probability that requests for support may begin to come in via social media. Understanding that this is part of the conversation will allow you to deal with these enquiries appropriately and swiftly. The approach you choose to take in this manner will branch out into multiple different aspects of social media as your use of the channel continues to grow.

Many businesses have taken to social media, particularly Twitter, as a means of providing customer service in addition to a dedicated call centre and email team. Microsoft has been championing this approach since early 2009 using the Twitter account @MicrosoftHelps to resolve customer issues. The immediacy of Twitter as a platform and the short-form messages makes for a quick and efficient service – equally impressive is the commitment to solving customer issues in the public eye, rather than through offline, controlled mediums such as telephone enquiries.


Community manager(s)Social media is a time consuming activity, particularly when part of your strategy and approach involves engagement. Running a social media presence with multiple account managers can be a great way to solve some of the problems arising due to time constraints, especially given the immediate nature or social media and lack of uniform ‘office hours’ globally. However, when an account is being run by more than one user, it’s important to understand some of the risks, and considerations, from an audience perspective of conversation, ‘case’ ownership, the previously discussed tone of voice and more.

As a starting point, it’s worth considering whether the account will be publicly operated by multiple account managers or whether this is a behind the scenes function and all messages are seemingly sent by the same person. This will play into both tone of voice and personality as whilst a unified tone of voice is important, multiple community managers will offer different approaches, within the overall agreed approach, bringing a little variety into the content but also making the community manager role more straightforward.

Running an account with multiple community managers to any kind of a guideline-compliant

level is only made possible with the use of a social media management platform, which we will cover in more detail later, allowing the creation of a workflow process, assignments and ‘case ownership’ to streamline the activity. The additional benefit of this approach is that additional team members can be brought into the workflow through the use of offline notifications. This means that a subject matter expert can be brought in as an additional community manager to generate relevant content, without the need to be ‘online’ as much as other team members.

Social media is free, in the sense that the networks themselves can be utilised free of charge. However, the resource needed to run a social media presence effectively is anything but free. So whilst social activity can be undertaken in many ways dependent on available time resource, budget and goals, it’s important to both get the most from the time available and also to ensure activity, no matter how little or how much, doesn’t stray too far from the overall aims and goals of the social media strategy. Multiple people acting as community managers can be a good way to spread this resource requirement, although the optimum solution in the long term for businesses looking to engage in extensive activity will always be to identify or hire one or numerous social media specialists to fill the role.


Thought LeadershipThought leadership as an approach to marketing positioning is nothing new. Companies the world over have used thought leadership to establish a position of credibility and expertise around their company, industry and amongst their competition. In social media, thought leadership comes with immediacy. Instead of compiling ‘trends’ in a monthly or quarterly report, we can comment, in real time, on areas related to our industry.

Twitter’s ‘Trending Topics’ demonstrate that ‘trends’ have moved from years, months and weeks, to days, hours and even minutes. In some instances trends have become shorter lived, in others they are on-going, the magic of social media comes in harnessing trends and discussion as a means for promotion and market positioning.

Thought leadership is a strategy that many companies utilise via social media, the aim is to establish themselves as leaders in a particular field by creating and sharing content around a particular topic as well as passing opinion or statements on curated content. Many senior executives practice this approach using a personal account on behalf of a company.

A good example is Cisco’s CTO Padmasree Warrior, whose 1.3 million Twitter followers are used to seeing opinion passed on new technological announcements with the perspective of the head of technology in a world-leading technology company.

The potential downside to this fact is that employees, particularly more senior staff, referencing your business as part of their online profile can be taken as thought leaders, even if this is not intended. This can be controlled as part of your employee code of conduct, perhaps generating two tiers of social media regulation. One level for employees who cannot be identified as part of your business, another for those choosing to share this information. This kind of governance can allow additional control over your brand in the public sphere and safeguard against negative impact from your staff ’s personal internet activity.

“ Trends have moved from years, months and weeks, to days, hours and even minutes.”

Why?ContentConversationConnectionsContent, conversation, connections

#TheThreeCs


The Three Cs is an approach to social media that factors in the major elements needed to drive a campaign. This approach is intended to act as a safeguard, ensuring a company engaging with social media doesn’t make the obvious mistakes.

The 3 Cs work by making sure you always have good Content to post, whether your own (blogs, videos, photos etc.) or borrowed (third party content used to establish a position of thought leadership). This will see your activity never gets stale and boring. Conversation is all about, well, conversation, ensuring you engage your most

avid brand advocates, users you’d like to amplify your messages and anyone who communicates inwardly with you. Finally, Connections leads on from conversation, in that your network is your tool, not the platform itself. Once you have a network of engaged followers including thought leaders, ‘mavens’, media, local and industry advocates your (subtle) promotional messages will travel a lot further.

When it comes to content, it’s tempting to think that the more you can put out, the better, and there is power in numbers, but don’t lose sight of the reasons for engaging in social media; conversation, analysis, feedback, CRM, the list goes on… Keep them central to everything you do, in line with the social media strategy, chosen approach and both the policy and guidelines and finally, remember that social media is definitely one channel where the old adage of quality, not quantity is really true

WhyThe 3 Cs approach focus on the ultimate goal of social media; Connections. Put differently, ‘connections’ could be as general as a company’s ‘audience’, or as specific as ‘customers’, ‘clients’, ‘media’ and many other things. However, the key thing is that these relationships drive your business. The Three C model is at the heart of social media interaction

The

3Cs

Curation+

creation

Collaborative+

collective

Communitybuilding

+story

sharing

ContentYours, mine & ours

ConversationNot control

ConnectionsRelationships drive your business


ContentThe first thing to understand when approaching social media as a business is the importance of good content. Whether original or curated from other sources, social media activity is not possible without content.

Content drives searchThe content you create, particularly on company blogs, is indexed by search engines, meaning that any content you publish creates a new way for somebody to find your company online. Obviously this means there’s a benefit to publishing the aforementioned promotional content, but this is not necessarily the content that returning users and the people you want to work with are interested to read. It is also frequently not the best-performing content when it comes to natural search traffic. Instead, a mixture of engaging content, from a number of sources, across a number of topics, is the correct approach. Most experts preach the 80/20 rule with only 20% of content actively promoting the business. For more information and detail on blogging in B2B, see Chapter 8; ‘Content’.

Good content establishes thought leadershipSocial media represents an incredible outlet for business, offering companies the opportunity to establish a position of thought-leadership by sharing the considerable expertise that resides within an organisation. A mixture of content discussing the relevance of current affairs to your business, innovations in relevant fields, staff experiences, opinion pieces and, within reason, almost anything that makes good reading, are all excellent places to start and can often times lead to publicity for your business. Traditional PR has shown that industry leaders commenting on relevant current affairs is a popular news format, so creating timely content on a public blog and sharing via social media alongside your traditional PR activities can lead to unforeseen benefits.

Furthermore, the immediacy of short-form social media such as Twitter and Facebook allows subject matter experts to offer insight and comment in real-time on breaking news topics and trends as they surface and peak. Making use of a social media management platform and offline notifications, as detailed in Chapter 5, allow

experts to partake in the activity at the request of an account manager, without the need to be ‘online’ 24/7 waiting for news to drop.

Regularity is keyContent creation is time consuming, making it unsustainable as the only source of social media activity for a business. Additionally, as discussed previously, the 80/20 rule of social media communication comes into play when creating original content. In order to be truly successful and sustainable, content curation comes into play, the practice of sharing relevant third party content to further perpetuate a position of thought leadership and understanding. Regular content is the key to successful social media activity in business and whether content is original or curated from other relevant channels, it should be correctly referenced (don’t steal it!) and remain on topic. This approach doesn’t stop the need for original content to be created regularly too, following the 80/20 rule, even an account posting just 10 times a week will need new content weekly. Upgrade that to 10 posts a day and that’s a daily need for fresh content, this is where content calendars, planning and understanding


how to get the most from each piece of content comes into play. We will be covering this in detail in Chapter 8; ‘Content’.

As a side note, content cannot get more regular than ‘live tweeting’, the idea being that through the use of a #hashtag bookmark on Twitter, users around the world can follow what’s happening at an event or users at an event can keep track of other attendees’ thoughts. Live tweets usually update with headlines from the on-going talks at a conference or event, giving an ‘as-live’ view of what’s happening, in real time. The truth of live-tweeting is that it’s often superfluous to need and irritates users who aren’t aware of or interested in an event. As such, live tweeting should be selective and akin to note taking. Make note of

‘headlines’, i.e. things that will grab attention, and don’t forget the hashtag! That said, Live tweeting can, however, be a great way to accumulate new followers. Most people following an event hashtag are actually in the same room as you (Yes, this is the world we live in!) so users will often follow those tweeting from events they attend, knowing they’re likely to be of interest in the future and as a form of networking.

“ Even an account posting just 10 times a week will still need new content weekly”


ConversationConversation drives social media activity – it is the way a company can engage with customers – but what does it mean, and how do you achieve it?

Conversation is about content and connectionAs previously discussed, content can be industry news, current affairs, public opinion or popular culture – all potential sources. Much of your content should be curated, as detailed above; share the load by utilizing links to content ‘farmed’ from relevant sources as a basis for discussion, engaging followers and saving your company from the need to create fresh content on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. Connections allow the passing of information to customers, potential customers and business partners through social delivery platforms, or listening to comments and suggestions and accepting criticism from your audience.

It’s important to understand the circular way in which ‘The 3 C’s’ work. Conversation ties directly back both to content and connection and each comes directly back to the others, none works on its own. It’s impossible to have a connection with your followers without conversation, just as it’s impossible to have a conversation with your followers without content. Equally, you won’t have many connections without any conversation.

Most importantly, conversation is… conversationNo one can dictate an outside and correct approach to the conversation a business will have on social media, just as no social media strategy can definitively predict what will come up. However, a robust social media strategy can shape the approach to conversation, which should include dialogue with customers and managing any criticism with acknowledgement and a response. Listening to customers will help to shape product and service development.

Conversation fuels understanding; Talking to your customers and clients can give insight into their buying behaviour and understanding the person behind the keyboard and how they like to be communicated with will allow a business to engage more effectively with a customer.

Whether potential, present, past or angry, conversation with customers can have a strong impact on future sales leads and company perception. An excellent example of a company using social media to develop conversation as a B2B promotional tool comes from sports statistics company Opta. Opta have built a social media following of more than 100,000 Twitter followers across a plethora of accounts, 60,000+ on the most popular account @optajoe alone. They have been able to successfully leverage social media conversation into popularity with sports fans

leading to firstly trust and then business deals with leading news and media outlets.

Regular conversation with fans providing data and statistics on request has catapulted them into the public eye as the most trusted source for fans to read sports data, causing media outlets to rethink their current providers and fans to question any news source not already utilizing Opta data in their reports. This is particularly interesting, as they have engineered B2B success through a predominately B2C approach to social media, communicating directly with the end customer and using thought leadership in front of the middle-man.


ConnectionHaving gotten this far, it’s important to not forget about the person behind the keyboard – your customers and those within your business. As we’ve touched on above, the important thing to remember is that content that engages us as humans is what people find most interesting, but also to think about your connections; who they are and what they need and want from you.

Relationships drive your businessCustomers like to deal with real people. Whether through email, call centre support or a sales team, even when ending a relationship with a company, it’s the human connection that makes a difference. Common sense tells us that customers choosing to interact with a business on the web are therefore going to appreciate similar human interaction online. This is applicable for a business in two ways, firstly a potential customer researching a business will appreciate a business communicating with personality. Secondly, when creating a personal relationship with a potential customer online, personality shines through.

Connections can be personalBe open about who you are and let the people managing your accounts have a name and a face. Let customers have access to real people, and encourage social media managers to

refer customers on to real people within the organization through social media. A good example of this comes from Microsoft.

As previously discussed, Microsoft’s @microsofthelps twitter feed is managed by a team of customer services managers, each named on the page. Each of the team has a unique ID, which they use to sign off every tweet. A potential customer looking at the feed will not only see a company that’s engaging in social media for good, by providing a free support service, they’ll also see a company with thousands of employees engaging publicly with customers on a one-to-one basis. It takes some commitment but it is valuable promotion and will be looked upon very favourably by any customer engaged in the social media world, even one choosing not to actively follow your brand’s activity.

Connection means going beyond the obvious social networksConnection, in business, can mean more than simply engaging ‘the big four’ networks. Bespoke solutions for businesses can include discussion forums and even customer-focused social networks as have recently been implemented by HSBC and American Express. HSBC’s community allows small businesses to share knowledge, engage with each other and share problems with a like-minded audience. Amex’s ‘Open Forum’, which follows a similar principle, has enabled the company to position itself as thought leaders

through the ‘resource’ element of the site.

Recent studies from Neilsen have shown ROI delivered from branded communities to be higher than through any other social channels. Whilst this is a step above and beyond what many companies may need, there’s a real benefit to such solutions, if you feel they could be of value to your audience, they can offer a far larger return than a Twitter account.

Connections give you reachIt was recently reported that just 40% of US users actively follow a brand or company on Facebook, however, this 40% equates to more than 45 million people in the US alone. To further put this in perspective, the average Facebook user also has 130 friends, each of whom will see the ‘story’ published when a user begins following a brand. The number of potential customers a business can reach through social media is mind boggling and increasing by the day. Even the number of new accounts Facebook rejects is astounding, recently reported as more than 20,000 every day.

The aforementioned approach of building a bespoke community also comes back into the numbers argument; quality vs quantity. The impact of creating a collaborative business forum, private social network or other community, perpetuated by one brand, which would serve to attract a far smaller but highly relevant audience, can be huge.


Finally, It’s also important not to lose sight of the impact a campaign or message can have ‘inside the walls’ of a social network, i.e. outside of your tracking capabilities. This is the ‘invisible audience’, those that you cannot track and those that you cannot track viewing your content. Numerous different levels of privacy settings on Twitter and Facebook mean that it’s impossible to track where and how far your content and company name may be travelling outside of your immediate vision. There’s huge potential for recommendations, good customer service, company messages and news to spread without further input.

The old customer service adage that ‘A customer will tell one person about a good customer service experience, but they will tell four if they experience a bad one.’ springs to mind here, except in 2011 bad customer service can instantly be shared with an entire network of contacts. You never know who might be talking privately about your business, so treat your customers well, both on and offline.

Content, Conversation, Connection The simple activity of engaging in social media is potential promotion already and as with most things, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get back. So whilst not all web users may elect to directly ‘follow’ or ‘like’ a brand, simply seeing a company’s page(s) and approach to social media may be a deciding factor in their decision to buy from or trust a business. The implied popularity of a brand amongst customers, i.e. the number of ‘likes’ or followers a particular brand has can be powerful. Numbers show a potential customer that they’re not alone and that customers value and respect a business or product.

It is easy to get too caught up in the numbers game though, and to forget that it’s quality, not quantity that’s important in the long run. The underlying message here is that social media is not a forum for promotion - but that’s not quite true; of course it is. The simple activity of engaging in social media offers the potential for promotion and, like all things, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get back out. More accurately then, the message is that the correct approach to social media for business is not to generate marketing messages day in, day out, but instead to engage customers, potential customers, complaints, partners, media, staff and the rest of the world-wide-web on a daily basis. To put it simply, the 3 C’s can be whatever you want them to be, just please make sure it isn’t a press release!

“ Simply seeing a company’s page and approach to social media may be a deciding factor in their decision to buy from or trust a business”

IntroductionStreamsProcess and workflowGoing mobile - smartphones, apps and rich media

#Management Platforms


Social media platforms contain numerous layers of functionality over and above what the standard user may be familiar with, or interested in using. Most Twitter users, for example, will never even have heard of Twitter’s private lists function and wouldn’t have a clue why they’d want to use them, yet this is one of the most important tools for using Twitter as a business. These different layers of functionality are designed for ‘power users’ those who spend hours every day using social media channels for a variety of purposes. These users are constantly on the hunt for new tools that will make the management of these accounts easier and allow them to make the most of their time.

As such, social media management tools have risen in popularity over the past couple of years, allowing social media community managers to create shortcuts, view multiple channels in one place and operate social networks at a high level, getting the most from the network itself and allowing them to make the most of their time. There are many platforms available, offering similar levels of service, but we’re going to be covering one in particular; Hootsuite.

“ Social media management tools have risen in popularity over the past couple of years, allowing community managers to create shortcuts and view multiple channels in one place”

Introduction


Process and Workflow

StreamsProbably the most significant capability of Hootsuite and other management platforms is the ability to view multiple social networks in one place and to segment your view of each social network into different ‘streams’. This is particularly useful for Twitter as it allows a community manager to follow individual topics, audiences, users, conversations, search terms, hashtags and more from one place. Each stream within Hootsuite shows a timeline of posts, just like on Twitter.com, however, each stream can be dedicated to something specific. For example, if your Twitter account follows 500 people, but you want to follow 10 of those users more closely, their activity can be isolated and viewed as a separate stream alongside the main content feed.

As more need to monitor specific topics, keywords and increases, a management platform becomes more and more valuable; streams can be set up to search for specific campaign keywords, brand names, competitor-related keywords and more. As many as six streams can be displayed on screen at any time, and dozens of separate tabs comprising up to 10 streams each can be allocated, making it far quicker to stay up to date on the various elements of a social media presence by campaign, audience and more.

Streams work mostly in conjunction with basic Twitter functions including ‘saved searches’, ‘@mentions’, Retweets and lists, allowing incoming

communication and impact to be monitored, as well as audience segmentation. Hootsuite also offers a ‘Publisher’s view’ which is built on another function of the platform, the ability to schedule activity. Alongside Twitter, it is possible to manage activity across numerous other social networks, each using a separate tab to segment the channel. Facebook, Linkedin, Wordpress and others are all supported allowing an ‘at a glance’ perspective on each network in one place.

Scheduling Another function that Hootsuite allows community managers to access above the basic functions of social networks is the ability to schedule forthcoming activity. Through the use of Excel spreadsheets, it is even possible to schedule up to 200 updates at a time in advance. This is a fantastic tool when promoting an event or wish to maximise the impact of a specific report, blog or other piece of content. The ability to schedule activity adds an additional level of functionality to community management allowing for the creation of a process and workflow capability.

Collaboration and Teamwork Another significant benefit of Hootsuite is the ability to create a workflow process to manage accounts and campaigns with input from multiple account managers and subject matter experts, in the cloud. The creation of multiple team members within Hootsuite allows actions, messages and conversations to be ‘assigned’ by a community

manager and also to allow certain user’s messages to pass in front of an administrator before they are publicly posted. It’s also possible to view ‘conversation history’ between the account and other users, in the instance of a conversation or ‘case’ being assigned to a new user. This allows the new conversation owner to understand the context, tone of voice and discussion, before attempting to take over.

A workflow process is a fantastic way to allow multiple users to collaborate on an individual account or campaign, even bringing an ‘offline’ benefit by alerting users that they have an assigned action in Hootsuite via email, negating the need for users to remain logged in at all times. This can be an incredibly powerful asset to a social media team. Furthermore, users can build a custom view, showing only the content and elements of activity that are of relevance to them.

Offline Notifications One of the many benefits of social media platforms is the creation of a workflow process allowing ‘part time’ users to work as part of a social media team, without the need to be constantly switched on and monitoring the streams, Hootsuite and various mobile platforms allow users to set up notifications to alert users to new activity. Notifications can be created for new @mentions, Retweets, friend requests and more. Hootsuite can also be set up to notify ‘team members’ of the need for an action relating to the


workflow previously discussed. If a part time team member is involved in a Twitter discussion the community manager can notify them of incoming responses by email, negating the need for them to remain logged in and checking the account for activity.

So as to manage email notifications effectively, it is possible to create ‘rules’ and ‘filters’ in mail clients to automatically place emails in different folders, meaning you need not be ‘pinged’ each time you get a new Twitter follower, but you get an email to let you know someone has commented replied to on one of your posts via the same means. The ability to combine on and offline team members to the management process of an account can be invaluable when working within guidelines that require speedy responses to incoming queries.

Reporting Built into Hootsuite at a core level is the ability to generate detailed reports around social media activity, custom reports can be built featuring useful statistics such as the date and time of Tweets overlaid with Google Analytics, showing the impact of particular messages and more. There are also numerous ‘flash reports’ available on-demand or auto-generated on a regular basis, including ‘click summaries’ on links you have shared, Facebook user insights and more. We cover reporting in more detail in Chapter 9; Reporting.


Another key benefit to Hootsuite is the ability to replicate the desktop user experience on mobile devices. As the platform is hosted in the cloud, the same tabs and streams can be viewed on any device, allowing you to work in the same environment across all devices you use, wherever you are.

Mobile smartphones are the perfective device for social media – the ability to take and upload photos, videos and even audio content without the need for long loading, editing, buffering and transfer times associated with digital media of

old. Using a smartphone means events, meetings and conferences all become possible social media content via the medium of live tweeting and there are numerous applications allow for rich media such as photos, video and even audio/podcasts to be recorded and uploaded over a 3G connection.

Going mobile - Smartphones, apps & rich media

#Listening

IntroductionMapping the landscape and segmenting the audienceSegmentationHow can it be done for free?Enterprise level and paid solutions


Social media works for business in two ways; firstly allowing a business to ‘listen’ to consumers’ opinions and secondly for companies to voice their own opinions, even affording the same opportunity to individual staff using subject matter experts and thought leadership techniques.

Corporate blogs and social media channels often miss the point and are often just used as an outlet for product, hiring and service announcements, publicity of awards and generally ‘shouting from the rooftops’ rather than engaging their audience; completely missing the point of what should be a hugely valuable asset. Listening to the conversation already taking place on social networks should be the first port of call for any business looking to engage in social media, as we outlined earlier in the chapter on Strategy.

There are various types and levels of listening that can be done, ranging from free tools that cost only time, to enterprise level solutions that run to thousands of dollars per month. Both ends of this spectrum produce valuable insight into the audience, what networks and channels they use and what they are saying about your brand and products so there’s really no excuse not to listen both before you speak and once you enter the conversation. In addition to the social media benefit of understanding what your audience are talking about, there’s the added benefit for large companies to gauge interest and impact of marketing campaigns, product launches and impressions on their activities.

“ There’s really no excuse not to listen both before you speak and once you enter the conversation”

Introduction


Mapping the Landscape and Segmenting the AudienceThere is a different audience on each social network, each audience is used to getting information in a way tailored to them. For example, Facebook is traditionally a place where users can view rich media (videos, images, widgets) without having to leave the page, but Twitter users are far more used to scanning headlines, ‘hashtags’ and short-links. As Twitter continues to evolve, however, they too are moving in the ‘rich media’ direction.

Whilst each social network’s audience is different, many platforms and services allow automation across numerous sites. Linkedin, for example, will allow users to re-post content from Twitter in their feed. Equally, Twitter allows Facebook users to re-post their content on the micro-blogging site.

Automation is a great technique when it comes to time-saving, especially with regard to posting one piece of content on multiple networks, but there’s also a strong case for utilising the tools given to you from each website, in order to best reach each audience. We’ll get onto this later, but part of understanding how to best use social media involves mapping the landscape, understanding who and where your audience may be and this is done through listening.

Segmentation Your audience can be all over the world and some things don’t apply to everyone; local news and geographically-specific offers, for examples. In some instances messages about these things can be directed at just certain users; Facebook geo-location allows you to make updates visible only to users in a certain territory, even users isolated by the language they speak, but in others you may have to directly reference that a special offer is available in just one territory (Twitter).

Additionally, there are many pitfalls associated with simply copying everything from one stream to another site - automated updates, for one, don’t provide the same functionality on all networks. The ‘@’ symbol on Twitter denotes the a user has been tagged or is being talked at, likewise, the same technique is used to ‘tag’ users on Facebook, but using a third party platform such as Hootsuite to update Facebook doesn’t allow users to be tagged in this manner.


How can it be done for free?The first port of call, before committing to a significant spend on a listening solution, might be to test the water with some free listening tools, luckily there are numerous good tools available free, some of which are scalable to provide valuable insight at all levels. The first tool at your disposal and one of the most valuable tools at any level is no secret, it’s Google, the world’s largest search engine and second most visited website. The first, if you were wondering, is Facebook.

Much the same as Twitter has numerous features above and beyond the needs of the standard user, Google has many capabilities that can make your listening efforts easier and more effective. Google Alerts, for example, allow you to create a saved search for certain keywords and receive an email every time Google finds a new instance of the words. This can be invaluable when posting press releases and news, setting up Google Alerts in advance for key product and campaign text can help understand the reach of your messages.

Another invaluable trick is to learn and master advanced Google ‘search strings’. Many users are aware that a search for multiple words will identify instances of both words, but by putting the same search term between two apostrophes you will cause Google to search only for the exact term as

you have typed it. There are many tips and tricks in this vein, including the ability to search for a word but only when another word doesn’t appear on the same page. It is also possible to search for a keyword within one website or even within a URL itself. For example, it’s possible to search for a keyword only appearing on a page for which the URL contains the word ‘blog’ or ‘news’, therefore isolating very specific content and audiences. There are dozens of advanced search strings and they can all be found, surprise surprise, with a quick Google search.

Google is far from the only free tool available when listening via social media. We mentioned ‘saved searches’ on Twitter previously and these can be set up on the main website, without the need for Hootsuite or a similar platform, allowing you to follow key terms in real time and see who is talking about you on Twitter. Additionally, sites such as Social Mention and Topsy also provide free platforms to search social media keywords, the former can even provide some insight into the sentiment of the discussion around your keywords.

One final searching tool that can be invaluable is Boardreader, a tool that allows you to search for keywords solely on forums and message boards, as often forgotten but hugely valuable source of user-generated content and discussion. Other tools include private Twitter lists and page bookmarking tools, the latter of which we will

cover in more detail in the next chapter.

One thing that often baffles new Twitter users is the sheer number of people that they can ‘follow’, especially given that one approach to gaining to followers is to follow people and hope that they will reciprocate. The best way of ensuring that you stay on top of the tweets from users you are most interested to follow (sources of good third party content, users you want to engage with etc.) is to use Twitter lists.

Twitter lists allow you to create a new, supplementary timeline from specific users, they can be either private (only you can see them) or public (any user can follow them). Lists can also be generated as new tabs within Hootsuite, allowing you to follow tens of thousands of accounts (if you want to) yet still keep tabs on a number of important accounts. Private lists can be a great way to keep tabs on competitors (You don’t have to follow an account to add it to a list) without anyone knowing and give individual users the feeling that you’re interested in their tweets (because you follow 1000 people and picked out their message). This is often at the centre of a good audience engagement strategy; identifying influential users and people interested to engage with you and ensuring you tweet with them regularly can work wonders in terms of amplification and earning brand advocacy.


Enterprise level and paid solutionsAbove and beyond the various free listening options available online, there are a number of advanced solutions available to provide bespoke listening capabilities within a single dashboard. Solutions such as Radian6, Meltwater Buzz and Alterian all provide advanced listening capabilities across a variety of websites, social networks and forums. There are additional capabilities based on advanced machine-learning algorithms, meaning that the longer these solutions are used, the more valuable they can be. However, this capability comes with a price tag and to operate these systems at their most advanced level will require a capable community manager putting in some significant work, so the commitment can be significant.

Differing businesses have different requirements for listening based on their customers and products. As an example, for a business with a popular customer-facing product, there’s a likelihood that the product can cause a large number of posts around the business - imagine Microsoft, Apple or Google trying to track every instance their name is mentioned - monitoring all of these is impossible. However, looking at just some comments can be even worse; everything has context and it’s important to understand the context in which things are posted, before considering crisis management or responses to every comment.

The above considerations also apply when studying sentiment around your keywords. On a

manual basis, this can be accurate and useful, but as volume picks up, manually studying mentions and then a user’s timeline is not a sustainable approach. Various paid solutions offer advanced sentiment analysis, although most only claim their results are only guaranteed with about 35% accuracy – so be careful how religiously this sentiment is taken into account. Where possible community managers should look to mine this information manually, perhaps picking comments from users with perceived influence, such as a high Klout score, number of followers, numerous web profiles – this information is all aggregated into solutions such as Hootsuite and available with one click.

EavesdroppingIn many ways, ‘listening’ via social media is tantamount to eavesdropping. This is due to the public nature of social media, especially Twitter, where discussions can be monitored and tracked using keywords. Using a social media monitoring platform to engage users discussing your business or products can be a dangerous game, if not done properly. The public nature of social media means that simply monitoring keywords and responding automatically to everyone mentioning your brand is not much different from walking up to somebody in a coffee shop who you overhear mentioning your brand and offering your opinion. Yes, it happens, but the person who you were eavesdropping on probably won’t like it.

It’s a strategic decision whether comments are responded to and in what terms responses will and won’t be posted, but when comments are posted directly at you, you’ll know anyway, through the use of saved searches and incoming messages and these messages are not to be ignored and should be covered in guidelines, regardless of approach. What’s most important is to understand what is ‘noise’ and what is valuable; indexing the number of times your brand or product is mentioned online is of limited value, whereas recognising when a key social media influencer compliments your brand or product and amplifying these messages or making a connection to a powerful advocate can be a great asset.

In addition to eavesdropping on the general public, there are many tools available to facilitate secret monitoring that can be used to track competitors’ activities online. Sites such as watchthatpage.com will send you a notification each time a website is updated, allowing you to track competitor blog and news feeds without having to publicly subscribe to their content. This approach can also be taken on Twitter with the use of private lists; users can be added to a private list without it being their knowing; allowing you to track their daily activity without publicly subscribing to their accounts

#Tools

Browser extensions, tools and time-saving tips


In addition to social media management platforms such as Hootsuite, which we’ve already covered, there are numerous tools available to make managing your social media presence easier. From account management platforms through to time saving tricks and products that can be every bit as useful in making your own life on the web easier. From browser extensions to content aggregation, making the most of what the web has to offer has never been easier.

Despite the importance of tools, platforms and processes to simplify your social media existence, sometimes visiting the website itself is the best approach. As an example, Facebook has the ability to use the site ‘as a page’ meaning it’s possible to ‘tag’ a user or company in a post, but this is only possible from the website itself. Additionally, as this approach allows you to engage in conversation and interact with other posts as a business, it can be very powerful when referencing other businesses featured in news stories and blog posts, as well as giving feedback to other user’s posts, showing you read them.

ToolsWhen it comes to social media ‘power users’, there are many tools online that can make your life easier. Tools such as Klout and timely.is can

be used to determine which users carry the most social media influence and suggest times to schedule tweets to reach the most receptive audience (based on past activity) respectively. There are also numerous ‘Twitter directories’ that list users that tweet around various topics and their perceived popularity (followers), Wefollow is probably the best known. Google Alerts and Social Mention are probably the last two major tools that you can benefit most from from day one, allowing you to set up alerts for when a keyword is used online. Finally, Watch That Page also allows you to monitor a particular website for changes to keep tracks on sites you have an interest in (competitors and so on). These tools have all been covered in more detail in the previous chapter but the following additional tools can be used in addition to other tools specifically intended for listening to increase your productivity across all parts of the social web.

Readitlater This is a cloud-based platform and bookmarking tool which allows users to archive web pages they don’t have to time read immediately. Being based in the cloud, the service works across all browsers, computers and devices and there’s even a browser extension button for most popular browsers allowing users to bookmark a page to read later with one click. www.readitlaterlist.com

Google Reader/RSS Similarly to Readitlater, Google Reader allows users to view content from an archive, but also gives the ability to subscribe to content and have all new posts visible in one place with incoming content added as and when it is posted at the original source. www.google.com/reader

RSS – RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and allows users to add a website feed to an archiving platform, allowing them to view all new stories as they’re posted. RSS feeds can also be generated for your own content, allowing other users to subscribe to your posts. You can even import your RSS feeds into Hootsuite to automatically generate a new social media post each time you post something to your blog.

Email Alerts Alongside the previously mentioned Google Alerts, many websites with regularly updated content offer their own email alerts and newsletters. These can be a great way to keep track of the latest content from the site without needing to check back regularly.

Browser extensions, tools and time-saving tips


Bit.ly A tool to shorten URLs with an additional capability for branding via a ‘vanity URL’ (Such as our own, http://omobo.co). Bit.ly also provides track-able data on who has clicked your links and automatically generates QR codes for any links you shorten. There is also a browser extension available to shorten the current page URL with one click. http://bit.ly

HootsuiteWe’ve already covered Hootsuite and what a fantastic social media management tool it is, however there are browser extensions for most popular browsers, allowing users to tweet from any page, including a shortcut to link to the page they’re currently reading, without leaving it. Hootsuite also includes its own URL shortner; ht.ly, which can also be accessed from the extension. www.hootsuite.com

Silver Bird A simple management tool, trimmed down to work as a Google Chrome browser extension, allowing users to view elements of twitter streams, post and respond within a browser window as well as receive pop-up notifications of new mentions and messages – all without opening Hootsuite or visiting the main Twitter website. chrome.google.com/webstore

There are many alternatives to the services mentioned above offering a similar mix of functions but these are some of our favourites.

#Content

Planning and calendarsMaking the most of content – fragmentingBlogging and content creation‘Think, think, think’


Planning & calendarsAs we outlined in the chapter on The 3 Cs, content is the key to social media, whether self-generated or curated from third party sources, without content, there is nothing to post and without anything to post, there’s nothing to discuss and, consequently, no one to discuss it with.

We’ve covered Audience (Connections) and Conversation previously, but as Content is the main factor in social media activity, we’ve dedicated a whole chapter to the pursuit of good content.

One way of keeping on top of the need for fresh content is to operate a marketing calendar completed to include key events, announcements, awards, results and similar milestones. Operating a timeline of events allows posts to be scheduled ahead of time, repeated as necessary and content to be scheduled and planned around pre-determined topics. You will also foresee peaks and troughs in activity and identify periods in which extra content creation will be needed.

A marketing plan should be a working document, split into manageable segments to give sufficient notice of key events and a timeline for completion of tasks to be completed in line with events. For example, a financial institution looking to engage with social media might identify 12 monthly events to attend, the dates when 15 major companies release their annual results

and key points in the financial year (end of the tax year, etc.) This would give them underlying themes on which to base blogs, scheduling and thought leadership pieces, as well as ensuring they identifying lulls ahead of time and schedule something to fill the void.

RelevanceWhilst the occasional off-topic blog is harmless - in one respect it’s a great way to keep content fresh and an audience interested via the ‘human element’, a content calendar allows you to keep content relevant by tying it back in to past and future activities. Different networks have different audiences and different expectations. Whilst Twitter is generally regarded as a high-volume network, platforms such as YouTube and Flickr, which are based on rich media such as images and video, need not be tended to everyday, particularly given the increased difficulty of creating regular new content for these networks.


Making the most of content - fragmentingAs mentioned above, Twitter is a high-volume social network with some users following hundreds of accounts in real time. Likewise, many Facebook and LinkedIn users don’t log in every day. Both facts mean that people miss content.

We covered previously several listening techniques for ‘cutting through the noise’ of social media, but on the other side of the ‘social media noise’ issue is the fact that your own tweets will be appearing amidst a stream of dozens of other messages to your followers, meaning individual tweets often get lost or missed.

Reusing content to ensure maximum reach is often considered to be annoying to followers, but in reality, most won’t realise you’re doing it. If an account has 1.2 million followers based all around the world and tweets for an hour a day, they will theoretically reach 1/24th of those followers, an average of 50,000, far less than their potential reach. As such, pushing a blog post, announcement or news story a couple of times, if not more, is hugely worthwhile. Why go to the trouble of creating great content if it’s going to disappear from your audience’s view before they’ve had a chance to see it there.

One approach to avoiding this is to use content multiple times with different headlines to draw attention. This approach also allows you to

identify the best approach to tone of voice. Most social media practitioners advise a conversational approach to tweets, including a call to action. For example if I were to tweet a blog post about this with the aim of engaging my audience, I might say:

New study suggests businesses should take a conversational approach to twitter: www.linktostory.com What’s your approach?

I could also equally have said;

Businesses should use social media for conversation: www.linktostory.com [REPORT]

Both might work for different audiences and reusing content allows you to test which approach works best for you, and/or reach both audiences with the same story. This approach, coupled with the ability to schedule posts via Hootsuite and other platforms allows you to promote a post over several days and even plan to revisit the content a month or more in the future.


Blogging & content creationBlogging is an invaluable business and website tool, allowing companies to share knowledge, news and gain search optimisation. Every blog you post is a potential new entry point to your web umbrella and you should bear this in mind when writing content for blogs.

Search engines traditionally worked by locating the keywords a user searched for and delivering them in an order based on the perceived ‘page rank’ of the site that posted them. ‘Page rank’ still is the main basis for how Google assigns search results from your website. However, recent announcements and changes to the Google Algorithm (Panda) mean that ‘content farms’ (sites which host a lot of content and therefore get a lot of visitors – subsequently increasing their page rank and allowing them to sell advertising space at a higher rate) are being assigned less significance in searches. In terms of what this means for bloggers (at the highest level), simply blogging about a topic will no longer be as effective at climbing search rankings. More important is establishing a ‘relevance’ across a topic (or number of topics) by consistent use of keywords across a longer period of time.

So an SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, cocktails, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor.

Yes, it’s an old joke – in some circles at least, but it makes a valid point; using keywords naturally and effectively is a difficult art to master.

The technicalities of blogging itself are subject to many different viewpoints, some people suggest blogging in 300 words or less, others suggest 700 is the magic number. I personally believe shorter is better, but tone of voice and content are most important. People will read a 3000 word blog if it is relevant and engaging. Furthermore, 3000 words contain a lot more keywords than 300, so longer blogs can be powerful. On the other hand, 3000 words are a lot harder to rattle off than 300, so each has its pros and cons. The underlying factor, again, relates back to creating engaging, relevant content, using the correct ‘tone of voice’, the tone you outline as being your unified voice for the business. A clear tone allows multiple community managers to work together, across multiple networks, without it being obvious to the outside word.

Equally, there are many different social networks that cater for different content. Sites such as Instagram and Flickr, allow users to keep ‘photoblogs’, whilst others, including Tumblr, allow users to post regular short-form media-rich content in a style akin to Twitter. Many companies have also experimented with video-blogs using platforms such as YouTube. Each platform creates a new discovery channel, but at the same time counts as one more network to update and one more place that needs fresh content on a regular basis.


‘Think, think, think’

Firstly, ‘Think rich’. By that I mean rich media, images, videos, audio, anything you can add to your content. As an example, if you can illustrate a blog post with an image, don’t just head to Google and search for a picture; take a picture, or upload a picture you own the rights to. Upload your photo, with a keyword-laden title and description, to a third party site such as Flickr as this actually creates a second way for someone to discover your content.

You can do the same thing with a site like Audioboo, which allows you to record audio using a smartphone and upload it straight to the web. This gives you both the ability to actually create and use audio content, but again, offers another way for someone stumble across your content. Another set of keywords, another set of search tags. It’s all great stuff. There are other tools you can use, such as Justin TV, which will actually allow you to stream video content from an iPhone, or TwitVid, which allows you to upload short videos to Twitter. These sites are all very simple and all add additional power to your content.

Secondly, ‘Think friendly’. As we’ve just outlined, adding keywords and phrases to the content you produce can be a very powerful way for people to discover this content through a search engine, but that’s not the only way that you can use keywords to your advantage. That is to say that you should think as much about WHO you reference in your blogs as you think about WHAT you reference. Adding links, keywords and crediting third party content creators can add a whole new level to discovery and also influence.

In this manner you can reference a client, internal department or other stakeholder and promote them. The great thing about this is that the chances the people you reference will likely spot your reference and often reference it back themselves, whether through a tweet, blog link or email. You can always let the person or company know you’ve mentioned them in a tweet of your own as well, if they don’t spot it, of course… That said, you obviously don’t want to miss the keywords as well!

The third and final thing to remember? ‘Think promotion’. This may seem obvious, indeed many people argue that social media is all about promotion. But the point is to not miss any opportunity for promotion you can provide yourself. This covers many areas, email, for example; do you have an existing list of email contacts that you could use to drive initial traffic to a new social media initiative? Is there another web presence you can leverage? I don’t just mean posting the same content across multiple social networks to try and hit more people, but think about the audience in each network, the relationship you have with them and whether you can use a different tool to reach them more effectively.

As an example, if you’re running an online event, a webinar for example, which we do fairly regularly, you could create a Facebook ‘event’ for the webinar and then run a small advertising campaign to reach a new audience. Even $30 can get you a couple of hundred thousand impressions amongst a very targeted audience. If you’ve not tried any

There are three factors you should think about each and every time you create a piece of content.


Facebook advertising before, you’ll be amazed at how targeted you can make them. What about internal communication as another social channel? If you’re doing something interesting on social media, why not tell your circle of contacts in the workplace?

As a final point, when you’re thinking things right under your nose, what about content? In this industry, we’re constantly creating content, but we rarely re-use it. Not in the manner we just mentioned, of getting the most out of each piece of new content, but looking at old content. You can spend hours on a blog post, only to send them out and forget they ever existed. Spending a couple of hours reading your old blogs can give you a lot of ideas. Revisiting topics is a proven blogging technique and takes a lot less time than starting fresh. How many times have you read a blog, perhaps something statistics based that opens; ‘I wrote a blog last year with a few predictions about X and thought it was about time I saw if I was right.’ These blogs are often a lot of fun to write and are interesting for your audience, admitting you were right, or considering how much things have changed in a year makes for engaging, frequently very insightful content. You can even tweet older blogs out with a note, perhaps use a hashtag to let people know what you’re doing. #fromthearchives would do the job.

What else can I make with this? Where can I get more traffic from?Who can help spread my message?

#Reporting


Reporting, in the most basic sense of the word, can be of limited use when it comes to an on-going social media campaign. Straight forward ‘flash reports’, the kind that show audience growth and re-tweets frequently tell you very little about what’s actually going on.

Whilst these statistics are of importance and can be extremely useful, it’s more important to understand why things are happening. Twitter in particular suffers with a spam problem, so the day you tweet about a trend in cloud computing allowing users to ‘work from home’ will likely see an influx of new followers who will disappear a day or two later. Follower numbers fluctuate greatly in this manner and can change by tens from day to day, dependent on the size of your audience and the content of your messages. This sort of thing cannot be ignored as it shows some of the inaccuracies associated with relying too heavily on basic data grabbed from social media.

As previously discussed, social media is about creating and adding value for your audience and the value of an engaged audience is far larger than that of a large audience. An engaged audience will help deliver a return on investment, but this is a lot harder to measure than just looking at arbitrary statistics; we need to look at value as a key performance indicator, rather than

making promises that are hard to measure and/or impossible to actually guarantee.

To understand the potential for ROI in social media, I’m a big advocate of analytics and what they can teach us, not in the aforementioned sense of how follower numbers are increasing, but as discussed earlier; analytical study of user journeys (where users go from and to on your website(s)), entry points (how they ended up on your site) and end goals (where they ended up and ended up leaving the site – and why). This approach is hugely valuable, both in the early stages of any campaign and on an ongoing basis to optimize campaigns. This approach allows you to understand your audience and customers; building an engaged audience which can be more easily understood and studied.

Whilst I’m not an advocate of straightforward flash reports as a benchmark for a campaign’s success, the more obvious statistical information should still always be at the fingertips of the community manager. A community manager should have an instant opinion of a campaign and whether it’s performing well, sitting stagnant or somewhere in between, but it may be difficult for them to put these ‘feelings’ into a flash report that can be used by more senior executives to gauge ROI and impact. If a community manager can’t articulate a campaign’s success in 30 seconds, a pie chart will be even less convincing.

So what is worth measuring? Whilst definitely an advanced technique and one that becomes increasingly difficult as a following grows, one of the best ways to measure your reach is to look at who is following you, rather than how many there are. Hootsuite aggregates publicly available information on users under their ‘Insights’ tab, which shows links to ‘all known aliases’ including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles, a Klout score, number of followers and more. Understanding the influence and reach of those you influence and engaging those users is the way to succeed in social media so measuring these factors are crucial to your strategy and ROI.

“ A community manager should have an instant opinion of a campaign and whether it’s performing well, sitting stagnant or somewhere in between”

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About OmobonoOmobono is an award-winning communications agency specialising in digital brand engagement for large corporates and government.

We believe Omobono offers a unique blend of business insight, creativity and technical delivery.

For our clients, this means more than just creating communications – it means creating tools and services that truly add value to the customer’s engagement with the brand.

Contact UsFor more information on how Omobono can help, please contact Fran Brosan on [email protected] or 01223 307000.

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