2019/1/8

1

MIB605-Lecture 10Social Media Strategy

Prof. Cui

Agenda

� Understand the role and type of social media marketing strategy

� Benefits of social media

� Common pitfalls in integrating social media

� Content Strategy

� SEO and SMO

2019/1/8

2

3

� Why should our company allocate resources to your team?

� How will you benefit the company?

� What will you do to meet the goal?

Since a marketing department relates to many people and groups, social media strategies can benefit several sections in an organization as well.

It’s not just for MARKETING!

4

Competing for budget n manpower!

2019/1/8

3

Recall: Scope of Social Media

� All zones are related.

� Previous focus is on social community zone(e.g., posters’ behavior)- a unique feature for social media.

� From the view of management, social commerce and social publishing is more central to a company strategy.

� Both are somehow considered an “alternative” approach to strengthen traditional management approaches.

Virtuous cycle

Social Media Strategies

A. Multichannel strategies

B. Rapid response strategies

C. Integrated CRM strategies

D. Leveraging social data

E. Seeding strategies

F. Social publishing (content) strategies

2019/1/8

4

7

� A campaign that uses several communication channels in order to:

� Increase readership size.

� Reach readers with different communication habits.

� Display different formats of message contents.

� Leverage virality.

Multichannel strategies (4Ps)

8

� Get response from customer immediately

� Respond to customers’ inquiry immediately

� Conduct market research with rapid data collection and responses

� Monitor social media metrics such as the volume of online chatter, public sentiment inferred from social media conversation, and keyword mentions. Whenever these metrics indicated a problem, an organization could take an action to address it.

Rapid response strategies (CRM, Marketing Research ,R&D)

2019/1/8

5

9

� Traditionally, customers receive mails, phone calls, messages. But now, they can be reached via social media with customized offerings.

� Social CRM allows organizations to customize each relationshipthey have with their customers by utilizing “database marketing” and “targeted marketing.”

� Increasing sales by showing the right products to the target� Enhancing customer satisfaction, and therefore brand loyalty� Future word-of-mouth behavior

Integrated CRM (CRM)

10

� When information travels via social network, it goes through this network of connections, and information is passed from person to person.

� Specify and target your customer (or audience)

� It leverages the data-rich nature of social media

� “Link, Like, Love” campaign, for example, by American Express, offers “discounts” based on customers’ network of friends and “likes”.

� Customers need to “install” a Facebook application that allows AE to access the individuals’ Facebook activity

Leveraging social network data (promotion)

2019/1/8

6

Benefits : Product development

� Increase volumes of new ideas through crowd sourcing

� Improved market research efficiency with better access to qualified test subjects. (recruitment difficulty)

� Increase ability to leverage expertise and source ideas across the organization.

symbolicexperientialfunctional

experiential

symbolic

what does the product (or service) do for the customer?

how does it feel, taste, smell, sound, look while doing what it does?

how does it make the customerlook?

Benefits: Marketing and Sales

� Use social media as an alternative of traditional marketing tool

� Segmentation and targeting:

� Improved targeting through self-selected social media users

� Marketing expenditure:

� Decreased marketing infrastructure costs through the tools (e.g., Twitter, Facebook)

� Sales management:

� Increased acquisition efficiency and penetration rates through viral mechanism.

2019/1/8

7

Benefits : Customer service and support

� New opportunities for self-serve and lower cost-to-serve channels (e.g., shift infrastructure costs to social utilities)

� Decreased costs to maintain knowledge bases through integrated internal and external media

� Greater personalization through access to more customer behaviors and preferences

Benefits: Hiring and professional development

� Increased access to the best candidates

� Decreased costs per hire by using free or low-cost social utilities to post jobs

� Decreased time to competence with social knowledge management applications

2019/1/8

8

15

� Many organizations tend to excludethe social media team from strategy discussion.

� The company outsource independent advertising agencies to manage its social media platform.

� Inconsistent messages across different communication channels.

� Do not synchronize their activities.

Pitfalls when integrating social media

Q: Would you like to hire someone to manage your Facebook or Email account?

16

� Organizations are NOT taking advantage of the unique opportunities provided by the “interactive” aspect of the social media platform.

� Use it only as a one-way communication tool.

� Do not respond to the feedbacks from customers.

Pitfalls when integrating social media

New marketing myopia. Social media become their blind spot! LU for

example!

2019/1/8

9

17

� Organizations forget about the “social” aspect of social media.

� Consumers not only interact with the brand, but also with other consumers. The nature of “community” is forgotten.

� The dynamics nature presents unique opportunities and challenges for brand wanting to disseminate information across their target population.

Pitfalls when integrating social media

The process of social media strategy

� SWOT Analysis

� Objectives (Understanding the benefits and to set objectives, e.g., volume, brand liking, engagement, etc.)

� Strategies

� Multichannel strategies

� Rapid response strategies

� Integrated CRM strategies

� Leveraging social data

� Seeding strategies

� Social media marketing plan (target audience, content, channel, metrics, etc.)

2019/1/8

10

• Profit

• Sales

• Market Share

• Customer Satisfaction

• Brand Awareness

19

� Based on core values, mission, and organizational culture, organizations (companies) set their specific Goals and Objectives:

From Marketing objectives to social media objectives

� Organizations are not advised to use social media mainly as another platform for advertising and communications. There should be “unique” objectives that can be achieved by social media.

Define a Social Media Objective for the organization

� Increase brand awareness (marketing goal)

� Survey to measure performance

� Increase conversation reach and volumes for positive-sentiment topics about the brand and products. (social media goal: social publishing strategy)

� Conduct sentiment analysis to evaluate goal achievement

2019/1/8

11

Define a Social Media Objective for the organization

� Increase revenues through demand marketing (marketing goal)

� For products where multiple people participate in the purchase decision, make it very easy for any participant to share succinct and relevant product contentwith other members of the purchase decision. (social media goal: Social publishing strategy)

Define a Social Media Objective for the organization

� Increase efficiency by decreasing average cost per converted lead (marketing goal)

� Increase lead volume from organic search versus paid search by increasing backlinks (link received and traffic to product-specific blogs and web properties. (social media goal)

2019/1/8

12

Summary

• An organization’s social media strategy needs to support an organization’s overall strategy and objective.

• The social media management team should get involved in the strategic development process.

• Social media can benefit a company in several aspects, and the company can set their own objectives.

• Social media strategies would help the company to attain these objectives.• Once the strategy is set, plan needed- selecting your audience, channels, contents.

Social Publishing (Content) Strategy

2019/1/8

13

• Games• Music• Art

• CRM/Service• Retailing/Sales• Human

Resources

•Editorial•Commercial•User-Generated

• Sharing• Socializing• Conversing

Social Community

Social Community

SocialPublishing

SocialPublishing

SocialEntertainment

SocialEntertainment

SocialCommerce

SocialCommerce

The Social Publishing Zone

Includes the following channels that allow peopleand organizations to publish content:

Blogs

Microblogs

Media-sharing sites

Information and news networks

2019/1/8

14

Blogs

The websites that host regularly

updated content.

The content is limited to short bursts of

text and links.

Microblogs

The Social Publishing Zone

YouTube/Vimeo/Ustream

Instagram/Flicker/Snapfish

Media-sharing sites

Video-sharing sites

photo-sharing sites

2019/1/8

15

Podcast Alley／喜马拉雅

FM

Scribd/Slideshare

Media-sharing sites

audio-sharing sites

Document and presentation-sharing sites

FACEBOOKOffers multimedia sharing functionality with videos, photos, and links to content.

Facebook is one of the fastest growing social networks worldwide. Users can make registration and create account for free and can fill different information about himself and share content (text, pictures, music, video etc.) with others.�2nd most visited website in the world. (Google

is the 1st)�Has been around for 10 years�757 million daily active users on average�Every 20 minutes on Facebook� 1 million Links� 2 million friend requests� 3 million messages sent

2019/1/8

16

Types of Content

Content appears in a variety of different formats such as:

Blog post and feature articles

Press releases

Newsletters

PhotosWebinars and

presentations

Barrage

Microblogposts

White papers, case studies, and ebooks

Videos Podcasts

Channels of Content Distribution

Blogs have been around for more than a decade with more than 175 million blogs in existence.

Evolution: Once a way to share opinions via text postings, today many blogs also include video and images.

2019/1/8

17

• Express their opinions

• Share their expertise

• Make money by selling on-site

advertising

• Attract clients for consulting work

Benefits of blog

For individuals For organizations

• Establish thought leadership on a

topic

• Increase traffic to targeted websites.

• Build links to other corporate sites.

• Build brand awareness.

Media-Sharing Sites

Like blogs, media-sharing sites enable individuals and

organizations to publish content online.

Media-sharing sites are earned media

Their environments are not directly controlled by

the person or organization posting the content.

The choice of which media-sharing site to use is

dictated by the type of content to be distributed.

2019/1/8

18

Saab iPhone apps are distributed via iTunes.

User-generated content is shared on the Facebook page.

Video content is shared on YouTube channel.

Photos are shared on Flickr photostream.

News is shared on the Saab Facebook page.

For example

Saab Newsroom

User-generated content (UGC)Definition

The lifeblood of emerging social media, people can create and post this content for personal reasons rather than to receive financial reward.

Social media value chain---people can share this content with those beyond their immediate area.

What new about UGC?

Content of UGC

Powerful---it attracts our attention to things we wouldn’t otherwise watch

Cultural co-creation---co-created meanings (among both producers and consumers) fold back into the culture

2019/1/8

19

0102

03

Examples

Examples

2019/1/8

20

User-generated content (UGC)

� Organic content – content a person feels intrinsically motivated to prepare and share.

� Incentivized content – content that is encouraged by the offer of an incentive. (in these case the contribution is a response to a call to action.)

Two types of the content

� Consumer-solicited content(CSC)---refers to invited but non-compensated citizen advertising, which is another way to describe marketing messages that actual consumer create. Marketers call this participation advertising.

� Sponsored conversation---refers topaid consumer content. Consumers are paid for their content creations, and brands may actively seek out certain people like bloggers, videographers, and artists to participate in the campaign.

� Counterfeit conversations---occurs when an organization plants content that masquerades as original material an actual consumer posted.

2019/1/8

21

Developing and Organizing Marketing Content

Guideline for developing content :

− The content must match the brand’s overall personality and strategic objectives.

− To manage workload, authors will need to be appointed and their duties assigned.

− Content development and responses to content feedback should follow established organizational policies.

Important component of social publishing

� Identifying relevant topic

� Types of content

� Publication venues

� A schedule for publication (editorial calendar)

Developing and Organizing Marketing Content

2019/1/8

22

Content Value Ladder

� Filler content – information that people copy from other sources

� All other content on the ladder is original content. This level refers to contributions that originate with the poster. At the lowest level, this content is original, but not weighty enough.

� Authority-building content – original content that positions the sponsoring entity as a authority

� Pillar content – typically educational content that readers use over time, save, and share

� Flagship content – authority-building content. Seminal pieces of work that shape the way people think

2019/1/8

23

Social Publishing Strategies

There is a twofold goal for social publishing:

To increase the exposure to the brand’s message

To use the content to drive traffic to the brand’s

owned media

01

02

SEO Search Engine Optimization

� Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of modifying content, site characteristics, and content connections to achieve improved search engine rankings.

� Depends on owned media and earned media online to reach these goals

SEO is the key tool used for search engine marketing (SEM)

Reason1: The sponsor will benefit from a higher rate of conversion.

Reason2: The more “eyeballs” the site attracts, the more advertising revenue the site can generate.

2019/1/8

24

On-Site Optimization

Meta tag

URLTitle tag

Heading tag

Title

code imbedded in a web page

An HTML tag that sections and

describes content

An HTML tag that defines the title of

a pageThe headline The website

address

The primary on-site variables are keywords embedded in the page’s tags, title, URL, and content.

Off-Site Optimization

Link – the building blocks of social publishing.

Two approaches:

1.Publish related content and links across other

sites

2.To encourage other, unaffiliated sites to link

to the brand’s content

• These off-site indicators include the number of links to a website from other sites, the credibility of those sites, the type of site promoting the link, and the link text (anchor text) these sites use.

2019/1/8

25

Examples

Level1:Social Publishing and Search Engine Optimization

On-site tactics

Meta tag – code imbedded in a web pageTitle tag – An HTML tag that defines the title of a

pageHeading tag – An HTML tag that sections and

describes contentTitle – The headline

URL – The website address

Off-site tactics Publish related content and links across other sites

To encourage other, unaffiliated sites to link to the brand’s content

2019/1/8

26

Social Media Optimization

The purpose of SMO:SMO mainly devotes to encourage people who have watched contents to share, promote, and recommend it.

SMO can use some tactics to increase the likelihood that others will share and promote content;

Three Functions of SMO

Utilize the network effect to spread endorsements of a brand with links to the brand’s content;

SMO can improve the search engine rankings because Web-Crawlers prefer links, especially high-quality ones.

2019/1/8

27

The Relationships between SEO and SMO

SEOSEO is more about finding ways to ensure

search engines index the site and to calculate a

good result ranking for the content.

SEO targets machines.

SMOSMO targets people.

SMO is focused on encouraging the sharing of the

content and establishing community for people.

Similarity: Supporting inbound marketing and enable the target audience to find and consume the brand content.Differences:

Level 2: social media optimization

On-site tactics

Off-site tactics

1. The optimizing content;2. Creating title;3. Share tools;4. RSS Feeds.

1. Promoting social media press releases;2. Microblogging;3. Promoting on social news and social

bookmarking sites.

2019/1/8

28

ContentThe content must be valuable, interesting, or entertaining enough so that someone wants to endorse it.

Principle a. If someone finds the content of this blog is organized and useful, he will share its

site for his friends and classmates.b. Then the linkwheel effect will produce under the sharing of more and more

people. c. More luckily, if this blog site is linked by one related article of the Hong Kong

Immigration Department, it means that this blog site is going to be worth a lot of link juice to search engine.

d. As we all know, search engines also consider the quality of a linking site and its type. A site will rank better in search engine results listing when some independent power sites link to it, and was shared by a large amount of people. That benefited from the contributions of web-crawlers.

TitleAn attractive title can increase the readers’ interests in content, and we can use the fishing metaphor to make it easier to understand:

♦ This behavior that social media marketers carefully choose title to promote content is called linkbaiting (链接诱饵);♦The intended audience is the fish; ♦The absorbing title is the hook which is used to position the content for the target audience.

2019/1/8

29

There are 5 different ‘hooks’ can make linkbaiting more effective.

Resource Hook:a common type in social news sites, and refers to content written with the intent to be helpful to the target audience. e.g. Serta mattress company created an article entitled “5 Methods to Ensure a Restful Night’s sleep”

Contrary Hook: It refutes some accepted belief and Challenges these beliefs can incite people to read the content, even though someone just wants to argue the point in the content. e.g. one weight loss website maybe post an article entitled “Lose Weight with Chocolate”

Humor Hook: It is designed to show that the content will entertain.e.g. Giveaway Hook: It embeds the sales promotion

into the content in order to offer an incentive to encourage people’s specific behavior response in a specific time period.e.g.

Research Hook: It offers a claim about something of interest. e.g. one weight loss website can post an article entitled “66% of Americans are overweight, but you don’t have to be.”

Share tools

People are more likely to connect to the content if social media makes it easy for them to follow through.

Plug-ins

Plug-ins is third-party applications that “plug in” to a main site to

add some form of functionality. The functionality is the ability to

easily share the site’s content with external sites. Many social

media sites offer their own site specific plug-in.

e.g. Facebook has a Like plug-in; Weibo has the transpond button;

Digg has a Smart Digg button.

The definition of share tools

Share tools are plug-ins that appear as clickable icons on a

website and enable the viewer to bookmark or share the page

with many social networking, social news, and social

bookmarking sites.

2019/1/8

30

RSS Feeds

It is a tool to automatically feed new published

content to subscribers.

The viewers can easily consume new content

through the convenience of content

distribution with an RSS feed.

Summary

• In order to understand the needs of social media users and respond to them accordingly, it is advisable to monitor social media pages

• In order to get more attention from social medial users, you need to make sure each of your posts is a hit

• Build a detailed profile, ensure that the pictures you use to create your profile are a true and interested representation of your brand, include contact information as well.

• It is also important to make a strong connection. Make sure you choose the social network that best supports your brand image and use it accordingly.

• Make sure the content, the platform, the network, the seed (KOL), the timing match perfectly with your brand image

2019/1/8

31

Break

� Followed by leading discussion group 7