Brian Groth’s Quick Guide

to Social Media

version 3http://Twitter.com/BrianGroth

http://BrianGroth.wordpress.com August 2010

Overall Guidance

1. Owned Media: Start with your own web site, a blog, and maybe an e-mail newsletter. Make sure the site has a purpose and accurately represents your brand, preferably leveraging social media when appropriate.

2. Earned Media: Listen to the social media services to determine where you should actively participate versus monitor and react. Drive your social media to your owned media.

3. Paid Media: Purchase advertising to drive large audiences to your owned site or your earned media site – whichever aligns to your ad strategy.

Before you jump into social media, you need to understand the following three points, which should be part of your overall marketing strategy.

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Owned Media (1)(Owned media = your brand’s presence that you maintain on the Internet)

• This is your web site with your message, your own blog ( regularly updated, such as http://BrianGroth.wordpress.com), your e-mail newsletters, and even your social profiles.

• Know the purpose of your owned media: make an online purchase, go to an event, request additional information, sign up for a newsletter, etc. Getting a customer to accomplish these equals a “conversion”.

• Social Content: Reuse/embed content from your social media efforts

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http://briangroth.wordpress.com/ http://www.briangroth. com/

Owned Media (2)• Remain consistent with all of your owned media: tone of voice, branding,

content, purpose• Analyze Results: Measure and analyze the referrals to your site from your

advertising, social media sites and your e-mail marketing• Quality Referrals: Focus your efforts on those sites, ads, services that give

(1) the best referrals then (2) the most referrals. This will let you know which sites you should simply listen to customers on versus invest more time engaging with them on.

• Successful Tactics: Focus your efforts on the tactics (giveaways, entertainment, etc.) that drive (1) the best referrals then (2) the most referrals. Work with the combination of the location and tactics to determine which tactic works best on each location. One cautionary note about asking for feedback, ratings, and comments: Don't offer anything in return (cash, free products, etc.) because it will almost always backfire, not result in useful feedback, and you'll be called out for paying for comments so they will be tainted as not being genuine.

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Earned Media (1)(Earned Media= blogs, comments, forums, ratings, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Fickr, Foursquare, etc.)

Be yourself:

• A real picture of you or the team behind the service’s online profile (such as http://Twitter.com/BrianGroth)

• Use your own voice; don’t speak like a press-release• Remember that this is relationship marketingThink of your strategy:

• Social media efforts are long term • Focus on your target segmentation • Solve the real needs of your community (people on different

services have different needs)• Amplify existing efforts (leverage your owned media) • Be cost efficient (think of your ROI)

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Earned Media (2)Communicate:• No hard sales – support your customer, create something fun, etc.• Listen and share – it’s a two-way thing, not a one-way channel for your

message• Let your customer be the hero/celebrity • Follow/”friend” your customersAcquire customers/friends/fans/followers: • Share good, but relevant content• Reward followers with special offers• Re-tweet/like/share what your influentials in your industry sayGet your content shared/re-tweeted:• Name a follower or two in a tweet or comment• Give away stuff for re-tweeting/sharing your comment• Share breaking news• Use http://bit.ly to shorten URLs (& track them)

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Earned Media (3)Drive traffic to your site• Share the same content multiple times (1 per major time-

zone)• Pitch ideas to your community, asking for feedback• Have your profile point to your site or blog• Create unique metadata for your tweets (once released)Listen:• Read the comments on your Facebook wall, your blog, etc.• Create Twitter lists to follow/listen to influentials• Use TweetDeck, Seesmic, or other always-on tools to

participate• Use these same tools, plus Twitter Search,

http://twitterfall.com/, or others to track your brand7

Earned Media (4) Communities• A community can be on any service, in forums, in e-mail distribution lists, or

anywhere on the web, not just on Facebook or Twitter (but you should check there too of course). Your customers will naturally congregate to some of these on their own – you have to find them.

• Some of the following ideas come from Francois Gossieaux's upcoming book (see http://twitter.com/fgossieaux and http://www.hypersocialorg.com/), which I paraphrase as:– Segmentation: Group people together based on behaviors and desires,

not demographics or previous purchases since the reasons why they purchase are far more important to them than what was purchased

– Feed Your Community: (1) Give something to these groups to talk about amongst themselves, (2) respond to these groups (the individuals) quickly, even if responses are uncontrolled from within your company, (3) try to ensure those from your company are naturally part of these communities (don't force it!) and (4) let them let them self-segment the communities (these groups) to create smaller communities that are even more focused and passionate.

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Paid Media(Paid Media = advertisements, advertorials, sponsorships)

• Use ads to drive traffic to your owned and/or earned media, depending on your strategy

Just like the earned and owned media: • Have the ad (image or text) match the tone-of-voice

of the site you’re directing people to • Make the advertising entertaining too (it drives clicks)

• Measure, analyze and optimize what works

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Example of a theoretical banner ad Search ad

Reaching CustomersAny good advertising system (paid media) has various forms of targeting, but what about earned media? Augie Ray’s paper (Forrester Research) "Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid" suggests the following 3 types of people using social media. I’ve summarized each below:• Social Broadcasters: (low trust, high reach) There are very few of these people and you

should know them by name and where they hang out online and offline (events). Build long-term relationships with them.

• Mass Influencers: (mid trust, mid reach) This is 16% of the social media users, but generate 80% of the pageviews. They know quite a few of the people they influence, but not everyone. It is difficult to find this group, but look offline and give content worthy of sharing. Make sure to look for them in blog comments and product reviews & ratings.

• Potential Influencers: (high trust, low reach) 80% of the people in social media are here, but they personally know (know them offline) all of the people they influence. Monitor this group for PR problems, make sharing very easy for them, and plan for long-term engagements with them.

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HTTP://TWITTER.COM/BRIANGROTHHTTP://BRIANGROTH.WORDPRESS.COM

Questions?

So to explain this picture… I like to hike up closed ski runs, usually in the Spring after they have closed.I have the same K2 clicker bindings on my snowshoes and snowboard (even though I’m a skier at heart). This picture is at the top of a lift at Snoqualmie Summit. I love the K2 brand because of this gear, even though they don’t sell it anymore!

A chairlift is the best place to have lunch. ;-)

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APPENDIX

Examples: Where’s Brian?

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My Profile Examples:• http://twitter.com/BrianGroth• http://www.linkedin.com/in/bgroth• http://social.zune.net/member/bigbree1967• http://www.slideshare.net/BrianGroth• http://foursquare.com/user/briangroth• http://digg.com/users/briangroth• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-Groth/119407968090116• http://grothadventures.spaces.live.com/• http://cid-817ed2a8693b5fc7.profile.live.com/• http://blogs.msdn.com/bgroth/

Useful Links• Know your Social Currency:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/next-tech-five-steps-to-social-currency.html

• Twitter for Marketing: http://holykaw.alltop.com/how-to-use-twitter-for-marketing

• Facebook for Marketing: http://bagtheweb.com/b/fHWj3h• Facebook Page:

http://www.marismith.com/how-to-add-a-custom-landing-tab-to-your-facebook-fan-page/

• Good blog posting: http://www.copyblogger.com/blog-content-checklist/ • Words and phrases for Twitter:

http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/the-science-of-retweets-with-dan-zarrella

Credits from the Earned Media slides• http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/07/50-ways-to-fail-on-twitter/ • http://

www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/next-tech-five-steps-to-social-currency.html

• http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/07/50-ways-to-fail-on-twitter/ • http://

www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/next-tech-five-steps-to-social-currency.html

• http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/07/50-ways-to-fail-on-twitter/ • http://

www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/next-tech-five-steps-to-social-currency.html