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Goal-driven social media strategies & tactics: how are you interacting with your target audience?
A small assortment of social media icons.
Why include RSS? It's a listening tool.
As some of you know, I regularly participate in a variety of real-time chats on Twitter, including #smchat, a weekly discussion of best practices in social media. On Wednesday September 30th at 1:00 p.m. e.d.t. I'll be moderating #smchat as we discuss what social media tactics people have implemented, how they have measured the results and how they have performed.
To prepare participants for the event I thought it might be helpful to give some examples.
Many people are jumping on the social media bandwagon these days just because they feel they should. One hear's people say "Everyone's on Twitter and Facebook, we need to start Tweeting and put up a Facebook page." Needless to say this isn't usually the best approach. Before picking tools and tactics one must assess needs, develop measurable goals and identify a target audience. Once that is done, then one can start developing strategies and tactics to connect with that audience (in their space, on their terms) in a way that will serve one's goals most effectively.
Your goals are set, what's your social media strategy?
To get things started, I'll give you an example of some of the things I've been doing. One of my goals is to get you (or someone you know) to hire me to consult on social media, offer guidance on search engine optimization or design and build a Web site or custom WordPress blog. My audience includes small to medium sized businesses, academic departments at universities, individuals and others who may need such services. My strategy is to position myself as a reliable and knowledgeable resource for information on Internet marketing and related topics.
Tactics to implement this social media strategy include:
- Sharing links to worthwhile articles and videos via Google Reader Share, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and so forth—and conversing with people in those spaces.
- Blogging in-depth articles on Web related topics here on the Web Development Blog.
- Commenting on other blogs.
- Networking with special interest groups on LinkedIn, Ning and the real world.
- Answering questions on LinkedIn. (You can read more about my LinkedIn Q&A strategy in Maisha Walker's Inc. blog, The Internet Strategist in the article, Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3). Read the complete series to learn about the myriad ways you can use LinkedIn for business.)
This blog serves as the foundation for all of these strategies. It provides a destination for traffic from the social media services and offers content for me to share via those services. Since it is built as a part of my overall site, it also gives visitors quick and easy access to other information such as the services I offer, my portfolio and my contact form—and I'm working on some site changes that will make that even easier.
Time is a major cost factor in social media
Measuring marketing results is fairly straightforward. If I want to know which activities are driving the best traffic to my Web site I can look at Google Analytics to see who is visiting from where, how long they stay on site, how many pages they view, etc. This tells me that LinkedIn brings in more new traffic while Facebook brings in the most repeat traffic. Visitors from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all also read more pages and spend more time on site than visitors from StumbleUpon.
In terms of leads and sales I can count the requests for proposals that come in via LinkedIn messages, Facebook mail and my contact form. Measuring the ROI comes from comparing my time investment to the results. In direct mail one measures the cost per sale in terms of dollars spent. When implementing my own social media strategies I must measure the cost per sale first in hours worked, then use that to calculate costs.
Social Media goals come in many flavors—not just marketing
Networking with peers, monitoring your products and brand, enhancing customer service, collaborating with colleagues, sharing policies and procedures, listening for ideas, sharing knowledge, and other functions are also popular and practical uses for social media. Here are a few more examples of strategies and tactics one might use for a few of these goals.
Listening for ideas via social media
During last week's meeting of the Cleveland Social Media Club we listened to a panel discussion in which members of the local media discussed how they use social media. Panelists included:
- Kaye Spector - Health and Medical Reporter, The Plain Dealer
- Howard Fencl - Assistant News Director, WKYC-TV
- Joseph Sheppa - Interactive Content Manager, WVIZ/PBS & 90.3 WCPN - ideastream®
- Scott Suttell - Managing Editor, Crain's Cleveland Business
- Denise Polverine - Editor in Chief, Cleveland.com
As one would expect, these media outlets are all using Facebook and Twitter to publish headlines and links to stories or videos on their Web sites. But they're also listening for information. News travels so quickly via social media that it's not unusual for them to first hear something on Facebook that they can later confirm through other channels. They also listen to their followers to gauge interest levels in certain topics and events. If their Twitter followers are all talking about X and not about Y, then the newspapers, magazines and T.V. stations know that their readers and viewers have an interest in hearing more about X.
Others—including bloggers as well as those in mainstream media—use social media to listen for ideas. When I answer questions on LinkedIn, I can see if certain types of questions in my field are trending. This can give me ideas for blog posts I should write. I also read blogs and listen to podcasts to keep up with information and get new ideas.
For instance yesterday, while listening to Diggnation, I discovered that Adam Savage, co-host of Mythbusters reads a wide array of blogs and visits Digg.com daily to get story ideas for the T.V. show. He's using the same technique for mainstream media that I use for my humble blog. By simply following my own listening routine, I discovered what he was doing so that I could use him as another example in this post.
Measuring the results of listening is somewhat murky. If you need to justify this use of time one could create a spreadsheet that would tally how many ideas you find each day then develop a ratio comparing "finds" and usefulness to "time-spent." But if you are also reading and listening to increase knowledge it may be harder to quantify. How does one measure the value of such activities? I know that everything I learn in this field makes me better at what I do, but I've not come up with a calculation to demonstrate how much more effective I may be now than I was 5 years ago when I knew less. What I do know is that I will better serve my readers and clients if I keep striving to learn more.
Social media strategies in local politics
Ari Herzog and Jill Miller Zimon are both long-time bloggers, who I've come to know through their blogging activities. Jill is a writer and political analyst who blogs at Write Likes She Talks. Ari is an online media strategist and community manager for business and government who blogs at AriWriter. Each of them is running for City Council in their respective home towns and each is using social media in their campaigns.
One could argue that political campaigning is similar to mainstream marketing, but I think it also bears a particular connection to brand management. When running for office, candidates need to increase name recognition, build a positive reputation, let voters know about their goals and demonstrate how they would serve their communities if elected.
As writers, Ari and Jill have an advantage in this sphere. Each has produced a wealth of online material that is part of the online historical record. If you read their blogs, you will see that they are both candid and direct. While I eschew the word "transparency" they've both exhibited the real meaning of this in their writing. Neither hides behind jargon or political doubletalk, they speak their minds so that you can tell exactly what their position is.
Their similarities extend to social media. As you can see from the links below, each of them is using an array of social media services, and neither is new to this medium. While their strategies may have some subtle differences, both are using social media to spread their message and to let voters know that they are listening.
- Jill Miller Zimon - campaigning for Pepper Pike, OH, City Council
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- Friends of Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council - Facebook Group
- Friends of Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council - Facebook Page
- Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council (Main Web site)
- Friends of Jill Miller Zimon Flickr Photos
- Jill Miller Zimon on LinkedIn
- Zimon for Council on Twitter
- Jill Miller Zimon You Tube Videos
- Ari Herzog - campaigning for Newburyport, MA, City Council
Measuring the success of their campaigns will be relatively easy. They'll either win or lose. But measuring the impact of social media on the campaigns may be trickier. Will having more Facebook fans make a difference? Does it help to drive Twitter traffic to your site? How does one measure voter engagement? Blog comments? Online donations? Volunteers? How would you measure the results?
What strategies are you using for social media?
Frank Eliason has had great success using http://twitter.com/comcastcares to provide proactive customer service to Comcast customers. The Cleveland Social Media Club used it's Ning Network in conjunction with Google docs to collaborate on our Welcome to Social Media eBook. Companies and universities alike subscribe to Twitter searches to monitor brand and product mentions. What other ways would you use social media tools to serve your specific goals? How do you know if your strategies are working? Do you have measurement techniques in place to gauge success?
Please feel free to share your ideas and experiences in the comments below and/or during next Wednesday's live #smchat. If you've not previously participated in a Twitter chat, you can learn more in my article, Twitter chats: if you can’t meet in real space, meet in real time. I look forward to reading your ideas and suggestions.
Social Media Measurement & Chat Resources
- #smchat Schedule
- #smchat Network on Ning (for ongoing discussion)
- Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat
- Introduction to Measuring Social Media for PR/Marketing
- Measuring Social Media ROI: Does size matter?
heidicool.com is also on Facebook
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John,
Thanks! I agree that there is no one-size-fits all solution. I think we can sometimes use common methods for different campaign, but in each case they must be adapted to serve a specific goal and target audience. On the other hand, those 5 high-level strategies you listed are key to any successful social media project. As we know from our Twitter spam, many people ignore those rules and instead try to take shortcuts. Such efforts (or should I say -- lack of effort) are typically doomed from the start.
Tashfeen,
Yes, posting to e-zines can be a great way to increase exposure. I'll also sometimes submit blog posts to aggregation sites like DesignNewz and The Web Blend. These are edited sites that will publish approved headlines with excerpts or tags and links to one's posts. I prefer these to the sites that post full copies of posts to avoid the SEO duplicate posting penalty. This also helps drive traffic as people must click through to read the whole post. I've also discovered many other good blogs by subscribing to their feeds. The key with these is to choose your submissions carefully. For instance I didn't submit this post to those 2 because they have more of a design focus, so this post wouldn't be precisely targeted to their audience.
Similarly many people recommend "article marketing", which I have mixed feelings about. My issue is that many of the sites that take article submissions will take any and all comers, thus the quality can vary enormously. This makes me wonder who is actually reading the content found on those sites. This may be fodder for a future post. I'll have to do some additional research on it. I think it's a strategy that has potential but that is usually mis-used.
Comment by Heidi Cool — September 26, 2009 @1:10 pm
Trackback by atownley (Andrew S. Townley) — September 30, 2009 @11:12 am
Comment by Green — October 12, 2009 @9:43 pm
Thanks Andrew, yet if one reads the Sept. 30th #smchat transcript, they'll noticed that participants (like you) had plenty of great ideas to add.
Green, yes reliability can be a problem, if Twitter gets sluggish during a chat the conversation becomes very hard to follow. Good point about the search engines too. I imagine you are right that they are giving lower rankings to the lower quality article sites.
The idea of having one's writing appear in multiple places is good, but it's all about quality—many of the article marketers seem to forget that. 1) The articles have to well-written and fill a need for the intended audience. 2)The place where the article is published must draw readers in the appropriate niche. Rather than writing for articles sites, I think people would be better served writing guest posts for established blogs or e-zines in their niche. Doing that, of course, takes work. One needs to be familiar with the intended blog/site and write something that matches the expectations of both that site's readers and its editors.
People want a quick and easy way to drive traffic to their sites, but if one is trying to market via content, it takes effort.
Comment by Heidi Cool — October 12, 2009 @10:34 pm
Comment by Malcolm Lambe — October 15, 2009 @6:53 am
Comment by Tuhin — November 12, 2009 @7:55 am
Malcolm,
Yes, corporate sites would love to get that sort of traffic! But you are right, blogs are still often misunderstood. Also those that use them for biz often focus too much on the business and not enough on the readers. As one of my Twitter friends once said, "If you are selling dog food, don't blog about dog food, blog about dogs." If you write content that people find useful, they will visit.
Tuhin,
In your case I would just keep writing. Also don't judge the success of your topics too quickly. Some posts may not get comments, but do get read. Others may not get read immediately but get read later. I have a post from 2007 that is still getting more visits than many newer posts. As you write more you'll start to get a feel for what is working and what isn't.
But the more stuff you produce, the more chances you have of being found. This applies to both blogs and social media. The content still needs to be good, of course, but when you have more pages of content, you have more pages that Google can index, and thus more pages that people can search for and find.
On the social media side, increased activity increases visibility. When I answer more LinkedIn Questions, post more Tweets, etc. I get more contact requests, e-mails, Twitter follows, client leads and so forth because there is more of my material out there for people to discover.
The bottom line is this: whenever you have the time, spend it writing (or on social media) and post with your readers in mind. The trouble is that most of us don't have enough time. I'm way behind on blog posts. I have 3 underway (blog design, Twitter censorship, and blogs as backbone of social media strategy) that I need to get out of my head and onto the site. The third one has to be up before Wednesday, as it will be the framing post for #smchat next week. This means that the weekend will be spent writing.
If you keep plugging away you'll see results, but also be patient, these results take time. I've got a head start because I've been blogging since 2005. Back then I was getting fewer readers per month than I now get in one day. But overtime they increased, as will yours.
Comment by Heidi Cool — November 12, 2009 @10:58 am