TVCogeco integrated social media channels: Portal community, Facebook, and Twitter
These projects had several common themes. First, a requirement for the analysis and integration of the strategical business goals with the Web 2.0 strategies. Second, the B2B and B2C clients all wanted to use social media channels to increase traffic and distribution, to extend their brand and message, and drive traffic back to a community portal. And lastly, they wanted to deploy processes, polices and procedures, and operational guidance, to help maintain their social media strategies.
Too often companies explore social media through baptism by fire, trying to deploy social media channels, models, and concepts without doing the proper analysis and ROI study. This initial effort can be compromised with insufficient resources to manage the social media analysis and deployment, and integrated PR and marketing, resulting in poor branding, messaging, traffic, abandoned social media channels, and the impression that social media is not yet ready for prime time. Or worse, discouraging staff and leaving them with the impression that the company does not take social media seriously.
Part of my job with each client was to find their social media balance between resources, business strategies and goals, processes and operations, and integration with their existing web community, technologies (RSS, SMS, rich media, immersive media), tools and services (forums, comments, ratings), and traditional media (print, radio, TV). In other words, I help companies find and deploy their social media recipe for success. Of course there are other variables involved in the social media analysis, but these were the critical items.
Social media is a powerful PR and marketing tool when deployed properly, and there are over 280 channels and usually limited corporate resources to mange the messaging, so you have to pick your channels carefully to achieve a reasonable ROI. As well, social media concepts are changing rapidly with new ideas and channels appearing on a monthly, if not weekly basis, so you constantly have to be plugged into the new media info stream to monitor these emerging concepts.
Council on Drug Abuse integrated social media channels: Portal community, Facebook, and Twitter
But it doesn't have to be complex to implement social media models, and here are 10 steps you can take to speed up the process of analyzing, developing, and integrating social media into your PR and marketing plan. This involves following some proven processes, measuring the result, and maintaining the social media PR and marketing over an extended period of time to gather useful analytics. In turn, this will justify the effort and clearly illustrate which social media channels/models are returning the biggest bang for the buck. As well, social media does not have to be an expensive endeavor as you can stick with the big four proven channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn), and analyze and deploy them one at a time, before you explore the complete range of integrated social media channels and models.
10 Step Social Media Set-Up Guide:
1) Establish a social media strategy, with defined goals, tactics, and measurements of success, and clearly define what are you trying to achieve with social media (SEO/SEM/SMM, Traffic and Distribution, Feedback, Engagement, Conversion, Retention, Viral, Key Influencers, target audience, etc)
2) Ensure that the social media strategies support the corporate goals (SWOT, ROI, target audience, traditional PR and marketing, sales, branding, analytics, etc)
3) Pick no more than 3 or 4 social media channels for your PR and Marketing campaign (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, DIGG, blogs, etc)
4) Integrate your social media campaign tactics with your traditional campaign, and integrate the social media channels (automated and manual systems, Google Adsense, Facebook ads, email blasts, etc)
5) Deploy your integrated social media campaign in clearly defined stages, and tactics, to help with analysis. Find and engage with your audience, listen to what your audience is saying, respond to their concerns, and provide quality content and value
6) Assign an internal social media leader who will take charge and assist with the training and knowledge transfer
7) Document your social media processes (messaging structure, viral messaging, channel usage, brand standards, best practices, policies and procedures, guidance, operations)
8) Establish short, medium and long term goals, and define your measurements of success, and analytics/metrics (PR/Marketing, traffic and distribution, revenue, awareness, reach, engagement, etc)
9) Maintain your social media campaign throughout the year, and use social media tools and services (Hootsuite, TweetDeck, blogs, forums RSS, SMS, email) to help manage the messaging, format, and processes
10) Review weekly/monthly social media analytics (Google analytics, Facebook Insight, Twitter Analyzer) to confirm your measurements of success, and continually improve your SM strategy and models
And of course, no social media guide would be complete without a list of great resource sites:
1) Mashable: http://www.mashable.com
2) SEO Chicks: http://www.seo-chicks.com
3) Social Media Examiner http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
4) Twitter Tips: http://www.twitip.com"
5) Twitter Tools: http://http://www.oneforty.com" and http://http://www.twitdom.com"
6) Think Geek: http://http://www.thinkgeek.com"
This is a compressed Social Media Strategy Set-Up Guide, and the details are missing, but it will get you started on the path to successfully integrating social media channels into your existing PR and Marketing plan. If you would like more information on analyzing, developing, deploying and maintaining your corporate social media channels, and integrated Web 2.0 PR and marketing, please contact Steve Cohen at (905) 330-3570, stevecohen@electriceffect.com, or visit the Electric Effect web site at http://www.electriceffect.com
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