objectives and strategies for social media

1. Jake Aull, GSU
Social Media
Objectives &
Strategies
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2. Personas
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3. • By regularly monitoring and researching web
communities, you can record your own
customer persona; as in web usability.
• It’s also very helpful to write a persona (or
user profile) for your typical social media
audience member. Who will you be writing
to and for? This is what a persona is for – to
help remind you of that when doing your
social media writing.
• (see sample persona next)
Profiling & Personas

4. • Mary is 37 years old, Caucasian, married and a mother of 3. She works as
an executive assistant for a small company. She lives with her family in
the suburbs of Houston, TX. Mary loves to work because she loves helping
people. She’s done it her whole life. She’s always helpful, couldn’t hurt a
fly and always puts others first. Once she ran over a squirrel in the
parking lot – and nursed it back to health! Everyone seeks her out – she
knows them all and is always there for them. People turn to her to
discuss their problems because she’s quick to lend a helping hand and
comfort them. People never forget her, and she returns the favor.
Persona Writing Example - Mary

5. • Mary’s Persona Attributes:
• Compassionate
• Helping people
• Selfless
• Empathetic
• Integrity
• Morals
• Thoughtful
• Helpful
Persona Writing Example - Mary

6. Objectives &
Tackling Them
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7. Overview
…something sorely lacking in social media
marketing today:
– Objectives identification
– Strategic content planning
– Coordinated tactical alignment
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8. Groundswell Objectives
• Listening – Research (monitor customers’
conversations)
• Talking – Marketing (two way conversation)
• Energizing – Selling (customers, ea other)
• Supporting – Customer Support (ea other)
• Embracing – Development (crowd-source)
• Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research, 2008
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9. Time Budgeting in Social Media Communications
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10. Finding the
Problem
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21. Objectives & KPIs
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22. Objective: Thought-leadership projection
• Objective 1: Thought-leadership projection (a content strategy for goals of
brand attribution or to influence sales)
• Rationale: Traditionally, companies have attempted demonstrating industry
expertise to enhance brand reputation or to persuade sales (largely B2B but
B2C as well).
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23. Objective: Brand awareness & fan promoters
• Objective 2: Brand awareness and fan promoters
• Rationale: Traditionally, companies have attempted to build new
awareness of their brand in market place for reasons of competitiveness
or eventual sales growth (largely B2C but B2B as well).
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24. Objective: Crowd-sourcing & Support
• Objective 3: Crowd-sourcing/R&D/Product support
• Rationale: Traditionally, smart companies have done marketing research to drive
product attributes (largely B2C but B2B as well). Modern companies can use social
media to not only capture more input more easily for product attributes, but even
use the groundswell itself for collaboration and creation.
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25. Objective: Customer Retention & Rewards
• Objective 4: Customer retention/upsales
• Rationale: Traditionally, companies have found it more profitable to
retain and upsell existing customers than to buy new ones. Social media
enables customer communities for just that.
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26. Taking it Deeper
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28. Broadcast Communications
• The strategy map shows how social media is often used
today with a traditional advertising broadcast
promotional model.
• In the digital world, hub-and-spoke models are
constructed.
• The goal shown here is to drive social and other
channel traffic to a website or landing page (or
increasingly a Facebook page).
• As evidenced here, messages promoting the hub are
pushed out to channels.
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29. Driving Traffic to a Hub; Grabbing Contact
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30. Funnel Conversions
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32. Campaign Review
• Website hub or Facebook hub?
• The marketing funnel
• Inbound vs. Outbound links
• IMC
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The Long Tail

34. The Long Tail Theory
• In 2004 Chris Anderson, editor of WIRED
Magazine, wrote article; "The Long Tail.”
• Janet Lowe (in Google Speaks, 2009,
John Wiley and Sons, Inc.) traced long-
tail marketing to the original Sears
catalog in the 1800s.
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35. The Long Tail Theory
• Today buyers of niche products are online
and in social media, searching for peers
and suppliers for discussion.
• The long tail represents the extended
downward curve along the X-axis of a
typical revenue cycle chart.
• Traditionally not financially viable in
economies of scale.
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36. Traditional Revenue Cycles & Long Tail
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37. SEO & Long Tail
• The long tail is similar term in SEO.
• In search marketing, “head” keywords
are broader, common terms.
• Competing for top search engine results
with head keywords such as “sculpture”
would be tough.
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38. SEO & Long Tail
• It’s more manageable to achieve top
organic rankings for a long-tail keyword.
• (Although it’s important to have a
balance of terms).
• In PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, the
cost for such a keyword would also be
less.
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39. SEO & Long Tail
• A full, long-tail digital content strategy
incorporates both social media and search for
optimal results.
• Internet cookies and SNS (social networking
software) data are also available to digital
advertising programs and CRM (customer
resource management) systems.
• The savvy digital marketer just has to find the
conversations and sincerely discuss, earn trust
and represent a brand.
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40. Content Strategy
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41. Positioning/Message Strategy
• PROBLEMS TO SOLVE:
• BENEFITS:
– Why should customers demand us?
• WHAT IS THE BRAND PERSONALITY WE WANT TO PROJECT?
• MARKETING STRATEGY:
• POSITIONING STATEMENT OR USP:
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42. Strategic Target Goals
• TARGET AUDIENCE:
– CURRENT TARGET CUSTOMER BELIEF
– CURRENT TARGET CUSTOMER BUYING BEHAVIOR
– DESIRED FUTURE CUSTOMER BELIEF
– DESIRED FUTURE CUSTOMER BUYING BEHAVIOR
• WHY SHOULD CUSTOMER BEHAVE THIS WAY?
• TARGET CUSTOMER INSIGHT:
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43. SEO Keyword Strategy
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44. Social Media
Tactical Plan
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45. Social Media Marketing Tactical Plan
• BRAND:
• INDUSTRY/MARKET DESCRIPTION:
– COMPETITORS:
– INFLUENCERS & MAJOR EXISTING COMMUNITIES:
• AUDIT OF EXISTING SOCIAL MEDIA (IF APPLICABLE):
– HOW WILL THE TACTICAL PLAN BELOW EFFECT/TOUCH EXISTING SITES (IF
APPLICABLE)?:
• TARGET AUDIENCE:
• BRAND POSITIONING (OVER-ARCHING):
– DESCRIPTION & MAJOR URL:
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46. Social Media Marketing Tactical Plan
• SOCIAL MEDIA POSITIONING (IF DIFFERENT OR MORE SPECIFIC THAN
OVER-ARCHING BRAND POSITIONING):
– USP/MESSAGE:
– OTHER KEY FACTS/DESCRIPTION:
• SOCIAL MEDIA/CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES/STRATEGY:
– REASONS WHY:
– SUCCESS MEASURE (e.g., projected followers or traffic):
• UPFRONT GUIDELINES (e.g., total budget, media requirements,
barriers):
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47. CALENDAR - TACTICS
(LIST SPECIFIC CHANNELS/SITES):
• Mktg
prede‐
cessors?
Hours
(daily/
weekly/
monthly)
Date
spread
Short‐
term
objectives
Key
metrics
& tools
analytics
Time/
resource
allo‐
cation
$ budget Keywords/
CTA
Segment
details
Blog
Social Networks
Microblogging (Twitter)
Social Press (Bloggers)
Widgets
Bookmarking/Tagging
Crowdsourcing/Voting
Commenting/Forums/Wikis/
Rating and Review sites
Online Video
Photo sharing
Podcasting
Presentation Sharing
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48. Additional Tactics Considered for Integration
• Advertising:
• Website integration:
• Offline media:
• Additional/ongoing monitoring/tools:
• Additional Notes and Objectives:
• RATIONALE/REASONS WHY:
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49. Questions…
Thank you!
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50. Obama ‘08
Election Campaign
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51. The Social Pulpit
Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit
• Social media lessons from the Obama campaign
– Start early
– Build to scale
– Innovate where necessary; do everything else incrementally
better
– Make it easy to find, forward and act
– Pick where you want to play
– Channel online enthusiasm into specific, targeted activities
that further the campaign’s goals
– Integrate online advocacy into every element of the campaign
© 2009 Edelman
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52. Obama’08 Election Campaign
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53. Obama’08 Election Campaign
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54. Obama’08 Election Campaign
The Obama campaign gave prospective supporters a menu of options:
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55. Obama’08 Election Campaign
The Obama campaign gave prospective supporters a menu of options:
• Personal - You could start by friending Obama on a social network. Then,
you might sign up for text messages and e-mails to stay informed about
the campaign. As a supporter, you may make your first donation or
register to vote.
• Social - Once invested, you may post a comment to a friend’s profile,
telling them why Obama was the right candidate for them. Perhaps you
would jump to the MyBarackObama.com (MyBO.com) Web site, where you
would create an account. After getting positive feedback on the site, you
might join or even create a group.
• Advocate - To drive interest in the group, you may post pictures, write
blog posts or create a video declaring your support, which you could post
to YouTube. With insights and materials from the campaign, you might
host an offline event where you would ask supporters to donate money,
register to vote, canvass or phone bank.
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56. Campaign Review
• Discuss Obama election campaign sites and videos
• The Obama election social media campaign
– Politics
– Democracy and communities
– Journalism
– SEO, tags and YouTube
– MySpace: Assuming control
– What do you think of “Crawl, Walk, Run?”
– Costs?
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57. • Behavioral
• Psychographics
• CRM integrations
• SEM advertising
Social Media Data