Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
Brad Little, Rob Howard, Brad Little, Paul Harrison, John Cole were up to face the audience questions.
Do you feel that charity and not for profit should be looking to place an ROI value against fans/followers etc?
Social media is where charities have to be, it’s a natural home. Ultimately you do, but its not always about fund raising but perhaps it can be about reach and awareness.
Test it and try things like special offers to understand your ROI, however that is different for charities.
Start with the strategy in mind, ROI isn’t always a financial figure, it’s a value. Value can be providing services or a new way of doing things for customers. Understand your goals and objectives which will define the tactics and what you need to measure to get your ROI.
The best charities are run like businesses so they still need to think commercially.
Is it possible to implement social media campaigns on a project basis only?
It can ‘work’ but social in its context is not short term campaign based. If we treat it like advertising or a one way conversation, people will stop using it.
You need to be pragmatic, projects can test something and larger companies do think in terms of campaigns. Campaigns can be run, but there are some social fillers that can keep the conversation going inbetween them.
Relationships should be valued and thought about in the long term.
You can’t turn the taps off once you start, but you can supplement in between campaigns.
Are there some good examples of internal organisational success in social media?
Best Buy, Marks and Spencers and Visit London.
Whats the hardest thing you’ve come up against in the last 12 months?
Delivering what we know is good, but then an organisation not being ready to do anything with it.
Resourcing is the biggest problem. Social media is tagged on to a full days work already and time is not given to it. It can’t be squeezed into an already full job description.
Half of our work is change management, companies often over invest in tech and under invest in people and resource.
Many businesses just don’t understand it.
The number one issue is aligning what clients are doing with their social investment with the overall strategy of the business. This is often overlooked to begin with and we need to go back to it.
Is it ironic that the large brands aren’t agile enough to change fast enough to deal with social media?
Social media is made for the small business who can hook in to real opportunities immediately. Its a great equaliser.
In terms of SMEs with limited budget and knowledge, what do you suggest?
Show them the conversation is happening. Show them there’s a market for it, scrutinise their budget and show them what to cancel and reassign to social media. Its easier for the smaller business to do and map this stuff than brands.
Social media has the power to rally negative opinion. Will it ever result in the death of a brand?
Look at case studies like Ratners, big enough problems can do it. But if a brand responds in the right way it can be dealt with and won’t have a negative affect.
We shouldn’t scare monger when it comes to negativity, companies that dont react well to it will suffer but it can be turned around. Dell is a great example of getting it right.
Negative comments aren’t always bad, it shows they value you enough to make the comment and gives you the chance to change things for the better. Paperchase is a good example of this.
Just social media alone won’t make or break a company. The news spreads across many channels and social is just one of them.
Brands are scared of getting involved in social media because of possible mistakes, can the panel share any stories of this?
Putting the least experienced person on Twitter or Facebook is common. You need smart people to evaluate what to do when mistakes happen.
You have to get the basics right first: hows your website, hows your seo, whats on Wikipedia etc. Get this right before engaging on social media platforms.
How soon will websites go the way of the fax?
Sites will continue, a blend of social integrated with the website could work. If people pick up on the social groundswell, it can have some great results for the site.
Its not all or nothing. Immediate Future are launching a retail report that looks at all touchpoints, not just social. This shows that the website is not going away.
Businesses have to think about where they fit and what their opportunity is.
From a strategic sense, where is the balance between creating content and actual touchpoints?
It depends where your brand is.
It’s the wrong question. Its not about technology or content, it’s about where your audience is, how they behave and what your strategy is.
90% of why people come to your community is for content. You go to Dell to look for a laptop. It depends on the strategy you’re executing. If youre not committed to delivering content don’t commmit to create a community.
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger. And this is my last post. Phew.
Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
Didier, the continental flavour of the day, was telling us a story about a story. Interesting.
The objective of the project Didier was talking about was to explore the power of recommendation and value of shared news from an advertising perspective. They wanted to demonstrate how influencers drive traffic to news through shared links and how their endoresement of these news stories increase the engagement of advertising embedded within them.
This was an exclusive for Social Collective as it was the first time Didier presented the findings.
They had 5 key questions:
- How does news sharing happening today
- What content is being shared
- What are the key drivers of sharing
- What is the emotional engagement with shared news
- What does it mean for brand advertisers
Didier showed a great presentation that explains how they conducted the global study, which we’ll share here later. The participants were aged 25 to 65 and were online users who engage in sharing stories at least once a month.
How is news shared today?
Typically people share 13 stories a week, but receive approximately double that in their network. They only read around 14 stories, the same number they share. A small number of these sharers share a majority of the content, 27% of them account for 87% of news stories shared (so the 80/20 rule applies here). There are differences in motivations for sharing. In Europe and the US people had altruistic motivations (if it’s of interest, if it makes people laugh etc). In Asia Pacific the motivation was around attention getting (status broadcasting). The platforms they were using were split thus: 43% social media, 12% IM, 15% SMS and 30% email. The typical characteristics of the CNN sharers were: more senior, active contributors who have a more global outlook.
What type of content is shared?
55% of articles had text and still images, 38% articles had video embedded and 7% from photo galleries. They found that every CNN user who shares brings around 5 new unique users to the site. CNN sharing generates more than twice the industry average uplift in unique visitors via shared links. In the business section of CNN, 57% of visitors came from sharing, which drove the strongest traffic for sharing. One story had 82% of its total traffic through sharing alone. One Paris based individual created 5,200 unique visitors for CNN, creating a wide and deep sharing tree.
What are the key drivers of content sharing?
They turned to semiotics to understand and break down the cultural codes that motivate sharing, looking at the underlying message, the narrative style and thematic content. When it comes to the narrative, 65% of the stories were ‘the next chapter, 19% were ‘breaking news’ and 16% were ‘quirky funny’. The top five content archetypes represent 40% of all visitors arriving via shared links.
What is the emotional engagement with shared content?
Watch this space, this is due to be released (I know, I wanted to see this too).
What does it mean for brand advertisers?
They ran a global online survey that looked at ads placed within news content shared by friends across a range of platforms. They found significant global uplifts in brand metrics driven by shared news.
To sum up:
They have an active community of news sharers.
They understand the process of what makes content shareable.
They can substantiate the value of shared news from an advertising perspective.
We hope to share this presentation here soon as it has some highly interesting data and findings that I couldn’t capture here.
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger
Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
John Cole from Adknowledge talked about social apps (tools that plug into a host network, like Facebook, and engage with users while also picking up social ID data). Social currency is an emerging area of advertising that allows users to opt into the advertising.
John used Car Town as an example, which grew to 4million active users in 6 weeks after launch. The people behind Car Town have persuaded car manufacturers to allow them to ‘cartoon’ their cars, which means users inside the game experience the brand while there. Clever. Users accumulate currency (points, scores etc) through the game (which encourages them to come back for more), they also interact with friends through the game encouraging competition and engagement.
An example used: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Users click on in-game ads within social game apps that create a feeling and experience of the brand and shares the users data (which they’ve given permission for). Users quickly become an advocate and share the game through Facebook, Twitter etc creating a viral uplift.
By owning fan pages and apps, brands get the benefit of owning their own media and interact directly with customers, something they didn’t have with traditional media. Once people are engaged, they consume ads for much longer and are more positively engaged than through something like a short television ad.
Key points: there are millions of social gamers, there are high levels of engagement, there is brand safety and it’s focused purely on performance. This is clear competition for tv advertising and the more traditional forms of brand exposure.
The successful apps didn’t spend a great deal on marketing, but they made great apps that people would love.
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger
Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
Now this was a lively debate that was hard to capture. The So Tech panel, Paul Armstrong, Shannon Boudjema and Darika Aherns, talked to us about a way of working with new and emerging technologies and how these can work with businesses. The first point was that this isn’t just a marketing conversation, it crosses over so many different areas.
Shannon talked about how we seem to be obsessed with whats coming tomorrow, but we shouldnt be focussing on this, we should focus on the business today. The two things that matter are making or saving money.
They introduced an infographic which details a framework that looks at how social impacts business, in particular different areas of business, and how it can be used and measured (we will upload this). For example:
Operational: If you take someone from HR and look at how they can benefit from social media, blogs etc can help show have great a company is, virtual working and tech allows a global talent pool. Some benefits of this include happier staff and reduced cost.
Acquisition and retention crosses over customer service, sales, R&D etc. These teams can make the most of social media in a variety of ways, for example it allows sales and marketing to work together through sharing and passing on data. Some benefits here are precision spend of your budget and a smarter way of working, returning customers etc.
They’ve launched a website that looks at their new framework and how it works and they encourage others to get involved in this.
Questions
How can Linked In and Facebook help with HR and staff retention? You can check peoples profiles online to get a better idea of who they are and go far deeper than the traditional reference. You can reference your digital footprint with the cv and cross check.
Part of the barrier of these tools is getting a collective understanding of the tools. Have you seen any good examples of social media education at an organisational level? Best Buy enabled a large number of staff to be using Twitter quickly and very well. Microsoft enabled all sales guys to dedicate a percentage of time to hunt for leads online. Starbucks employees have a great understanding of how social works for them.
Surely the real difficulty is tying KPIs directly into the ROI? Be clear what the objectives are and understand what the social marketing objectives should be to achieve those. SMART objectives are key.
Who do you see as the leaders in the organisation? This is irrelevant. Its everyone’s job. It doesn’t sit in any department.
If social are the tools to achieve the objectives, surely its no different to the telesales guys using the phones. After training, it’s just an addition to their roles. Yes, it’s the evolution of tools.
This caused a lot of debate and the team encourage people to go to their website and get involved in helping to develop the framework.
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger who struggled to keep up with this session. Sorry.
Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
Strangely Andrew started with how Sadam Hussein was found. His closest associates tracked, monitored and bribed, but it didn’t work. So they tried to figure out how to work out where he was if nobody knew where he was within his command. A British firm produced a piece of software that allowed them to map and track his social graph (social network), people like his drivers and who they associate with. They monitored and tracked these people which enabled them to put together associations and places and work out patterns. This is an important lesson for businesses: lets not look at leaders and what they’re doing, but look at our social networks and figure out where people are and what they’re doing.
Our approach to doing business and how we talk to customers and suppliers has changed dramatically. The old rules of comms have been altered, but they haven’t collapsed entirely. It has altered some of the ways we do business however the bricks and mortar that we used traditionally hasn’t changed that much. We need to keep a perspective as commercial realities still apply, so if you’re going to look at social media for your business you need to keep this in mind. The people that sign off the budgets will want to know what kind of commercial return you’re going to get back, and this won’t change. Ever.
We can’t rely on traditional sources of mass audiences in B2B, these audiences are now fragmented and group together in different places online. We need to find a way of going where these audiences are and engage there. Unfortunately some organisations aren’t onboard with this yet and there is a danger that they will be left behind.
Markets have fragmented and audiences segment as they group together in different places. So we need to look at how we create marketing pieces that talk to these segmented audiences in different places. The challenge in marketing is to address these different segments in a meaningful way (which doesn’t mean broadcasting irrelevant blog posts that mean nothing).
What businesses need to do is not just create stuff out of thin air, but look at building solid relationships with customers/clients/suppliers. Andrew suggested that they start by looking at key evangelists that will become advocates, including clients, staff, suppliers etc. Creating and generating internal culture is just as important as creating it externally. Once you have the internal culture sorted, look at the various conversation chains you have with your suppliers and clients/customers. Find these people online then listen to what they’re saying about you online and be ready to respond and react to it.
Closing the business conversation loop is key. Instead there are conversations happening in multiple directions and businesses need to create a platform that allow clients/customers/advocates to have the conversation on your behalf. But there is a danger of jumping in too soon without any formal planning, which is key. There is a balance between freedom, openness and transparency and corporate governance, market restrictions etc. Certainly in professional markets there are restrictions of what you can and can’t do, with financial services being a clear example of this.
Andrew went on to talk about the importance of social spreading across all divisions involved (which is pretty much all of them). Staff are already using social whether employers like it or not, so embrace that and ensure the right organisation that makes it work.
Businesses need to create an environment where customers/clients feel trust and comfort to come to you for what they need by establishing relevant resources and channels to allow it. Create a three dimensional business personality that can easily spread across channels. There are a lot of opportunities for SMEs to get involved in developing social media personalities as well as larger B2B organisations.
Quick word of warning from Andrew, if you don’t want it in public, don’t say it.
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger with bad grammar and sore fingers
Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
Next up, Paul Harrison from Carve Consulting looks at what we need to know about coming into 2011. There were eleven key areas:
- People prefer to listen to people rather than algorithms. The ability to make informed decisions is a natural extension of social media, we prefer to ask people in our network over asking Google. What we buy or do is very much informed by the new influencers: bloggers, the crowd etc (aka people). Our social graphs are key here, our own personal social network of people that we can carry with us wherever we go on things like smart phones.
- Everyone’s a critic. The likes of Trip Advisor and Yelp are widely used and this way of reviewing is coming to everything we do and Paul thinks this will massively define how we do business in 2011. How we manage bad reputation is a huge challenge. The companies that do social media best will understand what it means to create advocates and digital influencers, for both individuals and organisations.
- Listening grows up. Businesses are getting pages of data and reports from their agencies, but more than often they mean nothing. Actionable listening is what we need next, how we translate this data into meaningful actions is how people will get the most out of the tools. Businesses should push back more and insist on real translation of this data.
- You can’t fake it. Authenticity will be key and the fakers will be unearthed. Those organisations that are getting it wrong will be shown up in 2011 and we’ll see a divide between those that get it right and those that get it wrong. Paul hopes there will be a pushback against things like phantom tweeting and automation.
- The rise and rise of the social star. You can’t fake true social media knowledge and we’ll start to see the rise of those people that do it right and do it well in 2011. Organisations will need these people.
- Heroes. Empowering employees to understand social and hook into their passion for the business or brand and use it. You can’t beat this stuff. This is all about placing trust in your employees and allowing them to do it.
- Panic. We’re going to see a lot more panic across boardrooms with blocks on using social media platforms and concerns about staff using them during ‘work time’. But as they are using it anyway and using it in their own time, Boards will worry about errant staff speaking about the Brand. They need to understand how to lead from the front and deal with these issues by allowing things like authorised social users etc.
- Audiences can connect with each other. The website is going the way of the fax. Your audiences can’t have a conversation there, but they want to. Brands will start to think of social platforms and build on top of them, (eg host the website on Facebook).
- Ideation. As organisations understand the power of advocacy they’ll use things like crowdsourcing as a way of creating ideation.
- Race to create worlds dumbest app continues. There are so many worthless apps out there, but businesses still want them. However coming up with great experiences through these apps and using them as real brand extensions could be seen in 2011.
- That Question. Won’t social media disappear? No.
This was a great, fast presentation and I hope I did it justice. We’ll get the preso up on the blog asap.
@CarveConsulting
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger extraordinaire with sore fingers
Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
Brad started by talking about all the stuff businesses are hearing at the moment: data, the new media landscape (paid, owned and earned) and new processes (listen, learn, strategise, leverage etc). But what does that mean in real terms?
There is a new funnel: awareness – consideration – purchase and finally expression and its this expression that’s changed. We have to do things differently these days, advertising isn’t working as well as it used to so we need to sharpen our knives and do it better (but not stop advertising altogether). People are thinking about what can replace how we used to do things, but it might not be about ‘replacing’. Its about doing it better.
All too often businesses are attending conferences like this and come away thinking they need to ‘do’ social media. Which to them means a Facebook page or Twitter profile. 6 months down the line they normally start asking where the ROI is. This is when they come to Brad and ask him to ‘measure’ social meda. This is the wrong way round.
Brad cited: 26% of online discussion mentions brands. Every one of those mentions is a media impression. Just because you didn’t pay for them or generate them, they exist and they should be measured and reported. These mentions can influence how people think about your brand or product. He showed a case study on TV Buzz which, from 20,000 buzz mentions created 10 million unique views and resulted in great reach for the brand. His point: buzz does equal reach.
The challenge to social media strategy is understanding the measurement and how it is organised. The challenges of social media measurement are around relevance (are we identifying relevant information), reach and impact (are we measuring the full reach and influence) and advocacy (understanding key influencers and what that means). The key blockage is at the organisational and cultural side and this needs to be addressed. A company has to be willing and open to change to achieve what they need to, or at least meet us half way.
If we treat social media like an advertising channel, we ruin the fabric of what it’s about. It’s not just about broadcasting messages and it’s not just about sales and marketing, it crosses over:
- Customer insight and NPD: Brad used Kraft as an example of how they used social to understand what consumers love and want.
- Optimising marketing: The Evian dancing roller babies was used as an example here which had a big increase in lift in engagement and awareness and drove people to the website, far more than paid advertising. The result was 5% increase in sales in the weeks following the campaign.
- Managing reputation and the impact of association: Brad looked at the change in the Tiger Woods brand before and after he cheated on his wife. Brand image can change very quickly through conversation on social media.
- Customer service, building advocacy for your brand and increase customer value: BT was used as an example here with its customer service Twitter channel (although I have my own views on this, but that’s not for this platform). This is a big fundamental shift for businesses but it’s not being embraced enough yet.
Brads key messages:
- Social media is relevant, impactful, drives intent and influences sales.
- Figure out why you’re ‘doing’ social media. Set objectives. Understand what you’re trying to achieve and measure it (right).
brad.little@nmincite.com
@BradleyJLittle
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger extraordinaire (please excuse typos and grammatical errors … I’m typing this uber fast)
Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
Katy’s aim was to get to the truth about social media by sharing some insights to help stimulate conversations and questions later in the day.
We hear a lot about the principles of social media, we have to listen, add value, have conversation, be transparent etc, which of course is true. However is this actually happening behind the scenes. In reality the ‘flatpack’ instructions of social media may not work for all businesses as they’re all different.
The internal challenge can be big. The Board doesn’t always understand our social media language, it means nothing to them. So how do we translate our language into theirs? The key restricting of not investing in social media is lack of knowledge and we need to deal with that.
Katy cited Marks & Spencers as a best practice example of using social media by integrating the activity across the whole brand. It’s about making your business practice more social. How is the process managed when there is a negative comment? Who deals with it? All of this needs to be thought about in advance. Know your social estates, understand how your customer will converse with you, know who should respond and deal with it.
Measurement is the bit that really matters to the Board. The FD and the MD will be thinking in terms of money, nothing else. We don’t always have to find the holy grail, we need to find the benchmarks to allow us to understand how things are working and where value is. Katy talked about the purchase consideration phase and how this has changed online. This means research time has increased and gives marketers a great opportunity to understand what stops people buying andwhere the bottlenecks exist online. These can help us learn how to unblock it to improve ROI. Katy showed a great slide on her ROI framework, which we’ll try to get up here for you. She also showed some interesting figures on the CompareTheMarket campaign, again we’ll aim to publish this.
Another challenge Katy spoke about was: Whose budget is it? There’s a bit of a bun fight going on about where social sits and this can delay and affect the outcome. Social needs to involve everyone it affects and planning is crucial ahead of any activity.
Long term relationships are at social’s core and Sony was given as a good example of this. They started back in 2006, with press and high level tech bloggers. They started by talking to influencers, which made a huge difference and resulted in a big increase in product purchase.
We need to understand what we’re trying to achieve with our communities. What does thousands of people saying they ‘like’ product actually mean in terms of value. Giving people tools to the communities to engage outside of Facebook is key.
Many Brands are still shouting without engaging and we’re in a state of viral and app fatigue. They need to plan well and use it properly to get the results they need.
Katy’s overriding message: Plan, plan and plan again. Get this right and you’re more likely to get the results the Board want. A great resource was made available on Immediate Future’s social media secrets, download here.
katy.howell@immediatefuture.co.uk
@katyhowell
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger extraordinaire (please excuse typos and grammatical errors … I’m typing this very very fast)
Made Social on 30 September 2010 | View Comments
@AdamVincenzini kicked things off by asking people what they wanted to get out of the day, here is a summary of what they said:
- To meet people and learn tricks to help @slowfooduk members get to know each other better
- What should we be focusing on for social media 2011?
- Looking for insight that can be applied in a commercial context #socol
- Looking forward to some B2B insights
- Something other than the usual social blurb
- Interested in tips for B2B SMM. A few strong case studies will help me get extra funding
- Looking for insight into how SMEs can utilise Social Media without huge budgets
- Interested to hear about tools needed for social media at #SoCol especially for B2N
- We want to see more traffic to our website
Let’s hope they’re satisfied.
@GemmaWent, Founder of Red Cube Marketing and Social Collective Live Blogger extraordinaire
Made Social on 29 July 2010 | View Comments
In advance of Social Collective, we have been inviting select people to guest blog and join the SoCol debate, hopefully offering a fresh point of view. We have been asking a range of people to contribute, including those working in social, client side, techies, journos etc with a view of building a wider picture. Any questions raised during this process will be addressed during a panel at SoCol in September.
As part of the guest blogging initiative, Gemma Went, our Social Collective live blogger is putting together a social media strategy series, giving a step by step guide to developing a social media strategy.
The series is targeted at those businesses thinking about using social media as comms tool, but are not sure how to go about it. It’s less about setting up a Facebook page or Twitter profile and hoping for the best and more about aligning social media to your core business objectives and treating it with the strategy it deserves. So let’s crack on with post number two:
Getting Buy In
By Gemma Went
At this point you’ve done all the necessary checks to prove that social media is right for your business. The next stop is convincing the Boss/C Suite/Board that the time and budget investment will help you to get the results they want. This, my friends, is the tricky part. The boss will have read countless articles questioning the ROI of Social Media. It’s likely they’ll have assumed that it’s only for the youth or that it’s irrelevant to their business. Your job is to prove it’s worth and get full, ongoing support, resources and budget.
You see social media is more than just a ‘campaign’, it’s a long term commitment that needs long term support. It needs to be taken across the business, not just handed to one lonely manager to look after, which means it needs resource and to get this kind of commitment you need a strong business case.
The Business Case: Aligning with the business
First things first, get hold of the business plan and marketing strategy. Have a look at the objectives and work out which can be achieved by applying social media. Be realistic here, social media isn’t the answer to everything, so pick out those that are achievable. Then do your homework. Find examples of other businesses (preferably within your sector) that have achieved those objectives. Show how achievable it is, show how it can be measured, show an idea of realistic timescales. My collections of case studies are here and here.
Who’s using it?
Next up, think about your stakeholders. These can be customers, clients, suppliers, partners, employees, journalists, peers, investors and anyone else your business needs to connect with. Segment these and then find where they are online. What social media platforms are they using? Is there a large number using Facebook? Twitter? Linked In? a niche social networking site? Can you find any stats showing usage? (I’ve collected a bunch of stats here and some useful infographics here). You basically need to prove that the people you need to connect with are using social media. If you can find case studies that show results of how others have engaged with these audiences, use them.
Competitive analysis
Now moving onto your competitive set. List your competitors and then search for them online. What platforms are they using? Who are they engaging with? Do they have any success stories or case studies? Do they appear to be reaping other rewards through using social media (ie has their press coverage increased? Has their brand awareness grown? Are they directly engaging with prospects online? Are they speaking regularly at events?). If so, these are great ways of showing how social media is working for them. However, don’t be put off if you can’t find many of them using social media. It could be that take-up in your industry is slow and if you’ve found justification for using it in the other ways discussed here, you could be the first to reap the rewards.
Brand reputation management
Finally, and perhaps the piéce de résistance to those brands that are regularly talked about, find what’s being said about you online. Show what people truly think of your brand using the free tools such as Social Mention and Twitter Search. This really can make people sit up, take notice and realise they need to be part of that conversation.
How will you do it?
So, we’ve proven that social media is a relevant activity for your business and the board is onboard. Now you need to make them understand what’s involved and how it will be managed. Take them through the next steps, who will do it and timings. These steps will consist of:
* Identifying goals and objectives
* Finding your audiences
* Developing tactics
* The content strategy
* Metrics and measurement
* Defining resources
* Guidelines and training
* Ongoing management and beyond
* (I will be covering each of these throughout the rest of this series)
Then provide them with the budget requirements – do you need to hire an external consultant? Do you need external training? Do you need extra salaries (or portions of salaries)? Also provide them with the timings. Be realistic with both of these, they need the cold hard facts not hype.
If you think budget is going to be a sticking point, review your current communciations activities. Work out what’s working and what’s not. Suggest replacing those activities that aren’t producing results with a social media strategy and reassign the budget. Similarly, if finding extra resource is an issue, review job descriptions and work out what responsibilities can be replaced.
If you do your homework, get the justification, manage expectations without falling into the trap of overhyping social media, you can build a solid business case that should get the buy-in you need.
I hope that was useful. As always, I’d welcome any comments below, particularly if you’ve really struggled with this.
Next up in this series are the following posts, however there will be a break for a week or so as I’m jetting off for a well earned rest.
* Identifying goals and objectives
* Finding your audiences
* Developing tactics
* The content strategy
* Metrics and measurement
* Defining resources
* Guidelines and training
* Ongoing management and beyond
This post also features on Gemma’s blog, The Cube.
About Gemma Went
For those who are not fortunate enough to attend the full day of SoCol, Gemma Went will be live blogging from the conference, pushing a feed of information out into the online world. Information on feeds, channels and accounts to keep your eyes on will be published here closer to the event date.
Gemma is a strategic marketing consultant and psychologist with over 10 years experience. She helps businesses achieve objectives and engage with audiences through a blend of traditional and digital methods that span marketing, social media and pr. Having worked both client and agency side, she has a good grasp of what clients need and focuses on producing measurable results that fit with the client’s overall strategy.
Gemma runs The Cube, Red Cube’s blog, is a guest blogger for Brand Republic and regularly speaks at social media events.
View other posts in our quest blog series:
The tall and the long of it by John V Willshire
Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith
The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton
The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went
Talk is cheap by Peter Bouvier
Show social or show business by Chris Hall
Back to the future… by Adam Vincenzini
Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland
Get Excited And Make Things by Stuart Witts
Social media is where charities have to be, it’s a natural home. Ultimately you do, but its not always about fund raising but perhaps it can be about reach and awareness.
It can ‘work’ but social in its context is not short term campaign based. If we treat it like advertising or a one way conversation, people will stop using it.
Look at case studies like Ratners, big enough problems can do it. But if a brand responds in the right way it can be dealt with and won’t have a negative affect.
