If you like this video, we are sure you’ll enjoy Gregory Ng’s video interview on an Effective Way to Use Video in the Marketing Plan.
We couldn’t agree more with Wayne’s thoughts on video, which is why moving forward we are going to showcase lots of videos on the GBA blog, starting with this one.
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If you have insight on Marketing to share with our audience, contact us. Or learn more about Washington DC based GBA and our video production prowess!
We interviewed Wayne last week at the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas. Wayne was leading a panel discussion on Blogging and Web Video.
Wayne Sutton is an entrepreneur, strategist, and producer with a passion for video blogging and social media. With nearly 10 years experience in the technology and social media sector, he’s provided counsel to business leaders ranging from founders of small start-ups and representatives of non-profit organizations to CEOs of large andsmall corporations. Follow Wayne on twitter @waynesutton or visit his website.
You’ve heard about social media, you know you want to use social media, you have a budget for social media, but you need to know how to use social media marketing to help achieve your corporate marketing goals.
It’s an intimidating field because it’s so new and you know if a strategy is not clearly mapped out social media marketing initiatives can fail. But you can’t ignore it because you want to stay ahead of competitors, retain clients, manage your brand and monitor your space.
So where do you start? Follow these steps and you’ll be on your way to building a successful social media marketing strategy…
Step 1: Define goals and objectives
Clearly map out your corporation’s goals and objectives.
Is your goal to:
- Generate more brand awareness?
- Interact with prospects?
- Monitor competition?
- Monitor and manage your brand reputation?
- Generate awareness of your company’s services or offerings?
- Attract new employees, investors, partners/vendors?
Step 2: Pinpoint where your audience and potential evangelists are sharing information
Listen to what’s going on in your space and identify the thought leaders and ambassadors. Look at who you are currently communicating with and how, as well as with whom you want to interact. This will help you form a basis for everything else you do with social media tools. Identifying your audience before simply choosing convenient tools will lead to a much more successful social media campaign.
To help identify where/how your customers are sharing and consuming information online. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Is my target audience on social networking sites?
- Do they belong to specialized groups?
- Who are they interacting with?
- Which social media channels would be best to use for the type of content you have?
Step 3: Audit Resources
Once you have figured out what you would like to do with social media to achieve your corporate marketing goals, you have three options to execute your campaign: use current staff; hire employee(s); or outsource parts or all of your campaign to an outside vendor. You must consider the following when making your decision:
- Do I have existing content that I can re-purpose?
- Do my internal resources have existing knowledge on the platforms, and technologies needed to execute my campaign. How much is their “ramp up” going to cost my department in staff hours?
- What technology (portals, videos, platforms that enable user generated content, landing pages) do I need to develop? Which of these do I need to outsource?
- What monitoring tools do I have available?
- Who is going to fulfill the different social media marketing roles and responsibilities?
The Green Buzz Agency Blog provides insight for Marketing Decision Makers and other fun people
Step 4: Establish a social media protocol
A corporate social media protocol should be developed and employed to help companies feel comfortable about social media participation. A well-constructed protocol can help companies organize and prioritize goals, designate the individuals that should assume ownership of the brand’s online communications, while simultaneously ensuring that these communications broadcast messages that are consistent across all social media engagements.
To begin establishing a protocol, ask yourself the following questions:
- What information do we want to keep private?
- What kinds of information would we benefit from making public?
- What personal social media use is appropriate? Inappropriate?
- How will we measure which rules are helpful and which are not?
- Who are our quality followers? How can we continually engage them?
- Should we have a set of rules for proactive social media use? Reactive social media use?
- How do we respond to positive engagement versus negative engagement?
Step 5: Start using social media
Now that you determined who you want to communicate with, who is going to accomplish your social media marketing initiatives, and where you want to go with the relationships, you can execute your plan.
Step 6: Measure results
You need to measure and monitor all activity. Be sure that you create mechanisms for feedback and input throughout your process to provide opportunities for your community, staff, etc. to share ideas and LISTEN!
Ask yourself these questions as you evaluate your social media efforts:
- Have your networks grown or changed? How?
- Are there new social media roles to explore?
- What worked?
- What can we do differently?
- What should we eliminate?
- How much time is spent on each social media initiative?
- How is social media changing right now?
- Are we ahead of our competitors?
If you want to use social media marketing in your overall marketing plan, you need a sound strategy. If you don’t have a sound strategy, you risk losing control of your brand, reputation, client base and prospects. If you do have one, you will have a huge advantage over competitors, have the ability to enforce or build a loyal client base, position your thought leaders as experts, develop interactive relationships with prospects, avoid potential pitfalls and have an overall stronger marketing plan.
-AJ Gerritson is Founding Partner and Social Media Strategist at 451 Marketing, a Boston-based communications agency that specializes in social media marketing, public relations, and creative development. For more information, please visit AJ’s LinkedIn Page.
If you’re a business owner, chances are you know three letters very well: R.O.I. (Return on Investment.) It can be tough to put PR into numbers, which is why most of us work in the field. We checked out of math class when the algebra teacher started putting letters next to numbers on the chalkboard.
Online Media
We want to impress you, so we value impressions. There are many different ways to show these and many different web sites you’ll hear PR people reference. For online coverage, we’ll use Google Analytics, Quantcast, Compete and TrafficEstimate, just to name a few.
Oftentimes, these figures are compiled monthly, as in “unique monthly visitors.” If you’d like to know weekly or daily figures, those can be determined quite easily.
Now, because we are looking at a media web site, such as Forbes.com, it is tough to know if visitors actually clicked through to the article about your company’s news. That said, nothing’s guaranteed in media impressions; Forbes could have 2 million subscribers, but 1 million of them could have left town the month you were in the magazine; The Today Show could have 4 million average viewers every day, but they could have gone to work early the day that your CEO lands on a segment.
The Green Buzz Agency Blog provides insight for Marketing Decision Makers and other fun people
Online reporting is a bit easier to read, as your site can trackback click-throughs. Additionally, online coverage can get re-posted via social media networks and through wires.
Print Media
Print media is still alive and kicking and its tough to judge its effect on the public. Sure, we can look at circulations, but many conversations around the world start with, “I was reading an article in/by/about…”
In print, circulations are often multiplied as a sort of “pass on” factor. For example, BusinessWeek’s circulation is 926,785, but there is a “pass on” factor to consider, as families, offices and other places of business pass magazines around. So, an agency may report it as 926,785 x 4, or 3,707,140.
Newspapers are often sent to families or offices, as well, but since they are daily and not weekly or monthly, they are often multiplied by 2.6. Each issue is thought to have a shorter shelf life. Thereby, it likely gets “passed on” less. So, the Financial Times’ circulation of 500,000 is often reported as 1,300,000.
Ad Value Equivalencies (AVE) is also not an exact science. AVEs are determined by multiplying a medium’s ad rate by the size of the placement. In print and online, this is measured in inches or quarter inches. In broadcast, this is measured by seconds or half minutes. Many people value content more than size though. For that reason, we have developed a Publicity Value Analysis, which will be discussed soon here on the Green Buzz Agency Blog.
Alison Walsh is an Experienced Public Relations and Marketing Professional. You can reach her at alisonhope.walsh@gmail.com
Traditional advertising and social media marketing, the leaders and buzz generators in advertising and marketing arenas. Traditional advertising is reaching the masses in and outside of their home through targeted messages where you tell them how you will solve their problem and how your product or service will increase their quality of life. This is very effective when reaching your target and they are convinced that they need what you are selling. Social media is creating a presence online, finding your target, and letting them know you are there. Sort of a little nod of the head from the other side of the room so they know you are there. Those that see you, trust you or do know you, become a follower or a fan and have welcomed you into their community. They have opened the door to interact and build a relationship with them.
The Green Buzz Agency Blog provides insight for Marketing Decision Makers and other fun people
Traditional advertising and social media marketing have been treated as two separate communities: on and off line. And, they are, but these inbound and outbound distant cousins need to come closer together for an effective overall advertising and marketing strategy. Social media is still too new for many companies and as they are attempting to wrap their arms around it, the thought of integrating their social media efforts with their traditional advertising is too much of a risk. Failing to take this risk will negatively impact their overall marketing efforts in the long run. The two way communication that is afforded in social media provides great insight into how consumers feel and react to your brand. Ultimately you want to drive sales, and traditional media is a fast driver of sales. Social media is slower. It is more of an indirect form of sales. By hearing what your consumers want and expect from your brand, you listen more than you talk in social media. Traditional advertising is an all out effort to say buy me, because you need me.
How should you bridge the gap between traditional advertising and social media marketing?
- Branded Message: Stay consistent across all forms of your advertising; whether traditional or online. Live up to the promise that you make in your ads and in you conversations on line. Monitor what people are saying, answer their questions, and solve their problems.
- Business Cards: Add profiles to the platforms that you are most active on. Invite your offline community online. Let them know where you are so they can find you online.
- Print Ads: Once again add your social media profiles to your print ads to drive readers to your profiles. Let them see how they will benefit from interacting with you online.
- Broadcast: Tag your spots (easier done with TV than radio) with your profiles to further emphasize your online presence.
Traditional advertising and social media marketing will continue to play a vital role in 2010. Although utilizing different methods of implementation, they also need to work closely together. Bring those offline to your online world to learn more about them and further engage them. Consumers expect more from the brands that they are loyal to. The online interaction keeps them engaged, and you top of mind. Consumers need to have a feeling that they know you/your brand. If it is not you they are talking to, it will be your competitor.
Suzanne Vara is Managing Director of Kherize5 Advertising & Marketing, a Las Vegas based advertising & marketing agency specializing in social media marketing, website development and search engine optimization for small to mid-sized businesses.
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by Alison Walsh
Linkedin to Facebook via Twitter . Oh my! If you have to hear another one of your junior staff talk about being “poked,” you’re going to have to call HR and schedule a workshop.
Slow down, Michael Scott. Poking is basically a Facebook alert, Dunder Mifflin can still be held in high regard among the paper industry. In fact, you may want to start awarding Social Media Dundies.
Your PR team can assist you in building a web site that is savvy, eye-appealing and keeps the look and feel of your company. Almost as important as building the the web site though, is maintaining the site, which is where all of these Social Media Sites come into play. One way to keep these sites fresh is by re-publishing editorial coverage you garner.
Basically, there is a world of fans and potential fans of your business out there. You want to reach as many of them as possible. The internet has evolved business models. The word “global” no longer attaches a negative connotation because you easily can be a “global business” while still holding the position of “locally owned and operated.”
That said, online communities are just as important as the one in your backyard. Your PR team can generate conversation and buzz throughout online communities, so you have time to chat with your neighbors over the fence.
Tweet us (”That’s what she said!” – Michael Scott) at @greenbuzzagency today!
The PR Specialist behind this post is Alison Walsh. Email Alison: alisonhope.walsh@gmail.com
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