Social Media Strategies & Tactics Session

Speakers:
Bryan Rhoads – Intel
Matt McGee – Search Engine Land

Moderator: Hallie Janssen

Read on about what social media strategies and tactics Bryan and Matt have used in the past as well as looking at examples of other companies and what they’ve done to be successful.

Matt McGee started this season with a screenshot of Jerry Maguire exclaiming, “Show me the money!” and the title of his presentation being “The Jerry Maguire Guide to Social Media.” All the links and references he has in his presentation can be found on his blog at https://www.smallbusinesssem.com.

Five steps to success

Know your goal – You need to figure out your strategy that harnesses your Facebook / Twitter followers.
Build your assets – Will Facebook disappear in a few years? Who knows. Don’t throw all of your time, money and energy into assets that you don’t own (i.e. a Facebook profile). Instead, focus on your own assets, like your blog, and use social media to promote. “Blogs are incredible for SEO.” 55% more website visitors if you have a blog. Also 97% more inbound links to your site. Smart ideas: editorial calendar, variety of posts, analytics + keyword research = ideas (keyword research is telling you what kind of content people are looking for that are finding your site. Use this as getting ideas for future posts), short, electric headlines and make it social media-friendly – buttons or widgets to share on social media sites.
Fish where the fish are (meaning: ask your audience where they spend their time) – looking at your analytics will show you were your audience is coming from.
Reputation management – use Social Mention, BlogPulse, Twe.pe as well as Google, Yahoo and Bing to see when mentions are happening about your brand. KnowEm is a tool you can use to see if people have “claimed your real estate” on social media websites.
Track your results – rely on website analytics to show you social media traffic. Use URL builders to track clicks and use analytics. Matt gave us an example of how to use Google’s URL builder to track clicks in Google Analytics. Use URL shorteners to build low-character URLs and track clicks.

Social strategies in action

Thought leadership – billing yourself leader in the space can have a direct impact (a positive one) on your bottom line. You can also use LinkedIn Q&A and Yahoo Answers to answer questions in your space.

Brand visibility – InterfloraUK twitter account is a great example of how a brand can really do a great job at making their brand more visible. VistaPrint encourages customers to take a photo of their product and put it up on their Flickr.

Generating sales and leads – you can connect a shopping cart to your Facebook page. A guitar instructor posted parts of his lessons on YouTube and got a ton of visibility including Gibson guitars picking up his videos and linking to them. He then found success doing lessons via Skype.

Survey done in September: 69% of survey respondents said they were more likely to use a company if they found them on a social networking site.

Your to-do list

Know your goal – match your tactics and strategies to goals.
Find customers and join them.
Track everything.
Be visibile.
Be amazing (be consistent and do this everyday).

Bryan was up next. His presentation was titled “Social Readiness.”

He shared a social adoption cycle. The first step: early adopters and pioneers. What was their etiquette and blogging technique. Then created a pilot to see if something worked (or didn’t work). They also looked at risk (such as what happens when you get a negative comment). If it is successful, then integrate it into your company and establish company roles and then after that make sure you get exec buyoff and that they know that this is important and working for the right reasons.

Grassroots
Results.
Operational.
Widespread.

G.R.O.W. – this is how Intel’s social media program grew.

Bryan went over how companies typically are set-up to support social media. There are a variety of different structures and it’s really how you would like your company to be structured.

How do you get your company ready?

Customer profiles. Social technologies: where are they? What are they using?
Environmental Assessments. What are your customer’s needs?
Social audits. Are there employees that fit into a role that supports using social media?
Policies and guidelines. Know what is on and off-limits.
Training and education. Intel has an internal 30 minute course on social media.
Communications. Executive buy-in is really important.
Culture and mindset. Exec and employee mindsets.
Roles & responsibilities. Who are your social strategists? Community managers?
Stakeholders. Who are they? Identify them.
Monitoring and reporting. Alerting, influencing and listening tools. Having social and web analytics in place.

Be ready for a social crisis. Have the steps and escalation paths sketched out before it happens.

Encourage your employees to be SMPs (social media practitioners). More voices = more visibility. Recognize folks when they’re doing a great job.