Social media: A GuidePositif Politics November 2011

Social media: A Revolution

The machine is us/ing usThe Social Media

revolution

What is social media?

Different types of social media

Although they all enabling sharing, there are several different types of social media. We will cover these in more detail later.

Blogs are online diaries

Microblogs (Twitter) is texting online

Forums are conversational threads

Video sharing (YouTube) is shared video clips

Social photo (Flickr) is shared images and photos

Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn) is all of the above

Live Exercise: Your social media savvy

Social media makes the world go around

How it is changing the media landscape

Traditional communications were brand-led – organisations ‘owned’ their brands

New communications are word-of-mouth led. Social media gives more power to people. Today, people own the brand. The brand is what people perceive it to be, and now, say it is.

These people can be employees, experts, clients, potential employees, potential clients

They are passionate enough to create blogs, videos, and images, or to comment on them – often in their own time

The explosion of social media also means that your sources of information are fragmenting. Instead of a few TV channels, radio stations or newspapers, you now have access to thousands of blogs, social networks and so on

How it relates to business / organisations

Businesses and other organisations can – and do – use social media. For every major function of an organisation, there is an equivalent social media function:

Research = Listening to the conversations people have with each other to understand their wants and needs

Marketing = Talking in the conversations people have with each other to spread messages about your company/organisation and products/services/cause

Sales = Energising customers to sell you by finding your most enthusiastic customers/employees/supporters and supercharging them online

Support = Supporting customers/supporters to support each other by setting up tools that help them do this

Development = Embracing customers to work with each other by integrating them into the way your business or organisation works

Opportunities and Threats

Research

Research opportunitiesThere is a huge amount of content online that you can use to get an idea of what motivates people, and what they’re saying about you, your brands, your people, your products and services, your clients and your competitors

This is not just text. Social media covers multimedia too, so people are sharing audio, video and pictures. It is an extremely rich environment for researchers.

Research threatsThe amount of online content can be overwhelming so you must figure out how to find what you need

Don’t believe everything you read. Not everyone is an expert online

Marketing

Marketing opportunitiesSocial media presents an entirely new and powerful way of communicating with people. Instead of broadcasting messages that they may not believe any more, you can talk to and with customers and clients to move them along the marketing funnel.

Marketing threatsResource can be a problem. You are already probably doing some marketing, maybe also advertising and other communications such as PR. You now also have to take onboard social media.

Social media has fragmented everything – that is, instead of large segments of audience you are now looking at many smaller segments. You need to be sophisticated in the way you find these smaller segments and address them in a suitable way

Traditional marketing vs social media

Sales Sales opportunitiesInstead of pushing broadcast messages out to people who might not be listening anyway, you can interact with people in a much more targeted, persuasive way

You can push web traffic towards your website where people can check the facts and are one step closer to buying

Social media can work well alongside more traditional methods of online selling, such as adverts

Sales threatsSocial media thrives on ‘telling, not selling’. If you don’t share information that is useful to people, and instead try to sell yourself too hard online, you will get few results

Social media strategy: An overview

Where you are now

Your current strengths and weaknesses

Your competitors

Where you want to be

Business functions

The opportunities and threats if you do this

Who you want to talk to

Audience behaviours

Messaging/Why they want to listen to you

How you’re going to get there

SMART objectives

Tactics for social media types

Where are you now?Before you can start any social media programme you need to know where you are now. Otherwise you don’t know the direction you’re going in, or what success looks like.

What are your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses online?

How capable are you or your team online?

How big is your team?

What online resources or communities do you currently have, such as your website?

Do you have content that works online, such as videos or pictures?

Who are your competitors?

Share of voice: how many results do you get in search engines for them, compared to you?

Sentiment: how do people feel about you, and them, online?

Where do you want to be?

Decide which of the business functions you want to address. To recap:

Research=Listening

Marketing=Talking

Sales=Energising

Support=Supporting

Development=Embracing

Opportunities vs Threats Think about the opportunities and threats of doing this:

Will you increase your visibility online?

Will you increase sales/supporters?

Will you increase leads?

Will you lead conversations?

Will you learn more about your industry/sector?

Can your team handle increased online traffic?

Will you be able to prove that it was worth your investment?

Audience

Think about who you want to talk to (your audience)

Decision makers

CEOs/ CFOs

Journalists

Think about their demographics

How old are they?

What is their gender?

Where are they (Wales, UK)

Audience behaviours

Think about how your audience consumes online content

While demographics work for offline media consumption, online is different. This is because anyone globally can access online information, regardless of geography.

Therefore, online communications looks at what are called the technographics of an audience. This takes a broad demographic and creates a profile of how that demographic behaves online

TechnographicsResearch shows typical online behaviours are:

Creators – who tend to set up blogs and groups

Conversationalists – post regular updates and statuses

Critics – who contribute their opinions

Collectors – of friends, feeds, pictures, videos and so on

Joiners – who like to feel a sense of belonging

Spectators – who pop in and out of sites and leave little footprint

Inactives – who don’t tend to participate online

Having established the technographics of the audience, you can develop tactics that will work with their behaviour. For example, if you discover that they are predominantly collectors, you can offer them collectable content. If they are critics, you can offer rate-and-review material (like Amazon.co.uk).

Technographics tool The Forrester Groundswell tool will help you with this

To use it, go to http://www.forrester.co.uk/Groundswell/profile_tool.html Specify the age, country and gender of your audience. It will give you a profile based on thousands of case studies. This is your starting point for giving them content in the way they want to consume it.

For example, if it turns out that your audience is predominantly critics, it may not be worth your while to set up a community for them, because they don’t tend to join communities

Quiz: Your social media type

Where are you on this ladder?

Messaging Think about why these people would want to listen to you

What are their challenges?

Is there anything they’re doing now that they would rather not be doing (e.g. smoking)?

Is there anything they’re not doing now, that they would like to start (e.g. supporting a charity?)

What are your competitors saying to them?

Develop messages that appeal to their challenges but are different from what your competitors are saying

Think about ways to convey these messages in a creative, compelling way

Repeat these messages in all your communication – whether online or offline.

MeasurementDevelop online objectives that are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely

Examples of objectives could be:

– Increase share of voice

– Improve online sentiment

Set a time to measure your progress against your competitors and your objectives, and assess your strategy. Measurement is important:

If you don’t measure against competitors, you’re not measuring within your market

If you don’t measure against your objectives, you don’t know what success looks like

If you don’t revisit and revise, your online programme will flounder and may eventually die, simply because you never knew whether or not you were successful

Social media platforms

Where are organisations concentrating efforts?

Twitter

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging platform

It’s a bit like blogging, a bit like texting and a bit like instant messaging

Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers

What is Twitter?

A Twitter user can post updates, follow and view updates from other users (this is akin to subscribing to a blog’s RSS feed), and send a public reply or private direct message to connect with another Twitterer

Tweets have evolved to more than everyday experiences, i.e. what I had for breakfast

They now take the shape of shared links to interesting content on the web, conversations around hot topics (using hashtags), photos, videos, music, and, most importantly, real-time accounts from people who are in the midst of a newsworthy event, crisis, or natural disaster

Anatomy of Twitter

Important definitionsTWEETEach comment posted on Twitter is referred to as a tweet, and the act of sending a tweet is referred to as tweeting

RETWEETA Retweet is a type of message posted (or tweeted) on micro blogging service, Twitter, that repeats some information previously tweeted by another user, symbolised by RT at beginning of Tweet. E.g. RT@BRITNEYSPEARS Positif Politics is a great company

FOLLOWINGTo subscribe to someone’s Twitter updates

FOLLOWERSTo have people subscribing to your Twitter updates

@ReplyBeginning your Tweet or citing @personsname in your Tweet designates that you are referring to @personsname. People tend to monitor their @ mentions so it acts as a convenient, albeit public, way to communicate with people who are not following you

Important definitionsHASHTAGA topic with a hash symbol (“#”) at the start to identify it. Twitter hashtags like #followfriday help spread information on Twitter while also helping to organise it

LISTBasically Twitter’s “Group” function, offers a convenient way to bunch other users on Twitter into Groups to get an overview of what they’re up to

DMShort for Direct Message, a private Tweet which you can only send to people who are following you

TRENDING TOPICSTwitter indexes the most common phrases currently appearing in messages, making it into a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now.

Twitter management

Lets you manage all your Twitter profiles in one place. Godsend if you’re trying to keep on top of multiple tweets. Another useful feature is the pre-schedule tweet button, letting you stagger your messages throughout the day

HootSuite tracks user engagement by summarising your link statistics and individual tweet stats, letting you see at a glance which tweets have generated the most interest within the Twitter community. It also tells you who your top referrers are and where they are in the world

Finding who to follow

Twitter search function / Find People function

Twitter search engines e.g. Tweepz, Tweepsearch, Tweepdir

Twitter directories e.g Twellow (20m profiles), WeFollow (250m profiles), Just Tweet It

Hashtags e.g. #computing

Takes time to map your audience – won’t happen overnight – but this is crucial to building your following

Building a following“Twitter is not getting followers – its creating a reason to be followed – you are in the hands of your market – that’s how it should be” – Ed Dale

You create a reason for people to follow you by being relevant and interesting to them

A sensible starting point might be to use it for information or news distribution and then build on this accordingly

Shifting from one way communication to becoming more engaging over time

Have a clear objective

Tweeting

You type your tweet in the dialogue box at the top of your Twitter page

You have 140 characters or fewer in which to put across your message. This can be one thought, opinion or sentiment, and it can include links to other websites, for example to promote your latest blog post or sales offering.

Use tricks to help you be brief:

Words for numbers, such as to=2, for=4

‘Emoticons’ to show how you’re feeling, such as :) for happy, ;) for irony

Link shortening utilities such as bit.ly to reduce the length of URLs

This reinforces the point that Twitter is like texting. A lot of the techniques you use to text more efficiently, you can use in Twitter

Rules of engagementReplying: Click on ‘reply’ or type @username and type your response. Be warned – everyone can see it

DM: Only works if you are both following each other. Click in Twitter dialogue box and type DM space username. Totally private

Retweeting: Forward interesting tweets to your followers. Type RT space @ person’s username then cut and paste. Edit with care if necessary. Try and retain meaning. Cite your source!

Hashtags: Use to tag your content & make it more searchable e.g. #ge2010 #ff

Trending topics: What’s hot on Twitter? Example: Gigwise/John Terry

Gigwise and #JohnTerry

Twitter listGreat way of keeping up to date on specific groups of people. For example, you could have one list of friends, another of colleagues, another of clients, AMs and so on.

To create a list:

1. In Twitter, click the Lists button and click New list

2. Type in the list name

3. Specify whether you want the list to be public or private. You might want to create a public list so that other people can see who you consider to be an expert on a specific topic.

4. Click Create and follow the on-screen instructions to add people

Try Listorious – has lists of MPs etc

Facebook

Facebook: Background

Most visited website in the US, overtaking Google during 2010

More than 750 million active users. 250 million use it on mobile device

Market growth has started to stall in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011

More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month

Average user:

- 130 friends - connected to 80 community pages, groups and events - creates 90 pieces of content each month – 55 mins per day – ‘Likes’ four pages per month

An evolution

2005

An evolution

2011

Facebook: Where is it now? The latest incarnation of the Facebook homepage places a new emphasis on

search and lets you sort through much more information without ever leaving the homepage

Search is fast becoming the battleground for the social media and search engine giants

Being the go-to place where people look for information is an incredibly powerful position, one which Google has dominated for a number of years

Notice the much more prominently placed search bar at the top, including real-time search

Many of its recent privacy changes were made in the hopes that users would make some of their updates public so others could search for information just like they already do on Twitter and some other networks

Facebook for organisations Many brands and agencies will kick off activity in Facebook without a

clear vision of what they hope to achieve (77% of all Facebook pages have less than 1,000 fans, limiting impact)

Create a customised Page for your brand/organisation

Provide compelling and varied content that people will want to share

Ensure there’s a call to action or incentive to participate

Remember it’s an ongoing conversation, not a one-way message blast

Make your Facebook Page central to social media activity

Case study: I Will for Wales

Use of a bespoke app to spread message of a pledge virally

Earth Hour

Pages updates In addition to being able to share photos, videos, and notes on Pages, Page

admins now have a powerful tool previously only on Facebook profile pages - Status Updates

You can now post short blurbs that ‘Fans’ might find really interesting and engaging

Brands and small businesses – Share exclusive information about upcoming products or promotions, and encourage fans to share information you post with their friends. Respond to customer concerns and excitement directly and openly

Communities and non-profits – Post Events and Causes to mobilise your community, and share status updates and Notes on what’s happening with them

Facebook Pages are becoming a lot more like Twitter in terms of the ways marketers can use them to reach and engage people

Facebook places

Facebook’s location-based social networking tool allows you to share where you’ve been, where you are now, where you’re going

You can also add a specific place, like a restaurant or park, to your post

You have the option on the move to share your location by "checking in" to that place and letting friends know where you are

How might this be useful to an organisation?

Linked In

Background

Business-focused social networking site, launched in May 2003

The world’s largest professional network on the internet with more than 120 million members in over 200 countries and territories

6m+ members in the UK

More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages

Allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business – ‘connections’

Profiles - digital CVsWhen viewing other profiles, you will see a list of icons and options to the right of the snapshot:

Send a message: Send a message to the user if you are connected, an inMail if you are not

Add to your Network: Adds the user to your network

Recommend: Write a recommendation for your connection

Forward profile: Have someone you know in common introduce you

Get introduced: Write a recommendation for your connection

Search for references: Search through the user’s companies for potential references

One Click Reference: Conduct a quick reference check on the person that you are viewing

Optimise your profile

Don't cut and paste your CV. Write for the screen, in short blocks of copy with visual or textual signposts. Use a similar tone to the way you would blog – use the active voice, be direct, be ‘human’

Write a personal tagline. The line of text under your name is the first thing people see in your profile, and it follows your name in search hit lists. Make sure it gets across who you are and what you do in a compelling way

Put your elevator pitch to work. This is what you should use in your summary – it’s your 30 seconds to grab someone’s interest

Creating a company page A company profile shows what a company does, what it specialises in, and

lists all the people who have that company in their profile.

To create a company profile:

1. Click Companies at the top of your profile page, then click Add a Company

2. Type in your company's official name and your email address. You may be asked to confirm your address. Whichever name you enter as the company name will become your custom URL. For example: http://www.linkedin.com/company/yourcompany-name

3. On the next screen, you will be able to add all of the vital stats about your company, including: logo, company descriptions, specialities, type of company, year established, industry, Twitter account, RSS feedCreating a company profile

Linked In: Build a network It is also possible to view a list

of your colleagues (present & past) and classmates on LinkedIn

Market yourself. Publicise your LinkedIn address on your Email signature, Business card

Connect. Get into the habit of dropping people an invite straight away after a meeting – you will quickly build a very strong, relevant network

Linked In Groups The place to find and join communities of

professionals based on common interest, experience, affiliation, and goal

If it doesn’t exist – create it!

Discussions feature: You can discuss issues that are of interest to the entire group in this vibrant and professional atmosphere

Fantastic for thought leaderships and challenging views and opinions

Answers feature: A powerful way to share knowledge. Ask your question and get fast, accurate answers from your network and other experts worldwide

Showcase your knowledge, expertise, and interests by answering questions

Linked In & Twitter

A great time saver!

To add your Twitter account to LI profile, visit “Edit My Profile” and click “Add Twitter account” next to the Twitter field

To share updates from Twitter to LinkedIn, visit the settings page. Here you have the option to share all tweets, to share only tweets that contain #in or #li, or not to share tweets at all. You can change these settings at any time by clicking “Edit” next to your Twitter account name

If your tweet is personal and you don’t wish to share it with your professional crowd, just exclude #in or #li

To share updates from LinkedIn to Twitter, check the box next to the Twitter icon on the LinkedIn home page. The first time you do this, Twitter will verify your account name and password. Whenever the Twitter box is checked, that update will publish to your Twitter feed

Video killed the radio star

The power of video

Video offers tremendous opportunity to engage audience groups online

Viral spread – easy for consumers to share video content – meaning videos can spread very quickly online

Length – it is best if videos do not shoot past 1 minute in length online – reducing production costs

http://www.youtube.com/nonprofits

Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity

Option to drive fundraising through a Google checkout donate button

Listing on non-profit channels and non-profit video pages

Ability to add a call to action overlay on videos to drive campaigns

Posting a video opportunity on YouTube Video Volunteers platform to find a skilled YouTube user to create a video for your cause

Charity/non-profit YouTube classics

WWF – Because we’re all connected

Shelter – House of cards

Droptheweapons.org – Choose a different ending

Manchester Gay and Lesbian Foundation – F*** You

Google +

Google’s social network based on ‘circles’ e.g supporters, staff, family

User controls what content is visible to which circles

Google has flung open the doors to brands & non-profits. Toyota and Pepsi are among early adopters of ‘Pages’ feature

Search integration. ‘Direct connect’ – allows you to search users and brands in Google using a ‘+’ sign before search term

40m users to date

Hangouts – group video chat for up to 10 people – useful business function

Strategy round-up

At the core of social media strategy is traditional PR – Must be new, sufficiently interesting for someone to want to take their own personal time to talk about it and relevance is highly important

Simplicity is vital. Online influencers are extremely time poor. Key messaging must come through instantly

Attention-grabbing works – Humour (Old Spice -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE)

Bring the story to life as much as possible

The further you go the stronger the message, the reach, the impact

Video is enormously powerful

Two way The key feature that

differentiates social media from traditional media is its facility for two-way dialogue

This brings with it a number of important advantages:

- More powerful engagement - Improved recall - Active involvement - Participative for both parties

Make this principle core to a social media campaign

Measurement

No. of pieces of coverage

No. of Tweets regarding activity

Total audience reached

No. of people exposed to Tweets

No. of Friends/Fans

No. of video/image views

Level of engagement

No. of comments

No. of Likes, etc.

Fan Page Quality score and stats

No. of ReTweets

Coverage online media value (CPM relative to coverage size)

Visibility within search returns

Improved site traffic

Case Study: Agile Nation

Aim: Raise awareness of its £12m European-funded project which addresses gender inequality in employment by training women and supporting employers to implement flexible working measures. Chwarae Teg wanted to position itself as relevant to ordinary women at the same time as spreading the word about Agile Nation.

Budget: Very small budget to achieve this!

Research: Technology specialist Forrester Research describes the internet as “just another channel for women to do what they enjoy: shopping, talking, and caring”. Its data showed that 55% of women aged 18 to 34 use the medium regularly compared with 45% of men. Women also make up the majority of users on most social networking sites, and 70% of female social network users are aged 25-54, the target demographic for the project.

Case study: Agile Nation

Designed multi-channel social media-led campaign aimed to start an online conversation amongst women about what inspires them in everyday life, promoting Agile Nation as a project enabling women to fulfil their potential

The campaign would culminate in an event for 200 women in Bridgend on International Women’s Day (IWD). Women not able to attend could enjoy it online.

Creative concept: Womenspire - Based on women inspiring other women and being inspired themselves. This underpinning ‘inspiration’ theme linked to motivation, achievements and self-improvement

Devised Innovative free ‘app’ with inspirational quotes from famous women, from Marilyn Monroe to Mo Mowlam, allowing women to post their own tales of inspiration onto the web at the touch of a button.

The ‘Womenspire’ app, created for the iPhone and Google Android platform, and launched on IWD, marked the first time a Welsh organisation used an ‘app’ to engage with women across Wales, which in itself grabbed headlines.

Agile Nation: Implementation

A Twitter profile, Facebook group, Linked-In group and dedicated section of Agile Nation website created where women could upload pictures & share inspiration

Audiences built using research and outreach

Regular content posted to all sites to stimulate response/interaction

The campaign promoted offline with ‘What Inspires You?’ Postcards which encouraged women to fill in and return or visit the dedicated website

Press coverage generated around ‘app’ launch to draw people’s attention to the campaign and drive them to social networking channels

Womenspire event tweeted in real time with hashtag. Women able to enjoy of event despite not being present

Event filmed and videos quickly put onto YouTube/Vimeo, including ‘inspiration vox pops’ with attendees

Agile Nation: Impact Campaign created a stir in the blogosphere

Guardian Cardiff, Waleshome.org and Superwoman blogs all mentioned it

Value of press coverage equated to over £48,000

Twitter - 340 followers within weeks

Linked In group had 50 professional members all with their own large networks, and active discussion threads

YouTube videos from IWD event - viewed over 700 times

App was downloaded 1071 times and achieved an average rating of 4 out of 5 across the iPhone/Android platforms

The final results

Web hits to www.agilenation.co.uk doubled during March 2010

Rise in enquiries to the project team

As a direct result of the campaign, Chwarae Teg’s commercial director was approached to take part in a Guardian Careers live web Q&A on flexible working

Account Director Sara Robinson was also invited onto BBC One Wales’ live political programme ‘Dragon’s Eye’ to discuss how Chwarae Teg used social media to engage with women

In legacy terms, the @womenspire channel is used for all Twitter/LinkedIn communication for Chwarae Teg and has become an online brand in its own right.

Any questions?