SOCIAL MEDIA DEMYSTIFIEDBuilding effective strategies for business-to-business marketing communications programs

SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED

Social media: a broad set of online activities driving interaction among individuals and groups using technology applications.

SOCIAL MEDIA, STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s fourth largest between the United States and Indonesia.

The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females.

The second-largest search engine in the world is YouTube.

Twenty-five percent of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.

Seventy-eight percent of buyers trust peer recommendations — only 14 percent trust advertisements (traditional marketing).

Twenty-five percent of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone.

SOCIAL MEDIA DEMOGRAPHICSFacebook 99.6 million

visitors/month 54% female 46% between

ages of 18 to 34

58% earn more than $60K

42% college-educated

LinkedIn 28 million

visitors/month 53% male 78% over the age

of 35 68% earn more

than $60K 50% college-

educated

Twitter• 27 million

visitors/month• 53% female• 72% between

ages of 18 and 49

• 52% earn more than $60K

• 42% college-educated

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

Conversations Collaboration Multimedia Rants & Raves Brand Monitoring

THE ART OF CONVERSATION

Social media is a two-way conversation that requires brand-alignment and planning. One: Observe Yourself Two: Listen to Others Three: Define Community Expectations Four: Define Your Assets Five: Set Goals and Metrics Six: Concentrate on Channels Seven: Engage in Conversations

ONE: OBSERVE YOURSELF

At this stage, we observe: Brand personality Methodologies and channels Target audiences Audience involvement

TWO: LISTEN TO OTHERS

As in the best practices of holding a real-life conversation, companies engaged in social media marketing should listen to stakeholders more than 50 percent of the time

THREE: DEFINE COMMUNITY EXPECTATIONS

During this stage we outline our target demographics by listening to our community. Reach out to influencers and ask them 1) how they use social media and 2) what they wanted to see in a social media plan.

FOUR: DEFINE YOUR ASSETS

At this stage, we look at the dollars and cents of social media. A common misconceptions is that social media is free but it requires time, and time is money.

FIVE: SET GOALS AND METRICS

The goals of a social media program should evolve over time. During your initial program, track goals and metrics.

GOALS AND METRICS

Goal Metric

Build a community on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn that represents your employee base and recruits.

Increase membership 10 percent month over month in each network

Work with IT and marketing to create a solid process for recruitment tracking from social media activities to document effectiveness as well as employee participation.

Creation of a documented system Lead generation of 10 percent directly from social

media activities

Increase website traffic to HR/Careers section Drive 25 percent of traffic to site from social media URLs

Establish a hub – such as a corporate blog or LinkedIn company page – as a thought leadership tool and see syndication

See the blog referenced at least 25 times during test period

Earn at least 10 comments per month

Increase qualified subscriptions to corporate e-news, etc. Increase subscriptions by 5 percent month over month

SIX: CONCENTRATE ON CHANNELS

Determine the channels that are recommended for your company’s social media HR portfolio and what you can expect from each.

SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS TO CONSIDER

Community Communication

Brand Exposure Traffic Building SEO

Twitter Good: use monitoring tools to track what people are saying about brand, products, and competitors

Good: good website integration; engage customers in viral ways.

OK: requires solid strategy

OK: limited but tweets will rank high on results

Facebook Good: for engaging people who like the brand and want to express opinions. good for sweepstakes

Good: Brand pages are great for this, especially through ad platform.

OK Bad

Flickr OK OK Bad Good: heavily indexed

LinkedIn OK Good: great for personal branding. Have all employees maintain complete profiles

Bad OK

YouTube Good: good customer engagement

Good: great brand building if channel is built and maintained

OK Good: highly indexed

Digg OK Good: great for objective press and blog coverage; cannot sound like advertisement

Good: great for traffic spikes

Good: great indexing

Stumble Bad OK Good: wide range of people will get exposed

Good: if story makes it to top

SEVEN: ENGAGE IN CONVERSATIONS

Online conversations must mirror real-life conversations to be effective for company branding, recruitment, culture-building and organizational development.

CONVERSATION GUIDELINES

Be transparent Be authentic Be conversational Focus on our industry Respond to criticism immediately Thank profusely

CASE STUDYPrintronix Path2Profit channel partner loyalty program launch

CASE STUDY: PRINTRONIX PATH2PROFIT PROGRAM LAUNCH

Situation: Printronix sells its products and services through the channel. For many years, Printronix ignored its partner channel. In 2009, the company recognized that its partners are important and set out to launch a comprehensive loyalty program. Remarx Media was brought on to support the program by creating and distributing: Program name Program image Program materials: application, program guide, FAQs, Partner communications Employee communications Marketing options

CASE STUDY: PRINTRONIX PATH2PROFIT PROGRAM LAUNCH

Goals Create website as central hub for the program Create easy to understand and use program materials Communicate program to internal Printronix employees

to ensure support of the program Communicate benefits of Path2Profit program to

existing Printronix partners Sign-up 40 qualified partners

CASE STUDY: PRINTRONIX PATH2PROFIT PROGRAM LAUNCH

Results Website was created in one week using WordPress at

www.printronixpath2profit.com

CASE STUDY: PRINTRONIX PATH2PROFIT PROGRAM LAUNCH

Results (cont’d) Extensive materials were developed including:

Application Comprehensive program guide Frequently asked questions Level specific presentations Marketing development funds (MDF) application Examples of MDF programs

Developed employee communications including: Letter from Vice President of Sales announcing the program Separate incentive program for supporting the initiative

CASE STUDY: PRINTRONIX PATH2PROFIT PROGRAM LAUNCH

Results (cont’d) A series of outreach communications were developed to

encourage partners to sign up for the new program, including: Launch email Application email and 2-3 reminders over a one month period Out call campaign MDF announcement News release Channel eNewsletter

CASE STUDY: PRINTRONIX PATH2PROFIT PROGRAM LAUNCH

Results (cont’d) More than 100 applications were submitted to Printronix. The

applications represented partners in three levels: Platinum: 20 partners Premium: 30 partners Associate: 50 partners Reseller: 60

Client Reaction “Remarx Media is a dedicated partner and really knows the

channel market. I rely on them as my outsourced channel marketing department. Their recommendations are spot-on and consistently result in positive outcomes for Printronix and our partners. – Lisa Reickerd, director, channel marketing, Americas and China

SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDY HTTP://

WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=H-XGD67DLHI&FEATURE=PLAYER_EMBEDDED

Theresa Dreike

theresa@remarxmedia.com

www.twitter.com/prdreamer

www.linkedin.com/in/theresadreike

714-706-0433 ext. 102

Cara Stewart

cara@remarxmedia.com

www.twitter.com/remarx

www.linkedin.com/in/carastewart

714-706-0433 ext. 101