Writing for Social Media: A Guided Workbook

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Writing forSocial Media

a Guided Workbook

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Everything is better when it has meaning

children ask “why?” from the moment they can talk. as grown-ups, sometimes we stop asking why, and sometimes avoid answering why because we know that the answers are complicated and we just don’t have the time.

However, as marketers and community Managers, we can never stop asking why. We need to drill down to the deepest whys. When we know the answer to the question,“Why?” it provides focus for everything we do. all the content you create and curate, the style in which you write, and the channels where you share—can all be determined by this simple little word.

VISIONanother word for ‘the why’ is vision. a company’s answer to why is their vision. it’s the main goal, the ideal future place a company or brand wants to be. Knowing a company’s vision can help you align what you’re trying to accomplish with the content you’re writing. is it brand awareness? is it credibility? is it to change the perception of an entire industry? once you know the vision, the writing comes a little more easily because you have focus.





The Big Story

The story that we tell is no longer static like an ad in a magazine. We get to use multiple channels to tell an ongoing story about our brand, and then multiple users get to interact with that story and make it their own.

if you’re doing a good job as a community Manager each chapter of the story you share evokes more engagement naturally. This is because your vision resonates with the individual and collective vision of your community.





old-school marketing had the brand’s vision as most important. Marketing executives and advertising agencies sat in a room and developed campaigns based on what the client wanted, not on what the consumer needed.

With social media, brands understand the need to move away from deceptive, condescending marketing and advertising. But it has taken them a while to drop the narcissistic megaphone of:

We’re all on social media to hang out with people and search for content that interests us. We don’t want to be sold to.

Customers don’t need a pat on the back. They need their needs met.It keeps driving back to that shared vision.

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old School vs. New School Marketing

“Me! Me! ME!”





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company intentions

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What do you think your company’s core values are?

What are your intentions for social media?

What needs are you trying to meet?

What’s the company’s biggest challenge?





customer intentions

What are your [potential] customer’s intentions when communicating with your company on social?

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What’s their vision? What goals do they have? What needs are they trying to meet?

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What don’t they want? What are they avoiding or moving away from?

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Finding common Ground

are the company’s intentions in alignment or at odds with the customer’s intentions?

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How are the company’s goals aligned with the customer’s goals? do the company’s goals serve to meet the customer’s goals?

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FocusWriting for social isn’t that hard. it’s staying focused on the vision—and the strategy that will bring about that vision, takes discipline.

Many of you are probably interested in learning how to be more strategic on social. So before we move to the specifics of writing for the digital world, let’s walk through some exercises that will help you understand your company’s big vision and learn how to write and create content strategically.

Step 1: Identify Past SuccessesSpend the next five minutes identifying four or five examples where your company/client has had success in recent years. Try to identify whether there is a common theme—or themes—to these examples. Write them down.

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Step 2: Identify Core ValuesSpend the next five minutes developing a list of attributes that you believe identify who your company is and what their priorities are. The list can be as long as you need.

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See if you can narrow it down to just two or 3.

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Step 3: Identify ContributionsMake a list of the ways you imagine the company could make a difference. in an ideal situation, how could/does your company contribute best to:

The world In general ITS CuSTomerS

The CommunITy ITS employeeS





Step 4: Identify Goals

Spend a few minutes thinking about the company’s priorities and its business goals. Think about some short-term and long-term goals. Write down a few.

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Step 5: Write Mission Statement

Based on the first four steps and a better understanding of your company, begin writing your corporate mission statement.

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What?Now that we’ve answered the why, now it’s time for “what.” and the what stands for the business goal. (There can be more than one goal.)

This is the overall goal you’ll be holding yourself accountable to as a community Manager, and how you’ll determine the content you’ll publish. Here’s an example of a goal:

• increase U.S. brand awareness of XYZ product through social media

Take a couple of minutes to write down what you think the overall goal for your client is with regard to using social media.

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Now that we have the overall goal established, let’s look at the objectives.Who, when and where is a good way to think about objectives.

For Example:

• increase company blog subscribers by 10% in 6 months

• Host 4 Google Hangout on air sessions (one per quarter) to discuss XYZ product usage and achieve at least 50 subsequent YouTube views for each episode

• Grow our linkedin Group to 200 members (a 20% increase) by the end of the year

• establish a Facebook Fan Page with 500 fans within 6 months

Here’s an example of objectives based on the goal “increase brand awareness of the xyz product in social media.”

all of these items follow the SmarT methodology, which means they’re Specific, Measurable,Actionable, Realistic, and Timed. it’s worth noting that these objectives are determined after a thoughtful analysis of who your customers are and what they want - that helps to determine which channels you’ll use.

objectives:

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How?The how is the strategy.once you have the objectives written, you develop a strategy or set of strategies for how you’ll accomplish each one.

Here’s a strategy laid out for the first objective, “Increase company blog subscribers by 10% in 6 months.”

Increase company blog subscribers by 10% in 6 months:

• Assign a team to help create useful, valuable and shareable blog content

• Develop an editorial calendar to post three times weekly, and give blogging assignments

• Write a clear, easy-to-find opt-in for website that demonstrates the value of subscribing to blog

• Create and share an incentive to subscribe

• Add a persuasive footer at the bottom of each blog article

• Optimize content for SEO

• Leverage social presence

• Guest blog with link in byline

how?Tactics

These are how your strategy gets implemented. Tactics for the first strategy might include:

• Assign a team to help create useful, valuable and shareable blog content

• Send email asking people if they want to write for the blog

• Set a meeting with your manager to select the contributors

• Set up their profiles on the blog platform

That’s a snapshot of what a thoughtful strategic plan for developing marketing content for social media might look like.





Know the brand vision

Takeaways

1

54

32Know and respect

your audience

align your vision with the audience’s

vision

Have a strategy edit, edit, edit co-create the big story

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ThankS for reading!

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Writing for Social Media: A Guided Workbook

Marketing

Transcript of Writing for Social Media: A Guided Workbook