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
www.twitter.com/prdreamer
www.linkedin.com/in/theresadreike
714-706-0433 ext. 102
Cara Stewart
www.twitter.com/remarx
www.linkedin.com/in/carastewart
714-706-0433 ext. 101
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