SOCIAL MEDIA DEMYSTIFIED Building effective strategies for business-to-business marketing communications programs SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED Social media: a broad set of online activities driving interaction among.
Download ReportTranscript SOCIAL MEDIA DEMYSTIFIED Building effective strategies for business-to-business marketing communications programs SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED Social media: a broad set of online activities driving interaction among.
SOCIAL MEDIA DEMYSTIFIED Building 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 DEMOGRAPHICS Facebook LinkedIn 99.6 million 28 million visitors/month visitors/month 54% female 53% male 46% between 78% over the age ages of 18 to of 35 34 68% earn more 58% earn more than $60K than $60K 50% college 42% collegeeducated educated Twitter • 27 million visitors/month • 53% female • 72% between ages of 18 and 49 • 52% earn more than $60K • 42% collegeeducated 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. 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 Increase qualified subscriptions to corporate e-news, etc. Increase subscriptions by 5 percent month over month Creation of a documented system Lead generation of 10 percent directly from social media activities See the blog referenced at least 25 times during test period Earn at least 10 comments per 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 Brand Exposure Traffic Building SEO Good: good website integration; engage customers in viral ways. OK: requires solid strategy OK: limited but tweets will rank high on results Good: Brand pages are great for this, especially through ad platform. OK Bad Flickr Community Communication Good: use monitoring tools to track what people are saying about brand, products, and competitors Good: for engaging people who like the brand and want to express opinions. good for sweepstakes OK OK Bad Good: heavily indexed LinkedIn OK Bad OK YouTube Good: good customer engagement OK Good: highly indexed Digg OK Good: great for traffic spikes Good: great indexing Stumble Bad Good: great for personal branding. Have all employees maintain complete profiles Good: great brand building if channel is built and maintained Good: great for objective press and blog coverage; cannot sound like advertisement OK Good: wide range of people will get exposed Good: if story makes it to top Twitter Facebook SEVEN: ENGAGE IN CONVERSATIONS Online conversations must mirror real-life conversations to be effective for company branding, recruitment, culturebuilding and organizational development. CONVERSATION GUIDELINES Be transparent Be authentic Be conversational Focus on our industry Respond to criticism immediately Thank profusely CASE STUDY Printronix 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: Reseller: 50 partners 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=HXGD67DLHI&FEATURE=PLAYER_EMBEDDED Cara Stewart [email protected] www.twitter.com/remarx www.linkedin.com/in/carastewart 714-706-0433 ext. 101 Theresa Dreike [email protected] www.twitter.com/prdreamer www.linkedin.com/in/theresadreike 714-706-0433 ext. 102