strategy
What’s the Plan, Stan?
We encourage every business, every campaign and every cause to have some kind of online strategy. That means an online presence with a purpose. What we see time and time again is one of two things: no real online presence at all, or a spray & pray type of online presence where every online tool imaginable is engaged but…poorly.
Some people say you should just dive right in and try social media, which we support. What we don’t support is opening multiple Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, blogs, Flickr accounts, and even websites – having them falter and then abandoning them. Abandoning them but not *removing* them. It’s a bit like getting a goldfish, not feeding it, and then never throwing it away.
Something else we see a lot are companies opening a social media account, and then someone else within that same company, opening one as well. And then a repeat of those actions by someone else a few months later – or on another coast – or in another department. Suddenly one company has 3 Facebook Pages and 4 Twitter accounts. The profiles are active – but each has a different fan base with different messaging. Talk about diffusing your online potential and confusing your online audience.
These are signs of diving in without a plan. It smells of “We should be online. Let’s make it so.”. Yes. Do make it so. But do it strategically. Do your homework. We promote the idea of doing an online assessment first to understand what you should do online and how you should do it. Then comes a strategy to get it done right.
Tags: assessment, audience, facebook, strategy, Twitter, website
Social Media Strategy? Spare Me
A friend of mine quietly sent me a slideshare presentation yesterday. It was created by a long established advertising and interactive agency in town. She sent it to me quietly because it was entitled “Why You Don’t Need a Social Media Strategy”. I guess she thought I should know I might soon be out of work, if word of this got around.
I enjoyed going through the slideshow.. and I didn’t entirely disagree with its point. However, there is an “it all comes down to semantics” argument to be made against it. Let me explain.
The presentation stated you don’t need a social media strategy. Instead, you need an engagement strategy, or an influence strategy. My take on the presentation was that it was capitalizing on the nausea widely experienced when hearing the ubiquitous phrase “social media strategy”. Fair enough. However, in our shop, engagement and influence are key parts of every strategy. Doesn’t that go without saying? Perhaps what the slideshow was trying to get at is the fact that it is vitally important to venture deeper than social media when designing an online plan. Mobile, website content, optimization, online advertising are all important, sometimes more important than social media depending on the business objectives for the strategy.
There is no question “social media” is getting way too much airtime. But for people new to the concept of having an integrated online strategy, this term can really help get them in the right line of thinking, despite its shortcomings.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?
Tags: digital strategy, engagement, influence, Social Media, strategy
5 Questions About Resourcing a Social Media Strategy
Resourcing Social Media
I’m attending the Canadian Public Relations Society conference in Regina. Lots of great PR practitioners here, many of whom work for municipal and provincial government, and other large organizations.
A common question keeps popping up. How does my organization resource an online social media strategy?
The question is understandable, given that many marketing and communications teams are working with reduced budgets and increased demands. Here’s the thing, an online strategy is not a bucket to be filled.
Every online strategy should be designed to match the internal resources (e.g. the available time and skill set of your existing team) and/or external support (e.g. budget to hire content creators or strategists). There is no point sketching out a comprehensive social media plan that will chew through content faster than you can create it.
Here are five questions to ask before designing your online strategy:
1) Who is the person in-house, or a subcontractor, to lead the online initiative? How much time do they have each day or each week to manage the project.
2) What is the skill set of the project lead? Does the strategy need to allow time for training, either formal (training by an experienced strategy team, workshops) or informal (via free webinars, books, reading online).
3) Are there others who can contribute content? What time do they have available?
4) What are the objectives for the online campaign? If the goals are too ambitious for the available resources, consider developing a multi-phase plan. Appeal to management to gradually increase resources if realistic benchmarks are met along the way.
5) Is the person or team running the online strategy empowered to be responsive? Are they authorized to answer questions and engage with target markets? When a question is asked that requires information from another department, or a language translation, how fast can it be acquired?
With answers to these questions in hand you, or your strategy team, will be in a much better position to design a digital strategy that sets everyone up for success.
Good luck!
Moyra
Tags: resourcing social media strategy, Social Media, strategy
Social + Search = Marketing (Part 3)
Photo by: The Rhumb Line
This is part 3 of the Marketing basics series. After discussing the 4 P’s of Marketing in part 1 and brand positioning in part 2, I will now discuss the customer sales cycle. It is very important to first understand what the sales cycle is and then to identify where you want to meet your potential customers. What online channels you use and how you engage with your potential customer will change depending on the sales cycle phase.
The sales cycle can be broadly broken down as:
- Phase 1 – Awareness
- Phase 2 – Search and Evaluation
- Phase 3 – Purchase
- Phase 4 – After-sales
Phase 1 – Awareness
Customers in the Awareness phase either do not know that your product exists or do not yet desire your product. The marketing objective when targeting customers is this phase is to make your product readily available so that when the customer is ready to find your product, they will be able to.
Sample online channels: Organic Search, PPC Search, PPC Display
Phase 2 – Search and Evaluation
Customers in the Search and Evaluation phase know they want your product or a competitor’s product, but must decide which product to buy and where to buy it. The marketing objective when targeting customers in this phase is to provide them with as much information as possible in a convenient and easy to use interface.
Sample online channels: Company website, Facebook Page, review sites (eg. Epinions.com)
Phase 3 – Purchase
Customers in the Purchase phase have finally decided to purchase your product and now need to physically make the purchase. The marketing objective when targeting customers in this phase is to facilitate the customers’ purchase, make it as easy as possible, make it stress free and make it a positive experience.
Sample online channels: Company website, mobile app, Facebook app
Phase 4 – After-sales
Customers in the After-sales phase have purchased and are using your product. The marketing objective when targeting customers in this phase is to create loyal customers by offering them value. It is an investment because a happy customer will be a returning customer. Selling to a returning customer is much easier and cheaper than trying to gain a new customer.
Sample online channels: Company website, Twitter, GetSatisfaction.com
Victor
eMarketing Strategist
Tags: after sales, awareness, basics, evaluation, loyal customers, online marketing, purchase, sales cycle, search marketing, social marketing, strategy
New Social Media Channel
I like Canadian twin-sister rock duo Tegan and Sara. I first heard them about 7 years ago when they were relatively unheard of. We featured them on a late-night arts & entertainment show I was producing for CBC TV. We did with them, what we did with all bands that came through the studio, we had them play a couple of songs and then we interviewed them.
There is no doubt in my mind, Tegan and Sara have been interviewed a bazillion times since – and likely have answered the exact same questions we asked them 7 years ago, a bazillion times over. Such is the nature of fame and fortune.
Even in our own less famous lives we encounter the same questions time and time again. What do you do? Where did you go to school? If you could be any animal, which one would you be? You know. The usual.
Every day that I explore social media, I discover new tools, new channels, new ideas – many that are great. But one thing I picked up on this week (thanks to some fine folks I follow on Twitter), strikes me as more visionary than the rest. It’s a website called FormSpring and its premise is simple: ask any question you want someone to answer. You pose a question to someone on FormSpring, that person answers it, and it lives on their profile forever – or until they choose to delete it. You can ask anonymously or as yourself.
FormSpring offers all kinds of widgets, one of them making it easy to add this tailored, user-generated FAQ to your personal or company blog.
The reasons I think this is brill:
- from a company standpoint, it means your customers/audience shape your FAQ’s; making your FAQ’s more relevant to those who are most relevant to your business
- by virtue of this previous point, it creates an opportunity for real transparency and accessibility – the hallmarks of social media done right
- a profile on FormSpring can provide a permanent (or as permanent as you like) list of answers to questions you get asked all the time. In the case of Tegan and Sara, this could be invaluable; not just for them but for their fans.
- it offers the respondent a way of controlling their messaging, while still being honest and open with those asking the questions
- and finally, it’s just fun. Asking anyone anything? Are you kidding me? That’s awesome.
It should be said, I have no affiliation whatsoever with FormSpring. But hey – I don’t want to steal your thunder. You can ask me that on my profile.
Or help Magnify Digital shape its FAQ section. We know you want to ask us about our dog.
Tags: FAQ, formspring, Social Media, strategy
