Module 8

Question 1

Benefits of Social Media

Answer 1

– Interact with customers especially with Brand evangelists & influencers
– Potential to go viral
– In some categories can account for 25% of web traffic
– Can be used for advertising-e.g., FB promoted posts
– Feedback loop
– Learn more about your audience’s likes, dislikes, behavior– sentiment analytics
– It has made niche targeting a lot easier

Question 2

Downside of Social Media

Answer 2

 Creates expectations-of fresh & unique content
 Very time consuming-expensive in terms of labor & time
 Conversations cannot be controlled
 Negative reviews/comments may be pervasive-requires monitoring
 In many categories more top of the funnel, awareness and organic social media often not good for conversion/sales

Question 3

The biggest downside of social media

Answer 3

It Takes Time

Monitor (15 min/day)
Target (20 min/day)
Engage (30 min/day)
Publish (3-5 hours/week)
Build Community (5-10 hours/wk)

Question 4

Why Social Media?

Answer 4

It’s where the people are and spend their time:
• FB has over 2 Billion monthly active users; over 2 billion posts are liked and commented on per day; on average, more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day
• YouTube: 40 hours of video footage is uploaded to the site every minute.

• Can be low cost and the best way to reach certain niche demographics- mountain bike aficionados
• Some if it can help SEO: blogs, videos, comments and reviews more helpful. Does help with recently discovered activity, traffic to your site, number visitors does help so can aide indirectly. Many social media set as do not follow links or set to private

Question 5

Most popular social networks worldwide, ranked by number of active users

Answer 5

Facebook
YT
WhatsApp
FB Messenger
WeChat
Instagram
Tumblr

Question 6

Opinion leaders

Answer 6

Social media=Networks= for some categories there will be like minded people connected to each other

Question 7

Social Media: figure out in your category, breakdown of Heavy vs Light content creators to

Answer 7

passive followers-90-9-1 rule

Question 8

Ratings & Reviews

Answer 8

90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people they know; 70% trust opinions posted online by unknown users.

Nielsen’s Global Online Consumer Survey

Question 9

Social media best for awareness –conversion not clear

Answer 9

• Social media is better at creating awareness & interest (reinforces) and maybe desire but weaker on conversion
• Search & email are better in converting customers
• Attribution with social media is difficult since top of the funnel

Question 10

Strategic uses of social media

Answer 10

Advertising and awareness
Insights and Research
Sales and Lead Generation
Community Management
Support and Customer Service
Reputation Management
SEO
Communication and Outreach

Question 11

Social media strategy considerations

Answer 11

• Use a compensatory model to see based on web analytics data traffic to website, conversions
• Determine budget (time and funds required) to achieve some traffic and engagement goals
• Measure the impact in some quantifiable way- improve reviews, ratings, SEO, etc.

Question 12

Social Media objectives should be in line with overall business strategy.

Answer 12

 Prioritize based on best payback
 What is the objective and by when?
 How will you measure success? Shares, traffic to website, etc.
 Understand the landscape- what do your customer use? maybe its not Twitter but YouTube (cars)

Question 13

Organic Challenges with Social Media

Answer 13

• Understand that most of your posts, tweets, videos etc. will NOT be seen by your followers on their feeds/their own social media page.
• However, they will be seen by those who visit your FB, Instagram page- - so one factor in favor of doing organic
• Why are so few being seen? SM platforms claim user experience, clutter issues but also an economic incentive- advertising

Question 14

Organic Reach in Facebook

Answer 14

• FB uses an algorithm – Edgerank- to determine if a post appears in a fans NewsFeed
• FB claims they use 100,000 individual weights in that algorithm -measures affinity/closeness
• Also looks at a person’s settings
• Bottom line: from 16% back in 2012 to less than 2% and maybe even less…

Question 15

Step 1: For your target market identify User Persona variables

Step 1b: Identify which platforms they are on….

Answer 15

Examples consumer market:  Age ranges
 Gender
 Educational level
 Ethnicities
 Household income
 Hobbies
 Urban vs rural
 Media consumption-
websites, Klout, TV show
magazines, etc.
 Behavioral- affinity
markets (e.g., home and gardening), not easy for non PPC social media selection
 Any other variable which a social media platform captures and reports

Step 1b: ….and how much time they spend on them.
Keep in mind that in these charts– only a few variables such as age or gender are shown-you need to dig into details using sources like Pew, Nielsen, eMarketer, etc.

Question 16

Step 2: Benchmarking–part “art” but mostly “science”

Answer 16

• Look within your category or affinity categories for successful social media
initiatives/content
e.g., if you sell airplane engines a cosmetics retailer benchmark is not wise; affinity: but if women’s cosmetics can look at hair care

• Identify those posts, tweets, pins, videos, images etc. that show engagement metrics- (conversion metrics you won’t have access to ) – so things like shares, retweets, positive comments, subscribers are more engagement signals than just a “Like”

Question 17

Benchmarking analysis

Answer 17

• Look for competitors or affinity companies with a large number of followers
• Then focus on top engagement posts, tweets, pictures and/or videos
• For each platform you have identified as ideal for your target audience, collect approx. 30-50 top performing content
• Don’t just copy and paste: provide detailed data. Separate by platform, see excel
• Then come up with some recommendations- sort results in descending order– if possible identify best days/times, types of images, tone of posts/tweets, etc.

Question 18

Step 3: Content decisions

Answer 18

Type of Content

• Identify sources for stories
• Content Curation
• Formats
• Voice, Style, & Benefits

Question 19

Type of content

Answer 19

• Your benchmarking should provide some good ideas as to type of content you will want to at least test

1. News: you provide in depth coverage for that topic (your industry technology or niche topics like minor league baseball in Texas, etc.)
2. Expert or Resource: you are the subject matter expert; answer questions, give advice, write “how to articles”, whitepapers; videos, interview other experts (i.e. how to maximize your tax deductions or excel for marketing)
3. The Unusual: you focus on subjects as long as relevant to your business that few people talk about (i.e. Profile of web users who are active from 12- 5 am)
4. Showcase your products with demos
5. User generated content or customer “success stories”
6. It can be a combination of all of the above

Question 20

Identify your Tone (personality)

Answer 20

• Opinionated: can be controversial, edgy or provocative commentary to get people engaged- debate you. (i.e. Why Facebook has no future for marketers)
• Authoritative: reputation, track record and resource (indium.com)
• Entertaining: you post fun things, competitions, customers having fun with your products (i.e. Wendy’s, Blendtec)

Question 21

Content curation is a way to save

Answer 21

time and add more depth to your content

30-40% of content can be statistics & data from others-give credit and use reliable sources

However 60-70% of content needs to be unique: your opinion and additional research (e.g., surveys)

Content curation is the combination of these which you then share on social media

Question 22

Copywriting issues: Fair Use

Answer 22

Public domain: statistics from government agencies.
Copyright has expired (70 years after authors death-if after 1978)

Copyrighted Fair Use: (Copyright Act)

1. Purpose and character: e.g., educational vs. making money/promotion
2. Nature of the copyrighted work: using factual more acceptable than creative works
3. Amount and substantiality of the portion used : no set %-use common sense
4. Effect of the use on the market for the original-decrease sales

Easy to read resource on Fair Use: http://www.bitlaw.com

Question 23

Integrated marketing

Answer 23

Alignment & Synergy with Other Media Vehicles

Question 24

Social Media Calendar

Answer 24

• Execution: who does what/when
• Alternate/rotate content/format/vehicles-benchmarking and research should give you some ideas as to best day & times-that should be deciding factor for when
• Space/frequency: how much is too much? Test!

Question 25

Step 4: Measuring tools

Answer 25

* Make sure you have a website analytic software setup (GA)- capturing referrals-which platform (website, emails, social media, search) sent traffic to your website * Also make sure you are using the reporting platform for each social media platform unless you have tool that combines them * Social Media Listening- monitor your social media platforms performance, views, likes, etc. but also public conversations-posts, tweets, on social media for your brand-covered in next section

Question 26

Social media metrics

Answer 26

* Classify for your business, which metrics are for awareness, engagement or amplification (we already know what conversion metrics look like-someone goes to your website or social media store and buys something or fills out a form) * Over time, you need to determine which, if any of the metrics that a specific platform has (Like’s vs. Shares) is a better predictor of conversions

Question 27

Step 4: Metrics

Answer 27

* Always calculate the costs (labor, software, images, etc.) incurred from your social media efforts * Calculate your ROP (lecture 1) from any social media campaign (contest) * Segment and see if the LTV from social media customers is different from that of other acquisition sources (e.g., PPC) * If awareness & interest is your goal: consider how to track eventual conversions (attribution) * Determine the conversion rate for each social media platform (LTV to CAC ratio 3:1) * Based on this, decide on budget allocation by platform

Question 28

Social Media Checklist

Answer 28

 Social media and content strategy  Account logins / Assigned administrators for each platform-Roles and responsibilities  Social media guidelines/policies for agencies and employees  Brand voice guidelines / brand tool kit  Content calendar  Monitoring and listening plan  Risk and escalation plan-protocol  KPIs, tracking, insights, reporting  Community guidelines

Question 29

Social Media Track & Analyze

Answer 29

* Manage: some platforms help you manage your own social media accounts: one view of all social media platforms, calendar, push content from one platform to many social media accounts, metrics dashboard * Listening: others also monitor and listen to all publically available social media platforms based on urls and keywords your enter (e.g., company hashtag) and categorize as positive or negative, by influencers and other variables * Platforms expensive because data sold to them by Twitter and others, also restrictions public vs private

Question 30

Specialized platforms

Answer 30

* Don’t assume a major social listening platform like Netbase, Salesforce Radian, etc. captures all conversations * For reviews for example need specialized platforms reason is data structure * Big marketing cloud players have added social media listening as module-IBM, Adobe, SF

Question 31

Online Reputation Management

Answer 31

* Power shifting to consumers * Repetition-3-5 times * Social media is 24/7/365

Question 32

Online Reputation Management | The First Step: Monitor the Conversation

Answer 32

* Requires moderation & pre- planned action nights, weekend, etc., * Customers do not use the channels designated by a company when they talk about them * The Internet makes it easy for a company to use the channels that customers have selected ``` One can track many relevant items: – Brand name – URL – Key products – Key personnel (names, job titles, etc.) – Competition – Industry ```

Question 33

Online Reputation Management | The Second Step: Measure What’s Being Said and By Whom

Answer 33

• Take stock of the messages being sent by your own company, which includes: – Web sites and domains owned by your company – Blogs maintained by employees/depts. – Blogs maintained by former employees • Audit all points of contact— This will give an idea of the content that is available to the public and what that content is saying Not all mentions are equal – They vary in terms of positivity or negativity and influence – All mentions do not require action from company – Some mentions require drastic measures from company – All mentions are an indication of consumer sentiment ``` • Whether a post is positive, negative, or indifferent can be quickly assessed by reading it; influence is a little harder to establish – Indicators (traffic, links, and subscriber numbers) can assist in assessing the influence of a blog • Factors that indicate credibility – Followers – Re-tweets – Size of the blog’s audience – Frequency of posts – Age of the blog ```

Question 34

Online Reputation Management | The Third Step: Manage, Engage and Lead the Conversation

Answer 34

Positive Neutral Negative Urgent

Question 35

Rules to Recover from an Online Brand Attack

Answer 35

1. Have pre-planned response plan 2. Humility 3. Listen 4. Act immediately-direct approach- take offline if possible 5. If what they’re saying is false.... Options are basically three A) Bury with positive reviews /content B) Contact the forum/review site C) Threaten/take legal action D) Ignore 6. If what they’re saying is true.... A) Fix the problem! B) Generate more positive content

Question 36

Additional problems in ORM

Answer 36

* Squattedusernames * Squatted domains * Trademarkinfringement (using Coca-Cola logo without permission) * Doppelgangers(JimMcDonald opens McDonalds restaurant) * Defamatory&False information * Fakeprofiles(posingastheCEOof Apple) • Need to use different tools and approaches, for example: Fake profiles might require you contact platform: i.e. Yelp Doppelgangers/ squatted domains or usernames: might require legal action for copyright infringement Defamatory & False: might require legal action or burying with positive content/comments Squatted username: identify and challenge