Posted: April 15, 2011

BY lakeshia artis

lakeshia.artis@insidebiz.com

Social media platforms exploded onto the scene in the last decade and since then businesses and individuals have used them to market services and products.

To maneuver the social media landscape, businesses must master the art of content strategy, providing the audience with relevant, useful and engaging conversation as well as figuring out which social platform avenues, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, to use.

"Companies need to determine their goals and objectives," said Joe Takach, CEO of Meridian Group, an advertising and PR firm in Virginia Beach. "Some folks just jump into social media and don't know what they want to achieve. In order to establish goals, you have to determine which platform is good for your company."

Businesses must remember that social media sites are communication, not sales, platforms. Simply posting links to blogs and websites doesn't generate interest in your business.

"Make sure you're providing relevant content as it relates to your business and what the consumer really wants out of the relationship," Takach said. "It's not about you. It's about the client and audience."

Launch Interactive, a media division of Meridian Group, is responsible for websites, email and social marketing for clients. It has developed a custom-designed blog for clients to push the content out to different social media sites.

"Most of our clients are using a blog-based platform," Takach said. "The blog is the cornerstone of all of our social marketing activities. When the client or agency posts something on the blog, it automatically feeds to the appropriate social media site."

Social media measurement software tools like Radian6are, Cymfony Orchestra and Sm2 (Techrigy) are useful to businesses that want to monitor the conversations and activity on the social sites.

"We use Meridian 6, a private software program that helps us monitor every conversation on the Internet about our client," Takach said. "We're monitoring 24/7. We set up alerts so it notifies us about anything that could be crucial to our communication strategy."

Choosing the correct social platform is essential for a business to succeed in this market.

"LinkedIn is for more B2B customers," said Elizabeth Lester, president of Launch Interactive. "Twitter requires more upkeep. You need to be on it all the time. With Facebook, you can do something daily. Depending on how we structure the program, it can work out well but it may not fit with the client's communication strategy."

From the experts

Social media experts Andrew Hanelly, director of Digital Marketing at TMG Custom Media in Washington, D.C., and Heather Rast, principal of Insights & Ingenuity in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, answered questions to help businesses understand social media and learn how to develop a content strategy plan that will deliver positive results.

For businesses that are new to social media, define content strategy.

Hanelly In its simplest form, content strategy is the idea of connecting with audiences with useful information or entertaining editorial as opposed to using traditional advertising methods. People respond to good stories, useful information and entertainment better than they respond to traditional advertising. Content strategy is the planning, creation, distribution and management of editorial used to help build a relationship with a customer by offering value as opposed to making a sales pitch.

How important is it to consider what social media platform to use when sharing content?

Hanelly It's easy to be guided by buzz and jump on to new social networks as they come out. Quora is a great Q&A site, and it seems that everywhere you look these days you see a Twitter logo, but that doesn't mean it should be where you are spending your time. Figure out where your audience is congregating, and work to be a valued member of that community. The other thing to consider is owning your presence in some way and not putting all of your eggs in the basket of someone else's social network (e.g., Facebook or Twitter) and not building a presence (like a blog) on your own domain.

Rast While the tools used are secondary to the strategy, it's certainly important to fish where your fish are. Meaning, it's important for a company to have a strong grasp on its target audience profile (customers and stakeholders or influencers). With those profiles, personas can be created to typify the users around whom all strategies should be developed. When a company knows who they're after and what it has to offer them, it can then select platforms that perform well for the target.

What are some key tips for having a successful presence on social media sites?

Hanelly Don't be afraid to share other people's content. Always strive to be useful or entertaining. Have someone at your organization lead the charge, but try to incorporate more than just one voice. Social media is an opportunity to show the breadth and depth of your business, and showcase the people that make it special. Be responsive: Whether it's negative or positive, show people that you are actively engaged.

Rast Social media can be a volatile topic for many organizations. Stakeholders - including those pivotal to supporting its execution, like customer service, IT or accounting departments (where social media touches customers directly, or where integration or data is controlled) - can have divergent opinions as to its value and use. Others may feel threatened by the uncertainty of how social media might impact their current jobs. As important as defining objectives, goals, KPIs and metrics are, it's equally important for an organization to talk openly and honestly about its intentions for social media in order to garner the attitudinal and behavioral support necessary to execute. Failure to plan is a plan for failure.

What are some of the biggest mistakes people make when using/approaching social media?

Hanelly When people make it all about themselves as opposed to trying to be a valuable member of a community, it turns the rest of the community off. Think about it like this: If you go to a party and you don't know anyone, the best thing to do is introduce yourself and ask people questions about themselves as opposed to going up and talking about yourself. Listen first and ask good questions. If you have something to add, say it, but make sure it brings value to the conversation. Companies can also tend to be impatient with social media. It's not a light switch you can flip on; it's tough work to gain traction. Building relationships with customers is like building a relationship in real life: It takes time to build trust and the bond isn't formed overnight. It's formed by being consistently helpful, entertaining or informative.

Do you think companies have a tendency to act like advertisers instead of creating compelling or useful content?

Hanelly Companies that won't be successful in social media are the ones that treat it like a press release distribution service. Forcing unwanted content on people is why some traditional advertising models are broken. Social media is a chance to show personality, but it's also an opportunity to treat your audience like "people" instead of "customers."

Rast I think many companies have yet to embrace a truly social mindset. It may be fear of losing control, fear of shining a light on competitive solutions or businesses or the ingrained bullhorn mentality common with traditional advertising methods that keeps them from coming to know their online customer better. Companies that only tweet or update their Facebook page status with "me" messages ("Check out our new press release!" or "Our president is speaking at XYZ conference, you should go!" or "This is our second highest-revenue month ever!") don't realize that they're doing something they probably wouldn't try in normal conversations. Who talks only about their own personal interests (or in this case, business interests)? If a conversation - in real life or online - isn't a reciprocal flow of variable, useful dialogue, then it's not a conversation. It's a speech.

How often should businesses measure the results of their conversations on social sites?

Hanelly It's tempting to obsess over performance analytics, but overanalysis can sometimes cause paralysis and deter you from doing other, more important things. Figure out what metrics you will use to determine your success and check in on them on a monthly basis.

Rast The appropriate frequency for measurement can vary by organization, and may further vary based on the company's objectives, whether tied to branding value, awareness, reach, lead development, conversions/sales, referrals or something different.

What's critical is to begin any program with data from website analytics, CRM tool and any existing social media presences.

It's difficult to impossible to collect some of those data points later, so a program leader should have a full spectrum of information documented first.

Part of the measurement process includes determining key performance indicators that are relevant and important to the organization, then defining the metrics that contribute to the KPIs. This, along with benchmarking, should be done at the onset of any social media program. nib

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