Last Friday I attended an event sponsored by PRSA National Capital Chapter on social media strategy and measurement. The following ten steps for implementing a social media campaign were presented at the event.
- Listen -Identify who is saying what about your brand. Listening is the first step to participating in social media.
- Share of Voice/Messaging - Determine your brand's share of voice (total mentions of a concept/brand/message). Consider if the mentions are positive or negative and understand where these conversations and messages are found. Then, map your key messaging according to the content of conversations.
- Set Goals and Benchmarks - Decide what you wish to accomplish with your social media campaign. Set tangible numbers to reach and then determine the amount of time it'll take you to reach that goal.
- Discover Communities and Bloggers that Matter -Who is currently talking about you and your brand? Locate communities that already exist and see how you can engage those interested groups.
- Identify Influencers - Understand who influences your target audience. Forrester Research, Inc. found that 83 percent of people trust opinions from friends, peers and acquaintances compared to 63 percent who trust experts.
- Create a Content Strategy - Social media success depends on relevant content. Use your listening information and audit existing content to see what can be repurposed for digital use.
- Choose Tools - Use tools to help find influencers. (RSS feeds, Technorati, AllTop, social networks, etc.)
- Create and Deliver Content - Make it easy to share your content. Put your content on feeds and add "Share This" or "Follow Me" buttons.
- Engage and Facilitate Conversations - Interact in social media platforms by commenting, direct messaging and responding as appropriate. Being a key player in the conversations about your brand is important to ensure that the information being shared about your company is accurate.
- Measure - Establish a benchmark of the top blogs that mention you or link to you and measure changes over time. Determine your current share of voice and use analytics to help establish numbers and benchmark any changes.
These steps can act as a useful guide when creating any social media campaign. Of course, building a campaign doesn't happen overnight. There are many other factors to keep in mind about this growing arena, which were discussed at this seminar.
Customers now have the power of voice through social networks. Traditionally, people would call customer service if they need assistance and often times would have to wait at length to receive an answer to their problem. However, with the power of social media, people are able to have their voice heard and receive a response in a matter of minutes. Companies such as Comcast, Southwest Airlines and Dell are among the key players who are taking advantage of the opportunity to provide real-time customer service through Twitter. Dell is also using Twitter to affect sales by providing discounts; the company recently reported a generation of $6.5 million in revenue through discounts distributed via Twitter.
Social media has affected public relations. As PR professionals, we need to service journalists by using news releases that incorporate any and all digital assets. SHIFT Communications released a social media press release template that serves as a good starting point when deciding which components to include. Brian Solis also digs a little deeper on a social media press release in his blog post titled "The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases."
The public's trust has evolved. Consumers pay attention to others' opinions by way of word-of-mouth and online reviews, and not solely through advertisements.
So what does this mean? This means as digital communications professionals, we need stay ahead of the curve and identify trends in social media. We need to change the way we think about public relations. Traditional PR and digital communications should not require two separate plans of action, rather both are necessary for a successful and integrated campaign.
