social media and online communities
DESCRIPTION
A primer for passive and active social media and the role of user generated and self generated online communitiesTRANSCRIPT
Social Media Communities
To Build or To Join?
Andrew AbendM is for Marketing
The Answer
• Should you join an existing community or build your own?
YES
Your Questions
• How can online communities benefit our clients?
• Is it worth the time to build a presence in an online community?
• Where to get started? Does a directory exist?• Legal issues regarding privacy and ownership
of content
HOW ARE YOU USING SOCIAL MEDIA?
Social Media Channels Used
Face
book
Linke
dIn
Blog
YouTube
Technorati
Online Communities
CitySe
arch
KudzuFli
ckr
Yelp
AdWord
s0.00%
20.00%
40.00%
60.00%
80.00%
100.00%
Personal Client
Using Social MediaM
aint
ain
Fan
Page
Com
mun
icat
e W
ith C
usto
mer
s
Send
Out
Pre
ss R
elea
ses
Link
edIn
Pre
senc
e
Mon
itor C
usto
mer
Fee
dbac
k
Twitt
er A
ccou
nt
Cond
uct R
esea
rch
Enga
ge B
logg
ers
Hol
d Co
ntes
ts
Prom
otion
Blog
Lead
Onl
ine
Dis
cuss
ions
0%
20%
40%
60%
Regularly Use Most Successful
Measuring Social Media
Fans
Follo
wers
Web Site Visit
s
Blog Mentions
Blog Comments
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
80.00%
How Social Media Helps Business
• Generate Leads/Sales• Change Perception• Brand Management• Provide Transparency• Network• Gain Insight• Corporate Promotion
How Social Media Helps Business
• Active Social Media• Passive Social Media
Active Usage
• Actively promoting your company through:– Direct promotion– Education– Pay Per Click content ads– Behavioral targeting– Encouraging third party endorsement via blogs with
strong followings• Active usage allows you to control your message
and reach an interested or related audience
Purposes of Active Social Media
• Generate Leads/Sales• Brand Management/Changes Perception• Broadcast News Releases• Networking• Corporate Promotion
Challenges with Active
• Your audience must actually use social media on a regular basis
• Need to create an environment in which consumers want to receive your self-promotion
• Requires right balance of updates so people are not inundated with information yet still receive your message
• Requires commitment to provide information on a consistent basis
• Expectations that anything put on the web will become “viral”
Passive Social Media
• Using audience insight gleaned from social media to change your brand and/or business
• Tools include:– Forums– Review Sites (Yelp, Rip-Off Report, Kudzu, etc)– Fan Pages– YouTube Videos– Twitter
Passive Usage
• Monitoring online activity to understand what consumers are saying about your product
• Interaction with customers creates a stronger bond with them
• Information gathered can be used to improve products and customer service
• Makes sure your product and brands are being represented correctly
Challenges with Passive
• Information overload - companies often react to every comment instead of identifying trends
• The opposite of information overload is dismissing what your customers are saying because they “don’t understand what we are trying to do”
• Requires time to monitor online activities
STRATEGYUsing Social Media Effectively
Strategies
• Deploy a combination of active and passive strategies utilizing social media
• Active– To build a strong following of evangelists– Use for promotions, special offers and announcements to
loyal fans– To educate people on brand/products
• Passive– Understand what audience is saying about your brand– Gain ideas for new products and uses– Provide transparency and accessibility to the brand
ACTIVE STRATEGY
Blogs
• First Person– Blog directly from your brand– To build strong following content needs to be beneficial to
your audience• Can not be solely self-promotion
– Ensure posts have the ability to be linked to interest sites like Digg, De.li.cious, and StumbleUpon
• Benefits– Let’s you provide useful information to an interested audience– Good information tends to be disseminated by readers to
their friends
Blogs
• Third Party Endorsement– Reach out to bloggers who are relevant to your
target audience with information regarding the services you provide
– Use Technorati or BlogSearch to find blogs• Benefits– Taps into established audience to which your brand
can receive exposure– Bloggers have credibility with their audience and an
endorsement goes a long way
Social Networking Sites• Facebook is the dominant social networking site with over 300
million users• It is the only consumer focused social networking site worth the time
to manage• Create a “fan” page in which people can become fans of your brand• Fan pages allows:
– People to interact with your brand– The opportunity to learn about new products, contests and events before
they become public– Provide online specials to fans– Fans to easily recommend your brand to friends– Link to relevant fan pages– Received blog and Twitter feeds
• Growing a fan base– Include Facebook button on website– Promote via microblogging (to be discussed later)– Tap into employees who are on Facebook promote to their
friends– Public Relations– Use Facebook’s audience targeted ads to drive traffic
• Benefits:– Creates evangelists by giving “fans” access to something the
general public does not receive– Provides inexpensive venue for marketing
MicroBlogs• Twitter is the dominant MicroBlog at this time• Use of Twitter should be for three things:
– Drive traffic to website by promoting new blog topics– Drive traffic to Facebook by promoting contests, events, promotions– Create evangelists by announcing offers for Twitter-followers only
• Promotion of Twitter presence will come through:– Facebook fan page– Twitter button on web site and blogs– Employee emails/networks
• Benefits:– Inexpensive way to drive traffic to website/Facebook– Creates loyal followers and customers
Sharing
• Sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr will be good tools for contests and promotions
• Your brand should set up company pages for future promotions and, on YouTube,
• Employees should promote any video or photos to their friends via Facebook, Twitter and email
Additional Active Activities
• Cost per click search ads can be purchased two ways – by search terms or by content
• Search terms bring up your ads when people search your specific terms
• Content ads are delivered in blogs, news, etc when people are reading about a topic that is related to your product
• Cost per click ads to drive people directly to your client’s site
PASSIVE STRATEGY
Passive Strategy
• The ongoing monitoring of all social media channels• Understand what is being said about your brand
and responding when necessary• Monitor blogs and comment when appropriate– All responses must be positive and grateful, not
defensive• When a trend is noticed that your brand chooses to
respond to, reach out to the channel(s) that made you aware of it, acknowledging them and the result of their feedback
TRACKINGMeasuring Your Effort
Web Analytics
• Google web analytics allow you to see which social marketing activities are driving people to your web site and what people are doing on the site when they get there
• Google Analytics is a free tool that should be programmed into your website regardless of your social media activity
Social Media Tracking
• ViTrue or Techrigy– Track mentions across various social media like
Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc– Both have a limited free service– Techrigy allows you to track by demographics,
geography and positive/negative comments– ViTrue allows you to compare social media activity
versus a competitor
Fans and Followers
• Simplest measure is the number of “fans” and “followers” that your brand gains on Facebook and Twitter respectively
ONLINE COMMUNITIES
Active and Passive Communications
Community Measurement
• Key to either online community is setting up measurable metrics– Increased visits to your client’s web site • Especially direct links from online community
– Change in tenor of comments – Online Mentions– Fans & Followers• Special codes & coupons
Online Communities
• User-Generated – Created by people to connect with others with like interests and share ideas
• Self-Generated – Created by a company to create dialogue, provide transparency, share ideas in an effort to create evangelists
User Generated • Pros
– Already established– Group protocol exists– Easy to learn about the group
make-up through existing discussions
– Will gain objectivity regarding topics in which you are interested
– Potential source for great customer insight
– Provides platform to address negative comments in a productive manner
• Cons– View corporate
participants skeptically– Will “flame” your brand
if your purpose is disguised
– No control over content– Time consuming
Self-Generated
• Pros– Ability to lead conversations– Attracts fans of the brand– Provides transparency– Platform to move fans to
zealots– Platform to award fans for
their support– Learn what questions your
best fans have knowing others will have them as well
– Invites corporate promotion
• Cons– Takes time to establish
large, active following– Requires ongoing
nurturing– Lose objectivity by
regularly speaking to the converted
– Will be held accountable for promises and comments
Are You Ready To Create A Community?
• A Simple Test:– Do you have a Facebook page for your client?– How many fans does it have?– Does the page encourage conversation? – What percentage of page communications is press
announcements?– Are fans creating their own discussions?– Are fans responding to discussions you post?– Do people regularly comment on your blog or
tweets?
Join or Create?
• Yes - Join– Find a few highly
targeted user generated communities and begin to monitor
– Participate when appropriate
– Always identify yourself– Track efforts– Measure ROI
• Yes – Create– Start simply with
Facebook Fan page– Follow Test– If it proves successful,
expand to a private community
– Track efforts– Measure ROI
QUESTIONS?
Your Questions
• How can online communities benefit our clients?
• Is it worth the time to build a presence in an online community?
• Where to get started? Does a directory exist?• Legal issues regarding privacy and ownership
of content
Andy AbendM is for Marketing
[email protected]:@MarketSmarterhttp://MarketSmarter.biz
http://SmarterMarketing.Wordpress.com404.316.4820