How to Build a Social Media Community from Scratch

#SMWBuild

@tugagency

Friday September 27th 2013

WE BIG TRAFFIC

Tug Credentials

Established in 2006, based in Shoreditch, London

Offices in London & Toronto

Staff of 40+ search and social marketing specialists

Display, SEO, PPC, Social Media & Affiliates

100% accountable, transparent & results focussed

DMA Award winner 2009 & 2010 & 2011 for Best Use Of Search

2011 & 2012 Revolution Awards finalist

BIMAs 2013 Finalist – social community building

Some of our Clients

Background – Bombardier Beer

Wells & Young’s asked Tug to develop its Facebook Page for flagship beer Bombardier

Tug were involved in determining the media spend and campaign ideas to drive fans to the page and build an effective community where people can discuss all things Bombardier

We are proud to say that we have developed the UK’s largest online ale community, with over 75,000 likes engaging over 10,000 people every week

The alcohol sector and social media

Alcohol brands are moving to using a social media platform as their main B2C facing digital property – primarily Facebook Pages

Websites for many alcohol brands are now seen as a B2B property for on-trade and suppliers to find more information and make contact

The primary reason is that this sector depends on brand awareness (as there is no e-commerce aspect) and responsiveness from a social media community is a key way of ensuring this in a measurable way

Building a social community from scratch

For many people, a social media community is still a numbers game measured by likes or followers

Starting from scratch with an empty Page or profile can be a daunting prospect as its success/ progress is so immediately obvious

The trick is to hit the ground running, ensuring that even the first fans to arrive have fresh and engaging content to play with

What you will need

Clear objective and purpose – what is your community trying to achieve

Launch idea and possible competition

Creative assets pre-prepared

Ideas for creative and engagement

Access to Photoshop or a creative team

You need someone who lives and breathes social media working on the account ...

Listening to your target audience

There are a range of social media monitoring tools that can allow you to listen to what your audience is talking about

This is the first key step to understanding what type of content is going to keep your community engaged

Conversations and discussions are going to be the lifeblood of your community

What theme or conversation can you capitalise on and join?

Determine your budget and platform Growing a community from scratch will

cost time and money

Before setting the budget, it is important to have a goal or KPI in mind for how many people you are hoping to reach

It is possible to set your budget against the number of people you are expecting to bring into your community

Then it is important to think of the action that they are set to take when the user has clicked the ad and arrive in your community – what do they do now?

Setting up and launching

Register the social media domain names (use namechk.com)

Use a launch event and chose your day carefully, your media budget starts and it needs to be significant

Tie in some kind of activity that can take life on the community to kick start that initial conversation and make sure you have some good content pieces

Determine a content calendar based on new product launches, seasonality, specific events

Determine key categories and content for social distribution – each link should regularly lead the visitor to a point of engagement

The community should be an“anchor” for all content, to amplify the messaging that you know works with your community, channel by channel

Planning your conversation

Starting the conversation Launch idea should tie in with an event

or celebration that will kick start the engagement and get the community buzzing

This will also give you plenty of things to talk about, filling the page with comments and content to avoid people arriving on a blank page

New and potential fans clocking engagement and activity is more important than viewing the numbers of fans on the page

EdgeRank is Facebook’s way of determining what content gets seen in a person’s newsfeed

Continual engagement – with rich & relevant content, is needed to grow reach and likes, building awareness and ultimately retain your community on Facebook

Edgerank and the importance of engagement

Respond to your community regularly, ideally daily on Facebook

Balance between types of content and avoid repetition, particularly across different channels

Brand tone of voice should be adopted by anyone updating a status on a social media community

We recommend best practise is to respond to user comments within 20 minutes of a post being placed live

Community management

Learning from your community

The types of conversations that emerge in your community need to be addressed and understood

Popularity of posts is a good measurement for determining what topics and types of content resonate best with the community

We know on Facebook that embedded videos and pictures perform best in terms of content

We also know that fans prefer campaigning/ event based topics over observational/ announcement based posts

Competition fatigue?

People suffer competition fatigue on social media

Too many page depend on competitions to generate fans, giveaway are commonplace and often do not add much value

Small competitions that happen regularly run the risk of losing as many fans as you gain

Competitions now need to match the brand identity to ensure they target the right people and ideally offer something offline or event

Running Facebook ads

Facebook Ad Targeting

Choose your target audience carefully!

Matching the conversation with Ads

The ad targeting, copy and creative that brought people to your community is an important indicator as to what conversations they are going to engage with

Target audience profile demographic on Facebook to deliver advertisements

Facebook ads will increase the number of fans on the Page as an additional extra, creating a larger community to interact with following the campaign

The right content and the right time

Keeping up the momentum Friends and fans

and followers who are exposed to engagement &

activities

Increase reach among targeted

fans and followers across your community

Engagement Ideas and

Launch

Continually check Facebook Insights and keep an eye on all available metrics

Tweetreach is an effective tool to monitor how many people are seeing your messaging week on week

What we did for Bombardier

AIM 75k Facebook fans and take advantage of St George’s Day

CHALLENGE Ensure engagement and community grow together Fans become brand advocates and adorers

St. George’s conversation peak Enter the conversation, at the right time

Relaunching the Facebook Page

St. George’s Day cover image Populate the community with content Landing Tab listed in the Page Apps New Posts reflecting the creative concepts Pin St. George’s Day status to the top of the page

Competition and landing page

Standard Ads

Sponsored Video Post Ad Sponsored Image Post Ad

Facebook advertising

Page Post Ads: turn content uploaded on Fan Page into ads

Targeting new audiences Campaign Interests Reach

35-55 - TV Comedy

#Rik Mayall, #Dave (TV channel), #Hammersmith Apollo, #Red Dwarf, #Have I Got News for You, #Mock the Week, #Never Mind the Buzzcocks, #Men Behaving Badly, #The Young Ones (TV series), #Bottom (TV series), #Stephen Fry, #Blackadder, #Mr. E. Blackadder, #The New Statesman

559,200

35-55 - Sports

#Cricket, #Yorkshire County Cricket Club, #Lancashire County Cricket Club, #Warwickshire County Cricket Club, #Barmy Army, #The Ashes, #Test cricket, #Pakistan national cricket team, #India national cricket team, #Indian Premier League, #ICC World Twenty20, #2014 ICC World Twenty20, #ICC Test Championship, #Ireland cricket team, #Andrew Flintoff, #Rugby union, #Rugby World Cup, #Rugby league, #Heineken Cup, #England national football team, #Football, #Sport, #UEFA Champions League, #FA Cup, #UEFA Europa League, #Wayne Rooney, #David Beckham, #Manchester United F.C., #Manchester City F.C., #Chelsea F.C., #Arsenal F.C., #Liverpool F.C., #West Ham United F.C., #Tottenham Hotspur F.C., #Newcastle United F.C., #Fulham F.C., #Aston Villa F.C., #Stoke City F.C., #Football team, #Scottish Premier League

1,729,440

35-55 - England #Saint George's Day, #England, #London, #Manchester, #Cornwall, #Oxford, #Cambridge, #Salisbury, #Coventry, #Bristol, #Plymouth, #Brighton, #Portsmouth, #Nottingham

1,221,840

35-55 - Army #British Armed Forces, #British Army, #Red coat (British army), #Artillery, #Royal Air Force, #Royal Navy, #Royal Marines, #Military, #Military tactics, #Military history, #Territorial Army (United Kingdom)

473,660

35-55 - Drinking #Ale, #Pale ale, #Drinking, #Alcohol, #Alcoholic beverage, #Bitters, #Bitter (beer)

340,960

35-55 - Pubs #Royal Oak, #White Hart, #Pub names, #Pub chain, #The King's Arms, #King's Arms, #The Bull's Head, #Carpenters Arms, #Three Crowns, #The Star and Garter, #The Eagle and Child

12,860

Social advertising – not just Facebook

Social advertising has many pros and cons

Page post ads work well and attract a high click through

Standard ads often have a high click through but poorer cost per like

People can often get annoyed with ads appearing in newsfeeds and this can sometimes come back to the community

Ensuring that the targeting and messaging is appealing to this audience prevents these problems

Media spend & fan estimates

Facebook Ad Campaign 4th – 30th April

4th – 8th April Budget: £XXX 9th – 16th April

Budget: £XXX 16th – 23rd April Budget: £XXX 24th – 30th April

Budget: £XXX

Month Budget Impressions Clicks CTR Avg. CPC Conv. Rate CPA Fans

April £50,000.00 2,000,000 20,000 0.07% £0.43 44.00% £0.83 60,500

Example budget!

Twitter opportunity

Hashtag #stgeorgesday featured as a trending topic on the 23rd of April

#St. George’s Day #AllTimeLow3Days #ByTheWayBuyTHEWAY #ASK5SOS #WeWantOLDTwitterBACK #FollowMeRichard Abu Qatada iPod Cheers

Bombardier’s tweets can take the top positions in the hashtag #StGeorgesDay Direct interested parties to the communities run by Bombardier

Build your channel with help

Driving the community to the Facebook Page

Youtube

Twitter

Website

Use multiple social media channels to drive the audience to join the community you are building Ask yourself when the perfect journey is and where do you want the user to end up? In the case of Bombardier we drove everyone from the website, Twitter and Youtube through to the Facebook Page

Results of the campaign

Hit KPI of 75,000 Facebook fans

10,000 Twitter followers

on time and in budget!

Bombardier now own the largest social media ale community in the UK

Facebook reach topped 2.8 million impressions on St. George’s Day

Bombardier had several of the top messages on the trending hashtag #stgeorgesday

Weekly Twitter impressions reached 43,000

To wrap things up

Takeaway points

You need an event to kickstart to your community successfully

Build your community using the right messaging that closely follows your ad copy and targeting data

Continually test messaging and content for highest reach and highest engagement

Spend to your budget and always keep your target in mind

Once you have built your community to a size you are happy with, it will always be there as an effective communications channel that reflects your brand

Most importantly - enjoy and have fun!