Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY AND STRATEGY
FOR THE RESEARCH, WRITING, EDITING, TRAINING, PUBLISHING and SOCIAL CONSULTANCY FIRM

- A RESEARCH REPORT

November 19, 2012
Table of Contents
Section One: Introduction
Section Two: A Successful Social Media Strategy and Policy Keys to Success Benefits Steps to Creating a Successful Media Strategy and Policy Monitoring/Measuring Social Media Results Conclusion – Time Well Spent – ROI – Business Growth

Section One: Introduction

Some traditional companies perceive social media as just another billboard, another “media” where they can advertise. Yet as Erik Qualman so magnificently illustrates in his dramatic video “ Social Revolution 4” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUCfFcchw1w&feature=youtu.be ), [1] social Media is revolutionary! Social media is making a history. Facebook has a population of 1 billion. If it were a country it would be the third largest country in the world just after China and India! Everyday the equivalent of the entire enrollment of Ivy league schools in the United States join Linkedin! Talk about impact! 53% of people on Twitter make recommendations in their tweets. [2] 93% of marketers use social media for business.[3] In the future consumers won’t search for products and services, rather the consumer will be found via social media.[4]

Social media involves so much more than we imagine at first glance, both in terms of opportunities and challenges. 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations only 14% trust advertisements.[5] Social Media is the new word of mouth that has become the “world of mouth” as Mr. Qualman discusses.[6] Consumers are talking about our product our services, and we are either part of the conversation or eventually out of business, as successful social media strategies will have critical roles in the success of companies as the social media phenomenon widens. Already social media is the number 1 activity on the web![7] Social media is a new way of using the power of word of mouth. It is self evident what word of mouth can do for a business in a traditional environment. In today’s so called “attention economy” and information age having a social media strategy is a fundamental and no longer an option. As we as a company consider creating our social media strategy and policy, there is much information we need. This Research Report provides the more important points necessary to develop a winning social media strategy and policy for companies in our industry area: Research, Writing, Editing, Training, Publishing and Social Media Consultancy.
Social media success requires a substantial commitment in time, people and money.[8] To encourage the reader to invest the time and effort needed in the rethinking of business fundamentals required in order to develop a winning social media strategy and policy, this paper will present some of the significant benefits of successful social media strategy and policy, discuss the various steps involved in creating a winning social media strategy and policy and come to a conclusion that although successful media strategies and policies require significant effort and resources, the return on investment is well worth while.

Section Two: A Successful Social Media Strategy and Policy
To avoid being completely consumed by social media, a company must develop a comprehensive strategy. A social media management plan can assist companies in by outlining a prioritized road map for instituting the process, technological, organizational and cultural changes required to achieve the strategy.[9]

Successful companies understand that social media is not just another media upon which to advertise but rather is actually a brand new way of communicating. Furthermore when it comes to social media business fundamentals must be reconsidered and rethought out. Chris Ramsey co-founder of Social Consultancy firm Radian 6 explains that his firm calls social media the “social phone” because it considers that companies who want to conquer social media successfully must learn to see social media as a whole new type of two way phone, that needs to be learned. Ideally company must adapt to this new form of communication, learn how the social phone works, how to listen to it, how to engage and work with it and how to answer it..[10]

Benefits
Companies can thrive and profit from the increased consumer awareness, employee and customer empowerment social media can provide. Companies that successfully navigate the social media environment can create significantly greater awareness and revenues, while also decreasing costs of marketing, selling and customer service.[11]

Listening to social web is important because that is where customers are talking, before when customers wanted to talk to you they had to do it on your terms they had to call your contact center. When it was open, go into your stores when they were open or deal with you during your office hours. Now with the social web customers talk to you, about you, ask their friends their recommendations, where they want and on the platform of their choice, that is why listening to customers on social media is important.

Additional Benefits:

• With right planning and a bit of effort and patience, we can learn to use social media to attract, engage and retain customers inexpensively. • Better understanding of our customers • Better connection with our customers • This will help us to better market and serve and sell to customers. • Social Media also creates opportunity to engage with our customers when and where our customers want to be engaged with.

The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years![12]

Keys to Success

According to Social Media thought leader Erik Qualman the keys to Social Media success are to: • Listen to what is being said about you your product your service. • Interact, join the conversation, your customer wants to hear from you • React. You need to adjust quickly to what consumers are saying. • Sell - Selling will happen if you have done first three things well.[13] The customer will do same thing, listen interact react

Steps to Creating a Successful Social Media Strategy and Policy
A social media strategy is essential if your investment is going to pay off. A common mistake that many businesses make is rushing to create a Facebook page or Twitter feed without proper planning. The result can be wasted resources and poor results.
The key elements of a social media strategy are: • Goals • Audience • Content, Strategy, Key messages • Engagement • Social Media Action Plan • Ongoing Monitoring •
The following are the major steps to creating a successful Social Media Strategy and Policy.

Step 1 – Rethink business fundamentals

When a company is thinking about social media and the concomitant changes required. It needs to start re-thinking business fundamentals for entire brand a to z. From advertising to customer service to sales. The company needs to have solid content, strategy and communication. Need to rethink what we mean by media, not think about social media as a place to throw all money like traditional advertising media venues, but rather as evolving from 4 Ps to 5 cs according to Chris Ramsey of Radian 6.[14]

Four P’s of business; price, promotion, place and product need to be reconsidered in the light of social media, as they are less relevant, in terms of how we need to anchor our strategies. For example. Promotion, brand used to be about money resources budget you had to put behind driving your market message out to target market. The reality is today that has turned around consumers have access to so much information, consumers want more than that, consumers want more engagement, want human element to company. [15]

According to Chris Ramsey, Co-founder of Radian 6 we need to think about Five C’s: Content, Community, Collaboration, Communication and Connections.

For example with regards to community. Communities have always been out there, but there has been a fundamental shift in the community. Our customers are out there, talking, looking for information however brand is no longer defined by pile of cash that we can use to push our messages out, but by sum and totality of all conversations that are taking place about us online. Those conversations are happening whether we are in them or not, smart companies are choosing to be in conversation and in the communities that are out there defining their brands.[16]

Step 2 – Research, Listen, Learn
As social media is dynamic it will be useful for us to develop an ongoing monitoring function of social media. We need to take time to educate ourselves about social media and about conversations on social media regarding our :business, industry, product and services. It is a critical first step in finding out where we should be focusing our efforts. Research, Listening and Learning will give us lots of ideas about how to proceed once our social media presence is established. It is important for us to find out what is being said about our brand, where the most active conversations are and who are the influencers[17]

For success in this arena. We must build trust. We must become a member of the community. You must watch and learn how the community operates.[18]
What we’ll learn, while listening is how to transform our products and services. How to properly put all this new information to work to our advantage and use it to design a product/service for the broadest possible community. [19]

Step 2 – Determine Social Media Goals
With the help of key employees we need to determine the main goals of our social media presence. – Attracting more customers. Boosting our brand recognition. Improving Customer Service. Being a thought leader.

Metrics and social media success can then be structured around our goals. (For example number of visits, etc. )

Eric Swayne, with research firm M/A/R/C makes an excellent point when he identifies that we should identify those things that make our business win and translate that into our social media goals.[20] If a customer is already doing an action that makes us successful than we should make it fun[21].

Step 3 – Create a Social Media Strategy
The success keys here are simple but important. • Create great content Our ability to create compelling text, audio, video, and images is what’s going to build our story and get people excited about staying connected. We need to ask hard questions to decide what content to create: (1) What expertise and knowledge do we have, and how can we best share this with customers? (2) Is there something we can create that will empower our consumers to connect to one another better? (3) Which medium are we most compelling with – text, audio, images, or video.[22]

A key to social media success is offering interesting, relevant content that your followers will find compelling and want to share with their networks. This is the power of social media: word-of-mouth marketing and peer referrals. Ninety-two percent of consumers say they trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family, compared with only 36% who trust sponsored ads on social networking sites, according to an international Nielsen survey in April 2012.

• Host social media in a place where we can track interactions • And REWARD the assists that got consumer there

With regards to monitoring it is important to understand where our social media success pathways are coming from that encourage conversions and we should encourage those assists by further investing in those areas of our social media.
Social Media Consultancy firm Radian 6 does this well on their website. Awareness is not just eye balls it is monetized it is conversion. [23]

Step 3 – Create a Social Media Policy
In order to define our social media policy we must gather employee and relevant party input. Keeping a positive tone. The policy shouldn’t be too restrictive and should allow employees to be good company advocates.

“Once a company understands the desired business process changes social media will enable it must identify the impact of those changes on the people involved in the processes and the new roles the social media requires an organization to create. This can include training, new hiring criteria.” [24]

Employees should be careful to separate their personal and professional social media presence. They should be mindful of their reputation, and assume that clients and future employers can read information on their personal accounts. Social media posts and “likes” can remain online forever.

Step 4 – Evaluate our Website

Quality. Be sure your site supports your overall business strategy.
Prominently feature a call to action and contact information to help convert visitors into customers. Your call to action should be a clear message to prospective customers
Use graphics that have visual impact but are not overly busy and distracting.

Check with a professional to ensure that search engine optimization strategies have been used to attract potential customers to your site
Google search results now take into account how much websites are shared or discussed in social media, which means it’s also important to make sure your site is evaluated for its “social media optimization. your site should feature social media sharing buttons and compelling content to encourage visitors to interact with your site. Your social media sites also help promote links to your website, Prominently display links to your social media pages on your website, including, ideally, at the top of your home page.

Step 5 - Establishing Our Social Media Presence - Faceboo - Twitter - Youtube - Linkedin - Blogs -
Best Practices

- Keep Posts Brief: Most social networking sites don’t offer much space for long posts. But there’s another reason to be concise: A lengthy, solid block of text is even more of a turn-off online than it is in a newspaper or magazine. What’s more, a short post is easier to read on a mobile device and thus more likely to get shared. (More than 600 million people access Facebook on a mobile device each month.)[25]

- Video and podcasts don’t need to be of award quality to have a powerful impact. As with other social media content, keep videos and audio files concise.
- For audio, speaking clearly is even more important
- Ask customers to contribute video. .[26]
- Use applications. A dizzying array of applications are available that can enhance social media pages. Many apps are useful for businesses. They help you create, share and manage content. Some are free, others are paid. Apps are available to help you to: >>manage all your social pages via one dashboard, allowing you to save time, manage a complex publishing schedule and keep messaging consistent >>host campaigns or contests >>create a store on your social media page >>collect your fans’ email addresses >>make phone calls and manage your finances through a social networking page >>store and share documents >>share video
>>search for and analyze trends.[27]

Monitoring and Measuring Social Media Results

We need to gather all our customer feedback so we can respond promptly and deal with issues before they harm our reputation. The information we collect can also give us intelligence for product development, on tour competition and on market conditions. It will also help us determine how to engage better with customers, both in social media and offline.[28] The simplest way to measure your efforts is by watching the number of fans you get on your social media pages. But that’s not always a good indicator. What’s more important is the volume and quality of interactions on your sites—comments, likes, retweets, etc. This is a good sign that your site has attracted the right kind of fans—people whom you can sway to meet the goals and targets you set in your social media strategy

Conclusion – Social Media Strategy Development – Time Well Spent.
Successfully using social media takes time and patience. We cannot expect overnight results. But it’s well worth the effort. Consistently listening, measuring and learning. Then adjusting our strategy on the basis of what’s working best. It’s an ongoing cycle.

As an a research, writing, editing, training, publishing and social media consultancy firm we are already close to our customers and business partners. Social media is about making those relationships deeper and building new ones.

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[1] Qualman, Erik. 2012, “Social Revolution 4” (Online) Retrieved November 19, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUCfFcchw1w&feature=youtu.be
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Qualman, Eriik. Socialnomics, How Social Media Transforms the Way we Live and Do Business, New York: Wiley Publishing, 2010.
[7] Qualman, Erik. 2012, “Social Revolution 4” (Online) Retrieved November 19, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUCfFcchw1w&feature=youtu.be
[8] Boudreaux, Chris. Social Media Governance. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Publishing, 2012. .

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ramsey, Chris. 2010 “Social Web, Opportunities and Challenges” PR Report- Interview with Chris Ramsey, Co-Founder Radian 6 (Online) Retrieved November 19, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkeL8jcza_Q&feature=related

[11] Boudreaux, Chris. Social Media Governance. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Publishing, 2012. .

[12] Qualman, Erik. 2012, “Social Revolution 4” (Online) Retrieved November 19, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUCfFcchw1w&feature=youtu.be
[13] Qualman, Eriik. Socialnomics, How Social Media Transforms the Way we Live and Do Business, New York: Wiley Publishing, 2010.

[14] Ramsey, Chris. 2010 “Social Web, Opportunities and Challenges” PR Report- Interview with Chris Ramsey, Co-Founder Radian 6 (Online) Retrieved November 19, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkeL8jcza_Q&feature=related
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ramsey, Chris. 2010 “Social Web, Opportunities and Challenges” PR Report- Interview with Chris Ramsey, Co-Founder Radian 6 (Online) Retrieved November 19, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkeL8jcza_Q&feature=related

[17] Ramsey, Chris. 2011, Point of View, Van Breen. “Tracking your Brand in Social Media” (Online) Retrieved November 18, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkIto9eMyC4&feature=relateda

[18] Brogan, Chris and Smith, Julien: Trust Agents. New York: Wiley Publishing, 2010.
[19] Hunt, Tara. The Whuffie Factor. New York: Crown Business Publishing, 2009.
[20] Swayne, Eric 2012. Social Analytics and Insights. M/A/R/C Research (Online) Retrieved November 19, 2012 from http://www.radian6.com/

[21] Ibid.
[22] Joel, Mitch. Six Pixels of Separation. New York: Business Plus Publishing, 2009.

[23] Ibid.
[24] Boudreaux, Chris. Social Media Governance. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Publishing, 2012. .

[25] hubspot.com/ facebook-for-business-marketing-kit-2/

[26] http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-top-business-blogs-and-why-they-are-successful/

[27] facebook.com/appcenter, squidoo.com/twitterapps ,

[28] hubspot.com/social-media-monitoring-in- 10-minutes-ebook