5 Steps To Building A Cohesive Social Strategy

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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Author: Aaron Mann

Last week Jeremiah Owyang and Altimeter released “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation”.  This is a must read for anyone dealing with social media presences, whether one account or many.  One stat that will surprise a lot of people – global companies are managing on average 178 different social accounts!

One of our first recommendations to clients is to implement a Social Media Management System (SMMS).  However, even the right SMMS is only as good as the company’s management of the accounts, content strategy, measurement plan and internal/partner systems.  It is also clear one size does not fit all. We have been involved in 3 vendor selections in the last couple of months and the evaluations ended with 3 different vendors.  As is often the case with software – ongoing success depends upon both a successful implementation and a solid ongoing management plan.

Jeremiah’s report outlines some excellent pragmatic steps (page 20 for reference) to get ready, pick partners and rollout the program.  We have a similar approach with 5 steps to a cohesive social strategy.  These are the building blocks you want in place before starting to choose a tool:

1. What am I trying to do?  This is about being clear on the business objectives and how social efforts tie back to those objectives.

2. What do I want to say and how do I want to say it?  Before we set up a content strategy, we work to identify a specific theme and voice for every social property.  This makes developing content, often a vast and varied amount of content, much easier.

3. How do I measure success?  All too often this step is forgotten in the rush to execute in the fast-moving social space.  We want to establish success metrics upfront and put in place the right tools to make sure they are measured and tracked back to the business objectives. It’s important to set both internal goals and to benchmark against competitors in the space.

4. What resources, policies and guardrails do I need?  This is where strategy meets tactical execution.  Some of the elements include:

5. How do I implement and train?  This is not a one-time question.  The underlying platforms change incredibly often.  In the last year we saw the launch of Facebook’s Timeline, Facebook Sponsored Stories, and Google + to name just a few.   As fast as platforms change, tools change even more quickly. Therefore, training and implementation needs to be a dynamic and continual process.

Our perspective is that any tool, no matter how robust, needs an overarching social strategy to be truly successful.  

We’ve embedded the report for easy reference:

A market-leading social program is not about command and control, it is about support and empowerment.  Help your SMMS tools succeed by making sure you have the right plan in place before choosing and implementing.  

The New Facebook Layout (for Users)

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Thursday, December 08, 2011

Author: Bennett Wetch

For the first time in awhile, Facebook’s redesign is going to dramatically alter user behavior on the social network. As the site has grown, the News Feeds has become more and more populated, which, to a lesser extent than Twitter, has led to overwhelming noise.

The increased saturation of the news feed accounted for every little action a person took, from liking a status to interacting with an app, which decreased the amount of interaction occurring over the big events in people’s lives.

If one were to escape the busy-ness of their news feed and instead click through to view a friend’s profile, they were greeted with much more meaningful content. However, the personal details of this person’s life were still being viewed in the same layout as the news feed.

The new design has changed the core user experience for the first time. Now, when leaving the news feed to view a person’s profile, the user is greeted with an experience that much more accurately reflects their friend’s life at any given moment (obviously dependent on how much they share on Facebook).

The new experience is very much a scrapbook of your life. By highlighting key milestones, such as a friend’s wedding, and presenting them in a visually pleasing format, the person’s profile becomes a much more intimate look into their life.

Additionally, it is the first time Facebook has enabled users to retroactively add to their profile. Did you forget to post in 2006 about your new job? You can go back and do it now. You can add status updates, photos, check-ins, relationship statuses, and more.

Not only can you go back and add content to your profile, you can also choose which posts you want to highlight. Want to highlight your friend’s beach wedding?

Until you ‘feature’ the post, it displays in your news feed just like any other post. But when you ‘feature’ it, the post spans the entire width of the timeline (which is much wider than the current Facebook profiles). This enables you to highlight the events that meant the most to you.

While users will inevitably balk at these changes initially (and they already have), Facebook takes a similar approach that Steve Jobs did: "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.” So while this new interface will make people scratch their heads as to why Facebook would ‘try to fix something that isn’t broken,’ Facebook knows that this new interface will not only be something that users learn to love, but also something marketers will learn to adore.

If Timeline has not yet been activated on your profile, you can activate it here.

And be sure to read Part 2, The New Facebook Layout for Marketers.

The Bold and the Ridiculous: Social Predictions for 2012

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Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Author: Cristian Gonzales

Oh social tree…oh social tree… thy tweets are ever-changing.

As the new year begins, and everyone is buzzing about the next big trends in social media, I wanted to provide my own perspective. Part humorous, part serious, but always social – here are my 4 predictions for 2012.

• Fail Whale Will Make a Comeback 

Not to fear, folks. As Twitter continues to have fewer blips, everyone’s favorite social whale will be coming back with a vengeance. Expect the same wonderful screams of exhaustion and exasperation from all the Twitter-holics in 2012: “I have not hit my hourly usage!! Why won’t you let me tweet?!”

I kid of course, but in all seriousness I have a feeling Twitter will continue to become more relevant in social. I see the platform becoming more closely integrated with television (ex: ‘X Factor’) – and providing one of the strongest bonds between traditional and social media. Marketers will find new integrated opportunities and brands will have a clearer understanding of their ROI with the social bird.

• Your Parents Will Be on Tumblr

Yes. The nightmare will soon become a reality. The social network that’s for “cool kids” (I was never one) will soon be a platform you’ll be seeing your parents on. Run for the social hills, young folks – they’re coming. Blame the easy-to-navigate mechanics that make blogging on Tumblr something even a first grader could probably do.

Simply put, Tumblr is becoming huge. It now ranks as the top third social platform when it comes to time spent, and holds one of the most important target audiences for brands: women 18-34 years old. I predict by the end of the year it’s going to become a big social player for marketers, and become a major platform for ad spend.

• Your Smartphone Will Control Your Life

I’ve lost my Droid twice now this year. TWICE! And each time, I’ve panicked as if my entire life had been erased off the face of the Earth. I’ve been lucky enough that someone has taken pity on my forgetfulness each time and returned my phone, but my luck will soon run out (note to self: download the ‘Lookout’ app soon). Wait…where’s my phone?

The smartphone has become another limb in many respects – attached to us at all times and becoming a vital way of how we communicate with one another. I predict that brands are going to start ensuring that whatever it is they build – an app, a site, or a promotion – they are going to ensure it can live on mobile. Vitrue is doing just that, and everyone else will be following suit soon.

• Social Currency Will Become a Standard

Want to buy that jacket? Just whip out your Facebook credit card and you’ll get a 15% discount – but only if you have over 250 friends. And if your Klout score is above 55, you’ll get an additional 10% off. Yes, your ‘social relevance’ will become an asset for you the next time you walk into Urban Outfitters. That $65 tank top will now be $45 – score!

I’m going to step out on a limb and make a bold prediction that different social platforms will launch their own form of real-life currency in 2012. Klout already offers users incentives who score over a certain mark, but I have a feeling social giants like Facebook will be taking even bigger steps such as launching their own credit card. Imagine a card where the rate isn’t based on your credit score, but on your social influence score.  

It’s going to be another big year in social for 2012 and I’m looking forward to seeing what the social powerhouses and up-and-comers cook up for us. Let’s see if by this time next year I’ll be paying for lunch with my Facebook credit card. 

The New Facebook Layout (for Marketers)

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Thursday, December 08, 2011

Author: Bennett Wetch

Be sure to read Part 1, The New Facebook Layout for Users.

As the noise in the new feed increased and the quality of interactions decreased, marketers also felt their ability to engage with consumers to be increasingly limited. They too were lost amongst the noise.

Facebook provided no shortage of favors to marketers in this new layout. While there has been much speculation about what the new brand pages will look like, the social network’s changes already have several benefits for marketers.

As you are browsing the new ‘timeline’ profile, ads are now between the rich content of the profile, and the activity of the ticker and chat window. Consequently, as a user’s eyes move back and forth between the timeline content and the right rail ticker/chat, their eyes continually pass over the ad.

Knowing this was valuable real estate, when you resize the width of window, the right rail (content valuable to the user) is the first to disappear, while the ad unit (content valuable to the marketer) stays intact no matter how small you shrink the window. 

Additionally, Facebook finally realized that users do not spend the majority of their time at the top of a page. Until now, the position of ad units was locked to the top of the page, meaning they disappeared as the user scrolled down. With the new layout, the ad units are locked to the bottom, as you can see in the new CSS: 

While the placement of the ad unit is more than fortunate for marketers, the new way users interact with content is even more intriguing. First, we’ll compare two music services, SoundCloud and Spotify.

Spotify had the good fortune of a $30 million dollar investment from Sean Parker and the rolodex that comes along with it. As a launch partner for Facebook’s new layout, Spotify had the benefit of implementing the new Open Graph features first.

Previously, incentivizing a user to allow permissions for a Facebook app was considered marketing gold. While access to email addresses and contact info were helpful for remarketing, the ability to post to a user’s wall was the grail. Marketers were given the opportunity to speak on a user’s behalf to all their friends, which provided mass reach. 

SoundCloud gets all the information they required under the previous Open Graph structure: Name, contact info, publishing rights, etc.

However, as the news feed has become saturated, simply posting on a user’s behalf is increasingly no longer enough to break through the noise. 

As you can see below, the default setting for Spotify grants it permission to publish to my timeline:

Simply announcing to a user’s friends that they started using your product was a very singular broadcast. Hopefully a handful of their friends saw the post before it sank to the bottom of their news feed, but if not, there were no repeat opportunities to post on the user’s behalf unless they specifically took action to do so (sharing a playlist, etc.). With the new timeline/ticker permission, brands can now publish every time you have any interaction with their app.

What results is that the apps with the most usage receive the most broadcast. Previously, unless users liked, commented on, or shared the app, the level of usage of an app did not determine its reach. By being diligent in specifying the new action verbs, brand marketers have the opportunity to associate their brand with specific day-to-day actions.

via Facebook

Your friends now know what music you listen to because of Spotify, Rdio, and iHeartRadio. They can also see the movies/TV shows you watch with Hulu, and the articles you read on the Washington Post and Yahoo.

Any action that a user takes online can be translated into a publishable action on Facebook that in turn builds and defines a person’s profile. As commerce increasingly moves online, marketers now have substantially increased reach via a person’s day-to-day actions, after previously being limited to users needing to specifically interact with the brand’s page or app in order for it to publish on their behalf.

While these day-to-day actions comprise the minute actions that populate the real-time feed of the ticker, they also contribute to the person’s profile. The brand now has the opportunity to be a part of the user’s life as their friends scroll through their new timeline profile. Interaction and engagement with brands will contribute to building the profile just as the user’s actions do. This opportunity to be represented as a part of a person’s life is obviously enormously valuable to marketers from an advocacy standpoint.

With the new placement of ads and the added actions of the ticker and timeline, Facebook has provided extremely valuable awareness tools, and with the overhaul of the Open Graph to be verb-centric, the opportunities for advocacy are through the roof. Now its up to the marketers to drive the engagement…