Chapter 04: Developing a Social Media Strategy

Marketing is all about putting your message where your audience hangs out (which it is), then social media is a no-brainer. 

That said, many companies are failing to take full advantage of social media in their marketing efforts. The play, yes, but their strategic actions end up with the content and advertising. 

It's a big mistake, and here's why... Today, 79% of US internet users are on Facebook. Six out of ten Americans will keep you informed of the news via social media, while 35% say that they have used social media to search for a research job. 

And these are the same numbers is reflected over the world. Is it any wonder the marketer is to go to social security to grow your business?

The problem is that the "go social", is not as easy as it looks. There is a lot more to social media marketing than simply posting to Facebook and Twitter. 

This chapter covers the basics for a successful social media program, including the methods and metrics, the business owners, which is to take your social media marketing efforts, and the language you use to talk about it. 

Keep in mind that there is a big difference between a social media manager and a community manager. (And, yes, both to manage their social media efforts, but their focus is different.) Find out more in our article, " Social Media Manager vs Community Manager.

Methods of Well-Executed Social Media Marketing

There are 4 stages in a successful social cycle:

• Listening

• Influencing

• Networking

• Selling

All 4 of these steps are crucial in order to achieve social media success. However, it all depends on Stage 1: Social Listening. 

Listening will give you the knowledge you need in order to perform a 3-step good. 

It will help you to develop an approach that will allow you to leverage a strong network and a ton of leads and sales. 

The most important thing is, of course, is to get your information in front of your prospects and customers where they spend time online. For the majority of businesses, which includes one or more of these top social networking sites.

If you are concerned about the time in the sewer of social media can be, don't worry. 

Social media marketing is not all about spending time with your prospects and customers. It is a question of carrying out the social cycle, and at the same time, minimize the cost, which means that you will need in order to master the techniques and measurements for all of the 4 steps. 

1. Social Listening 

As with all marketing, you need to get started with your audience. This is why social media marketing is beginning to listen to it. 

This is the key to creating a successful social strategy. 

Regardless of whether you are aware or not, people who are talking about you will reach out to you on the social web. They shared their experience with your products. They talk about the things you say and do. They will ask you questions. 

Some comments, like these, are positive. You’ll want to celebrate them—and respond with a great big thank-you.

Any other comments that are not positive and some are negative). They are in need of immediate attention, followers will know that you are present and available. 

There is a lot of support for it. In the same way, it can help or hurt your overall opinion. 

Every day, your phone rings. 

If you do not answer, it will leave a bad impression on me. On the social web, it's a little bit of that to provide the customer service standard. 

However, when you do not answer the call, listen, and respond in an appropriate way, you can connect with your fans and followers to find and fix any issues that you might not be aware of, and build incredible goodwill. 

The most important thing is, of course, is to listen to your #1 priority, and use your insights to inform others of the 3 stages of a social success cycle. 

Goals of Social Listening

What are you listening for? When tuning in to social conversations, your goals are to:

• Track public perception of your brand.

• Identify the topics you need to be talking about.

• Keep a pulse on the industry, where it’s going, how it’s being perceived.

• Perform customer research.

• Conduct competitive research.

In particular, pay attention to these 5 things:

• Your brand – Watch for mentions of your company name, your products, or any other identifying information.

Example: Apple might watch for mentions of the Apple watch or anything related to iOS.

• Topics relevant to your industry – You want to stay on top of the pulse of your industry. So listen to the topics people are bringing up, their questions, and their hot buttons.

Example: Apple might follow conversations around wearable tech or smartphone cameras.

• Your competitors – What’s being said about them? Is it positive or negative? And what are your competitors saying about you?

Example: Apple’s competitors might be Android or Jeff Bezos. They’d be wise to watch for mentions of them.

• Influencers – Listen for the topics thought leaders and influencers are talking about, and look at the content they’re producing. They’re all clues for where the industry is moving.

Example: Apple should probably keep an eye on GigaONE and John Gruber.

• Public-facing people in your company – Watch for mentions of your leaders and influencers. What’s being said? Is it positive or negative?

Example: Mentions of Tim Cook and Arthur Levinson can reveal the public perception of the Apple brand.

Your aim is to tune into the pulse of public sentiment towards your brand, your industry, and the topics that relate to your brand. In a sense, it’s reputation management. But it can also help you perform real-time customer service and identify the product or content gaps that need to be filled.

Putting Your Listening to Work

Listening is only one part of the equation. You will also need to ensure that the things you see and hear. 

The strategic feedback loop is the best way to do it. 

What is a feedback loop? It is a process by which you create for your team to use when you are dealing with the problems that arise in social listening. There is a clear mapping to the person or department to which the questions should be, and who has the responsibility to deal with them. 

Here’s how it works…

When your listener is looking for complaints and/or issues, said on Twitter, they are going to perform "triage"—the respond with an emphatic, "you've heard of a" response, and then send the issue to the appropriate team. This will be done within 12 hours of the complaint/issue. 

Once the issue has been forwarded to the appropriate person, the specialist will then have to answer the question, which is designed to solve it within 24 hours. 

This is why it is... 

To have a social media audience is well and good, but in the real world, they often do not have the specific know-how or authority in order to resolve the issues that will arise. And sometimes they don’t know who should take care of those issues, either.

That’s how issues get overlooked and forgotten, resulting in untold damage to your brand.

But with your feedback loop, that won’t happen. This flowchart clearly maps out the most appropriate departments for resolving different issues. For example:

• Who in Customer Care will handle customer service issues.

• Who on the Content team will handle content issues.

• Who on the Product team will handle product issues.

So your social listener knows exactly who to alert when issues arise, and your social media team is able to quickly respond to anything they see.

Let’s break this down into 3 basic steps.

The 3-Step Social Customer Service Plan

For social media marketing to work, you need to make it human and authentic.

Even when you’re dealing with a complaint, your aim is to align yourself with the person, de-escalate the situation and provide a compassionate, human touch.

Here’s the 3-step process for doing that:

1. Respond quickly. Social media moves quickly. Make sure you perform triage within 12 hours and resolve issues within 24 hours.

2. Empathize. Make an empathetic statement as soon as possible: “I’m sorry you ran into this,” “I know this is frustrating,” or “I can understand how important this is to you.”

3. Move it to a private channel. If you can’t solve the issue in a sentence or two, take it off public channels. Private messaging, email or a phone call allow you to talk in detail without the rest of your followers adding their two cents to the discussion.

This approach demonstrates that you’re listening. It also allows you to express compassion. And by moving the conversation to a private channel, you make people feel as if you’re committed to giving them a real solution.

Metrics to Watch

What should you measure to track your social listening efforts?

• Reputation score (AKA sentiment level). Are people happy or sad when talking about you? Is the tone negative or positive?

• Retention rate. Are you retaining customers (and followers)? If not, why?

• Refund rate. Are you able to resolve issues without having to issue refunds?

• Product gaps identified. What suggestions are people making for new product features?

• Content gaps identified. What content should you develop to answer questions and resolve issues before they arise?

2. Social Influencing

At this stage, your objective is to guide and steer your followers ' opinions, attitudes, and behaviors. And as you have heard, it is reasonably easy. As you know, trending topics and conversation is taking place, so as to add to your authority, the authority of the voice, it is a natural next step. 

What are the signs that your influence? 

• You can get more engagement of people retweeting or sharing your post, and people respond to your posts. 

• Your list, the numbers are increasing, people are clicking on your links. 

• To develop a greater mindshare people to share their questions, thoughts, and opinions with you, and they are eagerly looking for our interaction with you. 

• You will be a recognized authority and is a brand to watch the world go by. 

Remember, at this stage of the success of the bike, under the influence of it is social listening and you made in Step 1. But, the reality is that you're going to continue to listen to their every move. In fact, when the bike arrives, you will have to carry out all the steps each and every day.

Goals for Social Influencing

During this phase of the social success cycle, you’re trying to:

• Increase engagement with your brand and your content.

• Start conversations around the topics related to your business.

• Boost traffic to your site.

• Build awareness of your products and offers.

• Grow your retargeting list.

Retargeting is an advanced tactic that can significantly boost your bottom line.

To learn more about retargeting (or remarketing), read The Remarketing Grid:

The Science of Ad Retargeting Audience Segmentation.

Metrics to Watch

How do you know you’re building your social influence? These are the metrics that matter most:

• Site engagement rates. Are you getting more social shares and comments?

• Traffic by channel. Traffic from your social media channels should increase over time.

• Offer awareness. People see and respond to the offers you make on social media.

• Retargeting list growth. Through retargeting, you’re able to get your offers in front of people who are most likely to buy from you—and they respond by downloading your lead magnets and subscribing.

Need help boosting traffic from social media? The key is to leverage your blog posts in social channels. This post gives you a 6-step process for socializing a blog post.

3. Social Networking

It is at this stage, the social, the bike that you connect with other influencers and government agencies, and start to move the needle. 

The social network is important to any business, regardless of whether you are just starting, scaling, and expanding into new markets. 

It may be helpful to think of social networks as a live event, except in your interactions online than face-to-face. After all, the network is in the network, regardless of where (or how) it's all happening. And this can lead to deep and long-lasting relationships, both with your followers and potential business partners. 

The Process of Social Networking

Each time you publish an article on your blog, and producing new content, or a new service, you will be creating social media posts for the channel to which you are sending the messages to the I to the "native" content " to get the word out. 

You will be sharing your valuable content with friends, and, yes, even your competitors are doing. 

Whether it is your brand, the primary subject, and will help your subscribers are, it's worth it to share with you all. You will also have to interact with people one-on-one, both to ask and answer the questions. 

That's it. 

Now, let's take a look at this process in action. 

This is one of our own articles, which we shared on the Facebook and Twitter pages. 

Please note that each item is suitable for the channel.

However, we would also like to share what would help the start of digital marketing. After all, to one day be able to get with our clients. So we will share the back-to-basics, content, and helpful information from other brands. 

By adopting a similar way, you not only have to attract a keen supporter of, but you've got plenty of them. By sharing helpful content from other brands, you are going to build goodwill and strong relationships with the brands that you will share it with you. 

For example, we have consistently shared the content from the Content Marketing 

The institute, a Buffer, and MarketingProfs. In the beginning, which led to a robust network. However, some of these relationships have been transformed into strong relationships, as well.

Your Goals for Social Networking

During this stage of the social success cycle, your aim is to:

• Share content that fills gaps left from your own content. This content may relate topically or target people at different skill levels.

• Create goodwill with brands that are similar to yours.

• Over time, transform that goodwill into profitable partnerships.

Metrics to Watch

To measure the strength of your social network, watch these metrics:

• Number of inbound links. A strong network will result in more backlinks to your content.

• Number and description of earned media mentions. Consider the relevance and value of the mentions, who they come from, and the value of those mentions.

• Number and description of earned strategic partnerships. Are you reaching out to partnership prospects, or are they reaching out to you?

How relevant are those brands to your business, and what is the value of those relationships?

4. Social Selling

The fourth and final stage of the social success cycle is social selling.

This is where social media marketing gets interesting. Finally, after listening to your prospects, building authority in your space, and establishing a strong network, you can start putting your offers in front of people—and converting them.

What does good social selling look like?

The short answer is to be. However, you will have to use multiple channels to get the people in those channels that are from the blog of retargeting to pay-per-click advertising. 

So, for example, you will have to lead the blog post with content that is entirely directed at your target audience, and in this context, and you will be embedding the opt-in offer. Then you will be taken to promote the content on social media, use steps 2 and Step 3 of the cycle). 

Your marketing will drive traffic to your content, they will make your offer. If they are unresponsive, you should make a sales offer at a low price, product is designed to help convert your new leads quickly to a customer. We refer to this entry-level product, like a tripwire. 

What happens, though, if a visitor does not respond to your offer?

You’ll retarget them with a relevant ad, so they receive multiple touches that could lead to conversion after they leave your site. The ad takes them to a funnel, where they’re offered the same (or a related) lead magnet—and then an entry-level product.

Of course, you should also try to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers.

For example, if they buy a patio cover, they’re probably in the market for patio furniture. Retarget them with the next logical offer.

The point is this: Don’t simply create one offer. Create a buying path that boosts the lifetime value of every customer.

Goals for Social Selling

• Your goals at this stage are to:

• Generate leads to grow your email list.

• Acquire new customers and upsell/cross-sell existing customers.

• Increase buyer frequency, turning one-time customers into raving fans.

Metrics to Watch

To track your success at social selling, watch these metrics:

• Number of leads. Over time, your email list show growth.

• Offer conversion rate. Are your offers converting? Maybe your offer isn’t relevant or isn’t close enough to your prospects’ bottom-line desire.

• Buyer recency/frequency. You want customers to buy repeatedly and often.

Relevant Roles in Social Media Marketing

Once you understand the basics of social media marketing, you need to identify the people who will be responsible for managing your success.

There’s no right answer. It will depend on your organization and goals. But in most cases, you’ll find your best solution is one of three departments.

Marketing

Marketing and social media integration so accurate, it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. And for the majority of marketers are already involved in social media because it gives them the 3 things they need to do their jobs: 

• Customer awareness. 

• An understanding of the current trends and conversations that are affecting their prospects for the future. 

• As a powerful tool to disrupt the status quo. 

Since they are already actively participating in social media, promotion, and could be a good fit for managing your social media efforts.

Sales

Like marketing, successful sales depend on being relevant and current.

Salespeople often use social media to engage with prospects, identify talking points, and figure out what matters most to people evaluating their products.

That being the case, someone on your sales team may be a good fit for managing/directing your social media program.

Public Relations

Public relations is another good option for taking responsibility for your social media. PR is all about creating a positive brand perception, and it’s already customer-centric, which makes it social by default.

Community Manager

One last source to consider is your community manager if you have one.

Social media is about being present and truly engaging with your fans and followers. That’s pretty much the definition of a community manager.

If you already have an active social community, your community manager could be a good fit for taking on your social media efforts. They already create, maintain, and encourage member-to-member relationships. As your social media manager/director, they’ll simply scale those efforts.

The Lingo You’ll Use in Your Social Cycle

Knowing the lingo will help you communicate what you’re doing with other professionals. Here are 5 terms you need to know.

“Value First” Offer

Social media marketing is really just another channel for your marketing, which means you’re creating an environment where you can make successful offers.

Offers that are appropriate for social channels include:

• Valuable content. Link to content that has embedded offers and CTAs.

• Lead magnets, or opt-in offers. These are designed to get cold traffic into your funnels.

• Tripwires, or deep-discount offers. Use these to upsell and cross-sell new and existing customers.

Feedback Loop

You need a system where complaints, praise, and other useful comments “heard” during social listening are routed to the correct person in your organization.

This makes it easy to apply the 3-step social customer service plan:

1. Acknowledge the concerns.

2. Forward the issue to the right person.

3. Take the issue off public channels and resolve it in a timely manner.

Social Media Bouncing

Much of the success of social media marketing is the frequency of the "elements." 

If you are on more than one social channel, and people will look at you on multiple channels, you can build a j-curve exposure. 

This is what we refer to as the social media puzzle: One of the social media followers of the channel is exposed to your brand on a different channel. 

Take Taco Bell, for example. 

First, you'll see them on a billboard. 

Then, you can follow them on Twitter. 

Your goal is the same—to engage with your followers on all your channels, fully immersing them in your brand.

Social Media Topic Map

The two keys to the success of the promotion are the relevance of the focus of attention. Your topic map will help you stay "on-brand" with both of them. As an added bonus, by means of a reduction of the substances to which you are posting, if you are actually increasing the level of commitment. 

Here's how it works... 

To take your brand, products and services that you offer, and the main message is. 

Then, figure out the subjects, and the object of which is the "mark" in order to discuss on social channels. 

For example, a health insurance company, the subject of the map should include the main topic of insurance. However, this can also be done on the area of financial management and health. 

Long-tail Media Outreach

This is a process, in order to make mention of a lot of media players, bloggers, podcasters, etc), rather than a small number of major media players. 

As you can see, the traffic can be boosted post is a reference to a major media player, but it will soon return to normal. The smaller of the media, on the other hand, is a more targeted audience, which is a better fit, and the audiences are actually listening to them. 

As a result, a few mentions of those of the players can give you higher-quality leads that actually convert. You may not get traffic surges, but your bottom line will get a boost.

The strategy? Figure out who the influencers are in your space, who’s listening to them, and whether they’re competitors or potential partners. Then build relationships with the small players who are a good fit for targeted outreach.

Your Social Media Success Metrics

We’ve talked about specific metrics for tracking the 4 stages of your social cycle, but there are a few more metrics that can show you whether you’re nailing your social media strategy overall. Here are 3 you need to watch.

Applause Rate

Every social share and mention is a form of applause. Because let’s face it, no one shares something they don’t perceive as valuable.

Measure the sum total of all social shares (Facebook, Likes, Tweets, LinkedIn shares, etc.) and comments on a piece of content.

Traffic by Channel

It’s important to know where your traffic is coming from. So use a tool like BuzzSumo can measure your social traffic by channel.

Lots of engagement indicates you’ve found a topic your audience resonates with. Low engagement tells you you’ve missed the mark.

Ideally, you want to know who likes your content and how often it’s being shared. From that, you can figure out what’s working and where you need to improve.

Conversions from Social Media

Once you know the traffic that’s coming from social channels, the next step is to calculate your conversions from social media.

You want to know the percentage of visits from social media that take the action you’re driving on a web page. For that, the formula is:

[traffic from social media] divided by [total traffic]

Ultimately, this is the number you want to impact. The higher your conversion rate, the more successful your social media marketing is.

Bottom Line

Like it or not, we live in a social world. Your customers are on the social web, sharing experiences and opinions related to you, your brand, and your industry.

Are you listening?

The approach we’ve shared in this chapter will help you create a strategic social media plan that helps you keep up with the conversations taking place online, as well as getting you in front of your customers—and helping you lead, engage with, and sell to them.

But there’s another (more direct) way for you to have conversations with your prospects and customers: email. And it’s a vital piece of your digital marketing strategy.

Email is hands-down the most effective way to move prospects through the Customer Journey. It’s also your ticket to loyal customers and repeat sales. So don’t miss it.