Creating a succesfull Social Media Strategy

Yannick Kramm

Social Media in Marketing Oktober 2012

Abstract 02.11.2012 Bachelor of Tourism Author or authors Yannick Kramm Title of report Creating a succesfull Social Media Strategy Teacher/s or supervisor/s Johanna Heinonen-Salakka. The aim of this report is to provide the reader with all necessaire information to create a succesfull Social Media Strategy. Therefor this report includes a short introduction into Social Media and shares the most basic statistics. After the theory, a 13-pointsplan shows one possibility of how to create a strategy. It includes a research, a tactical a practical and a post processing part. Group or year of entry 2012 Number of pages and appendices 9

Keywords Social Media, Strategy, Entrepreneurs, Networks

Table of contents
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 2 Social Media rules and statistics ........................................................................................... 2 2.1 Users ................................................................................................................................ 2 2.2 Platforms ......................................................................................................................... 2 3 Set up a Social Media Strategy .............................................................................................. 4 3.1 Research .......................................................................................................................... 4 3.1.1 Company Background ...................................................................................... 4 3.1.2 Analyse of past Social Media activities........................................................... 4 3.1.3 Clarifying Marketing goals ............................................................................... 5 3.2 Tactics.............................................................................................................................. 5 3.2.1 Target Audience................................................................................................. 5 3.2.2 Message ............................................................................................................... 5 3.2.3 Channels .............................................................................................................. 6 3.2.4 Responsibilities .................................................................................................. 6 3.2.5 Strategic Partnerships ....................................................................................... 6 3.3 Practice ............................................................................................................................ 7 3.3.1 Building a Social Media plan............................................................................ 7 3.3.2 Temporary schedule .......................................................................................... 7 3.4 Post processing .............................................................................................................. 7 3.4.1 Evaluate ............................................................................................................... 7 3.4.2 Feedback ............................................................................................................. 7 3.4.3 Adjust Social Media plan .................................................................................. 8 4 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 9

1 Introduction
Social Media has increased its popularity in the past couple of years dramatically. Nowadays every big company uses Social Media Marketing and even smart companies start using social platforms frequently. All of them are well aware of the big advantages of Social Media. It is less expensive than print ad and can reach more clients. Most people know how simple a Facebook account is created but only few know how to handle it appropriate. Actually, Social Media marketing is similar to common Marketing: you create a goal, set up a strategy to reach the goal and launch a campaign. Sounds easy, but there are some issues that you have to be aware of while building a strategy. This report provides you with a 13-points-plan which will help you to set up a Social Media Strategy and, furtermore, it acquaint you with the most common questions that you will have to answer on your way.

2 Social Media rules and statistics

It might be a good advise to study Social Media basic rules and statistics about Social Media before inventing a Social Media strategy. Because, as many companies had to find out with negative experiences, it is not You creating the rules of Social Media but the customer. That sounds simple but ask Nestle (lexiconsocialmedia.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/nestles-social-media-fail/) what might happens if you dont follow this rule. Furthermore statistics provide us with useful information that will increase the strategys output. Social Media statistics are based on two big pillars: The user and the platform. As you will find out later, particulary the term platform is hard to define. Under point 2.1 and 2.2 the most basic and common statistics are provided. Two recommendable websites which are sharing many more stats are shortly mentioned here. http://thesocialskinny.com/ http://royal.pingdom.com/

2.1

Users

There are thousands of more or less useful statistics concerning the user. Two interesting facts from royal.pingdom.com (Pingdom, 2012) are shown here. The average Social Media User is 36.9 years old and to 52% female. The age and gender varies strongly amongst different platforms. A trend shows that, on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, four of the biggest platforms, more than 65% of the user are older than 34 years.

2.2 Platforms
The dinamic and fast changing world of Social Media makes it difficult to name the biggest and most used platforms. Some statistics mention the platforms with the most members, others only count the active members a month. Because of this issue you will see that consulting different statistics about the same subject leads to different results. According to eBizMBA (Top 15 most popular social networking sites) the top

5 platforms are: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Google Plus +. But watching at socialmediatoday (40 most popular social networking sites of the world) the big 5 are: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and Bebo. This makes it easy to understand how complex such studies are. In every case you should remember following three aspects: Smart differences in your search like most popular or biggest lead to a different result. Are you looking for Europeen, Amercian, Asian or worldwide networks? What is you personal definition of a social network. E.g. do you count Wikipedia and Youtube? To not leave you out in the rain at this point I profide you with my personal Top Social Media platforms which, after me, a common entreprise should have. Obligatory -Facebook -Twitter -Youtube -Wikipedia Optional -LinkedIn -Xing -Slideshare -Flickr -Pinterest

3 Set up a Social Media Strategy

A Social Media Strategy will help to guide a company or a private person through the world of internet networks. To define a strategy it is recommended to use a social media plan which will help you to ask yourself the right questions. During Internet and professional literature researches it is easy to find a lot of different opinions and so called ten-points-plans about how to create a Social Media strategy. However, there is no formula that suits every company - companies and Social Media are too dynamic systems to universalize. The following plan from point 3.1 to 3.4 is mainly based on a socialmediatoday article (Strella, R. 2012) and a PowerPoint presentation from Johanna Heinonen-Salakka (Heinonen, J. 2010), a senior lecturer at Haaga Helia University and CEO of BrainIT Finland. 3.1 Research

3.1.1 Company Background Start with analysing your company critically. Therefor it may be helpful to answer following questions: In which area are we based? Do we have a mission and vision? Are we conservative, open minded, formal/ informal? Who are our clients: female/male, old/young? Why are we better than competitors? Why are our clients choosing us? Are there misunderstandings about our company? If yes which? 3.1.2 Analyse of past Social Media activities List all your current activities concerning Social Media that you have done so far and answer following questions: What has been done so far? Where have we been active? 4

 How active have we been? How was the feedback?

3.1.3 Clarifying Marketing goals After your research you will have a good overview about your company. Now you have to answer the two most important questions: Why do we want to use Social Media frequently and what are the goals and targets of our Social Media campaign? Think about clear and logical goals and bring them on a paper. They should be ambitious but reachable. 3.2 Tactics 3.2.1 Target Audience In your research part you found out who your current customers are. Now think about the target audience for your Social Media campaign. Do you want to reach the same group as your print ad reaches or do you want to enter a new client segment? Think also about the average Social Media user is your target group big enough to gain positive feedback? 3.2.2 Message This is one of the most important points and should always be answered with different opinions amongst different people in your company. Many companies failed in creating a message that is understandable and shows the companies value in both image and products. This point is like watching into a mirror: Who are you and as whom do you want to be seen? Are you a professional businessman or a hipster? Also include your target audience from point 3.2.1 and ask yourself if your message suits your chosen clients.

3.2.3 Channels Wikipedia.org lists 202 social networks that are the major active social networking websites (Wikipedia, 2012), this list doesnt include dating platforms and defunct social networks. You may can image that we are talking about several hundreds of possible channels for you company. Different company needs require different platforms, no doubt, but still it is recommended to go after the one mentioned in point 2.2.

3.2.4 Responsibilities Su Franke, a German senior lecturer at the HTW Chur University of applied Sciences mentions in her presentations one very important issue. Social Media is made for a PR manager, not for the trainee. Not because the trainee is too stupid, but he or she most probably doesnt know all the interesting facts about products and the company that can be shared. Furthermore, once a thing is in the www it will remain there, no mistakes are forgiven. You should also be aware of that customers prefer to talk to one single person instead of many; therefor I personally recommend having one person being responsible and not ten. The phrase too many cooks spoil the broth is also true in Social Media. 3.2.5 Strategic Partnerships To achieve a powerful result in Social Media is easy if you are able to reach enough people. And enough means thousands and thousands. Share and retweets are the magic words therefor. If you have partner companies you may be able to deal with them: We retweet and recommend you if you do so for us.

3.3 Practice 3.3.1 Building a Social Media plan Now that you are aware of your research and tactics you are able to set up your personal Social Media strategy. Include all the points mentioned above in your final paper. If your strategy works as required you will find out after launching your campaign. 3.3.2 Temporary schedule Set up a temporary schedule to see if your effort works properly. That means you launch your campaign according to your Social Media plan and gather all possible information in the first e.g. 60 days. 3.4 Post processing 3.4.1 Evaluate According to point 3.3.2 you set up a temporary schedule. Now, after your chosen time, you are able to evaluate your gathered dates. Take only the countable facts and look at the statistics. How many people have visited your platforms? Did your sales increased? And also very important: Are your defined expenditures still in your budget or far over? 3.4.2 Feedback After evaluating the countable facts you now should turn towards the uncountable: the replies provided by your customers. Did you get positive feedback or negative? Or none of it at all? Compare the feedbacks to the countable facts: are they similar? Be honest to yourself, it is easier to change your Social Media plan than to change a customer.

3.4.3 Adjust Social Media plan Now that you have critically evaluated your first period you are able to make Social Media adjustments on your Social Media strategies. After that you are able to either re launch or continue your campaign.

4 Bibliography
Strella, R. 2012. How to Create a Social Media Strategy. socialmediatoday. Seen on 24.10.2012 on http://socialmediatoday.com/node/679466 Glynn, W., Faulds, D. 2009. Social Media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Business Horizons (2009) 52, 357-365. Heinonen, J. 2010. Social Media in Marketing. PowerPoint on Haaga Helia University of applied sciences Moodle page. Seen on 24.10.2012 on http://elearn.haaga-helia.fi/moodle eBizMBA. 2012. Top 15 most popular social networking sitesOctober 2012. Seen on 24.10.2012 on http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networkingwebsites Socialmediatoday. 2012. 40 most popular social networking sites of the world. Seen on 24.10.2012 on http://socialmediatoday.com/node/195917 Pingdom. 2012. Report: Social Network demographics in 2012. Seen on 24.10.2012 on http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/08/21/report-social-networkdemographics-in-2012/ Wikipedia. 2012. List of social networking websites. Seen on 24.10.2012 on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites