Thanks to all who showed up to the event, and to those who were unable to show, enjoy the slides. If there are any questions about this presentation, please contact me at jdouglas@spydertrap.com.

Is the social media world a dark and dangerous unknown world? The answer is yes and here is why; for most marketers (especially traditional marketers) social media tactics are relatively new. Aside from being on Linkedin and hearing about Twitter on the Today Show, most marketers simply don’t have the experience or training to understand why, where, when and how to use social media strategically.

Does social media need to be a scary unknown world? No and here is why:

• Social media is not unlike traditional media in many respects. You need to have an objective, or reason for engaging in social media. Simply saying, “we need to be in social media,” is not an objective and it certainly is not a strategy.
• You need to have a target audience or demographic that you hope to engage with, to either gain brand awareness through impressions, increase sales through conversions, or to better understand other aspects of your business, consumers or competition.
• Finally, you need a strategy to accomplish these goals or objectives. During this phase, keep in mind that unlike traditional media, social media is a two way street, so be prepared for unexpected or negative comments.  Guess what? Negative comments are okay. Yes, it’s okay because for the first time in your company’s history you can finally respond directly to the customer and attempt to rectify the issue.

Also, remember social media best practices. Though not all social media companies are alike in their approach or strategic thought process, in my experience most have a pretty good understanding of social media best practices.

Whether large or small, below is a phased approach to help with the adoption and success rate of your social media efforts. Keep in mind this is not a good fit for all, and other factors such as multiple brands or stakeholders might be involved.

Phase 1: Listen
Listening is the foundation to any social media strategy. Understanding who, what, where, when and how often these conversations are occurring is paramount.

Objectives of this phase:
1.Define the audience and topics to monitor

2.Capture and quantify conversations

3.Identify trends, dashboard report and analyze

4.Listen to dialog about competitors

Phase 2: Strategy
The focus of this phase is to take the lessons and insight gained during Phase 1 and develop an integrated social media strategy.

Objectives of this phase:
1.Develop integrated, objective-based social media strategy

2.Define tactics to deploy: i.e. Twitter plan, Facebook plan, etc…

3.Determine campaign Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

Phase 3 Engage
With Listening and Strategy phases complete and objectives set, now you can deploy strategic tactics and engage with consumers to meet those objectives.

Objectives of this phase:
1.Strategy deployment

2.Engage conversations, promotions and incentives

3.Test, measure and modify strategy as appropriate

With Facebook recently achieving 225 million active users, and Twitter – well, who really knows how big Twitter really is – firms are desperately trying to understand how to make social media work for them. Not only is the volume of users massive, so is the challenge of making sure you have a social media strategy in place. As Spyder Trap continues working with larger and larger organizations we are becoming very accustomed to taking a firm who has a fragmented approach to social media and creating an integrated social media strategy. Our task is to consider all stakeholders, business objectives, hearing all voices/pieces of information and molding a model that will accomplish those goals. As fellow Twitter friend Adam Kmiec of http://www.thekmiecs.com/ stated this morning… “You can’t pulse social media. It doesn’t turn on and them off.” In other words, any social media campaign needs a starting point and that starting point should be accompanied with a well thought out integrated strategy.

Below is a strategy and process I devised for a particular American clothing manufacturer with a similar issue to what I described above. After further thought and discussion, I began to think that both large and small firms could benefit from this guidance. I hope it helps.

Social Media Strategy Definition Process:

1. Discovery Meeting/Roundtable – Each department has a stake in the successful development and implementation of a social media campaign. Our goal is to fully understand and address each core-marketing objective of each department. Common questions to discuss during a discovery session are as follows:

1. What are your overall business objectives? What role does your online marketing play in your marketing mix, and what are you looking to achieve via an online marketing program?
2. With regards to your online marketing efforts, where are your biggest “pain points” and/or areas of greatest opportunity? How would you prioritize them? For example:
   • Reach – Are you attracting enough traffic via your paid/organic efforts? If not, what are your goals? What are the biggest barriers to success?
   • Engagement – Are visitors finding your online presence relevant and engaging? Are they coming back?
   • Conversion – Are you getting enough sales? Are the leads converting to sale?

3. Who are your key competitors? Brick and mortar institutions, click and mortar institutions, etc.?
4. What is your key competitive advantage / what “niche” do you serve?
5. What KPI’s (key performance indicators) do you use to measure your online performance? How are you tracking them?

2. Trend Identification – Upon completion of the discovery process, the next step is to complete an analysis of the data/comments/thoughts received and formulate it into and actionable social media strategy. Considerations during this phase of the process are as follows:

1. Matching the goals of the individual department with the overall business goals.
2. Understanding how the unique business units work together.
3. Understanding of how the different marketing channels work together to build the brand and ultimately drive sales.

3. Strategy Development – This is the culmination of the time spent identifying goals/objectives, the core business needs and the current brand presence in the social media universe. The output of this phase is an on-brand integrated social media strategy that meets the goals and objectives defined by the different business departments in the discovery phase. Considerations during this phase of the process are as follows:

1. Developing a strategy that is a progression into a full-blown social media campaign. Ex. Start with brand monitoring to make sure we have the consumer approach, language and messaging determined. Slowly work into more consumer engaging activities and promotions.
2. Developing a strategy that is both timely and cost effective as defined in the discovery phase.
3. This strategy must be trackable to the extent that the services and tactics will allow. Goal is to closely monitor key performance indicators (KPI’s) such as:
   • Impressions
   • Visits (landing page, microsite, website)
   • Conversions/Sales

4. Integrated Social Media Strategy – As illustrated below, through this process we began with a fragmented strategy and approach and concluded with an integrated social media campaign. Again, this campaign is designed to support and accomplish the goals and objectives of the business departments and the client’s overall brand.

What do you think? Was this helpful? Any thoughts or feedback to the process would be greatly appreciated.