The Plain Scoop on Social Media

From the talented minds of Common Craft comes this simple, and engaging explanation of social media marketing today. Simple format – clear and concise message. Enjoy…

Kick Start Your Social Media Campaign

A few of us at SmartBrand have been working hard to establish a way to help our clients create and implement a successful Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaign can prove to be one of the key catalysts in growth for a small to medium sized business. It can increase brand and PR exposure for a fraction of traditional advertising costs and effort, as well as provide larger scale market research and product/service refinement ideas at virtually no extra charge.

Here’s our official first release of that campaign. And as always, we’d certainly welcome your insights and thoughts as they relate to our offerings, and your experiences.

A successful Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaign can prove to be one of the key catalysts in growth for a small to medium sized business. It can increase brand and PR exposure for a fraction of traditional advertising costs and effort, as well as provide larger scale market research and product/service refinement ideas at virtually no extra charge.

The speed in which trends evolve on the internet can often be daunting, but SMM campaigns by large companies can be emulated in whole, or in part, even by very small businesses. It’s not the money. It’s the content marketing mindset that separates success and failure. Big ideas can honestly beat big budgets.

Social media marketing goals will often involve different overall strategies and social media channels. It is possible to market with the aim of achieving all the following benefits; they do complement each other and some results naturally arise when other goals are achieved (e.g. better brand awareness eventually brings links).

SMM Campaign Benefits:

Increased Revenues - New sales opportunities through customer-generated content and brand engagement.

Powerful Customer Relationships – Establish and maintain valuable customer relationships through social media networks that increase brand loyalty, cultivate a network of evangelists, and maintain ongoing dialogue that will help position future marketing and business development initiatives.

Increased Traffic to Site – Increased search engine visibility effectively drives traffic to your site from fast growth channels.

Competitive Market Insight – Valuable data on behaviors and interests which helps you better understand your customers’ needs.

Enhanced Brand Presence – Seed branded messages within existing online conversations to amplify marketing efforts and manage public perception of your brand.

The power of recommendation. – Would you rather buy from an unknown company or from a company that people recommend?

SOCIAL MEDIA SERVICE OFFERINGS:

Social Media Strategy Development – Identify content, brand messages, communities and influencers with the greatest potential for our clients’ social media engagement. Create a roadmap based on marketing strategies and goals to coordinate and execute social media campaigns as a key component of the overall sales and marketing plan.

SMM QuickStart: $500 (one time fee)
➢ Profile background information and data gathering
➢ Strategy Session / Goal Setting (1 hr. in person/teleconference)
➢ Asset Compilation (graphics, broadcast, public relations)
➢ Recommendations (Phased development if required)

Social Media and Blog Launch – Create personal relationships with the influencers and evangelists that have the greatest voice within their online social networks.

BlogStart: $1,500 (one time fee)
➢ Profile background information and data gathering
➢ Strategy Session / Goal Setting (1 hr. in person/teleconference)
➢ Asset Compilation (database mining, graphics, broadcast, public relations)
➢ Installation & Profile Set-up (free platform only)
➢ Content Creation Launch (1st posting only)
➢ Content Creation Schedule Recommendations
➢ Maintenance & Update/Usage Training

Social Media Distribution – Optimize communication placement through blogging, video uploading and sharing, podcasting, webcasting, tagging and social bookmarking to maximize distribution throughout social media networks.

BlogSphere: $500-$1,500/month, 3 month minimum.
➢ Strategy Session / Goal Setting (1 hr. in person/teleconference)
➢ Installation & Profile Set-up (free platform only)
➢ Content Creation & Scheduling – monthly/weekly/daily (goal dependent)
➢ Link SMM Outreach Campaigns with existing Sales & Marketing Strategies
➢ Mobile Media (Twitter 1x day)

SMM Influencer Direct (ID): $500+/month, 3 month minimum
➢ Create and distribute electronic press kit
➢ Develop & distribute content for editors, bloggers, influencers, online columnists, and industries use to disseminate to their users and readers

Campaign Management – Manage clients’ social media initiatives in coordination with your search engine optimization and paid search marketing efforts.

SMM Management: $250+/month, 3 month minimum
➢ Content control, archiving and tracking
➢ Internet marketing strategy coordination
➢ Monthly or weekly reporting of trends, comments and response(s)
➢ Monthly or weekly recommendations to targeted topics/tactics

Brand Development and Strategic Partnerships: Design, development and refinement of affiliate-based influencer programs to build out Clients’ affiliate networks and drive their sales. Price TBD

Brand Strategy & Creative Development: Viral video/webisode production, viral email, promotions and contests, social network design: blogs, and other interactive content recommendations and distributions. Price TBD

Monitoring and Reporting – Combine technology and human insight to provide “buzz” tracking and performance analysis for social media campaign.

SMM Monitoring/Reporting: $150-$500/month, 3 month minimum.
➢ Monthly or weekly content response reporting, archiving and tracking
➢ Monthly or weekly reporting of trends, comments and response(s)

Training - Provide a full training curriculum on how to effectively utilize and integrate social media into future marketing strategies.

SMM Training: $125 hr., 2 hour minimum.
➢ Complete training for corporate staff
➢ Enable channel updates
➢ Determine ongoing reporting mechanisms

Of course, we believe this is a comprehensive, inexpensive approach to establishing a social media marketing campaign for just about any potential target market. That said, we know you may have had experience in these areas that might help guide our efforts – so please feel free to comment on our structure and pricing…we’d really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions!

Start A Social Media Campaign

I think we can all agree that all types of organizations and campaigns will use some form of social media marketing in their mix. And like all emerging communication channels, the pitfalls will come first to the early adopters.

Establish And Measure Your Goal
Good endings begin with good beginnings. Seems simple enough, right?

But far too many social media campaigns are undertaken with the expectation that entering the sphere of conversations will, by their very nature, create the campaign momentum the company is looking to achieve. In fact, social media is simply an accelerator of that campaign momentum – and certainly not a creator of it.

The good news is… social media is somewhat easy and immediate to measure. Response to blogs, web offerings and overall sales can be tied directly to the social campaign itself – especially if personalized capture points are implemented as needed for measurement.

Provide Real Value

In the social media sphere, traditional messaging simply doesn’t work. Most savvy participants are careful to not to engage in conversations without understanding the context of that conversation. Authenticity, then, rings loudly to the social media audience. More so than the internet – rules of engagement are a sign of intelligence, and as in any social setting, no one wants to be thought or branded ignorant or immature.

And more to the point, social media enables us all to truly give of our knowledge, interests and discoveries. If that information is pure in it’s nature – then a relationship of trust can be built between the company, and the social media network at large.

Dollar for dollar – that is a level of brand loyalty you simply could not afford to buy in today’s tightening, competitive market.

It’s A Conversation, Not A Platform
The largest of corporations have tried their hand at social media campaigns – many (if not most) of them unsuccessfully. Part of the problem is obvious – any type of corporate dialog is suspect of being a thinly veiled attempt at sales – and not the hones conversation between brand and public it could be. Therein lies the challenge – to present and create dialog that is truly useful to all participants – and not just an attempt to announce a product or service.

Conversation is king – openness is the key to the kingdom. Restricting dialog because of self-imposed corporate brand standards simply doesn’t work in this truly social environment.

Give It A Go!

Once the decision is made to begin your social media marketing campaign (SMM), there are a few considerations that you might review before getting started.

> Message Consumption – hopefully, you’ll develop or have a blog. One surefire way to accurately measure engagement is through monitoring who is reading your blog, where they are from and exactly what content they are reading. Most blogging services provide some form of web analytics that will provide you with these reports.

> Content Response – Who’s actually interacting with your content? Comments may very well be the easiest way to find out – and if your message is compelling or thought provoking – you’ll receive comments from both positive supporters and negative comments. Either way – you’re making progress.

> Social Media Bookmarking – Who’s adding your content to sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit, and Stumbleupon. Engage your web analytic tool and run a click map report and see how many web visitors are clicking on the social bookmarking icons. Or, simply create profiles in each of the individual bookmarking sites and search for your specific web addresses.

> Who’s Subscribing to your RSS feed? An easy way to measure how many of your readers are actually engaged is to monitor how many of them are directly subscribing to your RSS feeds

> Who’s referring and engaged about you? Many blog platforms have the ability (like WordPress) to tell you who’s linked to your site. If that’s not an option in your blog platform, you might a blog search engine Technorati for your domain’s current interaction.

> Profile Engagement: Even if you don’t have a blog, you might have a profile on Myspace, Facebook, or Mybloglog. Simply use the same methodologies for any blog, and you’ll watch the growth of friends and profile visits in real time.

Successful social media marketing (SMM) campaigns will likely be a key catalyst i for a small to medium sized business to grow their business strategy. Without a great deal of expense, and if implemented correctly, it will increase brand equity and public relations reach at a small fraction of traditional advertising costs and effort. Not to mention it can also provide market research and product refinement guided directly by the target market for little, or no extra cost.

Clearly, having a comprehensive SMM strategy for your business is essential in today’s increasingly competitive market. If you’re interested in jumping into this powerhouse marketing strategy, but simply don’t have the time or expertise to do it yourself – give us a call.