Social Media Marketing Week 1

Social Listening/Sentiment Analysis

To determine brand health, and to listen in on competitors or a category at large. Also can be used to stay on top of industry news. Benefits of Social Media

Promote Content and Paid Ads

Use social media as another means of distributing advertisements. Benefits of Social Media

Crisis Management

When a Philadelphia Starbucks store had two black men arrested, the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks went viral, and fast. The hashtag was used more than 100,000 times in just three days. That is officially a crisis, Starbucks responded quickly. After this first apology, the company followed up with several more statements on social media and announced that it would close all of its stores for a day of racial bias training. It remains to be seen what the long-term effects of this incident will be for the Starbucks brand, but the consequences would almost certainly be worse if the company had not responded quickly and appropriately on social media. Does your company have a plan in place for dealing with a crisis? While smaller brands may not have a crisis blow up to such a large scale, a smaller number of shares can have a devastating impact within a tight-knit community or niche. Silence is not an option when it comes to responding to crises on social media. Maintaining well-run and managed social accounts and having a plan in place can help make sure you're present and ready to engage if the worst occurs.

Partner with Influencers

Word of mouth drives 20 to 50 percent of purchasing decisions. Including word of the keyboard, influencers have a stronger connection with their audiences than brands. Benefits of Social Media

Influencer Marketing

Word of mouth drives 20 to 50 percent of purchasing decisions. When you get people talking about your product or company on social media, you build brand awareness and credibility and set yourself up for more sales. One way to drive social word of mouth is to partner with influencers - people who have a large following on social media and can draw the attention of that following to your brand.

Reputation Management

Your customers are already talking about you on social media, whether or not you're there to respond. If you and your team are on the ball, you can pick up on important social posts about your brand to highlight the positive and address the negative before it turns into a major issue. Is someone saying something about your business that's not true? Be sure to share your side of the story in a polite, professional way. Someone singing your praises? Send them plenty of thanks and draw attention to their kind words.

Customer/Audience Engagement

Two-way communication. Like any relationship or flower, it requires watering and careful tending. Benefits of Social Media

Increase Passive Traffic

Adding links to your content is a great way to increase passive return/conversions to your website (often a key metric for many retail or local level brands). Benefits of Social Media

Learn More About Your Customer

All of the major social platforms provide information about your audiences - demographics. Some more detailed than other. Can be as macro as your gender to as micro as your device used. Benefits of Social Media

Brand Advocate

Brand advocacy humanizes your social media platforms. A UK study from Trinity Mirror Solutions found that more than half of adults do not trust a brand until they see "real-world proof." Introduce your followers to the people who make up your company and showcase how existing customers are using and benefiting from your products. Create a social media advocacy program.

Stay Top of Mind

Commercials turn off. Paid ads stop. Organic always on social, doesn't. Benefits of Social Media

Thought Leadership

Establish your brand as a thought leader - the go-to source for information on topics related to your niche. LinkedIn Research with Edelman shows that marketers underestimate how much thought leadership can impact trust, especially for B2B. About half of B2B marketers surveyed believed their thought leadership would build trust in their companies. However, more than 80 percent of buyers said thought leadership builds trust. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer also found that 63 percent of people trust technical experts, compared to only 42 percent of people who trust businesses.

Generate Leads

Find new consumers. Benefits of Social Media

Boost Sales

Many social platforms now offer shops through partners like Shopify directly in the native platform - hugely important for small-scale operations, and for operations with control over the distribution process. Benefits of Social Media

Modern Marketing

Modern marketing strategy is to social media. As fish are to water.

Company Branding

Opting out of social media is not an option for brands. Brands need to develop a social media ecosystem that is right for their needs and their target demographic, and omnipresence may not be right for all brands. It requires careful consideration.

Reputation Management/Crisis

People are already talking about your brand during a crisis - it's important to communicate with them or get ahead of negative issues before they turn into big issues. It's also important to engage with people expressing brand love. Benefits of Social Media

Customer Service - Support

People expect brands to be available on social media and seek out their social accounts for customer service. Research published in the Harvard Business Review shows that brands who don't meet those expectations damage their bottom line. The HBR research, which specifically looks at Tweets, shows that customers who receive a response to their Tweets would be willing to spend more with the brand on a later purchase, especially if they get a response within five minutes. That holds true even when the initial Tweet was a flat-out complaint.

Customer Service

People expect this, Twitter most relevant platform. Benefits of Social Media

Paid Social Advertising

Social ads are an inexpensive way to promote your business and distribute content. They also offer powerful targeting options so you can reach the right audience and make the most of your budget. Savvy marketers have embraced this key benefit of social media for business: They will spend twice as much on Facebook ads in 2018 as they will on newspaper advertising.

Humanize The Brand

Social media allows brands to connect with audiences and communicate 24/7/365. It also allows for two-way dialogue. Social media also allows you to express personality, think about customer service or an account like Wendy's. Benefits of Social Media

Social Media

- Enables marketing departments to increase brand exposure. - Gain a better understanding of customers. Support their broader marketing campaigns more effectively.

Strategies for Social Marketing

- Increase brand awareness - Humanize your brand - Establish your brand as a thought leader - Stay top of mind - Increase website traffic - Generate leads - Boost sales - Partner with influencers - Promote content - Go viral - Source content - Reputation management - Crisis communication - Customer and audience engagement - Customer service and customer support - Monitor conversations that are relevant to your brand - Learn more about your customers - Gauge sentiment around your brand - Keep an eye on the competition - Stay on top of industry news - Targeted advertising

Social Media Facts

- More than 90% of marketers use social media in their campaigns - 77% of Fortune 500 companies have an active Twitter account and 70% have an active Facebook. - Social media provides two-way dialogue with consumers through meaningful interactions/engagements. - Many brands, especially smaller ones, turn to social media to create or join the community and develop brand ambassadors. Turning to social media is a great way to increase a brand's visibility (awareness), reaching untapped markets, with the potential of going viral on a macro or micro scale. Going viral though isn't easy and requires thoughtful and timely content with a strong pull strategy. Content that resonates with audiences, in general, is one that taps into a particular moment or Having a strong amplification strategy for key marketing initiatives is important. Consider a distribution list, like loyal followers or company employees. Employees can also help during a PR crisis. Social media helps brands establish brand sentiment through proactive listening.

Source Content

Ideas through social listening or through sourcing user-generated content. Benefits of Social Media

Engagement

If you want customers and followers to be engaged, you have to be engaged yourself. Stay active and respond to comments and questions on your own social media posts in a way that's appropriate to your brand.

Social Listening

In the online world, things move fast—and you can't afford to be left behind. Keeping a virtual ear to the ground through social listening makes sure you're always informed about upcoming changes to your industry that could affect the way you do business.

Company Employer Branding

Social media generates a huge amount of data about your customers in real-time. You can use that information to make smarter business decisions. All of the major social networks offer analytics that provides demographic information about the people interacting with your account. This can help you tailor your strategy to better speak to your real audience. Lots of mentions are a good thing, right? Sure, in many cases. But if you're getting lots of mentions with a negative sentiment, you need to do some quick thinking to figure out what's gone wrong and address the problem. While it's important to know how much people are talking about your brand online, it's also important to know how people actually feel about your brand.

Brand Awareness - Top of Mind

Social media increases brand awareness. Nearly half of the world's population using social media platforms. 60 percent of Instagram users say they discover new products on the platform. Top of Mind: Most social media users log into their accounts at least once per day, according to Pew Research Center, and many people are checking social multiple times per day.

Establish Brand Position as a Thought Leader

Social media is a great place to separate your brand from the herd, through a mechanism known as thought leadership. It's an opportunity for the brand or key members to take important positions on various social issues. Think most recently Twitter starting to ban Trump first. Benefits of Social Media

Increase Brand Awareness

Social media is an untapped mine of potential new consumers. Traditional media attracts a particular demographic and so too do digital medias. Social media allows you an always-on advertising opportunity from low to high investment. Benefits of Social Media

Lead Generation Conversion

Social media offers an easy and low-commitment way for potential customers to express interest in your business and your products. Lead generation is such an important benefit of social media for business that many social networks offer advertising formats specifically designed to collect leads. Renault Europe used Facebook lead ads that allowed people interested in learning more about a new model to book a test drive directly from Facebook, with just a couple of taps.

Social Networking

Social networks give you the opportunity to interact directly with customers and fans, and likewise give them the chance to interact directly with your brand. Unlike traditional media, which offers only one-way communication, social media is a two-way street. There's a difference between being a user of a social network vs. using a social network for marketing - you need to be able to shift between thinking like a user and thinking like a marketer. Using a social network is never 'free.'