9. Creating a Comprehensive Social Media Strategic Plan
Contrary to popular belief, crafting a social media strategy is actually the last step in the process of becoming a social business. First, a company must become completely aligned internally; that is, it has completely evolved into a more collaborative and integrated structure. It has comprehensively defined ownership of the social media function, established a governance model, and sourced and selected technology partners and agencies.
Creating a social media strategic plan is a comprehensive and detailed task that organizations handle in a variety of ways, depending on their size and structure. Some companies create a strategy that encompasses an entire fiscal year and then create smaller (or more tactical) quarterly execution plans that align with the strategy. The strategy is sometimes referred to as a “plan of record.” In some cases, the plan is a living document and goes through a natural evolution process as the external social landscape changes or the organization itself experiences management changes.
Other companies are less formal and create a “mission” or “charter” for the social media function and then plan for quarterly strategies or tactical plans. The benefit of this approach is that it allows the plan to be more flexible and to change direction quickly. Often companies with this mindset are more open to trying new and unproven approaches in the social space. Of course, the downfall is that not all plans may be aligned with consistent messaging, which can result in customer confusion and subpar social media programs. Both approaches can work just as effectively. It just depends on the organization’s culture and planning cycles.
Companies must consider several points when creating a social media strategic plan for it to deliver business value and be as comprehensive as possible. Critical components include a clearly defined mission, defined goals and objectives, and a tactical approach. Understanding the target audience members and the way they interact in social media environments across various global regions is equally important. In addition, the plan must include integration points with paid media (or advertising), along with a clear definition of the key performance indicators (KPIs).
Defining the Mission, Goals, Objectives, Strategy, and Tactics for a Social Media Plan
To be a truly effective social business, the entire organization must speak the same language. Confusion sometimes arises when defining business language, especially with social media. Companies need to clearly understand the definitions of mission, goals, strategy, and tactics to avoid confusion with the planning process.
The Mission of Social Media
The mission statement is the focal point of the strategic plan, so it must be clear. A mission, sometimes referred to as a “team charter,” is a short statement of the company’s purpose or vision, or a high-level result or achievement. Mission statements identify the nonfinancial achievement that a CEO, group head, or manager wants the company, product, or team to pursue. The mission addresses the “what” versus the “how” and is used to determine the organization’s direction and guide decision-making. The following examples are mission statements from two Fortune 500 companies, Cisco and Dell:
Shape the future of the Internet by creating unprecedented value and opportunity for our customers, employees, investors, and ecosystem partners.
Dell’s mission is to be the most successful computer company in the world at delivering the best customer experience in markets we serve.
Most teams in charge of social media have their own mission and use it to steer all their marketing plans. This mission can include statements such as the following:
• Create business value using community engagement that will increase conversational volume, share of voice, sentiment, and engagement in owned and earned media properties.
• Forge meaningful, collaborative relationship with influencers, advocates, and the target audience.
• Become a content machine by creating, co-creating, distributing, and amplifying relevant branded content.
• Activate targeted advertising, promotions, and sponsorships, and driving contextually relevant social conversations that extend the value and opportunity of paid digital advertising.
The mission will depend on the roles and responsibilities of the social media team as well as the size and culture of the company. For example, a business-to-business (B2B) company will have a very different mission than a business-to-consumer (B2C) company. Nonetheless, documenting a mission and ensuring that the entire team, business unit, and company support that mission is critical.
The Social Goals and Objectives
Goals and objectives are synonymous and are used interchangeably in the business environment. These are the stated, measurable targets (or outcomes) in achieving a particular task and are closely aligned with the mission. Goals and objectives also address the “what” versus the “how” but are more specific and actionable than a mission. The most commonly used framework for establishing goals is the SMART framework, first used by George T. Doran in 1981:
• Specific—Goals must be simple and specific, as in “to increase awareness and consideration about the brand.”
• Measurable—Goals must be measurable so that the company can determine whether the goal was met. An example of a measurable goal is “to increase awareness and consideration about the brand by 10 percent.” Simply adding a quantitative value to a goal ensures that it can be measured.
• Achievable—This aspect might require a look back at historical data, such as growth rates or previous sales revenue. Certainly, creating an unreachable goal isn’t wise, but goals also must be set high enough to ensure adequate business value and return on investment.
• Relevant—Goals must be challenging but also tightly integrated with the company and team mission.
• Time-specific—Goals must have a limit for achievement, such as “by the end of the fiscal year.”
If a social media team’s mission is to create business value through engagement by driving conversational volume, share of voice, sentiment, and engagement on the social web, a practical example of a goal using the SMART framework might look something like this:
We want to increase awareness, consideration, and conversation on the social web about the brand by 65 percent in the next quarter.
The Social Strategy
A strategy is an idea. It takes into consideration the organizational (or team) goals and devises a plan. It addresses the “how” versus the “what.” A strategy is a conceptualization and plan of action for how to achieve a goal or objective at a very high level. Many companies today hire strategists to devise marketing plans. They are essentially the “thinkers” who can look at the big picture when trying to solve real business problems. Some companies today hire social media strategists for this responsibility and then rely on an agency, junior staff, or community managers (or doers) to execute the plan. In some organizations, the entire social media plan and execution is outsourced to an agency.
Building upon the previous mission statement and goal of increasing awareness and consideration about the brand, this could be an associated strategy:
Empower employees to engage online with influencers and the general community.
Social Media Tactical Plans
Tactics are the specific actions taken to achieve the goals, in close alignment with the strategy. In most cases, a tactic addresses the “what” and “how,” depending on how the goals are framed. In some cases, tactics are included in the “execution plan.” Tactics are primarily executed by “doers,” in the form of junior staff, agencies, or community managers. Although execution is more about doing than thinking, it’s still a critical part of any plan because poor execution prevents a company from achieving its business goals. In the earlier example of empowering employees to engage online with influencers, viable tactics to support the strategy would include these:
• Create social media policies that address employees’ behavior when engaging online.
• Train employees on how to blog, use Twitter, and be conversational when interacting in the community.
• Develop a metrics model to measure the effectiveness of employee engagement on the social web.
• Find and engage with online influencers and the communities where they spend their time, using social listening software.
Closely examining the tactics will reveal that they are all actionable and aligned with the mission, goals, and strategy.
Understanding Audience Segmentation
When devising a social media strategic plan, it’s imperative to include who the target audience members are and how they use social media. For example, a company that sells hair products for 25- to 34-year-old women might need to categorize them into different subgroups, such as single women, married women with or without children, mommy bloggers, and working women. This can help prioritize the importance of each group and create tactical programs that speak to each segment in a relevant voice.
Some organizations go through an exhaustive audience segmentation process to ensure that they are as relevant as possible when going to market with their social plans. Audience segmentation is a process of categorizing the overall target audience into smaller segments or subgroups. Many times these subgroups have fictitious names for internal reference.
For example, Post Cereals, which manufactures popular cereals such as Cocoa Puffs and Raisin Bran, might have a target audience of general consumers. A segmentation analysis, however, might reveal more specific traits to classify each consumer into groups:
• General demographics, such as age, ethnicity, and income
• Buying habits and behaviors
• What they read and how they interact with friends and neighbors
• Where they shop (for example, online or at the grocery store) and who is responsible for making purchase decisions
Traditionally, moms have been the primary decision makers in homes when it comes to making purchasing decisions for groceries. Moms also are often the ones who do the actual shopping. So it’s probably safe to assume that one segment of Post’s target audience consists of moms, right?
Actually, in a 2010 study by Yahoo!, interviews of 2,400 U.S. 18- to 64-year-old men identified that demographic as the primary grocery shoppers in their homes. For Post, this might well be an additional audience segment. Insights similar to this are valuable and probably can only be revealed by a segmentation study, which, like the preceding example, will shed some light on which segment a company should be targeting.
For a B2B company such as Silicon Valley networking company Cisco, a segmentation analysis can uncover similar information. Obvious Cisco target customers are business professionals or people working in an enterprise. But “business professionals” in the enterprise can be categorized in many ways, and a segmentation analysis can reveal more specific details about them. These customers can be grouped based on answers to these questions:
• What is their job title, and what are they responsible for? Are they a network engineer, data center architect, or chief information officer (CIO)? Are they responsible for making purchase decisions? Do they manage a team?
• What type or publications do they read? Where do they spend their time online?
• How many years of experience do they have? What is their natural job growth pattern?
• What are their daily work-related activities?
An audience segmentation analysis is important because it allows marketers to accurately plan for segment priorities, messaging, and social media usage and behaviors. The end result of a segmentation study is relevancy—that is, the more specific details a company knows about its target audience, the more relevant it can be with messaging and programs.
One useful segmentation analysis is Forrester’s Social Technographic Profile Ladder of Participation. It categorizes consumers’ use of social technologies and their general behavior online. According to this method of analysis, consumers are segmented into seven different groups:
• Creators—Create and publish content on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube.
• Critics—Post ratings and reviews on websites such as ePinions, Yelp, and CNET. These users also comment on various blogs and wikis and contribute to online forums.
• Collectors—Collect content in the form of tags and RSS feeds. They also vote for content on websites such as Digg.com.
• Joiners—Join social networks but might not necessarily create or interact with any content.
• Spectators—Only consume content. They read blogs, watch videos, read customer reviews, and listen to podcasts.
• Inactives—Don’t create or consume any social content whatsoever.
Using Forrester’s free social technographics tool (which can be found at www.forrester.com/empowered/tool_consumer.html), and considering the earlier example of a company that sells hair products targeting U.S. women ages 25 to 34, the results tell a specific story about this segment: Thirty-one percent of all women in the United States are creators, 43 percent are critics, 24 percent are collectors, 74 percent are joiners, and 78 percent are spectators.
Although this data is very high level and general, companies can use it to make specific decisions when creating social media programs. Because 74 percent of this segment actively “joins” social networks, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for a company to explore building a community for this segment or simply launching a Facebook fan page. Additionally, building in functionality that enables users to rate content or review products might be an option because 43 percent are critics and are familiar with this type of online behavior.
A company can add value to a Technographics Profile by mapping specific behaviors to specific segments. And this is where the social media agency or consulting firm can come in and support the plan. One aspect to consider when facilitating an audience segmentation study is the global landscape. This is important for global businesses that are considering using social media specifically for their individual regions.
Global Considerations of Social Media
Social media has to be locally driven. This simply means that what works in the United States, for example, will not necessarily work in other parts of the world. One quick illustration is Twitter. Although Twitter is used widely in the U.S. and growing in popularity, parts of Asia do not use Twitter at all. Before companies can think about launching social media programs, they must spend time understanding the local market trends, as well as the way consumers are using social technologies in each of the countries and regions where they are considering.
Research firms such as ComScore, Nielsen, Altimeter, and Forrester already provide comprehensive case studies and research that outline usage models, social media adoption, and platform analysis globally. Many of these studies are free to download and use, but the more comprehensive and in-depth studies come with a fee. The only exception is data from Altimeter Group, which publishes all its research free of charge for public consumption.
GlobalWebIndex provides a self-service online tool that helps companies, agencies, and business professionals understand their target audience, business category, and market trends in each region of the world. The tool pulls data from a sample size of 51,000 Internet users from 18 different countries. In 2011, the sample size will increase to 90,000 Internet users and cover 20 key online markets. The data set focuses on consumer web behavior and adoption across browser-based technologies and packaged web platforms, social media adoption and impact, attitudes and motivations regarding the role of the Internet, perception and needs for brands online, and the models for content delivery and monetization.
A 2011 breakdown of social media activity in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific using data from GlobalWebIndex, ComScore, and Nielsen reveals some interesting trends in social network growth, adoption, and user behavior.
Snapshot of Social Media Usage in Europe
In Europe, 60 percent of all social network users had an active profile on Facebook at the end of 2010, which equals a little more than 69 million people. Facebook is the most dominant social media network across Europe, but several country-specific social networks are popular as well. One of these is Odnoklassniki, in Russia; 10 percent of European social network users have an active profile on Odnoklassniki, even thought it’s dedicated to Russian-speaking users.
It’s no surprise that Facebook has become the top social network in most European countries. Part of this growth resulted from Facebook introducing a translated version of the site in January 2008.
A closer examination of the activities of social network users in Europe shows the extent to which messaging services on social networks are replacing traditional email services. Seventy percent of European social network users have sent messages to friends via a social network, 64 percent have uploaded photos to their social network, and 52 percent have watched an online video via a social network service. Yet while 42 percent of users have joined a group on a social network, just 16 percent of those social media users have joined a group that is affiliated with a brand or product. This might seem discouraging for companies operating in Europe, but it’s also a huge opportunity to begin thinking about expanding in the European market.
A more in-depth analysis using GlobalWebIndex showed that European users spend a lot of time within their social networks and engage in a variety of different behaviors:
• 27% installed applications within their social network.
• 41% played a game within their social network.
• 20% sent a digital or virtual gift to a friend.
• 23% uploaded a video to their social network profile.
• 52% watched a video shared by a friend.
• 18% wrote a blog.
Outside their social networks, European users are also engaged in social media:
• 31% left a comment on a website or blog.
• 27% posted a comment within a forum or message board.
• 20% uploaded a video online.
• 39% uploaded a photo online.
• 9% used a microblogging service, such as Twitter.
• 63% watched a video.
• 13% actively wrote a blog.
Additionally, In 2010, ComScore reported that Twitter growth in Europe soared 106 percent from the previous year’s figures, to 22.5 million total visitors accessing Twitter.com.
Snapshot of Social Media Usage in Latin America
In Latin America, Facebook has a strong market position compared to other networks. Fifty-five percent of Latin American social network users have an active Facebook profile. Surprisingly, 83 percent of Latin American social network users also have an active profile on Orkut (mostly in Brazil), which is a social network owned by Google, and another 40 percent have an active profile on Windows Live Spaces; both of those audiences are much higher than in other regions around the world. The Latin Business Chronicle reports that there were ninety-five million Facebook users in Latin America as of March 2011.
Despite the difference in platform usage, the activities of Latin American social media users are similar to those of European and Asia-Pacific (APAC) users. Seventy-three percent of Latin American social network users send messages via their favorite social networks. Sixty-six percent of users are active on instant-messaging services via social networks, and 62 percent have uploaded and shared photos on a social network. Similar to European users, a low 21 percent of social network users have joined a social network group affiliated with a brand or product, and only 5 percent have joined a branded community.
Data from GlobalWebIndex suggests that Latin American users spend a lot of time within their social networks and engage in a variety of different behaviors:
• 47% installed applications within their social network.
• 47% played a game within their social network.
• 30% sent a digital or virtual gift to a friend.
• 38% uploaded a video to their social network profile.
• 68% watched a video shared by a friend.
• 26% wrote a blog.
Outside their social networks, Latin America users are also engaged in social media usage:
• 49% left a comment on a website or blog.
• 35% posted a comment within a forum or message board.
• 41% uploaded a video online.
• 56% uploaded a photo online.
• 25% used a microblogging service such as Twitter.
• 74% watched a video.
• 27% actively wrote a blog.
Finally, a study by ComScore calculated that 15 million Internet users in Latin America visited Twitter.com from work or home computers in June 2010, representing growth of 305 percent over the previous year. What’s more, this number excludes the millions of users who accessed Twitter through third-party mobile and desktop client applications such as TweetDeck, HootSuite, and Seesmic.
Snapshot of Social Media Usage in Asia-Pacific Countries (APAC)
In Asia-Pacific countries, social media usage is increasing and reaching a wider audience than ever. However, Facebook doesn’t dominate social media as much as in other regions. Because of government bans in countries such as China, only 32 percent of APAC social network users have an active profile on Facebook. This is still a sizeable user base, however, equating to nearly 71 million users.
In China, the largest APAC market covered in the GlobalWebIndex, QZone (a social network created by Tencent in 2005) and RenRen (a social network with very similar features to Facebook) are the most popular social networks, and 36 percent and 24 percent of Chinese social network users have an active profile within these social networks, respectively.
Activities that APAC users undertake on their social networks are much the same as in Europe. For example, 64 percent of APAC social network users send messages via the social network platform. Furthermore, 66 percent upload and share photos, and 52 percent watch videos on their social network platforms. One interesting difference is found in the proportion of social network users writing blogs; 53 percent of APAC users write a blog on a social network, compared to just 18 percent of European users.
APAC users also spend a lot of time within their social networks and are just as engaged as users in Europe and Latin America:
• 43% installed applications within their social network.
• 55% played a game within their social network.
• 30% sent a digital or virtual gift to a friend.
• 35% uploaded a video to their social network profile.
• 52% watched a video shared by a friend.
• 53% wrote a blog.
Outside their social networks, APAC users are also engaged in social media usage:
• 42% left a comment on a website or blog.
• 43% posted a comment within a forum or message board.
• 29% uploaded a video online.
• 50% uploaded a photo online.
• 26% use a microblogging service such as Twitter.
• 65% watched a video.
• 37% actively wrote a blog.
A 2010 study by ComScore reported that Facebook is the leader for many of the individual markets in Asia-Pacific. India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have their own local social networking sites that dominate market share. A similar ComScore study revealed that Twitter grew 243 percent, to 25.1 million visitors. Numbers for the Middle East and Africa jumped 142 percent, to 5 million visitors.
In 2010, Nielsen released a similar study titled “Social Media Dominates Asia Pacific Internet Usage” and reported unprecedented growth among Asia-Pacific countries. The report found that three of the seven largest global online brands are social media sites, including Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Additionally, the influence of social media has a significant impact on consumers’ purchasing behavior. In Asia-Pacific countries, online product reviews are the third-most-trusted source of information when making purchase decisions, behind family and friends. The report also uncovered several insights for companies to consider before going to market in these regions.
Blogging is exploding in Japan. Japanese Internet users are the most prolific bloggers globally, posting more than a million blog posts per month. Their adoption of Twitter continues to grow as well, with unique visitor numbers increasing from less than 200,000 in 2009 to more than 10 million in 2010.
Although 70 percent of social media users in India identify Orkut as their preferred social network, Facebook is gaining market share, with 50 percent of social media users claiming to use Facebook most often, compared to 38 percent for Orkut. Additionally, Twitter has experienced explosive growth in India: Fifty-seven percent of Twitter users signed up in the past year. In addition, 32 percent of India’s social media users use Twitter at least once a day.
Social media use is on the rise in South Korea. Naver, the leading social network site, attracts nearly 95 percent of the Korean Internet population every month. Twitter experienced 1,900 percent growth during the reporting period.
Although regional data is good to know from a high level perspective, it’s not nearly as granular when examining country-specific data and trends. Even though countries are a part of the same region, the usage models and social media behaviors differ dramatically when comparing one country to another. For this reason, it is crucial for companies that are expanding globally to understand the target audience in each country where they plan to launch operations. Understanding which networks are widely used in each country and region helps organizations plan accordingly for global expansion.
Integrating Social Media with Owned and Paid Media
From a paid media perspective, the opportunities are endless for social media integration. One of the benefits of paid media is that it can potentially reach millions of people quickly. Any company can easily create a Google AdWords account, add a budget, and begin to sell products and capture some real estate on the search engine results page. It’s just as easy to get on the phone with a sales rep at Mashable, TechCrunch, or Federated Media to discuss a paid media program.
The value that social media brings to paid media is relevancy. Most traditional display advertising campaigns require rounds of approvals from the brand marketing teams and the legal department to ensure that the marketing message stays “on brand” and doesn’t make any unsubstantiated claims. This process holds true for most corporate websites as well. However, if done right, paid media can help jump-start a branded community, increase a company’s Twitter following, and grow Facebook “Likes.”
As mentioned in Chapter 1, “Human Capital, Evolved,” individuals trust people like themselves. They distrust advertising and corporate communications. A truly integrated social and paid media program encompasses some elements of a relevant conversation in the form of blog posts, tweets, discussions on a Facebook page, or some other type of user-generated content.
For example, when Intel released its Centrino 2 processor in 2008, it used several marketing channels to increase awareness about the launch, with paid media leading the way. One tactic that proved successful was creating a 300 × 250 display ad unit that integrated a real-time RSS feed from an Intel blog. Each blog post in the unit was specific to Centrino 2 and written by Intel social media practitioners. On average, click-through rates (CTR) for display ads range from just 0.2 to 0.3 percent; this equates to only two to three clicks out of every 1,000 impressions (or people who see the unit). In this case, the CTR was a little over 5 percent. The ad unit had to be pulled down almost immediately because it caused mass server load issues and the server eventually went down.
Ford Motor Company also exemplifies marrying paid media with social media marketing. In 2011, Ford released a print advertisement in Architectural Digest magazine highlighting a screenshot of a specific discussion on Ford’s Facebook fan page. One of Ford’s fans had asked about the difference between the performance of the 2011 2.5 V6 and the 2010 4.6 V8. The entire messaging on the print ad addressed his question and suggested that the new 2011 Ford was powerful and efficient.
Integrating social media with owned and paid media channels isn’t hard to do. In fact, it can be executed relatively easily, as long as there’s cooperation among marketing teams. One way to do this is to make the corporate website more social. Simply adding the Facebook “Like” widget on the home page or product pages is an easy way to make the corporate website more relevant. Many companies today are adding hyperlinks to Facebook at the bottom of the home page. This is definitely a start; however, few Internet users scroll down a web page and read marketing copy on a corporate website. Ensuring that the social integration happens “above the fold” is ideal. The “Like” widget might not necessarily match the brand’s look and feel, but users relate more to each other than they do marketing copy, and the widget provides a level of humanity needed for social relevancy.
Companies can take it one step further and integrate a Twitter feed directly into their website by using specified hashtags or pulling in tweets from the corporate and employees’ Twitter accounts. Another option is to pull in relevant blog posts to product pages.
Featuring brand advocates on the corporate website is another way to achieve social integration. By showcasing premoderated, user-generated content, companies can let their advocates tell the brand story using their own, authentic voices.
In addition, many companies are sponsoring third-party websites such as College Humor, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and CNET, to maximize their presence within these networks. They’re buying media placements throughout the website and sending users to a branded “hub” or microsite. To maximize the traffic to these hubs, companies need to pull in their existing owned media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, or corporate blogs and communities. This helps grow the community with users who are already interested in the brand, product, or service.
Taking the Next Steps
Creating a social media strategic plan isn’t easy to do. It requires strong partnerships internally, collaboration among various marketing teams, research, and smart thinking. The ability to think beyond just “social” is necessary because social media alone will not yield the business results that companies require in this competitive market.
Having a clear and documented mission of the role of social media is key in setting the foundation for the entire strategy. A quick military analogy further illustrates the difference in a mission, goals and objectives, strategy, and tactics:
• Mission—World domination.
• Goal—Win the war against our opponent in the next 12 months.
• Strategy—Decrease the morale of enemy troops.
• Tactics—Wipe out all the enemy communication lines. Destroy all fuel and supply routes. Take out enemy leadership.
More important than defining and documenting each of these elements within a PowerPoint slide deck is the ability to articulately and confidently explain how these components work together. Explain, too, how social media drives overall business value.
When companies consider expanding globally, the natural conclusion is that the core focus should be on Facebook and Twitter. This might be the case, but it makes wise business sense to first understand and study the specific country market data and social media usage models before spending significant time, budget, and resources trying to build a social media program there.
Equally important is studying how consumers behave with the social technologies that they use every day. If a natural behavior is reading blog content and watching video, it makes sense for a program to potentially include a blog featuring video.
Additionally, organizations need to realize that social content cannot be translated and used across various geographies. This is especially important when developing global social media plans. Many companies today are approaching this in two ways.
Some firms are simply publishing content in English. However, although English is considered the global language of business, it might not be a preferred method for consuming content on the social web. In addition, users might naturally search for content in Google (or other search engines) in their native language. If a company is posting content only in English, it will miss the opportunity to be found in the search results. The end result will be no web traffic, no engagement, and complete irrelevance.
Other companies are translating existing blog content, Facebook status updates, and tweets to the local language. On the surface, this might seem like a viable practice, and most corporate websites follow this same practice. The challenge is that social media content is usually informal, full of jargon, and centered on personal and cultural anecdotes. Direct, word-for-word translation doesn’t work.
Before expanding into a different geography, companies also must have local on-the-ground support in that specific geography, to maximize the effectiveness of any social media strategy. Simply put, if a company doesn’t have adequate support in the form of strategists, community managers, or employees willing to engage with customers online and in that region, launching a social media initiative might not be the right way to proceed.
Finally social media cannot operate in a silo. To maximize the effectiveness of any social media strategy, a company needs some level of paid and owned media integration. From a business perspective, it makes sense to leverage all the internal assets at a company’s disposal. From a marketing perspective, having an integrated plan with consistent messaging globally is the icing on the cake.