Social Media Playbook For SMEI Affiliates & Chapters

Transcription

1 Social Media Playbook For SMEI Affiliates & Chapters Passion! For the profession.

2 SMEI Social Media Playbook Sales and Marketing Executives International, Inc. Prepared By: Shannon Richardson Account Manager 6S Marketing Inc. Phone: AND: Kelly Robertson Marketing Manager 6S Marketing Inc. Phone:

3 SMEI Social Media Event Strategy Overview 6s Marketing has created a social media event strategy to assist SMEI in its efforts to create a vibrant social media platform. This strategy when implemented will create a uniformity in the messaging and branding, bringing together SMEI s affiliates and chapters in a unified program that will create awareness and professionalism. Pre-Event Promotion Strategy It is our goal to promote and increase awareness of the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter events using SMEI Affiliate/Chapter social media channels. If you do not currently have Twitter, Facebook Page and LinkedIn groups setup for your organization, please contact SMEI (willis.turner@smei.org) and ask for assistance in order to ensure that SMEI s branding guidelines and naming conventions are followed. Prior to launching this strategy, please record the following statistics in order to create a benchmark: Twitter Followers: Facebook Page Likes: LinkedIn Group Members: The social media channels that are to be used in the promotion of SMEI events are: SMEI Affiliate/Chapter Blog SMEI Affiliate/Chapter Twitter (@smeiaffiliate/chaptername) SMEI Affiliate/Chapter LinkedIn Group SMEI Affiliate/Chapter Facebook Page YouTube & Slideshare (Main SMEI Account) Below we go into how each event should be promoted on these social media channels. Contests Contests are a great way to increase awareness and participation from followers leading up to the event. Contest ideas for SMEI are to give away tickets to the event or even lunch or coffee with the speaker (if possible). The contests can range from a simple RT to win contest to asking participants to engage with you to win. Below is a couple of different contest strategies and how SMEI Affiliate/Chapter can execute the contests. RT to Win A week or 2 before the event date send out over the Twitter account a tweet with the link to the event like:

4 RT to win tickets event RT to win 2 tickets event: LinkedIn Using Social Media To Market Your Personal Brand Pick a random winner a few days before the event and announce the winner/s on Twitter. Follow it up with a tweet like: Didn t win tickets to LinkedIn Using Social Media To Market Your Personal Brand? Will still have tickets - RSVP now! Comment to Win A week or 2 before the event date create a blog post about the event and announce in the blog post that SMEI Affiliate/Chapter is giving away 2 tickets to the event. Within the blog post explain how a person can obtain an entry to win the tickets. Example: Here s how you can enter to win 2 tickets to SMEI s event LinkedIn Using Social Media To Market Your Personal Brand: Leave a comment on this post on why you want to attend the event (1 entry) Post the following on Twitter (1 entry) I entered to win 2 tickets event: LinkedIn Using Social Media To Market Your Personal Brand Pick a random winner a few days before the event and announce the winner on the Blog and on Twitter. Q&A A week or 2 before the event date promote a live Q&A chat on the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter Facebook wall. Create an event with a date and time. The Q&A can be around the topic of the event and at the end of the Q&A you can give out 2 tickets to the event to the most engaged users or the person that asked the best question. Random Winner A week or 2 before the event date send an around to the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter s database announcing that SMEI Affiliate/Chapter will be giving away 2 tickets to the event. All they have to do to enter is follow SMEI Affiliate/Chapter on Twitter and Like the Facebook page. SMEI Affiliate/Chapter will pick a random Twitter follower/facebook fan to win tickets. This is a great way to get an initial boost of Twitter followers and Facebook Like s on the page. During Event Q&A Announce at the start of the event that users can post their questions to the event presenter on the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter Facebook page or on Twitter using a set hashtag like #smeivan. Make sure to set aside time at the end of the event for the event presenter to answer the questions asked on Facebook and Twitter. Then pick a winner from the Facebook/Twitter Q&A to win tickets the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter s next event.

5 SMEI Affiliate/Chapter Blog Blog Optimization It is recommended that one master blog be incorporated into the SMEI website as a page on the website, instead of a multiple chapter blogs hosted on external sites. This is a recommendation to improve usability but also branding. SMEI will create a master blog and provide authoring credentials to one designated author from each affiliate/chapter. Titles To draw attention and traffic to each blog post, name the title of the blog post something that describes the event, but positions it in an interesting way. Also think about what would be interesting to tweet out to your followers in only 140 characters. It has to be eye catching enough to encourage a click, but be descriptive enough to let followers know what the blog post is about. For example, the blog post about the LinkedIn event could be rewritten as: How to use LinkedIn to market your personal brand In our experience, the blog posts and tweets that receive the most interest are How to blog posts that indicate the reader will learn how to do something by reading your blog post. Images It is recommended that a minimum of 1 image be incorporated into each blog post. This will help with search engine optimization, but when posting the blog post to Facebook and LinkedIn those social media platforms will have an image to pull in, making the social media post more esthetically interesting. The image for event postings can be the speaker photo. Be sure that you have the authorization release form (available from SMEI) signed by the copyright holder before posting any photos. Social Sharing An easy way to increase exposure for the event is to add social sharing buttons to the blog so people can automatically tweet, like, share on LinkedIn or post to Google+. It is recommended the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter blog incorporate social sharing buttons into its blog. Please see: for an example. Linking Linking to other portions of the SMEI.org website from the event blog post is an excellent way to provider readers with a direct link back to the main SMEI.org website, or the Chapter s page on the site. We recommend that bloggers for the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter provide links within the blog posts back to the chapter location page on the SMEI.org website. Use in Event Promotion The blog should serve as the base platform used in social media campaigns. This is where the content you wish to share with the world should be placed and shared from.

6 It is recommended that each event the Chapter holds is blogged about. The blog post should contain the details about the speaker, where the event is taking place, why people should attend and how people can register with a link to a registration engine. A good example of the content that should be contained in each event blog post is: Each blog post, not necessarily only posts about the events SMEI Chapters host, should be promoted on social networking sites in this order: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Groups YouTube again, to consolidate the brand, please send any video to SMEI for uploading to the master YouTube account. (Post Event) o Twitter o Facebook o LinkedIn Groups & Business Page Slideshare SMEI has a premium slideshare account. Please send the PPT to the SMEI office for posting (Post Event) Twitter Tweeting your blog post Based on the recommendations above regarding blog post titles, the subsequent tweet that would be sent out for the LinkedIn Speaker event would then be: Event: How to use #LinkedIn to market your personal brand: {Link to Blog post} This Tweet indicates that 1) The tweet is about an event, 2) The event is about #LinkedIn, and 3) They will learn how to use LinkedIn to market their personal brand. Note about Hashtags A hash tag has been used to tag the topic of LinkedIn. This means that anyone who follows topics about LinkedIn will see this tweet even if they do not follow the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter Twitter account. This is a powerful way to increase followers and brand awareness. However, each event or conference that SMEI Affiliate/Chapter hosts can benefit from SMEI creating a unique hash tag for each event. This allows attendees, or those who cannot attend, to follow the conversations taking place about the event or speakers at the event on Twitter. Obtaining Re-Tweets Once the SMEI Affiliate/Chapter Twitter account sends out the above Tweet, it should leverage its personal network. This will mean that the person managing the twitter account would send an to their colleagues, other chapter leaders or employees and ask them to retweet the original tweet sent out (as above). Remember, the people asked to do the retweeting should have some sort of affiliation

7 with SMEI and follow either SMEI Affiliate/Chapter or SMEI International from their personal Twitter accounts. An example sent out to a personal network for a retweet can be as something as simple as: Hi {first name} Do you mind retweeting the below from your Twitter account since you have x affiliation with SMEI? Thanks, Tweet Schedule As soon as the event is scheduled, the blog post and first tweet should be sent out regarding the event. Then, amidst other tweets from the account, 2 3 tweets per week can be sent out with teasers regarding the events. The maximum of 3 should be sent out about the event so as not to annoy followers. Teaser tweets can contain secret tid-bits about the event speaker, what attendees will learn, or stats relating to the event topic. Facebook Page The next step in promoting the blog post is to post it on the Chapter s SMEI Facebook page. This is as simple as writing a short blurb about the event and posting the link to the blog post for more information. The below screenshot is a wonderful example of SMEI Affiliate/Chapter promoting upcoming events on Facebook:

8 To continue to promote the event without repeating content, posting a contest to win tickets, lunch or coffee with the speaker can be initially posted, with reminder postings leading up to the announcement of the winner. Obtaining Likes & Shares The same strategy as used in obtaining re-tweets should be used for obtaining likes and shares of Facebook content. The personal networks of SMEI Affiliate/Chapter members should be utilized to share Facebook content. LinkedIn Groups SMEI uses LinkedIn Groups quite effectively to encourage participation in local events. Here are some guidelines to LinkedIn Groups, as provided by SMEI Affiliate/Chapter, which is currently being used by the chapter: Guide to LinkedIn Groups For SMEI Chapters with less than 25 members, the LinkedIn Group for the chapter can be a very useful tool for keeping everyone engaged and informing the members of chapter events. There is a short tutorial available at to help you learn how to navigate and use groups. The chapter leader will be given admin status in the group so that they can assist SMEI in managing the group and using the interface to send updates to the members about upcoming events. Setting Up Events Simply go to and put your mouse over More in the top navigation buttons and scroll down and click on events. Once you are on the event page, you can use the add event tab. You can collect RSVP s and cross promote the event in the chapter s LinkedIn group. Posting Events BCAMA has a good example of what an event should look like when posted in a group on LinkedIn:

9 This is a good example because: Clearly states what the event is and the speaker Clearly identifies the date and where the event is taking place. Links to the website for more information. What SMEI can do better: Provide social sharing buttons on the event landing page on the SMEI website to encourage sharing. Encouraging Event Sharing The head person at each chapter hosting the event should be the one to initially create the event. The chapter head should then send an to other SMEI employees at that particular chapter and ask them to share, comment or like the original event post in the group. A blog post should also be present on the chapter s blog with social sharing buttons available for those visitors who want to share the event. Once the event has been created on LinkedIn it should be posted on the wall of the Facebook account for the chapter, and tweeted from the chapter s Twitter account. During the event Hashtags For each event that SMEI hosts, a hashtag should be created and disseminated in all pre-event promotions. At the beginning of the event, attendees should be made aware of the hashtag. This can either be verbally, on signage or both.

10 Using a hashtag during an event means that attendees, or those who could not make it can follow the conversation about the event on Twitter. This also increases the chances of SMEI trending on Twitter during the event, increasing brand awareness and visibility. Conversation Management During the event, it is a good idea to have someone at SMEI manage the conversation taking place online; meaning they should respond to questions from attendees who have tweeted them on Twitter, and re-tweet interesting tweets. Post Event Promotion YouTube SMEI s largest and most exciting opportunity lies within video sharing for post event promotion. The event should be filmed, and the subsequent video should be uploaded to YouTube. This video on YouTube should then be posted on the chapter s blog, tweeted from the Twitter account, and posted to Facebook. Slideshare Within the blog post, the presentation deck should also be embedded from SMEI s Slideshare, upon the assumption that the presenter has given permission for SMEI to do this. The presentation deck would also then be used for additional tweets to continue the buzz after the event and provides additional content to be used within post-event promotion efforts. Summary In summary, SMEI should use their blog as the support of their event promotion campaigns. The event information is then shared on social media sites that link back to the original blog post. Post-event, the use of video will be SMEI s strongest promotional tool in promoting the event along with Slideshare. The content on these two sites should also be promoted through social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. In the promotion of events, LinkedIn Groups allows for very direct communication between members who would most likely be interested in events that SMEI chapters host. Along with posting information about the event