SEVEN SOCIAL MEDIA PRACTICES NOT TO IGNORE Leverage the latest social media research and resources

Transcription

1 SEVEN SOCIAL MEDIA PRACTICES NOT TO IGNORE Leverage the latest social media research and resources 1. Know where your audience is Back to basics: Who do you want to reach? Where can you reach them? New social media sites pop up every day. They re exciting and new, but they re also overwhelming and time consuming. You can t afford to invest your effort and not be effective. So it is essential to do the research and understand where your key audiences are networking online. Google Ad Planner shows who uses which social media sites based on key demographics including gender, age, income level, and education level. It reports on Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, and Ning. When looking at usage by gender, females exhibit higher usage than males on most sites. Digg, Reddit, and Facebook are exceptions to this. Males have higher usage on Digg and Reddit and usage equal to females on Facebook. This indicates that females are slightly more likely to engage on social media sites. Social Media Use by Gender 57% % 50% 40% 3 36% 4 52% 36% 60% 50% 60% 66% 6 Male Female Contents 1 Know where your audience is 4 Align the medium with goals 5 Make a policy 5 Have a plan for triage 6 Make it easy 7 Integrate 7 Drive them home 1

2 Most social media sites receive the highest amount of usage from people ages 35 54, with the ages of trailing close behind. The one exception to this is MySpace; its highest segment of users is ages 0 17 at 34 percent of users. This indicates that social media should not be treated as a purely Gen Y medium and that it is quite an effective way to reach older generations as well. Social Media Use by Age 62% of Facebook users are over the age of 34 Ning 15% 25% 20% 11% MySpace 3 12% 20% 6% 0 17 Twider LinkedIn Facebook 7% 1 25% 12% Reddit StumbleUpon Digg 6% 1 12% 1 27% % 1 11% When looking at education, the majority of social media users have a college degree or some college education. This holds true across all the social media sites reported. LinkedIn has the highest percentage (52 percent) of college graduate users, followed by Reddit (40 percent), Digg (35 percent), Twitter (30 percent), StumbleUpon (29 percent), and Facebook (26 percent). Ning MySpace Twider LinkedIn Facebook Reddit StumbleUpon Social Media Use by Educagon Level 11% 4 6% 12% 32% 4 11% 4 2 7% % 40% 4 32% 5 22% 7% High School High School Diploma Some College Bachelors Degree Graduate Degree The majority of social media users are college educated. Digg 1 42% 2

3 You can also target your communication efforts based on income level. If you re looking to target people with incomes higher than $100K, LinkedIn is the best social media site for your efforts, with 25 percent of users having an income of $100K or higher. Facebook and Twitter follow this with 15 percent and 14 percent, respectively. Social Media Use by Income Ning 12% 36% 27% 1 MySpace Twider LinkedIn 6% % 11% % 11% 6% 2% 5% $0 24K $25 49K $50 74K Facebook 7% % $75 99K Reddit 22% 20% 1 5% $ K StumbleUpon 32% 2 7% $150K+ Digg 1 When planning your social media efforts, first determine who you want to target. Leveraging the above data will help you find the most effective places to target them in the social space. Also keep in mind the overall usage of various social media sites. For example: More than 500 million are on Facebook 175 million are on Twitter 173 million are on YouTube More than 85 million are on LinkedIn 3

4 2. Align the medium with your goals What are your social media goals? Communication brand exposure website traffic search engine optimization? Different social networks can help you accomplish very different goals, so take some time to think about what your goals are and how you can best accomplish them through social media. CMO recently produced a Guide to the Social Landscape that can help you decide where to invest your efforts based on your marketing goals. Below is a summary of the guide. Customer Communication Marketing Goals Brand Exposure Traffic to Your Site SEO good good ok ok good good ok bad ok ok bad good ok good bad ok good good ok good ok good good good bad ok good good bad bad ok ok Source: CMO For the full guide, visit: guidesocial media landscape 4

5 3. Make a policy How many organizations using social media don t have a social media policy? Too many. Whether you ve already launched your social media strategy or are just beginning to think about it, it s never too late to step back and write a social media usage policy. PolicyTool.net provides a free service to help you write your policy. Some items to consider: how will your internal culture embrace social media, what concerns do you have, who is responsible for managing and participating, what are the ground rules, how will concerns be reported and managed, and what kind of social media training should you provide? 4. Have a plan for triage Because social media allows anyone from anywhere to say just about anything they want, it also makes you a target for negative (and positive) word of mouth. It is best to have a plan for how you will interact with those who are talking about you, or to you, in the social media and blogosphere. Here s a sample plan for social media triage: Social Media Triage Plan Source: Altimeter Group Take reasonable action to fix issue, let customer know action taken Do you want to respond? Positive Assess the message Negative Evaluate the purpose Does customer need or deserve more info? response Unhappy customer? Are the facts correct? Gently correct the facts Can you add value? Dedicated complainer? Are the facts correct? Thank the person Respond in kind and share Comedian want to be? Is the problem being fixed? Explain what is being done to correct the issue Let post stand and monitor 5

6 5. Make it easy Adding more social media into your marketing communications mix can seem like a lot more work, but there are a few ways to make it easier. Utilizing RSS feeds to pull content from your website onto your Facebook page or other website presences is one way to do more with less. You can also use tools like Facebook Connect to let your constituents do the work for you. Facebook Connect enabled sites make it easy for site visitors to make your content go viral because they can automatically post the actions they take on your website to their Facebook profiles. 60 million status updates made on Facebook daily. Are you in their newsfeed? 6

7 6. Integrate Your social media efforts should integrate with your other marketing efforts; from messaging to branding, everything should be consistent. Using some of the tools mentioned above, such as RSS and Facebook Connect is one way you can integrate your efforts, but also provide links to your social networks on all communication, from your website and e mails to direct mail pieces. 7. Drive them home In the online world, you have one destination you want all of your constituents to reach your website. On your website, you re in complete control of the message, content, and branding, and once your constituents are there, you can lead them to all the information you want them to see. Therefore, in all of your social media efforts, remember to drive them home. About imodules imodules provides technology solutions and services to help organizations achieve their missions and build meaningful relationships through member engagement and online communication. With more than 600 clients reaching more than 31 million constituents, imodules offers easy touse tools for website management, data management, e mail marketing, event management, online giving, membership management, and social networking. An industry leader since 2002, imodules partners with organizations worldwide to make a difference. For more information, please visit imodules Software, Inc. This paper is for informational purposes only. The contents express the views of imodules Software on the items discussed as of the date of the publication. All imodules product names are trademarks of imodules Software. Other marks are the property of their respective owners and are used for informational purposes only. 7