This week, I\u2019m in Las Vegas giving the opening presentation of\u00a0MarTech\u00a0at the\u00a0LeadingRe\u00a0Annual Conference and speaking on two other panels during the general sessions.\u00a0 They\u2019ve prepared an exciting lineup of speakers \u2013 including\u00a0Guy Kawasaki,\u00a0Scott Murphy, and more.<\/p>\n
The MarTech opening session title is\u00a0Architecting<\/em>\u00a0a Social Web Marketing & P.R. Strategy.\u00a0<\/em>For this presentation, I\u2019ve decided to dial down most of my content from the deck so that event-goers focus on my words instead of reading slides.\u00a0 However, to supplement my session and provide the same content to The Future Buzz community, here\u2019s a brief written summary of what I\u2019m presenting.<\/p>\n The social areas of the web are growing fast.\u00a0<\/strong>Consider just a few stats:<\/p>\n While the above numbers show the scale of the consumer driven web \u2013 B2B influence also lives here.\u00a0 According to a\u00a0Forrester Research report\u00a0of business buyers:<\/p>\n Consumers\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0prospects are already here.\u00a0 Marketing dollars care catching up, fast:<\/p>\n Media influence, too:<\/p>\n These stats are just the tip of the iceberg, and highlight a clear trend of the last decade.\u00a0 Despite the doom-and-gloom in the early 2000\u2032s, the web kept moving forward and integrating tighter with business and our personal lives.<\/p>\n But, more subjectively \u2013 why is social media so compelling for marketing and PR pros?\u00a0 A few of main reasons include:<\/p>\n Your opportunity is to approach the web in a strategic manner through the development of a digital marketing\/social media roadmap.<\/p>\n As with any marketing plan, you need to start by identifying\/researching audiences, then defining objectives and developing a strategy.\u00a0 Only after these first steps should you get into tools and tactics and ultimately move on to metrics\/KPI measurement (and at that point, you\u2019ll know what your objective metric is and what other numbers feed it).<\/p>\n So, let\u2019s go through an outline of the basic steps:<\/p>\n Identify who it is you are trying to influence.\u00a0 Once you\u2019ve defined them, start to gather data about them.\u00a0 Your potential data sources include, but are certainly not limited to:<\/p>\n After you\u2019ve uncovered the data, what exactly do you do with it?<\/p>\n Develop personality archetypes<\/strong><\/p>\n Start to create personality archetypes of your audience.\u00a0 Who are they, what are their motivations, what makes up the influencers\/connectors?\u00a0 What makes up the average user? Begin to document this in a way that\u2019s scanable and useful.\u00a0 Include both objective and subjective insights.\u00a0 As you move forward into your plan and dig deeper, you can come back and make this section even more robust.<\/p>\n Identify popular content\/ideas<\/strong><\/p>\n What types of content, ideas or imagery resonates with this audience?\u00a0 Start to track and document what they\u2019re sharing like crazy or always linking to.\u00a0 This data will help you learn to tap into existing demand and model the already popular archetypes.\u00a0 It will also help you predict what\u2019s coming next and be the one to capitalize on it.\u00a0 Also try and make correlations between popular content\/ideas and personality types of influencers identified during this process.<\/p>\n Matrix trending data (including competitive intelligence)<\/strong><\/p>\n Take your audience data and begin to trend it over time in a way that is useful and accessible at a glance, such as popularity of content within Google search trends or Twitter trends.\u00a0 The past can help you map the future.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be able to make connections today even if you\u2019re not tracking this data since others are already doing so for you.\u00a0 By studying it, you\u2019ll gain insight into the ebbs and flows of the niches that matter to your business.<\/p>\n What are your end goals from this audience?\u00a0 What is it you want from them?\u00a0 Just a few example objectives I\u2019ve worked with include:<\/p>\n Of course, your objectives will vary depending on your business.\u00a0\u00a0Social media marketing application\u00a0is only limited by your creativity.<\/p>\n After audience is identified and your objective(s) are fleshed out, you are now ready to define a strategic approach.\u00a0 This is driven by audience data + objective + industry insight + creativity.\u00a0 All tactics implemented in the next steps should be driven by the strategy.\u00a0 Consider common\u00a0digital strategy development\u00a0mistakes prior to finalizing this.<\/p>\n Only at this point should you define tools\/tactics.\u00a0 As Matt Dickman stated previously \u2013 if you want better digital strategy,\u00a0ban these 7 dirty words.\u00a0 Most marketing and PR pros skip immediately to this step.\u00a0 And while it makes sense to\u00a0experiment\u00a0with different tools\/tactics, they should still roll to the strategic approach (which needs to be locked down first).<\/p>\n Potential tools include anything from blogs and microblogging, to social news sites\/networks, to content formats such as videos, podcasts and images.<\/p>\n Points to keep in mind when fleshing out tools\/tactics<\/strong><\/p>\n Ultimately, you want to siphon users out of the horizontal social sites \u2013 which have a signal to noise ratio you do not control \u2013 to your own social channel (perhaps a blog, as just one example).\u00a0 Networks can and do fall out of favor and to vest too much time and effort into sites like Twitter or Facebook comes at the opportunity cost of building your own leverage on the web you earn by having your own site.<\/p>\n Activate SEO intersection<\/strong><\/p>\n All social media activity should be mindful of search engine optimization.\u00a0 5 basic tips to keep in mind include:<\/p>\n Of course feed your content into your social channels, but ultimately realize your community has greater power to do this than you.\u00a0 Inspire a group to organically raise your brand\u2019s search equity naturally.<\/p>\n Measurement is key with a social web strategy, and defining the KPIs that matter to your brand is vital.<\/p>\n Some potential metrics to measure include:<\/p>\n For much more details on measurements\/KPIs, check out my post at Online Marketing Blog on\u00a0web analytics reporting.<\/p>\n After the plan outline, I\u2019ll be taking the audience through several case studies that would each require their own blog post to do justice.\u00a0 With that said, for readers here, following are a few fleshed out case studies to help you start formulating your own ideas, lock down your plan, and execute next steps:<\/p>\n This week, I\u2019m in Las Vegas giving the opening presentation of\u00a0MarTech\u00a0at the\u00a0LeadingRe\u00a0Annual Conference and speaking on two other panels during … <\/p>\n\n
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1.\u00a0 Identify audience<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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2.\u00a0 Define objectives<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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3.\u00a0 Develop strategy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
4.\u00a0 Implement tools\/tactics<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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5.\u00a0 Metrics\/measurement<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Case Studies<\/h2>\n
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