Brand Matters

“To the world you may be one person; but to
one person you may be the world.”
Dr. Suess

•Why your online brand matters and how it impacts your success
•Creating & defining your online brand
•Launching your online brand publicly
•How to build your brand on social networks such as
Twitter, Facebook, & Linkedin
INTRODUCTION

STRATEGY
What is Social Media?
“Social media is media designed to be
disseminated through social
interaction, created using highly
accessible and scalable publishing
techniques.”
Widipedia
Canadian, Sociologist

What is Social Media?
• An ongoing conversation that’s happening
RIGHT NOW
• A promotional channel for content distribution
• A long-term return on investment
• A steady stream of information for:
–Research
–Feedback
–Building Relationships with customers, clients,
contacts

Current Statistics
•Over 50% of people in the US have at least 1 social
media account
•Social media makes up over 17% of all online
usage
–Overtaken email as #1 activity on the web
•93% of Americans believe companies should have
a social media presence
–85% believe those companies should be
interacting with customers

Social Media Facts - Twitter
•1 Billion registered users
•500 million tweets sent daily
•100 Million active users daily
•170 minute spent per user on Twitter Monthly
•Peak days to tweet are Tuesday & Wednesday
•Millennials and Teens are most active segment

Social Media Facts - YouTube
•1 Billion unique visits each month
•Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each
month on YouTube
–Almost an hour for every person on Earth, and
50% more than last year
•100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube
every minute
•According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US
adults ages 18-34 than any cable network

Social Media Facts – Pinterest
47% of US online consumers have made a
purchase based on recommendation from
Pinterest
Pinterest generates 4x more revenue per click
than Twitter and 27% more than Facebook
Pinterest buyers spend more money on items
than any of the other top 5 social media sites
Conversion rates for Pinterest traffic are 50%
higher than conversions from other traffic
80% of total pinterest pins are repins
70 Million users as of 2013

Social Media Facts – Google+
•Over 350M Users
•Google plus has great SEO benefits
–Google plus links are all “dofollow”, meaning
they pass valuable link juice
–Posts are crawled and indexed immediately
–Bots crawl 2,500 words on a + page, vs 275 on
Facebook
•Google Plus for business offers more integrated
analytics on your business page

Social Media Facts- Facebook
•1.5 Billion active users worldwide
–819 Million on mobile devices
–Mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile
users
•53% female, 46% male
•300 Million Photo uploads per day
•Thursdays and Fridays, engagement is 18% higher
•Average time spent on Facebook is 20 minutes
•4.75 Billion pieces of content shared daily
•Largest segment is 25-34 years old

Understand why?
Information towards insights
Strategy
Roadmap to roll-out
What is the task at hand and what does it need to deliver?
Research & data gathering with focus on getting a clear understanding of the target market
Define the strategic approach, demonstrate the user experience, highlight opportunities for engagement
Define the operational plan, budget implication, analysis review, project plan and refinement
Business objectives
Competitor
review
As-is
analysis
Digital
vision
Ecosystem User
Journey
Mobile
Strategy
Channel delivery Measurement
CRM
Strategy
Web
Strategy
Social
Media
Strategy
Best practice
& Trends
Analysis &
Review
Refinement &
optimisation
DIGITAL STRATEGY APPROACH

APPROACH

APPROACH
Understand why?
What is the task at hand and what does it need to deliver?
Business objectives

APPROACH
Information towards insights
Research & data gathering with focus on getting a clear understanding of the target market
Competitor
review
As-is
analysis
Best practice
& Trends

APPROACH
Strategy
Define the strategic approach, demonstrate the user experience, highlight opportunities for engagement
Digital
vision
Ecosystem User
Journey
Mobile
Strategy
CRM
Strategy
Web
Strategy
Social
Media
Strategy

APPROACH
Strategy
Define the strategic approach, demonstrate the user experience, highlight opportunities for engagement
Digital
vision
Ecosystem User
Journey
Mobile
Strategy
CRM
Strategy
Web
Strategy
Social
Media
Strategy

APPROACH
Strategy
Define the strategic approach, demonstrate the user experience, highlight opportunities for engagement
Digital
vision
Ecosystem User
Journey
Mobile
Strategy
CRM
Strategy
Web
Strategy
Social
Media
Strategy

DIGITAL CHANNELS
1. Identify what your objectives are
Lead generation / Sales
Brand awareness
Customer engagement
2. Choose the right digital channels
High
Priority
Medium
Priority
Low
Priority
PPC (Pay Per Click) – Paid search marketing
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – Site copy, meta tags, site architecture
Content Marketing – Copywriting, Native Marketing
Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube
Email Marketing – Campaign specific
Mobile Marketing – mobi sites, SMS, MMS, Display
Display Advertising–3rd
party Display, Premium publishers

APPROACH
Define the operational plan, budget implication, analysis review, project plan and refinement
Channel delivery Measurement
Analysis &
Review
Refinement &
optimisation

The Usability Process
Usabilit
y
 Competitor analysis
 Trends and innovations
 Focus groups
 Interviews
 Identify user types
 Goals & objectives for the user
 Context of use
 Identify scope of the project
 Key stakeholders
 Marketing and business
objectives and requirements
 Personas
 Task flows
 IA
 Navigation
 Wireframes
 Process flows
 Task Scenarios
 2 types:
 Paper prototype
 Performance testing
 Measure the following:
 effective to use, efficient to
use, safe to use, having a
good utility, easy to learn,
easy to remember, and how
to use
 Benchmark against user
goals and business
objectives.
 Benchmark usability test

Creating a Social Media Plan
Steps:
1.Preplanning
2.Listen to the Conversation
3.Create Your Target Profiles
4.Set Specific Goals
5.Join the Conversation
6.Measure ROI

Step 1 - Preplanning
Questions to ask internally:
Where do our customers get their information
What influences our customers?
How does information flow in our industry?
What promotional channels are we currently using?
 Are they working?
What is my sales funnel? How are leads qualified?
Asking questions indicates how social media can be used to
complement your business goals.

Step 2 – Listen to the Conversation
Secure your brand on social platforms
 Usernames are often unique
 Use consistent usernames across all platforms
Set up monitoring channels
 Google Alerts
 Social Mention
 Technorati
 Twitter Search/Twitter Lists
 Radian6
Monitor: individual influencers, competitors, blogs/comments, and
industry news sources

Step 3 – Create Your Target Profile
• Focusing on key target segments lowers marketing costs
• Example:
★ Target Audience is 25-35
★ $350 Billion in spending power
★ Spend 20 hours online weekly
★ 96% of them join social networks
• This information can be gathered through market research,
surveys, or previous studies
• What is the perfect prospect?

Step 3 – Continued
• Find key attributes from monitoring channels
• Chart presence on social media
• Determine Market Segmentation
★ Demographic
★ Geographic
★ Psychographic
★ Behavioralistic
• Continue gathering customer data at each step of your plan

Step 4 – Set Specific Social Goals
• Generate Leads
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase traffic/Opt-ins
• Develop relationships with current customers
• Boost SEO/SEM results
• Reduce CRM costs
• Increase Revenue

Step 5 – Join the Conversation
• 3 Phases of Social Equity
★ Awareness
★ Qualify fans and followers as leads
★ Engagement
★ Increase long-term communication
★ Exclusive promotions will help turn advocates into customers
★ Social Commerce
★ Determine small data set to introduce products to
★ Gather product reviews

Step 5 – Continued
• Establish an Editorial Calendar
★ Choose specific days for posting content
★ Be consistent – you’re a news source
★ Helps stay on track and organize content
★ Choosing specific topics each day helps find content ideas
• Share calendar with everyone involved
• Use video to build quality content
★ Doesn’t have to be professional
★ Include descriptions and tags for search engine optimization
★ Post video with content on your blog/website

Step 5 – Continued
Be Transparent and Authentic
 Don’t be evasive
 Offer your name, title, experience
 Admit your interests in the topic
 Define your credibility (Use LinkedIn to build your credible profile)
 Contribute quality input on topics of interest
Strive to answer questions about your authenticity
Don’t focus on selling, focus on engagement
Earn a reputation, build trust, then sell to qualified leads

Step 5 – Continued
• Be the expert in your industry
★ Write about what you know
★ Offer insights to those who ask for it
★ Share links to resources you think add to the conversation
• Use topics you monitor to start conversation
★ Articles/blog posts
★ Community Forum Threads
★ Conversation from social media groups
• When customers trust your content, they’ll trust what you’re
selling

Step 5 – Continued
• Have rules of engagement
★ Know what to do with negative responses
★ Determine who in your organization is involved in responding
★ Admit to mistakes and thank those who bring it to attention
★ Respond Kindly
• Share these rules with your team
• Turn brand “detractors” into “advocates”
★ People remember bad experiences, but will buy again if it’s corrected

Step 6 – Measure Your Returns
• What is a Return?
★ Non-financial
★ Visitors, word of mouth, page views, fans, followers, referrals
★ Financial
★ Sales, Transactions, Coupons
★ ROI
• Not all returns have to be $$ to bring value

Step 6 – Continued
• Establish before/after baseline
★ What did our online environment look like before social media?
★ What online channels were we using?
★ What does it look like now?
• Determine hard numbers here
★ 5.5% conversion rate before
★ 8.5% conversion rate now
• This baseline should track at least 6 months

Step 6 – Continued
• Develop Activity Timeline along same baseline
• Diagram exact dates in which key SM activities occurred
★ 8/11 blog started
★ 8/13 Facebook page started
★ 9/15 FB ad campaign begins
★ 9/17 FB ad ended
• Note Milestones on diagram
★ 500/1000/10,000 fans
★ 100 clicks back to blog link

Step 6 – Continued
Look at Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
 Transactions
 New Customers
 Sales
 Revenue
 Average Order Size
 E-mail list size
Use Google Analytics to determine exact numbers
What are the transaction precursors?
 Brand mentions
 Loyalty metrics
 Store traffic
 Free sample offers

Step 6 – Continued
Overlay all timelines and look for patterns
 SM Activities
 Web Analytics
 Store Metrics
 Loyalty Metrics
Circle areas where increases occur
How were specific numbers achieved?
 Facebook promotion
 Product launch
 Press release
 Coupon offer

Budgeting
• Allocation vs. Addition
★ Do you raise new funds or borrow from existing budgets?
• How to determine Allocation or Addition
★ What are your goals?
★ How much is your existing marketing budget?
★ Which current tactics work? Which are most expensive?
★ What internal resources are available?

Budgeting
• What to budget for:
★ Time
★ Design and Branding
★ Analytics Tools
★ Social Monitoring
★ Automation Applications
★ Social Media Advertising
★ Outsources/Consulting

How to Get Started
Start with platforms you can actively maintain
What outsourcing is needed?
 Design, development, content management, market research
Plan your content flow
 Will you push content through all channels?
Find tools to automate processes
 Tweetdeck (now by Twitter)
 Hootsuite
 Sprout Social
 Mailchimp
 Sendible

Additional Resources
Blogs
 Socialmediaexplorer.com
 Socialmediatoday.com
 Mashable.com
Tools
 Tweetdeck
 Sendible
 Hootsuite
 Shoutlet
 Buffer
 Trackur

Thank You and Good Luck