Social Media strategy

Candidate nr. 870. MOK. Exam – Media socialization.

Title:

Social media strategy

Media socialization exam:
Subject code: JBMKMEDIESOS
Candidate: 870

Rune Haugestad
+ 47 94 88 29 01
rune_haugestad@yahoo.no

My digital CV and recommendations:
http://no.linkedin.com/in/runehaugestad

Media & Communication - 5th term
Oslo University College 18.12.2009

My empirical qualitative survey:
Appendix A: Excel spreadsheet; company A.
Appendix B: Excel spreadsheet; company B.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 3

1.2 Research objectives and purposes................................................................................................................. 3

1.3 Theory and methodology .............................................................................................................................. 4

1.4 About the authors.......................................................................................................................................... 4

1.5 Chosen methodology .................................................................................................................................... 5

2. Historic view and background on social media ..................................................................................... 6

2.1 Social media and e-marketing words, phrases & acronyms.......................................................................... 9

2.2. Digital engagement; creating buzz & word of mouth ................................................................................ 10

2.3 Viral marketing/campaigns ......................................................................................................................... 10

2.4 Creating positive buzz ................................................................................................................................ 12

2.5 Social media as part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ........................................................ 12

2.6 Overview social tools and services ............................................................................................................. 13

3. Defining a social media strategy.......................................................................................................... 15

A. Identify and define your social media business goal(s) ........................................................................... 17

B. Identify and define your social media business objectives ...................................................................... 17

C. Identify and define your (hyper) target audience ..................................................................................... 18

D. Identify and design your message/story ................................................................................................... 18

E. Build engagement, interactivity and dialogue .......................................................................................... 18

F. Choose your social media mix ................................................................................................................. 19

G. Define how to measure success ............................................................................................................... 19

H. Identify, evaluate, test and deploy monitoring tools ................................................................................ 20

When it`s time to wrap up your written strategy .............................................................................................. 21

3.2 Social media and ethics.............................................................................................................................. 21

4. Discussion............................................................................................................................................ 22

4.1 Research objectives and purposes .......................................................................................................... 22

4.2 Analyzing my survey ...................................................................................................................................... 23

4.3 Patterns & themes ........................................................................................................................................... 23

4.4. My interpretation............................................................................................................................................ 24

5. Summary and conclusion..................................................................................................................... 25

References .................................................................................................................................................... 27

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1. Introduction
My choice of theme social media, and title; “Social media strategy” is based on my interests
in online user behavior, online perception, digital communication, business strategy and
Internet technology, in addition to rapidly new developments within social media. Through 11
years of experience from the IT branch, I have worked with project management of ERP,
CRM and Web solutions, and consulting about strategic thinking within both business
strategy and IT strategy. Searching for news on social media themes, I came across the
survey “Virksomheters bruk av sosiale medier 2009 – 2010” by Den Norske Dataforening,
Kommunikasjonsforeningen and Kampanje.com which tells us this: “85 % tell that their
organization has zero strategy for social media.” Source: Kampanje.com. This is also a
reason why I decided to combine social media with strategy in this term paper. The term
paper was a good opportunity to learn more about social media, social media strategy, and
especially the business approach to social media.

1.2 Research objectives and purposes

Why is social media so popular? Is “everyone” on social media platforms? More specific, I
wanted to look deeper into how existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM)/
customer philosophy are coordinated with social media. Further, I wanted to investigate how
two different (one publisher (A) and one software company (B)) companies approach affect
their attitudes regarding to social media. Do they already have a written Internet/Web
communication strategy in place? Do they use e-marketing tools today? Is it big
differentiations between their employee’s private usage of social media and their companies’
usage of social media? Do they have any company guidelines for social media usage? And at
last but not less important; do their respective customers use social media? And how
important is managing social media marketing in today’s digitized world? Everyone seems to
consider social media as an important “social thing”. But how important is social media for
corporations? Do they have a written social media strategy in place? It is not a future
technology and phenomenon. Is has evolved together with the Web 2.0 era, and has boosted
since Facebook was established in 2004. In five years Facebook have grown to approximately
a 350 million (and still growing when this paper was written) social user community. Several
speakers and authors including Clara Shih (2009) are calling present social communication

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phenomena for the fourth (digital) revolution. Businesses are looking into Facebook and
other social media platforms to create hyper targeting ads to increase their brand awareness,
identity and reputation, and to create positive buzz. Other objectives businesses seems to
share are to build more trust, reach new audiences and of course to sell more of their
respective services and products. Because of this I decided on the following research
question: “How to empower your business engaging social media?” I will discuss insights
due to these questions based on the social media curriculum books and from my own survey
based on thirty-seven statements. I will look more into Facebook because they are the
“number one” in the social media sphere and look at some of the others with a general
approach and try to categorize some of them.

1.3 Theory and methodology

Because our existing curriculum books in media socialization say little to nothing about
today`s social media platforms, I decided to buy some fresh books with business approach to
the topic. I provided the following two books and got acceptance from our teacher to use (200
pages) these books as my own additional curriculum. The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools
& Strategies for business success by Safko, Lon & Brake, David K. (2009), will I use mainly
to learn about social media strategy approaches, to identify and to categorize different social
media platforms. The Facebook Era – Tapping Online Social Networks to build Better
Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff, by Shih, Clara (2009) will I use both to
look into historical background, and to obtain knowledge about social media strategy and how
to create an action plan for positioning a company in the social media sphere.

1.4 About the authors

Clara Shih (2009) is one of the world`s top business social networking leaders and
practitioners; she is the entrepreneur and creator of the first business application on Facebook
called; Faceconnector (formerly Faceforce), and leads salesforce.com`s partnership with
Facebook. Shih previously worked in strategy and business operations at Google and as a
software developer at Microsoft. Shih holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer
science from Standford, and in addition a master`s degree in Internet studies from Oxford.
Clara`s first book; Using New Media, was commissioned by UNESCO to help out parents,
teachers and school administrators in developing countries to use digital media to adopt best
practices. Lon Safko (2009) is an innovator and professional speaker, and has more than
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twenty years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering,
training, writing and e-commerce. David K. Brake (2009) is the CEO and founder of Content
Connections, a company that uses social media strategies to help clients build economical
viable relationships around their respective content. In their book The Social Media Bible –
Tactics, Tools & Strategies for business success (2009), these authors have supported insights
from several interviewed experts and from qualitative surveys with hundreds of participants.

1.5 Chosen methodology

I`ve chosen qualitative methodology, and more specifically, a statement based questionnaire
to gather my empirical data in this educational research. This is because I wanted to
coordinate findings and insights from the curriculum authors with my own survey. In my
survey I look at two managers (One CEO in a publisher company (A) and one Vice President
of Corporate Communication in a software company (B)) individual knowledge, practice and
attitudes towards social media. In addition my purpose is to discover the link between
Internet/Web communication strategy and social media implementation, and to discover
social media concepts and usage after data was gathered. I wanted to do this because of the
importance of connections of my discoveries to insights, theory and theses in my curriculum.
Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln define qualitative methodology like this: “Qualitative
research is multimethod in its focus, involving an interpretive naturalistic approach to its
subject matter. This means that qualitative researches study things in their natural settings.
Attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring
to them” (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003 p. 24). My questionnaire tries to explore status quo due to
the following six topics: 1. Customer philosophy, 2. Marketing philosophy, 3. Employee
philosophy, 4. Web site & Internet philosophy, 5. Social media and technology and 6.
Customer’s usage of Social Media. I have chosen to use questionnaires with statements (not
questions this time, because I wanted to reduce the time to fill it out, and not interviews as
method of collecting research data. I designed five dimensions for sentiment based status;
strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree. The main reason for choosing
questionnaires is because it`s easier to send the questionnaires by e-mail than to travel around
and doing interviews. Then my participants can answer the questions when they have time
and in their own speed, and choose the order of the statements (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003). I am
aware of some negative effects of doing it, like; if the participant does not understand a
statement, I can`t help them immediately. And after I have distributed the questionnaires I
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can`t change the statements or re-phrase them. If I had more time, I would both use
questionnaires and interviews to have the ability to ask follow up and in depth questions or to
redefine questions if not understood. I have tried to get the statements as easy to understand as
possible to avoid participants doing their own interpretation (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003). In my
bachelor paper I plan to have several more participants and will create an online e-mail based
survey with i.e. the tool Survey Monkey, and then I get automatically statistics and reports. I
have already started a dialogue with INMA to help me connect with possible new participants
to answer my bachelor paper survey within the decided topic: Online Reputation
Management (ORM).

2. Historic view and background on social media
Cyber year 2004. One billion US dollars. A twenty-three-year-old founder. Today`s ultimate
number one social media platform. What connects the dots? Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of
Facebook! Right now, only on Facebook alone, over 350 million people around the globe are
logged in, updating their status, sharing their experiences, giving their recommendations,
interacting with friends, interacting with brands, providing valuable information for you to be
able to understand them better, and learning about you and your business, your products and
services in return. For businesses, they need to be where their customers are, and increasingly,
customers are spending more and more time on social networking sites like Facebook,
YouTube, Twitter, Ning, Flicr, Blogger, Wordpress, and Linkedin to mention a few of the
biggest platforms. “Consumer activity on social networking and blogging sites accounted for
17 % of all time on the Internet in August 2009, up from 6 percent a year ago Nielsen
estimates” (Source: http://clickz.com/3635095). But does this mean that all the companies out
there know what to do and how to engage with social media? No; regarding to the survey
“Virksomheters bruk av sosiale medier 2009 – 2010” mentioned in the introduction. Several
tech experts like Shih (2009) are talking about that we now are experiencing the fourth
(digital) revolution and that this is about the online social graph. The first revolution was the
mainframe computer revolution in the 1970s. It was first of all IBM and the “Seven Dwarfs”,
that is the following companies; Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data, Honeywell,
General Electric, and RCA with roots in military and academic research labs, which led the
industry charge (Shih p.12). The second revolution was the personal computer (PC). In the
1980s, advances in integrated circuit technology and the first graphical user interface gave
rise to the Personal Computer (PC) era. Innovations from companies such; Intel, Xerox

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PARC, Microsoft, Apple, and others drastically reduced computer price and size while
increasing capability, intuitiveness, and flexibility. For the first time, computing became
accessible to the mass market mainly because of the “low” pricing. Businesses embraced
spreadsheet software like Lotus 1-2-3 and time-consuming, by-hand calculations. Word
processors such as Corel WordPerfect and Microsoft Word replaced typewriters in big scales
(Shih p.14). The third revolution was the usage of World Wide Web (WWW) for the masses,
and it really boomed in the 1990s. The WWW period in the nineties is often referred to as the
Web 1.0 era. Social communication was done with Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). The 1990s
were very much defined by the technologies of the World Wide Web, developed by Tim
Berners-Lee working with Robert Cailliau at CERN (ibid). Web sites, online news, and search
engines like Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek and Google began providing fast and low cost,
real-time information for workers as well as a new medium for reaching customers. eBay,
PayPal, and commerce sites like Amazon the feasibility and popularity of self-service
transactions. E-mail, Instant Messaging (IM), and Web conferencing applications
dramatically improved communication capacity across the globe for businesses while
drastically reducing costs. Regarding the company and enterprise software area, the Internet
paved the way for the open source software and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), movements,
both of which have greatly democratized access to enterprise-grade software and services for
small and medium sized business and self-employed individuals. The Web made it
dramatically easier and cheaper to start and run businesses (Shih 2009 p.15). Today social
communication is done by Instant Messaging (IM) systems like i.e.: Skype and MSN, with
social media and other chat sites and software and blogs. Today`s solutions are easier to use
and the user interface are much more advanced using technologies such as i.e.; Java, Ajax,
Joomla and Flash. These technologies evolved and boost from approximately 2004, the same
year as the beginning of Facebook. Both the increase of social media type of communication
plus new and updated Web software started the Web 2.0 era (ibid). This started the fourth
revolution. With the fourth revolution, Internet really democratizing privileged access to
people. Online social networking takes this further, democratizing privileged access to people.
The fourth revolution is also about the online social graph. What is the online social graph?
Shih explains it this way: “Well, it is the World Wide Web of people—a map being
constructed by social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Hoover’s Connect,
of every person on the Internet and how they are interlinked. The social graph is for people
what the World Wide Web is for hyperlinked Web pages: that is, for organizing, filtering, and
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association. Now that all of our machines and content pages are connected, the next digital
revolution will be in capturing and using information about how we as individuals are
connected. Metadata about Web pages, such as headings, keywords, and how they are linked,
have been crucial for allowing us to manage and navigate through an eruption of content on
the Web. Similarly, metadata from the social graph about individuals, such as where they
work, how we know them, and who we know in common, will become crucial for allowing us
to manage many different kinds of relationships with large numbers of people” (Shih 2009 p.
11). Thomas L. Friedman`s (2006) claim in his book The world is flat are belonging to the
fourth revolution era. Friedman identified ten flattening effects, three of them (flattener four,
nine and ten) are truly related to social media and blogging. Flattener #4 is about uploading.
Friedman has located three main uploading areas: community-developed software, blogging
and podcasting (Friedman 2006 p.96). Flattener #9 is about in-forming. “In-forming is the
ability to build and deploy your own personal supply chain of; information, knowledge,
entertainment. It’s about self-collaborating – becoming your own self-directed and self-
empowered researcher, editor, selector of entertainment. In-forming is searching for
knowledge” (Friedman 2006 p. 78). Flattener #10 is about the steroids: digitized storage,
Instant Messaging (IM) and file sharing, mobility/wireless, VoIP (Voice over IP) personified
and virtual technologies. Social media is a social flattener. Shih is in addition talking about an
organizational flat effect that equals individuals in a company when they are using social
media (Shih 2009 p.52). We are living in the recommendation age; recommendations and
referrals from people we know, both personal friends and professional colleagues. More and
more, these relationships, referrals, are crossing over from real life to social networking sites
and vice versa. Thanks to the viral nature of social networking, we have reached the tipping
point in the mass adoption of online social networks (and this is one of the reasons why
calling this event the fourth revolution), and they will only continue growing in prominence
and pervasiveness. Because social networking is not just for teenagers! According to
Facebook, although it maintains an 85 percent or greater penetration among four-year U.S.
universities, more than half of its users are out of college, and those 25 years and older
represent the fastest-growing demographic. Between July and November 2008, Facebook
grew from 90 million to 120 million users. Facebook grew as much in those three months as it
did in the first three years combined. (Shih 2009). Facebook alone are now counting more
than 350 million registrated users and growing. The scale and scope Facebook now yields is
unprecedented and profound. All the previous revolutions mentioned did have huge impacts
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of how business was done. The fourth revolution and social media will probably exceed this
by far. Yet it is only the beginning. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and an increasing number of
other social networks now offer Web services Application Programming Interfaces (API`s),
which make it possible for corporate Web sites and Web business applications to tap into
profile and social data. These advances are extending the reach and impact of the online social
graph beyond specific social networking sites to potentially every Web experience. Besides
the mainstream genre led by Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, several other forms of social
networking sites have developed in recent years that are important to notify (ibid). I have tried
to categorize some of them in chapter 2.6.

2.1 Social media and e-marketing words, phrases & acronyms

What is the definition of social media? The authors Safko & Brake (2009 p.26), defines it like
this; “Social media refers to activities, practices and behaviors among communities of people
who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media
“. I have chosen their definition because it`s short and direct to the point, and it is shared by
Shih (2009) and Ryan & Jones’ (2009) thoughts. What is social networking? Social
networking is a relatively new marketing opportunity, and offer highly hyper targeting
advertising to niche social groups based on social filtering from profile information users
volunteer to accept when they sign in to sites like; Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and
similar. (Ryan & Jones 2009 p. 33) What is social bookmarking? Social bookmarking is very
much alike adding a page to your personal browser favorites archive, but taken to the next
level; to online Web sites. Social bookmarking sites, like StumbleUpon, Delicious, Ma.gnolia,
Digg and Reddit to mention a few, these allows users to “save” bookmarks to their favorite
web resources including; pages, audio, video, blogs and categorize them using tags (labels
that help you to identify and filter the content you want to look into or share with others later
(Ryan & Jones 2009 p. 157). Instead of having bookmarks stuck and available only on your
computer, they`re now up in “the cloud” (refers to cloud computing).

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2.2. Digital engagement; creating buzz & word of mouth

What is the meaning of the words; “word of mouth”, viral marketing and buzz? Word of
mouth is a very common e-marketing and social media phrase to describe the passing of
information online from person to person. Originally the term referred specifically to
oral communication (literally words from the mouth). Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is
a form of promotional campaign which operates through an individual’s personal
recommendations of specific brands, products or services (Shih 2009). Like its literal
meaning, word of mouth marketing spreads from one person to another outside of a
formalized setting, without heavy intervention by advertisers. Shih explains it; “Due to
transitive trust and decentralized distribution, word of mouth is the most effective and least
expensive kind of marketing that exist. To the recipients of such marketing, it feels less like
spam if the endorsement is coming from someone they know” (Shih 2009 p. 97). For people
who refer, giving a recommendation can be a gratifying experience that allows them to
provide value, express themselves to their friends and in their online communities. Facebook
and similar platforms have empowered word of mouth marketing. When people are updating
a status message, writes on a wall, receives a message in their news feed, makes a comment,
sends or receive a gift, endorse a RSVP for an event, becomes a fan, or plays branded game,
other people are instantly being notified (ibid). The same effects are happening when people
login in to corporate Web sites with Facebook Connect API (Application Programming
Interface) installed. All this user generated content based alerts are called push (from push and
pull technology) content, and the alerts called push alerts.

2.3 Viral marketing/campaigns

The phrase viral marketing and viral advertising refer to e-marketing techniques that use e-
mail and/or existing social networks to produce increases in brand and identity awareness or
to achieve other marketing objectives such as product sales, through self-replicating
viral processes, analogous to the spread of i.e. computer viruses. It can be word of
mouth delivered or enhanced by the network (Web 2.0) effects of the Internet. Viral
promotions may take the form of text, chat, blogging, audio or video. Viral campaigns have
three vital components: message/storytelling, the choice of medium and the delivery
platform/technology (Shih 2009 p.99). The term "viral marketing" first became prominent
when used to describe a marketing campaign for the e-mail service Hotmail.com. When the

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company launched, every outgoing message contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a
link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As people e-mailed their friends and colleagues,
they were also advertising the service. Recipients could simply click on the link and sign
themselves up, and as they e-mailed friends from their new account, the message spread
within existing social networks and was passed along with little effort from the company
(ibid). This example demonstrates all the key elements of viral marketing. Its cost to the
advertiser is minimal. Instead, it takes advantage of existing resources by making everyone
who uses the product an involuntary spokesperson. It exploits common behaviours, such as
sending and forwarding an e-mail. Viral marketing uses communications networks that are
already in place (Ryan & Jones 2009 p. 227). Viral marketing implies endorsement and/or
recommendations from a friend. People who received a recommendation (on a Web site or
within a social media platform) from a friend using the service learned that the product works
and that their friends use it. And most importantly, viral marketing offers the ability to spread
a message exponentially faster and to more people than conventional third party ad
campaigns, but the message has to be “sticky”. The authors of the book “Made to Stick” Dan
Heath and Chip Heath have outlined six principles to mastering “sticky” techniques. It is all
about; simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional and storytelling (Shih
2009 p.99). There are different types of viral marketing, all using the same fundamental
principles. Pass along messages encourage users to send them along to others, such as e-mails
with instructions to forward at the bottom or humorous video clips. Incentive driven messages
offer rewards in exchange for providing e-mail addresses. Undercover viral marketing
presents messages in an unusual page or false news item without any direct incitement to pass
it along, in the hopes that word-of-mouth will spread the message. Viral marketers seek to get
people talking about something by creating controversy. Viral marketing has been criticized
by consumers, privacy advocates, and marketing pundits because of concern over unsolicited
e-mails. The best campaigns, however, use the principles of viral marketing tactfully to avoid
negative reactions and ensure a high pass-along rate - the number of recipients that will pass
the message to others. Much like the common cold, effective viral marketing uses people to
unwittingly transmit a message within their social network. Viral marketing are depending on
network (domino) effect, and social networking sites are boosting network (domino) effects.
It takes the concept of word-of-mouth and enhances it with the instant global communication
afforded by the Internet and social networking.

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2.4 Creating positive buzz

What’s the online term buzz mean? Creating buzz is about creating discussions, reviews,
comments and debates in entries, posts and articles around the Web, at aggregators and in
social media and in the blogosphere (Ryan & Jones 2009 p. 159). It’s all about creating
positive buzz related to your business, brands/products, services, your identity and your
reputation. Buzz marketing, is a term used in word of mouth marketing. The interaction of
consumers and users of a product or service serve to empower the original marketing
message. To create positive buzz is often a objective of the marketing department within viral
marketing, and with usage of word of mouth within communication/PR departments. The
term refers both to the execution of the marketing technique, and the resulting positive image
or reputation that is created.

2.5 Social media as part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

“CRM is both a software system for maintaining sales and marketing data. The purpose with
a CRM solution is to empower and improve relationships with customers. CRM systems
solutions are often a big part of enterprises e-marketing tool also. CRM systems can store e-
mails related to specific customers and partners, and can be a useful tool to plan, collect, and
store and analyze data retrieved from other systems and e-marketing campaign. CRM system
often has tailored statistics modules for generating easy to understand data presentation for
sales and marketing people and key economic statistics for financial management. Analytical
CRM applications include: Sales analysis, customer profile analysis, campaign analysis,
loyalty analysis, customer contact analysis and profitability analysis (Hougaard & Bjerre
2002 p.132).The managements need for real time data are essential, so many enterprises have
business intelligence (BI) solutions in addition to their ERP and CRM solutions. BI solutions
have the ability to extract and present data across all systems and databases in real time,
giving the management minute to minute business status to take the optimal decisions. CRM is
the central application to store all e-marketing campaigns data and statistics” (Haugestad
2009 p.13). Traditional CRM strategy seems to evolve and to include social networking in
several ways. Traditional CRM system is one-way communication used for sales departments
to contact the customer. Social networking offers bidirectional interaction, collaboration and
visibility. It is two main ways to integrate social media with CRM; first, of course existing
CRM system and strategy can co-exist with a new social media strategy. Second, developing
a CRM strategy together and coordinated with a social media strategy. In addition it`s
possible with new (SaaS) online based services i.e. from Salesforce.com which offers
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Application Programming Interfaces (API`s) to import social media profile data into their
CRM`s systems customer contact database with their business application called
Faceconnector (Shih 2009 p.41). This depends on the persons profile and privacy setting and
degrees of separation. Sales departments can then view a customers or prospects record inside
Salesforce, helping them during telephone calls and sales meetings. Another approach to get
into the social graph on i.e. Facebook is to integrate Facebook`s own API on corporate
Websites. This is called Facebook Connect, and it let visitors on a Web site engage with their
Facebook friends on blogs, videos and on popular contests. Instead of developing their own
community login on their Website Facebook members can use and log in to a corporate
website using their already existing Facebook user name and login password. Then they can
see what their friends like, recommend and watch their comments related to the Website
content. Conversely, if the Facebook user consents, action taken, such as blog post
commenting and sharing, this will appear as feeds on the user’s Facebook profile and in the
News Feed. Together with use of social media monitoring tools and services and importing
the report data into the CRM system with monitor tool API`s will the companies benefit in a
whole new way, truly 360-degree view, regarding whether it is online information,
suspecting, prospecting, on the phone tool, pre-sales, mid-deal or post-sales (Shih 2009 p.80).
CRM vendors will probably follow the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM vendors in the
close future and offer social media API`s to offer more bidirectional interaction to enhance
their word of mouth and viral marketing abilities.

2.6 Overview social tools and services

It is literally hundreds of social related tools, platforms and services out there. Here have I
tried to pick a selection of the most commonly known and biggest providers, sorted by
categories. Social Networking: Facebook, MySpace, Windows Live Spaces, Nettby, Biip,
Blink, Linkedin, Bebo, Ning, Fast Pitch, Friendster, Gather, KickApps, MOLI, Orkut and
Plaxo. Social network platforms give your company a unique way to hyper target different
wanted demographics. Publishing platforms: Wikipedia, Wikia, Wordpress, TypePad,
Blogger, Slideshare, Joomla and Knol. Publishing content outside your corporate Website can
have extra effect on how people perceive your company. Photo sharing: Flickr, Picasa,
Photobucket, Radar, SmugMug, Twitxr and Zooomr. Using images to communicate and
collaborate can be a very strong tool. Audio sharing: iTunes, Podbean, Podcast and
Rhapsody. To podcast your messages can be a smart service in addition to others. Give the
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audience choices on which medium they want to absorb your information and messages.
Video sharing: YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Viddler, Brightcove and Hulu. If a
picture says more than thousand words, what is then the value of video? It is a more
comfortable way of receiving information or a message for many people than plain text and
i.e. PowerPoint/SlideShare presentations. Remember to have versions both for PC, Mac and
cellphones if you choose to upload video to your own site. Remember to optimize your digital
video picture, light and audio before i.e. uploading to YouTube to get the best possible result.
A badly performed video will easy damage your reputation. Microblogging: Twitter, Twitxr
and Plurk. Communication with few characters seems to be a winning field for both people
and businesses. Often you will find the hottest and newest information within the
microblogging sphere. Livecasting: BlogTalkRadio, Live 365, Justin.tv, SHOUTcast and
TalkShoe. Streaming live and broadcasting your message can create exclusive business events
for your target audience. Virtual Worlds: Second Life, IMVU, Active Worlds, Kaneva,
There, ViOS, Gaia Online and Habbo. Become part of a computer-generated virtual world
and join the growing virtual community. Gaming: World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Entropia
Universe, Halo and Sims. Millions of users across the world are signed into both virtual
worlds and online games. These users are often fiercely loyal kind of online community.
Productivity applications: BitTorrent, Survey Monkey, QuestBack, Google/Yahoo Alerts,
Google Docs, Google Translate, ReadNotify, Tiddlywiki and Zoomerang. This category
really enhance your business digital productivity and effectiveness. Aggregators: Digg,
Reddit, FriendFeed, Delicious, Newsvine, Stumbleupon, Google Reader, iGoogle, My Yahoo!
and Yelp. Getting your message/article out on one of these popular aggregators really help
boosting buzz about your business. RSS (Really Simple Syndication): RSS 2.0, FeedBurner,
Atom and PingShot. To keep track on all exciting news and changes on wanted sites these
tools does it automatically for you. Integrate one of the tools on your corporate site to ease
updated access to information for your audience. Search: Google Search, Yahoo Search,
AOL search, EveryZing, Technorati, IceRocket, MetaTube, Redlasso and Kvasir. To execute
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial for your business and one of the less expensive
of marketing initiatives. Search engines have been the de facto standard for people in their
quest for desirable information, places, products and services. Mobile: airG, SMS.ac,
Brightkite, CallWave, Jott and Jumbuck. The mobile sphere is one of the fastest growing
areas for business applications and services. The leading social media platforms all have their
mobile adjusted sites. Be sure that your sites also are optimized for the growing Web mobile
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users. Interpersonal: Skype, MSN, Acrobat Connect, Go To Meeting, iChat, Meebo and
WebEx. Using these tools will increase your organizational effectiveness and knowledge
about communication tools and can be transferred to social media practice (Shih 2009 &
Safko & Brake 2009).

3. Defining a social media strategy
In this chapter I will mix insights especially from Safko & Brake (2009) and Shih (2009), and
add some practical advice from Ryan & Jones (2009). But first; what is a social media
strategy? And why bother develop a written strategy? An important purpose with a written
strategy document is to pinpoint all issues and opportunities to support business goals and
objectives (Shih 2009 p. 146). A strategy is a tool to help moving from an existing situation to
a wanted future situation. A social media strategy plan shall work as a business tool to achieve
goals in a given time schedule and to support organizational vision. A written social media
strategy should work as a quality tool to ease and support a short term or long term action
plan or campaign. The modern and historical meaning of the word strategy is closely
discussed in my term paper exam “e-marketing strategy” (Haugestad 2009) where I looked
into what modern business strategy is all about. A social media strategy should identify and
define; goals/objectives/needs, target audience/customers/market, online communication tasks
and action, the social media mix and defining measurements. How can you measure if your
efforts/campaigns have been a success if you don`t think through these kinds of topics? (Shih
2009 p. 147). It`s smart to discuss, debate and share knowledge in the planning phase, and to
share learning’s after launch. New insights after campaigns should be included in the strategy
document. Try to involve top level management; this will increase the success factor of any
project also online communication. It is important to identify organizational services, products
and other organizational tasks. To do this it is important to understand the status quo situation.
A SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) analyzes can help to define the
status quo in an early planning process, before identifying and defining goal(s), objectives and
the social media mix (Safko & Brake 2009 p. 699-716). The written document must both be
strategic, tactical and operative and need to be dynamic due to the changes in the social media
ecosystem and social media technologies. This year it is Facebook and twitter which is the
“hottest” places to be, we do not know what’s out there winning users trust the years to come.
So therefore should a social media strategy support overall business goal, objectives and be
coordinated with communication, marketing and CRM strategies. Social Media gives

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companies a more “neutral” venue for communicating with new and existing clients, and
building trust and dialogue with their target audience. Safko & Brake have identified four
pillars to manage the social media strategy work; 1: Communication. 2: Collaboration. 3:
Education. 4: Entertainment (Safko & Brake 2009 p. 675). In all forms of communication you
need to think through and be specific to differentiate your message (Shih 2009 p. 163).
Remember also to differentiate between the different kinds of communities you want to reach;
metropolis, intra-company, vertical and horizontal communities. Facebook and MySpace are
examples of what’s called metropolis communities. Intra-company communities are
companies which have created their own internal social network (I.e. with help of Ning).
These are industry, branch and/or lifestyle specific communities where people with special or
expert skills interact with each another (Safko & Brake 2009 p. 687-688). By establishing i.e.
an internal company Wiki, a company can create an employee community and collaborate in
new ways and use this experience to be more agile with external social media tools. This will
help to increase their collective wisdom and help the management to educate their staff. Your
social media strategy should also have elements of how to leverage niche/branch expertise
from your company, and encourage your customers to share theirs on your Web site, blogs
and in corporate social media groups. Do not be afraid to experiment with entertainment,
humour and fun stuff. Try to be interesting and compelling, but respect humour and fun stuff
and adjust it to your target demographics. I have created the following eight main areas (A-H)
to consider when developing a written social media strategy, based on insights from Shih
(2009) and Safko & Brake (2009):

A. Identify and define your social media business goal(s)

B. Identify and define your social media business objectives

C. Identify and define your (hyper) target audience

D. Identify and design your message/story

E. Choose your social media mix

F. Build engagement, interactivity and dialogue

G. Define how to measure success

H. Identify, evaluate, test and deploy monitoring tools

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A. Identify and define your social media business goal(s)

Start with choosing two or three goals at maximum, and then use these to build the rest of the
strategy (Shih 2009 p. 146). Coordinate your social media business goal (s) with existing
marketing and CRM strategy. Communication should be consistent with overall business
goals and corporate defined ethics. What is the difference between goal(s) and objectives? In
a broad perspective; “Objectives define the general ends sought by the company while goals
are objectives that have very specific definition” (Percy & Elliot 2005 p. 45). Here are some
examples:

• We want to reach girls from 13 to 18 years old which play social online games

• We want to reach consumers between 35 to 55 years old which like to read crime novels

B. Identify and define your social media business objectives

Here are some common social media objectives assembled by Shih (2009 p. 146):

• Conducting market research, such as identifying trends and recruiting early adopters for more in-depth
focus groups

• Improving customer satisfaction by providing opportunities for engagement, interaction and dialogue

• Promoting additional products and brands and services to existing customers

• Expanding into new markets

• Encouraging word-of-mouth, viral and buzz marketing

• Recruiting new employees

• Establishing or evolving your branding and positioning, identity and reputation

Objectives should always be defined so they can be measured. One way to do this is to define:
KPI`s (Key Performance Indicators). KPI`s are quantifiable performance measurements used
to define success factors and measure progress toward the achievement of business goals and
objectives. The Web Analytics Association (WAA) defines the term KPI in the context of
web analytics:”While a KPI can be either a count or a ratio it is frequently a ratio. A KPI is
infused with business strategy - hence the term Key” (Ryan & Jones 2009 p. 119). What
metrics are important to your business? KPI`s are always clearly aligned to strategic business
goals and objectives. To be able to measure success defining your business KPI`s is crucial.

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C. Identify and define your (hyper) target audience

Hyper segment your market and audience. Try to find out the criteria that matter most about
your (different) product(s) (Shih 2009 p. 164). Think about how your target audience will
react to your communication. If possible do your own perception analyzes before launching
your campaign, to avoid misinterpretation. Create an internal and if possible an external
crowd of test people to test out your strategy and re-write it if necessary.

D. Identify and design your message/story

How would you ideally want your brand to be perceived? Which new audiences do you want
to reach? Are they on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Ning or Bebo? Are you trying to find
early adopters to help define the future of your product? Is your priority to up sell existing
customers or find new customers? Depending of what you your message is, the nature of your
product and your demographics, create i.e. targeted ads designed for social media platforms,
or create a message or story to be released as a viral campaign. Identifying and designing your
message or story is crucial independent of your media mix (Shih 2009 p. 163).

E. Build engagement, interactivity and dialogue

Having a presence on social networking sites allows you to do two very important things:
Engage existing customers and engage prospective customers on these sites. Depending on
the nature of your product or service, customers could already be seeking you out. Perhaps
some have already taken the initiative to create an unofficial group about your brand to
discuss, rant, and rave about it with friends. Prospective customers too often want a way to
engage with others about your product in an unbiased environment before engaging with you.
Why would these groups want to engage? What kind of incentives, motivation, expectation,
and thought processes do they have? Shih presents some general reasons (2009 p. 147):

• To express strong emotion. Perhaps they are overjoyed, overwhelmed, or frustrated. Your product,
brand, service has really been a positive or negative in their life.

• To improve your product/service with constructive feedback.

• To define their identity to be associated with your brand.

• To feel important in helping others answer questions.

• To benefit from selling peripheral products and services, like a vendor selling iPod cases on the iPod
group page.

• To bond socially with friends over the experience of using your product.
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F. Choose your social media mix

Before your business can manage an online community on social networking sites and blogs,
you need to choose applications, platforms or tools to meet your goals and objectives. On
your quest to determining what tools are right for your business, the following questions can
be asked (Shih 2009):

• What functions and features do we want to have available to our community?

• What will be the costs of building and manage and engage the community?

• Will we be able to use internal and/or external human resources to build and maintain the community?

• How long time will it take to get chosen tools and services launched?

• What can we learn from our competitors, partners and others in these matters?

• What is the wanted business ROI?

• Which tools do we pick to monitor conversations, buzz and word of mouth?

G. Define how to measure success

It`s very important to define metrics around these goals to help define what success means in
your organization, determine the appropriate level of investment, and measure value to the
business and related to your defined ROI`s. Here are some (KPI) metrics examples and targets
that correspond to the objective areas in the preceding list B (Shih 2009 p. 147):

• Identify X new trends. Recruit focus group of Y early adopter 14–18-year-olds to help us understand the
teen market and design the next generation of our product.

• Improve customer satisfaction scores by X. Decrease customer support call center volume by Y percent.

• Increase existing customer average spending X more dollars this year.

• Acquire X number of new customers in a new region, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong.

• Achieve X responses to our word-of-mouth campaign and Y conversions into sales.

• Source X number of candidates for the recruiting department.

• Rebrand company as X, as measured by a customer survey on how they perceive our brand. Increase
our Net Promoter Score by X.

Set realistic goals and expectations. It probably took several iterations to arrive at your current
marketing, CRM and Web site strategy. Coming up with an optimal social network presence

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will require the same kind of learning by doing inside your organization. Starting off overly
aggressive can set companies up for disappointment down the road and create “information
overload” scenarios (ibid).

H. Identify, evaluate, test and deploy monitoring tools

If your social media deployment starting to boost numbers of; visitors and buzz and viral
communication, you probably very soon need help in addition to manual surveillance. Then
you should start using social media monitoring tools and services. With these kinds of tools
you can easy and fast get an overview over where, when and whom engaging the social
sphere. They will help you find and identify these important people:

• Initiators: They who propose i.e. usage and purchase

• Influencers: They who recommend (or discourage) usage or purchase

• Advocates: They who love your business, products/brands and services

• Deciders: They who make the actual choice

• Purchasers: They who make the actual; decision, click, action or purchase

• Users: They who already use your service or taken action conducted by you

Some monitor tools are quantitative (only counts your “share of voice”) others are qualitative
and sentiment based (i.e. positive, neutral and positive buzz) and analyze the content in what
their search engine algorithms find of buzz. Here is a short selected list of monitoring tools
and services: Social Mention, Google News RSS, Google Analytics, Google/Yahoo Trends,
Yahoo/Google Alerts, MonitorThis, Mashable.com, google.com/blogsearch, Technorati,
Twitter Advanced Search, , Collecta, Twittorati, TweetMeme, TwitterCounter, TweetDeck,
Yahoo Pipes, Nielsen Buzz metrics, Trackur, PostRank and IceRocket™ Blog Tracker to
mention a few. These services and tools lets you set up RSS feeds and/or sends you reports by
e-mail or export data with API`s directly to your intra web, CRM or ERP system. When
monitoring tools, crawlers and RSS feed systems are up and running, it is important to
establish procedures for checking them regularly and to distribute and share the statistics and
trends and present them internal in your organization, so different departments and
management can take good business decisions based on the “intelligence” this deliver. Before
deployment make sure to identify, evaluate and test the tools that fits your demands and
which of them who can measure your KPI`s (Ryan & Jones 2009 p.118-123).

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When it`s time to wrap up your written strategy

At the end of your strategy document planning exercise, you should have a written strategy
that you are ready to execute and put to action, which should include (Shih 2009):

• Prioritized list of goals and objectives including time frame, metrics, message and (hyper) targets

• Value you expect to bring to your business

• Defined expected ROI

• A social media budget and identified human resources to maintain your efforts

• Level of resources and identified departments (Market, Comm./PR, Sales) you are willing to commit

• Means, social media mix and frequency by which you will evaluate progress

• Defined measures for success

• The person in your organization who will be responsible for carrying out this initiative

3.2 Social media and ethics
Buzz about your company, products/brand and identity is out there on the web for all to see,
and it can be difficult to delete or reverse, especially if they reach the SERP`s (Search Engine
Results Page`s). If negative buzz appear it is important to engage and answer but to do it in a
proper and ethical way. As part of a social media strategy, it`s essential to work out guidelines
for damage control. Damage limitations must be performed and the job is to balance the
negative buzz (Ryan & Jones 2009). Engaging with the writer/publisher of negative buzz
must be done with respect of their privacy and information rights. Social media and e-
marketing technology presents real challenges to ethics. E-marketing and ethics are discussed
in my e-marketing strategy (Haugestad 2009) term paper exam, the themes regarding e-
marketing is also relevant for social media and marketing; “Identify and describe clearly the
facts (who did what to whom, where, when and how). Define the conflict or dilemma and the
higher order values involved (values such as freedom, privacy). Identify the owners (players
with an interest in the outcome). Identify the options one can reasonably take. Identify the
potential consequences of your options” (Haugestad 2009 p. 11-12). It`s possible to find
suggested rules and guidelines especially designed to engage with social media and the
blogosphere. Ethics to consider when outreaching online community, blogs and other social
media is described by the well recognized PR consultancy Ogilvy: “Blogger Outreach Code
of Ethics from Ogilvy”. Source: http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2007/10/the-ogilvy-pr-blogger-outreach-code-of-
ethics/

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Ogilvy PR’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics

OUR APPROACH

• We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that
is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.

• We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not
recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.

OUTREACH

• Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to
see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll
leave you alone.

• We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and whom we work for in our outreach
email.

• If you tell us there is a specific way you want to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.

• We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t, and we’ll make a best effort to spend time
reading the blogs we plan on contacting.

• In our email we will convey why we think you, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product,
issue, event or message.

• NEW! As available, we will provide you with links to third party information/blog coverage of the
campaign we are pitching to you. (via Web Strategy with Jeremiah and MC Milker)

• Our initial outreach email will always include a link to Ogilvy PR’s Blog Outreach Code of Ethics.

Read the whole set of code of ethics on their website mentioned above.

4. Discussion

4.1 Research objectives and purposes
My main purpose in this term paper is to answer my research question: “How to empower
your business engaging social media?” To explore facets of this question I have constructed
the thirty-seven statements in my questionnaire. You will find all the original replies from the
participants in the appendix A and B. As agreed to both participants they are anonymous in
this paper regarding to the type of strategic and confidential content. The reply from the CEO
from the publisher is tagged company A, and you find the original reply in appendix A. The
reply from the Vice President of Corporate Communication, the software company, is tagged
company B, and you find the original reply in appendix B (as documentation/verification).

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4.2 Analyzing my survey
Here is some information about my participants; the publisher (A) company is very traditional
regarding their web site appearance. Company A is a medium sized Norwegian company. The
website is both regarding web design, navigation and information architecture, more Web 1.0
than Web 2.0 based. They have no interactivity or dialogue based features on their site and
none corporate or external blog. They have none corporate profiles inside social networking
sites. But a new web site is being developed these days, and they want to communicate with
their audience and customers which is a complex demographic base. The publishers market is
Norway. Company B is a quite large company (In Norwegian scale) and is ten times bigger
than company A. The software company (B) is more Web 2.0 based; they have both a modern
look due to web design, and modern navigation and information architecture. They have a
corporate blog, their own user/customer community and they have Facebook profile, group`s
and ads and is present at Twitter and YouTube. They are also using Salesforce.com as their
CRM solution and also have internal Wiki pages for sharing information, reports and for
collaboration. They are using Skype to communicate internal. They also are using several
monitoring tools today. The software company’s market is global. Then, back to my survey
and the results from them both.

4.3 Patterns & themes
You will find details and scores in appendix A and B. Both companies seem to share the
importance of having the customer in focus (Ref. #1. Customer philosophy), both regarding to
encourage feedback and suggestions from their customers. Both companies do have a written
and updated market plan, and monitor marketing trends (Ref. #2. Marketing philosophy).
They also use different e-marketing tools today. Regarding to their perception of their own
brand, they mean that they have a strong brand and identity in their respective
industry/markets. Both companies are using Web/Internet technology to expand to new
markets and/or cross selling their products. Company B does perform some monitoring. But
none of them have started online monitoring of buzz about their online brand, identity and
reputation in an extended and/or coordinated way. Both companies consider themselves to
have a strong and positive online reputation, thou. Both companies actively encourage
feedback and suggestions from their employees and to both use social media private and in
their job situation (Ref. #3. Employee philosophy). Company A does not yet have a written
internal social media guideline including rules and ethics for their employees, but company B

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do have this in place. Both companies do have a written updated (last/this year) Web
communication/Internet strategy with goals, objectives and defined measurements (Ref. #4.
Web site & Internet philosophy). Both companies consider that they are using some Web 2.0
elements on their websites, and have a modern Web design look adjusted to their target
customers, but company A seems to think they have room for increased quality. When it
comes to easy website navigating adjusted to their target audience (optimal information
architecture), says company A that this is functional but company B thinks that it can be
improvements. Regarding to interactive usage of (Web) services at their Web sites mean
company A that they really don`t know, but company B do have this implemented. Both
companies use several e-marketing tools and services today. Company A does not regularly
measure Web traffic to all their website sub domains, but company B does it. Both companies
uses IT technology to its advantage today (to work smarter), (Ref. #5. Social Media and
technology). Company B`s respective employees are already using social media tools and
applications in their personal lives and in their job situation. Company A has not started this
usage in their jobs. Company B does perform current communication with their employees
today using either IM tools, Skype or other chat tools, company A doesn`t. Company B scores
also high on encouraging and facilitating collaboration among employees using collaboration
software tools, company A doesn`t. Company B do have a written and updated (last/this year)
social media strategy with goals, objectives and defined measurements, company A doesn`t.
Both companies share their thoughts to be creative companies. When it comes to their
respective customers, company A says that their customers not are very familiar and agile
with IT technology, but that is opposite with company B (Ref. #6. Customers usage of Social
Media). Customers usage of social media private and in job situation, seems to be clearly
highest for company B and less for company A.

4.4. My interpretation
Both of the companies score high regarding customer and market philosophy. That`s a good
fundament to succeed with social media. The customers and audience must be in center. This
is a necessity to understand how to tap and harvest from social media. I think both companies
could benefit of their customer approach, and help their organization connect within
marketing, sales and communication departments due to their social media further planning
and actions. The understanding of the importance of written strategies shares of both,
regarding to marketing. They also use different e-marketing tools today, which already give

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them both software and service knowledge to be used within social networking. The
importance of using Internet as a market force, are adapted within their respective
organizations. Both companies have focus on internal learning by using social media tools
and services both private and in their jobs. This attitude is a win-win situation both for the
company and their employees and management. My interpretation is that both companies
understand the importance of modern web design and optimal navigation and Information
Architecture (IA). The CEO in the publisher company told me that they were not happy with
their current website and had started developing both new web design and IA including new
focus on how to build interactivity and engagement within their audience. The lack of a
written social media strategy shows the importance of including the management across
business departments such as marketing & sales, IT, and the CEO (Chief Executive Officer)
in this subject. Another important issue is that if a company wants to bring visitors from social
media networks to their corporate website, they do need to make sure that their website
attracts, engage and keep the audience coming back. The content must always be fresh and
sticky. Especially important are this for index pages and landing pages which you choose to
direct your audience from social media ads or viral marketing efforts. Creating sticky content
will help to grow your wanted community (Safko & Brake 2009 p. 685). This is important to
increase your conversion and bounce rates at your website (s). Crucial factors to obtain
success are when website communication strategy, an interactivity and easy to use website are
coordinated with actions from social media networking. The participant companies different
replies regarding status quo of customer’s usage of social media, tells me how important it is
to adjust and select the right social media mix regarding to understand and communicate with
different kind of initiators, influencers, advocates, and demographics.

5. Summary and conclusion
Social media is all about enabling conversations, word of mouth, positive buzz and spreading
viral influences among your target demographic. But then it is important to understand that a
company cannot control conversations about themselves with social media, but they can
influence and balance them. Influence, user generated recommendations, and online
community reputation is what the social media ecosystem is all about. Use ethical guidelines
when you engage social media and blogs. Finally, my conclusion to my research question is if
you want your business to achieve your goals and objectives with social media you need to;
develop a social media strategy coordinated or integrated with marketing/CRM strategy,

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involve high level management, put money into a social media budget, have a corporate Web
site which is attractive and engaging, manage employee resources to engage and create
dialogue and interactivity. If you have both the budget and human resources enough to
integrate API`s to your CRM/ERP systems, do it to automatically import social media profile
data, and data from social media monitoring reports to increase effectiveness and to give the
opportunity for faster and better management business decisions. Implemented optimal social
media and viral marketing can give a company highly desirable ROI`s. Understanding these
factors will help a company learn, grow and prosper with their online business actions.
Remember to always deliver something genuine value to your customers and audience who
give your business their most valuable asset of all; their time.

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References
Curriculum books

Safko, Lon & Brake, David K. (2009) The Social Media Bible – Tactics, Tools & Strategies for business success.
New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Shih, Clara (2009). The Facebook Era – Tapping Online Social Networks to build Better Products, Reach New
Audiences, and Sell More Stuff. US: Prentice Hall, Pearson Education.

Additional books

Friedman, Thomas L. (2006). The world is flat. London: Penguin books Ltd.

Gall, Meredith D. & Gall, Joyce P. & Borg, Walther R. (2003). Educational Research – An introduction. US:
Pearson Education, Inc.

Hougaard, Søren & Bjerre, Mogens (2002). Strategic Relationship Marketing. DK: Samfundslitteratur Press.

Ryan, Damien & Jones, Calvin (2009). Understanding DIGITAL Marketing – Marketing strategies for engaging
the digital generation. US: Kogan Page Limited.

Percy, Larry & Elliot, Richard (2005). Strategic Advertising Management. New York: Oxford University Press.

Other sources

Haugestad, Rune (2009). e-Marketing strategy. Oslo: Oslo University College.

Internet sources:

Kaitlyn Wilkins (01.10.07). The Ogilvy PR Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics (Take 2). Located 09.10.09 at
WWW: http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2007/10/the-ogilvy-pr-blogger-outreach-code-of-ethics/

Knut Kristian Hauger (21.09.09). Skremmende om sosiale medier. Located 16.10.09 at WWW:
http://www.kampanje.com/markedsf_ring/article502018.ece

Lisa Lacey (25.09.09). Nielsen: Social Ad spending Up Sharply. Located 03.10.09 at WWW:
http://clickz.com/3635095

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Appendix A

Social Media - Status Quo : Business analysis Version 1.0
2009

Your name: Company A

Try to answer the statements as things truly are, not the wanted
scenario

Strongly Strongly
37 Statements agree Agree Neutral Disagree disagree
Score
(Write your statement scores in the cells: score 1-5) Score 5 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1

Read the statement and then decide to what extent
you believe it applies to your company. At my
company: i.e. 4
1. Customer philosophy
We actively encourage feedback and suggestions from
our customers today 5
Fulfilling customers needs drives the strategy of the
company 4
We have defined objectives to increase customer
satisfaction 3
We treat customer complaints very seriously, and try
to resolve them asap 5
Our current customers are treated as more important
than potential new customers (prospects) 4
We have a widely communicated product and/or
service concept in different media 4
We recognize that even our internal departments
have customers to satisfy 5
We regularly measure customer satisfaction 3
(Max score = 40, lowest = 8) 15 12 6 0 0
SUM 1: 33
2. Marketing philosophy
We have a written updated (last/this year) marketing
strategy with goals, objectives and defined
measurements 4
We regularly monitor marketing trends 3
We are using Web/Internet technology to expand to
new markets and/or cross selling our products 4
We have a strong brand and identity in our market 4

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We monitor buzz about our online brand, identity and
reputation 2
We have a strong and positive online reputation 4
(Max score = 30, lowest = 6) 0 16 3 2 0
SUM 2: 21
3. Employee philosophy
We actively encourage feedback and suggestions from
our employees today 5
We actively encourage to share knowledge between
our employees 4
We actively encourage usage of Social Media to
increase our company knowledge within the area 4
We have a written internal Social Media guidelines
incl. rules and ethics for our employees. 2
(Max score = 20, lowest = 4) 5 8 0 2 0
SUM 3: 15
4. Web site & Internet philosophy
We have a written updated (last/this year) Web
communication/Internet strategy with goals,
objectives and defined measurements 4
We are using Web 2.0 technology at our Web site
(I.e.: XHTML/CSS, dynamic pages; Java, AJAX, etc.) 4
Our Web site have a modern Web design look
adjusted to our target customers 3
Our Web site is easy to navigate adjusted to our
target audience (optimal information architecture) 4
We are using interactive services at our Web site to
engage with our audience today 3
We use several e-marketing tools and services today 4
We regularly measure Web traffic to our site 3
(Max score = 35, lowest = 7) 0 16 9 0 0
SUM 4: 25
5. Social Media and technology
Our company uses IT technology to its advantage
today (to work smarter) 5
Above half of our employees are familiar and agile
with IT technology and software 4
Our employees are already using social media tools
and applications in their personal lives 4
and applications in their jobs 3
Currently communication with our employees today
using IM tools, Skype, chat tools 2
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Our company encourage and facilitate collaboration
among employees using collaboration software tools
(Not e-mail this time) 3
We have a written updated (last/this year) Social
Media strategy with goals, objectives and defined
measurements 2
Would you characterize your company as a creative
company? 5
Are there people within your organization (or
department) who would rank especially high on the
creative scale, say a 9 or 10?
(when 10 = highest creative factor) 4
(Max score = 45, lowest = 9) 10 12 6 4 0
SUM 5: 32
6. Customers usage of Social Media
Our customers are familiar and agile with IT
technology 3
Our customers already use social media applications
in their personal lives 3
Our customers already use social media tools and
applications in their jobs today 3
(Max score = 15, lowest = 3) 0 0 9 0 0
SUM 6: 9

Your total score: 135

Max possible
score: 185

Lowest possible
score: 37

Your S. M.
quotient: 0,73 1 = max

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Appendix B

Social Media - Status Quo : Business analysis Version 1.0
2009

Your name: Company B

Try to answer the statements as things truly are, not the wanted scenario

Strongly Strongly
37 Statements agree Agree Neutral Disagree disagree
Score
(Write your statement scores in the cells: score 1-5) Score 5 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1

Read the statement and then decide to what extent
you belive it applies to your company. At my
company: i.e. 4
1. Customer philosophy
We actively encourage feedback and suggestions
from our customers today 5
Fulfilling customers needs drives the strategy of the
company 4
We have defined objectives to increase customer
satisfaction 4
We treat customer complaints very seriously, and try
to resolve them asap 3
Our current customers are treated as more
important than potential new customers (prospects) 3
We have a widely communicated product and/or
service concept in different media 3
We recognize that even our internal departments
have customers to satisfy 4
We regularly measure customer satisfaction 4
(Max score = 40, lowest = 8) 5 16 9 0 0
SUM 1: 30
2. Marketing philosophy
We have a written updated (last/this year) marketing
strategy with goals, objectives and defined
measurements 4
We regularly monitor marketing trends 4
We are using Web/Internet technology to expand to
new markets and/or cross selling our products 4
We have a strong brand and identity in our market 3

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We monitor buzz about our online brand, identity
and reputation 3
We have a strong and positive online reputation 4
(Max score = 30, lowest = 6) 0 16 6 0 0
SUM 2: 22
3. Employee philosophy
We actively encourage feedback and suggestions
from our employees today 5
We actively encourage to share knowledge between
our employees 5
We actively encourage usage of Social Media to
increase our company knowledge within the area 5
We have a written internal Social Media guidelines
incl. rules and ethics for our employees. 5
(Max score = 20, lowest = 4) 20 0 0 0 0
SUM 3: 20
4. Web site & Internet philosophy
We have a written updated (last/this year) Web
communication/Internet strategy with goals,
objectives and defined measurements 3
We are using Web 2.0 technology at our Web site
(I.e.: XHTML/CSS, dynamic pages; Java, AJAX, etc.) 4
Our Web site have a modern Web design look
adjusted to our target customers 4
Our Web site is easy to navigate adjusted to our
target audience (optimal information architecture) 3
We are using interactive services at our Web site to
engage with our audience today 4
We use several e-marketing tools and services today 4
We regularly measure Web traffic to our site 5
(Max score = 35, lowest = 7) 5 16 6 0 0
SUM 4: 27
5. Social Media and technology
Our company uses IT technology to its advantage
today (to work smarter) 5
Above half of our employees are familiar and agile
with IT technology and software 5
and applications in their personal lives 5
and applications in their jobs 5
Currently communication with our employees today
using IM tools, Skype, chat tools 5
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Our company encourage and facilitate collaboration
among employees using collaboration software tools
(Not e-mail this time) 5
We have a written updated (last/this year) Social
Media strategy with goals, objectives and defined
measurements 4
Would you characterize your company as a creative
company? 4
Are there people within your organization (or
department) who would rank especially high on the
creative scale, say a 9 or 10?
(when 10 = highest creative factor) 4
(Max score = 45, lowest = 9) 30 12 0 0 0
SUM 5: 42
6. Customers usage of Social Media
Our customers are familiar and agile with IT
technology 5
Our customers already use social media applications
in their personal lives 4
Our customers already use social media tools and
applications in their jobs today 4
(Max score = 15, lowest = 3) 5 8 0 0 0
SUM 6: 13

Your total score: 154

Max possible
score: 185

Lowest possible
score: 37

Your S. M.
quotient: 0,83 1 = max

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Social Media strategy

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