2. IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Think of social media like a shopping mall
When we have a product to sell, we take it to where our customers
already are
People are looking for information on social media
Army – 1.5 million likes, >101 thousand people talking about this
Last Army post – 6,160 likes, 577 comments
Two-step flow of communication
Each user who follows and interacts with us helps market our
content
Social offers a marketplace of our information without requiring great skill
in programming or design
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3. INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media isn’t a replacement for tools we
already use; it’s a way to augment it
There’s no start or end to an integrated presence
Integrates seamlessly between website, print
and social
QR codes bridge the gap between print and digital
Alerts and sends users to digital presence RS
Supplements print pieces with multimedia and
gives creates opportunity for conversation
Army Reserve page includes links to and content
from several sources
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4. SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIREMENTS
Planning
Content strategies, management policies
Training for both administrators and Soldiers
Marketing – gotta get the Soldiers there
Fresh content
Research shows that users interact less with
brands that don’t regularly update content
How will content differ from content offered in
other 84th TC products?
Irregular content updates affect visibility of
new content
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5. EDGERANK
Edgerank is the algorithm Facebook uses to decide what will show up on a user’s
newsfeed and where it will go
An edge is anything that happens on Facebook – status updates, shares,
comments, likes
Based on three metrics:
affinity (u) – based on how often and how deeply a user interacts with a
brand’s edges
weight (w) – each type of content carries weight – video>photo>status
update>link
time decay (d) – content loses points based on how long it’s been up
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6. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
How do we get people to social channels?
QR codes draw audience from print products
Featuring Soldiers in photos/videos attracts traffic
from them and can bring shares (highest edgerank
benefit)
Showing a benefit to following social presence will
increase participation
Ummmm… why?
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7. CONVERSATION
Social media allow for users to interact with
and comment on content
All Army social sites are required to be
open, so anyone can comment and see
other comments
Creates opportunity for us to receive
and respond to feedback
Creates opportunities for “haters”
Blogs allow us to us to give Soldiers,
sections, partners a forum to
communicate
Allow for more content updates than the
Railsplitter
No need to meet space requirements
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8. MEASUREMENT
“I know half of my advertising isn’t working,
I just don’t know which half.”
All aspects of a digital presence provide
opportunity to measure effectiveness
QR codes are trackable to monitor
transition from print to digital
Web analytics provide search terms,
traffic logs, demographics, trends
Facebook and Wordpress provide simple
analytics to measure several metrics
Measurement allows us to learn and adjust
to needs of users
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9. MEASUREMENT - FACEBOOK
Facebook Insights has powerful tools
to measure the reach of our posts
and the demographics of our
followers
We can track the impact each post
has on our likes and reach, then
cater to what our audience
interacts with most
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10. MEASUREMENT - WORDPRESS
Wordpress offers several free
plugins that allow users to
measure site visits, referrers and
search terms
Jetpack gives users ability to adjust
fire to focus on the tools and
topics that drive the most traffic
Provides insight as to how many
people are being exposed to
messages and where they’re
coming from
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11. SUMMARY
Integrating social media allows us to bring our
content to the user instead of making the
user come to us
It allows us to incorporate our Soldiers into the
voice of the command
Bridges the gap between print and digital
It can help us maintain fresh content
It gives us the ability to measure what works and
what doesn’t
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12. PATH FORWARD
Integrate social media into strategic plan
Decide on new tools
Discuss how we will manage content – post development, assigning blog
posts, frequency of posts, types of posts
Manage administration – who has access to the page, what level of
administrator privileges are handed out
Privacy concerns – tagging Soldiers in photos? Geotagging?
Plan for how to respond to comments – both negative and positive
Social media training – work inside-out to make sure PAO understands
tools, then provide guidance to Soldiers
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