…According to the 2010 Social Media Marketing Report, 67% of marketers plan to increase their use of social media channels including blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

As more companies integrate social media into their marketing and communications plans, emphasis needs to be on creating a social media strategy.

So how exactly do you develop this strategy?

The Prerequisite

Before you develop your strategy, make sure your upper-management team believes in social media and that the first goal is not to sell, sell, sell.  In other words, if your business is jumping into social media because “everyone else is doing it” or because you want to sell product rather than to build relationships, please step away from social media.  Social media is a long-term commitment and not a marketing gimmick.

It’s important for the organization to understand that testing and experimentation are keys to success.  This comes naturally to an organization whose culture embraces being proactive and open.  The reason why all businesses need to have a social media strategy is because it prevents any misunderstandings and emphasizes why social media is relevant to your business’ overall goals.

Here are some key points to consider…

#1: Determine Your Goals and Objectives

Determine who owns social media.  Whether it’s marketing, PR, or communications is irrelevant.  In a perfect social media world for businesses, social media instills a collaborative approach and breaks down silos. What’s important is to understand your social media goals and objectives and how they tie into your overall company goals.

Keep it Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Timely (aka be SMART!).

#2: Research, Research, and Research Some More

Rather than jumping into social media, prepare yourself so you know what to expect.

• Develop a list of social media sites where you can potentially engage with your target audience.  The list will most likely start off with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and a few select blogs and forums.
• Check out each of the social media sites on your list and do additional research to determine relevancy by searching for your brand name, your competitors, and your target keywords.  Listen to what’s out there, identify, and understand your target audience.

#3: Create a Digital Rolodex of Contacts and Content

When social media is done correctly, relationships will build naturally.  Begin making connections by following the conversation.  You can do this by subscribing to blogs in your industry and by making a list of influencers who are relevant to your business.

This becomes handy when it’s time to provide content on your social networks.  Read Emily Proctor’s article in which she provides some excellent pointers on a social media content strategy

#4: Join the Conversation to Develop Relationships

You can start joining the conversation by posting comments on blogs and forums, answering questions on Yahoo! and LinkedIn, joining groups related to your industry and joining Twitter chats.

Begin developing relationships by following and friending influencers and those in your industry.  Don’t just look for people with thousands of followers; you’ll be surprised by the value that someone with only a couple of hundred followers provides.  Look at measuring twitterers influence on (surprise, surprise – twinfluence.com)

#5: Strengthen Relationships

It’s easy to hide behind your avatar or profile picture, but face-to-face is incredibly powerful.  I think more people are now realising how underrated the in-person interaction really is because of how far social media has come, allowing so many people to “hide.”

Attend offline events related to your industry—not only to strengthen your knowledge base but also to network and strengthen relationships with those you might have conversed with via social media but never met in person.  A popular offline event is known as a tweetup.

#6: Measure Results

Goals and objectives of your social media strategy.

• Improve brand presence across social channels—The measurement goal here is an increase in the number of followers on Twitter, number of fans on Facebook, number of comments, number of times your brand is mentioned in blogs and forums and so on.
• Increase positive sentiment about your brand—The goal here is to convert the number of positive mentions while taking note of negative mentions.  Has the ratio of positive to negative comments improved?  With the good comes the bad in social media. Get used to it! The positive is great, but the negative is better! (Read A Complaint as a Gift – Jannelle Barlow)
• Develop relationships for future partnership opportunities—This goal is to keep track of those with whom you’ve connected.  For example, if you met a potential speaker for your webinar, include that person into your digital Rolodex. LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for it! If a vendor contacts you through your blog, capture that lead and take note.
• Increase traffic to your website—Keep track of visitors to your website who come from each of your social media sites.  If you’re promoting an event using social media, consider using a unique code to track the campaign.
  Use GoogleAnalytics extensively! It’s free, and very comprehensive!

Measuring social media is a never-ending debate.  What metrics do you use to measure social media?  What objective are you measuring those metrics for?

When it comes to measuring social media, it takes a multitude of metrics as well as trending reports to get a sense of what to improve.

#7: Analyze, Adapt, and Improve

Your social media strategy doesn’t end with measurement; it goes beyond that.  You need to analyze your social media campaigns, adapt any new findings into your current processes, and improve your efforts.

Testing and experimentation will perfect your social media efforts.

As you dive deeper into the never-ending pool of social media, you’ll quickly understand what works and what doesn’t.

More specifically, you’ll develop favorite tools to use, realize that there are certain days and times where it doesn’t pay to be active in social media, and come to the conclusion that you still have lots to learn.  It’s a wonderful new world and I hope many of you are as thrilled to be part of it as I am.

Conclusion

Social media strategies will vary for each business and for each industry.  However, one thing is clear: social media needs to have “all hands on deck” in order to be successfully integrated into your company’s goals and objectives.

I consider the social media platforms like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., as tactics that tie into the social media strategy, which is a part of your overall PR, Comms and Marketing strategies.  In other words, outline your social media strategy and support your strategy with tactics.  Without a carefully thought-out plan, you’ll eventually be overwhelmed with social media and even worse, get burnt out by it.  Use this guide as a stepping-stone to your social media success.

Does your company have a Social Media Strategy? How do you implement it? What did you learn from that process?

Posted by Raz Chorev

Pic from http://sdow.semanticweb.org

Facebook Privacy seems to be a question that gets raised in nearly every presentation we run, and it’s a no brainer why!

One thing you all should know. Everything you post on facebook is automatically open for anybody to see! That’s every status update, picture and video you upload!!! It can be pretty daunting for some people as for others..they couldn’t care less.

Before we nail the privacy controls, remember this. Every single bit of content you put up on Facebook is a choice….so be wise in what you share.

Facebook Privacy is an educational process for every person who decides to utilise the platform, whether it be for business or for a personal account. It’s now an easy platform to nail, ensuring you’re not pumping out content to everyone and anyone. Facebook in the distant past was known to over complicate the privacy process and it’s great news for us as now, thanks to the “master switch” you can tighten things up in the shake of a lambs tail, controlling all your content at once in the same spot. The main thing to highlight here is you can protect all the content you have ever processed.

What better way to learn than from the second biggest search engine in the world! Soak up this quick Facebook privacy video “how to”.

Other things to remember:

• When you “like” or “share” any content then it’s automatically feed onto your wall too, for all your friends to see. GREAT  viral exposure for brands/products etc and we feed off this quick and easy sharing facility yet if you’re not keen for your mates to see this then simply – take the tick off  “Allow select partners” in your privacy settings (held in your account bar – top right)

• If a person tags you in a picture then it goes straight into your pictures. Great if it’s a flattering photo Yet if it’s one you’re not sure if you want your mates/the world to see (privacy settings) then make sure you untag yourself.

• Last one – have a quick look through all the pages you have liked. Facebook is lapping up the business and community pages and is always looking for ways to utilise this info to link in with specific advertising. They index the business page/community page with info of your profile. So if you’ve liked a page that you’re not keen for other people to see then probably best to punt this one into space!

Facebook is obviously hotter than the sun right now…and it’s one of our favourite social networks for biz and pleasure! The reach is huge and the facebook insights and targeted messages step all over Google analytics. It’s a platform full of potential, yet with huge opportunities there are always risks.

What are your thoughts on how facebook shares your information? If you’re a brand/biz then can you see how this is possibly the most targeted way to connect with your market? If you’re on it for a personal aspect..are you finding to find that brands are finding you now? Hit us up with your thoughts below, we’re keen to hear more.

(via Social Media Examiner)

Social media monitoring is a biggie..full stop! By monitoring what people are saying about your brand you can gain an outstanding insight into how it is perceived. With this valuable information, it enables the brand to see what’s working and what’s not, it also gives them a huge influence over others in engaging and interacting real time with their audience/community – thanking people when thanking is due and cleaning up the spilt milk, changing the bad to good.

We are luuurving what Gatorade are up to! A big brand that are all over the monitoring process and reaping the rewards in a huge way!!! It’s a triple edged sword, not only are they setting the benchmark yet they are keeping the brand fresh, assisting to it’s voice and also pumping cool campaigns out like this (see video below) which enables influencers, like us bloggers, to assist them with the marketing and awareness! (bloggers are a truly powerful source in assisting a brand to build up  credibility and trust).

Check this out guys – Gatorade’s Social Media Mission Control! A power mix of IBM and Radian6 it’s monitoring everything said about the brand, right here, right now!! Love it!!

So, are they setting the stage for digital leadership or have you seen another brand nailing this space (monitoring aspect) ?

via ( Digital Buzz Blog)

Foursquare has been around for a while now – I’m well and truly hooked on it and check in to around 4 – 10 venues or places each day, given talks on it at conferences and on radio and generally spreading the love for it to promote its use for both personal and business use.
I’m not going to lie, i’ve totally changed my buying habits since i’ve been using it. I’ll grab a coffee from somewhere even if I don’t like the coffee – if there’s a mayorship to battle for, I’m happy to drink crappier coffee and walk that little bit further – in saying that, I’m rather lucky that Outpost Café (@outpostcafe) has probably the best coffee in Melbourne and offers Foursquare Specials for the Mayor (ME)

The platform seriously has the ability to grow ten-fold by increasing the incentives offered for users though use of the points system or encouraging businesses to offer specials and discounts.

Apart from a few venues around me– I’m stunned that either foursquare themselves or developers using the API haven’t produced a better, feature rich retention program using the points system that foursquare already has as part of each check in.

We were recently playing around with the foursquare API for a client of ours – Fit n Fast Gyms who will soon be checking in users on their behalf when they scan their membership upon entry, this then posts to the users Facebook & Twitter profiles with a Fit n Fast logo to their stream.

In club, they are offering prizes for mayorship, most frequented and many more to come – in addition to this, we are playing with the idea to include Foursquare screens (see pic) onsite where a leaderboard can be displayed of most visited, who the mayor is for both that particular club and nationally for all their clubs.
How cool is that – it increases loyalty, encourages users to frequent the gym more often, encourages friendship / networking  and generally makes it  a nicer place to be.

Next up for us is presenting a cross brand retention strategy to organisations through some clever coding using the foursquare API.
As an example, I’ll use 2 totally different brands yet the same company to increase cross promotion opportunity, that works hand in hand.
Salsa’s Mexican food & Boost Juice is one of my favourite little combo’s when scouting for lunch at my local shopping center – in nearly every shopping center there is both of these stores – it makes absolute sense to encourage cross sales and foursquare is the perfect platform for these to work.
as an example :  “check in to a Salsa’s and Boost within 1 hour to receive a free upgrade” Makes sense yeh?

To give another example, lets look at Coles Supermarkets and their Coles Express fuel outlets. Users could either have their phone’s scanned to check them in to the place or do it themselves, the offer could be if they visit a Coles Petrol Station within 24hours to receive a discount fuel offer.

For the smaller businesses, teaming up with other stores or even developing a frequent user program is a no brainer – using the reporting functionality that foursquare already offers its business owners, its easy and best of all – free of charge to implement in its rawest form.

We love integrating Foursquare into our campaigns as its functional, live, has fantastic reporting functionality and is innovative and enjoyable to use – it also keeps us on our toes for trying new things, which is what makes our job in Social Media marketing so much more enjoyable!

Seen any other brands nailing campaigns using Foursquare? Let us know!

The Facebook business page, as I’m guessing you all know by now is HOT HOT HOT ! From it’s community building features, sales channel opportunities, sharing capabilities, customisable application development to competition role outs and so much more it’s certainly a platform to keep your eye on, and embrace if it’s part of your social media strategy. You’d be crazy not too!

We are always looking for ways to integrate a businesses experience/sales channel into the Facebook Page  and Matt @ttam (Our Head Developer and Strategist) is constantly coming up with new ideas for businesses, building them into applications for this power platform. Here’s a great example of a world first developed by Matt on Facebook http://bit.ly/aqM0Su ( I just had to mention a quality staff member in this post – he totally deserves the acknowledgment) Anyhow, these applications are available to purchase via Thinktank Media, however we love to share the free ones too!

If you are looking for employees then this free application is a ripper….. and it’s so easy to install into your page. With the “work for us” application you can post jobs on your Facebook Page for FREE and receive potential employee applications using this. To take a look at how you can use the app then check out the Fit n Fast Gyms page – one of our fantastic clients also

You can also link the “work for us” application into your facebook advertising campaign by the click of a button.

So, how are we using this app with our clients for successful results?

1. Install the application here http://bit.ly/9Ykinn

2. Update the job roles

3. Share the link (in a http://bit.ly link – so you can track clicks) on twitter/linkedin, facebook and any other social networks you have. Also you can put this in your email signature and in your email marketing campaigns if you’re keen.

4. Post on your facebook wall any pages/forums where your target employees maybe hanging out – be careful not to spam though.

5. Warm up your alliances and get them to assist you in promoting this also via the bit.ly link you have set up – driving traffic to your Facebook page. This also plants the seed you have a page, what your services/products are and gives a warmer opportunity for people to “like” your page.

So, what do you think of this application? Have you used it yet? Are you considering it? Hit me up with some comments below peeps

CLEVER!!!! As soon as I heard about Chat Roulette I could sense that this platform would be a great place to run a guerrilla marketing campaign. For those of you who are not sure to what this site is, it’s basically an online chat video platform – it randomly matches you up with another random person online – for video or text chat. Pretty in your face and not my cup of tea, however it’s a hot hot space at the moment….and where there are people and attention…there’s a great space to run a guerrilla marketing campaign!

Check out how Condomerie.com used this space to highlight the awareness of HIV via a quirky and catchy Bingo sign and half dressed lady!

Do you think we will see more of this type of marketing on Chat Roulette? I have a few ideas of what can be utilised here already Hit me up with your thoughts team

Off the back of our recent post on Foursquare, we know that there are some that love it and some that hate it.

In very recent news, the powerhouse brand PepsiCo announced it is launching a location-based social networking campaign with Foursquare including its very own geo-targeting mobile application – Pepsi Loot.  It is really simple – Restaurants that sell Pepsi are pointed easily found and when customers drop in to pick up a drink, Pepsi will reward them with great incentives such as free music downloads and other things.

When we first heard about Foursquare, this type of application is exactly where my mind went straight away. Part of the reason we persisted with it so early on.

In the context of SMS adverting, In a September 2009, Mobile Commerce report, the AIMIA found that 39% were willing to receive advertising direct to their mobile phone for little incentives and prizes (Australian Stats).

It also has to be said that campaigns such as these are still in the experimental stage and reach is yet to be fully realised.  You may have noticed your local café has a special that you can unlock for a free beverage or the like. Our own clients Caroline Services Apartments recently caused a flutter of activity on their Brighton premises with accommodation give away for Foursquare Day.

So what are other ways that traditional business could use this form of media? I would really love your creative ideas on the below business……

Hand Carwash

Tax Accountants

Dentists

Clothes Boutiques

Optometrists

So, off the back of feedback on my recent post on the demographic of LinkedIn STATS, I thought I might let you in on one of our little secrets here at Thinktank Media.

Most people think that the Twitter audience is predominately female. Indeed in the US, where most of our market research comes from, it is female dominated. This is contrary to popular belief. Here in Australia the numbers are unusual.



Source: Google Ad Planner – Viewed 30^th April, 2010.

Twitter users in Australia are 66% Male.

Twitter users in America are 60% Female.

4 Keys:

1. This is an exceptionally ugly looking graph.
2. These are remarkable differences and a staggering insight into the differences in culture.
3. Figures like this should dictate how you treat different social media channels.
4. This figures change very regularly, so they will be outdated almost the month this post is uploaded.

There were also major difference is the dominant age groups. The United States most active group on social media is 35-44 years olds, whereas here it is the 45-55 year olds at 32%.

The United Kingdom is behind us but ahead of the USA on 58% males. Japan is just slightly behind us on 62% males.

I would love to hear your theories and interpretations on why you think it is this way here in OZ in the comments section below.

This week Linkedin launched its new sharing features , so I thought I might revisit some of the STATS I use for creating some of our Social Media Strategies. This corporate networking is gaining traction quickly, and is commonly a top referrer to the Thinktank Media Blog.  No doubt people will go out and start using this new function right away. But there are a couple of things to consider first. So let me show you the breakdown of segments on the 65,000,000 million members.

So who is there?

Average Age: 43

Average Household Income: $107,278

Male dominated as compared with Facebook /Twitter: 54%

Household Income $100k+ 51.8%

University Graduates: 80.1%

Business Influences Purchase Decisions Makers: 41.6%

The number of Directors and above at any size company is over 7 Million

IT Professionals- whose job function is IT or engineering over 5.5 Million

By Job Title:

C-Level /Executives 7.8%

Senior Management 16%

Middle Management 18%

Source: http://advertising.linkedin.com/

Cross posting may leave you missing the mark. This is a completely different audience make up to other platforms, so you need to treat it very differently. This includes language, messaging, even product bundling and the images the feature now allows you to add etc.

Your connection network will also be unique to you, so keep this in mind.

Updating your LinkedIn Profile as often as your other social media profiles may not be received warmly either. Remember it isn’t about what you want to say that matters, but about what they want to hear.

Do you have any success stories from linkedin, or have found a way to really work this space well?

Can I hear a whoop whoop! Seriously, how fantastic is it that we can now video live content from the comfort of our facebook page or profile. The amazing people at Vpype have built us an application that has been on many business owners facebook wish list for a while.  Vpype Live Broadcaster

What is Vpype Broadcaster?

This is a free application for your facebook page or profile. All you need to do is install this and add it to the page you want to broadcast from. You can add as many pages as you are admin for. Once installed, vpype will show up under the “shows” tab at the top of your page.

Once you configure your mic and camera then you can start to enter in specific info about your broadcast. Then share this with your twitter and facebook friends/fans for even more exposure. Remember, as soon as you hit broadcast you are LIVE…so be prepared!

OK, so why would you want to live stream from your facebook fanpage?

Firstly, people are comfortable with the facebook platform and in some cases it feels safe to them. This new application makes it easy for your community to join in and take part.Here are a few hot points that spring to mind on why to use this powerful application:

Video seminars - free sessions you may put on for your community. This is also fantastic to build up more fans by making them aware you have a page and for them to become a fan and take part.

Annoucing winner of your online competition - we did this recently with a client of ours  – AFL Players Association and it worked a treat! Many people hopped onto their page and started interacting to hear if they had won. We did have some trouble towards the end as the internet went down – ekkkk…so, please note: this application needs a good internet connection and always have a back up plan of how you intend to connect with your viewers if things don’t go to plan We decided after this minor set back, to announce the winner via the facebook platform and record this immediately on the iphone then updated the page. AFLPA fans still stayed with us throughout the whole recording and the comp was a hit!

Sharing an experience – live! Eg. the release of a new product/service or a pre buzz campaign.

A demonstration of  “how to” eg. how to download your slideshare presenation from your website/blog.

I’m sure you can think of many more ways to utilise this!

Why do I love this application? It makes things even easier for us! As users of the social web we are always looking for ways to integrate a social experience to our brand/product/business. This app enables us to connect with our community – audio and visual LIVE and gives  them the opportunity to interact back (typing) via their facebook/twitter accounts. This interaction is also shared in their news stream/wall if they choose it to…making it even easier for us to get the word out about the broadcast. I also love the fact that if someone missed the live broadcast, then that’s ok, they can watch the recorded version in their own time.

So what do you think to this new application? How do you think you may use it? Hit me up below