One Social Platform
or Many?
The lure of social media platforms
for marketers is strong. Considering
there are 560M users on Twitter and over a billion on Facebook alone (Bennet,
2014), the available reach and engagement opportunity is hard to ignore. So should your brand jump into every platform
headlong? Most likely not all platforms,
but an integrated, multi-platform strategy should be a component for every
brand’s marketing plan.
Social media marketing is becoming an increasingly important
component of every brand’s marketing strategy.
For brands deciding to remain focused on just one social channel, it’s
likely they’ll find themselves late to the party and playing catch up. The top 3 digital areas marketers plan to allocate more budget on
are social media advertising (70% plan to increase spend), social media
marketing (70%), and social media engagement (67%) (Nanji, 2015). If you don’t engage your customers across
multiple platforms, your competition most likely is getting ahead.
The process for determining which
platforms to integrate into your marketing communications strategy should take
into consideration your target market, the marketing objective your brand is
looking to achieve, and the type of content which is most effective at
influencing your customer to take an intended action. Establishing “rules of engagement” will
encourage thoughtful interaction that benefits the business, brand, customer,
peers, and prospects at every touch point” (Solis, 2010).
Understanding
your target market and how they engage on each platform is one of the most
critical early stage planning decisions.
The process of building a buyer persona for your target markets, one
that takes into account their social media behavior, puts the customer first
and will point you in the best direction.
While not exhaustive, here are some categories to shape your buyer
persona questions:
●
Demographic information i.e. age, gender, relationship
status, ethnicity, nationality etc.
●
Lifestyle habits
●
Hobbies & Interests
●
Professional information
●
Social media usage
●
Shopping preferences (online/ in-store)
●
Challenges surrounding your industry/service/product
●
Factors that enable success in your role (Freeman
Social Media.com, n.d.)
A component of your persona
research should also include social listening and as Hubspot suggests, spend
some time at the watering hole (Hubspot, 2015).
“Discover all relevant communities of interest and observe the choices,
challenges, impressions, and wants of the people within each network” (Solis,
2010). On average, a staggering 55M
photos are uploaded on Instagram each day.
This represents a treasure trove of user generated content (UGC). If your strategy is to increase brand
awareness with UGC, this is a great platform to integrate with your
website. Already 63% of prestige brands
link their Instagram account to their website and 54% to their Facebook page
(Gillett, 2014). Instagram provides a
visual content focused platform allowing brands to give a glimpse into unique,
behind the scenes moments. "That
is really what building a brand is about, not just showing the product but
showing the story all around it" Gillett, 2014). Brands need to determine how each watering
hole can support their objective.
With well researched buyer personas
in hand for your target markets, a second consideration should be the
customer’s buying cycle. “The reality is
that your target audience has different communication needs depending on which
stage of the buying cycle they’re in. A customer-centric approach flips content
creation from brand first to customer first” (Quesenberry, 2015). If your brand is focused on gaining awareness
and interest among consumers in the prepurchase stage, providing how-to content
on YouTube may be an ideal strategy.
If you’re a B2B marketer, LinkedIn is a platform many brands
have used to showcase thought leadership and industry expertise. The nature of this platform makes it highly
effective for B2B lead generation. One
study showed LinkedIn to be 277% more effective than Facebook and Twitter
(Corliss, 2012). A successful multi-platform
strategy aligns platform with content and buyer personas.
Another
important benefit of executing a multi-platform strategy is the positive impact
on SEO. “Social conversations can inform
keyword strategy, and search keywords can inform social content strategy. This
process is a virtuous cycle because social engagement boosts search
performance, which increases social signals and drives more social
conversations” (Lee, 2013). While Google
may have declared social signals don’t impact search engine results rankings,
“social is the new SEO because social networks themselves function as powerful
and widely-used search engines in their own right” (Patel, 2014). In addition, social pages which are optimized
will rank high in SERP results, especially for brand names.
If marketing budgets
were bottomless pits of gold
Since marketing budgets are
finite, an important decision in creating a multi-platform social campaign is
how much time and money it will require to launch and sustain each one. As you allocate budgets, here are several
things to keep in mind for success:
1.
Compare benefits with spend - know your ROI
2.
Earmark dollars for each specific channel
3.
Invest in content that is shareable
4.
Account for rising costs
5.
Leave room for programs and new opportunities (Braziel,
2015)
Budget dollars should be allocated towards channels that
drive the most impact and deliver an ROI. “Creating highly shareable content
that accomplishes a business objective is a craft, and you need to invest in
the creation of it” (Braziel, 2015).
Marketing teams need to develop a content calendar and determine the
total cost for each platform.
In addition to affordability, the content plan
needs to be one the team can sustain. “Once you start with a given cadence,
you’ve made a content promise. If you can’t maintain that promise, it will
quickly alienate your readers” (Greenberg, 2009). The extent of a multi-channel campaign is
dependent on the team's’ ability to adhere to a content calendar. However, in the quest for generating content
on a regular basis and integrating across platforms, it’s important not to
forget to customize the content for each platform. A brand could adapt content across platforms
in the following way:
●
Twitter - share news and promotions
●
YouTube - entertain and educate
●
Pinterest - organize products around consumer interests
(Quesenberry, 2014)
●
Facebook - share emotional brand stories and contests
It’s also important to remember
that social media is intended to generate engagement and even
conversations. Brands must evaluate
their ability to have dedicated community managers who monitor and respond to
comments, handle complaints, and amplify user generated content on each channel
that reflects that the brand is paying attention and interested. In evaluating the number of social channels
to use, a brand must evaluate their ability to identify and feed advocates and
remember that “tools don’t build community - people do” (Momentum Marketing,
n.d.). All of this requires time. In a recent study by Social Media Examiner,
64% of marketers are using social media for 6 hours or more and nearly 19% of
marketers spend more than 20 hours each week on social media.
The good news is that this same report shows this investment
of time is paying dividends in reduced marketing expenses (Social Media
Examiner, 2014).
Regardless of which channels are
chosen in a multi-platform strategy, each one provides another opportunity to
use analytics tools to monitor tactics, measure ROI, and adjust
strategies. Chris Sietsma from Convince
and Convert provides 5 reports for social media on Google Analytics that will
allow you to monitor and refine your multi-platform strategy:
1.
Use advanced segmentation to monitor traffic and user
behavior exclusively from each source
2.
View conversions by source
3.
Measure traffic to social outposts to understand how your
website drives awareness of your social channels
4.
Create and deploy content experiments
5.
Use multi-channel funnel reports to understand digital
attribution and show the value of social media in the sales funnel (Sietsma,
2014).
The days of driving on one lane
social roads are over. Consumers and B2B
buyers are consuming content across a myriad of highways. Take the time to develop strong personas,
prioritize social channel development based on the audience and your goals,
develop a content and staffing plan that is realistic and attainable, and use
your analytics tools to avoid the traffic delays and roadblocks.
References:
Bennet, S. (2014, January 20). Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn – Social Media Stats 2014. Adweek
Magazine: Social Blog [Web log]
Braziel, L. (2015, July 13). 5 Tips to setting your social
media budget in 2016. Retrieved from http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/social-media-strategy/5-tips-setting-social-media-budget-2016/
Corliss, R. (2012, January 30). LinkedIn 277% More Effective
for Lead Generation Than Facebook & Twitter. Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30030/LinkedIn-277-More-Effective-for-Lead-Generation-Than-Facebook-Twitter-New-Data.aspx
English, A. (2015, July 20). Top 100 Global Brands on
Youtube: 2015 update. Retrieved from http://www.pixability.com/top-100-brands-2015/
Gillett, R. (2014, April 22). How the most successful brands
dominate Instragram, and how you can too. Adweek Magazine (Online). Retrieved from http://www.fastcompany.com/3029395/bottom-line/how-the-most-successful-brands-dominate-instagram-and-you-can-too
Greenberg, M. (2009, October 20).
Content is king of social marketing. MultichannelMerchant.com.
Retrieved April 12, 2012 from http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/1020-content-social-marketing/
Lee, W. (2013, October 25). SEO and social media alignment. Retrieved
from http://searchengineland.com/seo-social-media-alignment-174775
Momentum Marketing. (n.d.). 5 keys
to engaging and driving online community engagement. Retrieved from http://momentummediamarketing.com/5-keys-to-engaging-and-driving-online-community-engagement/
Nanji, A. (2015, January 27). 2015 Digital Marketing Budgets:
Top Priorities, Metrics, and Challenges. Retrieved from http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/26900/2015-digital-marketing-budgets-top-priorities-metrics-and-challenges#ixzz3qwquVy7r
Patel, N. (2014, April 11). Why
social is the new SEO. Retrieved from
http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/11/why-social-is-the-new-seo/
Quesenberry, K. (2015, May 14). How
to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan. Retrieved from
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-marketing-plan/#more-83257
Quesenberry, K. (2014, December 8).
Three Ways to Customize
Content Across Social Channels for Greater Response. Retrieved from
http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/26645/three-ways-to-customize-content-across-social-channels-for-greater-response
Seitsma, C. (n.d.). The 5 Top
Google Analytics Reports for Social Media Marketers. Retrieved from http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-measurement/the-5-top-google-analytics-reports-for-social-media-marketers/
Social Media Examiner. (2014). 2014
Social Media Marketing Industry Reprt. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2014.pdf
Solis, B. (2010). 21 rules for
social media engagement. Mashable.
Retrieved January 2, 2011, from: http://mashable.com/2010/05/18/rules-social-media-engagment/
Freeman Social Media. (n.d.). How
to: Create buyer personas for social media marketing. [Web log]. Retrieved from
http://freemansocialmedia.com/buyer-personas-for-social-media/
HubSpot. (2015, October 13). How to
create personas. Retrieved from http://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts-user-guide-v2/how-to-create-personas
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