Welcome. In this video lecture I'd like to talk about the 4 x Client briefs that you can write a strategy for, the 9 steps of a social media strategy framework and - reward!- if you complete the classes and the strategy, a video/skype discussion with me about any questions or feedback you'd like.
WORKBOOK (PDF) is under Resources in Lecture THREE. Select a CLIENT BRIEF under RESOURCES in Lecture 4. Many of the HOMEWORK exercises are there too - for each lecture. Let me know in DISCUSSION if you have a problem with the resources. Thankyou. PS there are closed caption (SUBTITLES) available on the lectures if you struggle with the Australian accent! :) VIDEO LECTURES start in SECTION 2.
Welcome to Social Media Strategies for Public Relations Professionals. As a communications professional (or higher education student) you know that a number of your clients have gaps in their social media strategy preferring to rely on a Facebook content calendar or a adhoc approach to posting on Twitter. This series of lectures and tutorials on social media strategy will be given in three formats.
- The first is theory and understanding the strategy framework step by step,
- the second a practical example of each step and how companies are using the principle well (or otherwise!) so you can see the theory at work
- third is a fun homework question where you will be asked to formulate a strategy around the principle weve just gone through for a Brand X or Organisation Y in a specific industry e.g health or fashion or local government for a specified market segment e.g. youth or mums with babies or CEOs.
Im here to guide you every step of the way, and you can ask me questions in the Discussion area if you get stuck. There will also be supplemental reading material, course notes, examples and infographics and if you are REALLY keen, University lectures and sources to study. Dont forget: work at your own pace, dip in and out, and ask questions!
Please click RESOURCES and download the PDF eBook which has both notes and exercises. You can also download as a .doc from Google Docs https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HOWDw5nGO-1oxTRLUIdz1ZVGLx3YK8642DoMyUqztOU/edit?usp=sharing and is updated from time to time so check back!
Choose from one of the Briefs - Gov, Not for Profit, Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C). You will be asked to complete each section of the strategy with reference to your chosen brief. Please note, brief will be updated/changed once a month (look at the end of the lectures for archived old projects) so if you want to play a second time you can :) Of course you can use your own organisation or business to write a strategy but by choosing one we are all working on, you may find it easier to collaborate with others doing this course.
Ever met with a client or talked to someone in your organisation and asked "what's our strategy"? If it's social media and they say "we have Facebook, do you think we need Instagram" you groan and think "they need to work some stuff out"? Welcome to strategy!
A Nine Step Social Media Strategy asks the questions that can be answered in a document with examples for staff/Franchisees/partners can implement.
- Purpose and Values - Why would someone want to connect with you on social media? What's your purpose? What value?
- Market Segment and Avatar Communications - who are you talking to? Demographics, Personas, Behavioural. Facebook for example chooses who will see your stuff. Have you got it sorted?
- Social Spaces and Which Platform - Different platforms have different communities. Or at least people change their voice, their needs, their values when they are on different platforms. Which one should you be on?
- Identifying Personal Brand Gamification - Are you adjusting your content marketing and rewards to the different members of your community?
- Engagement Lifecycles and Call to Actions - if you know where your community member is in their lifecycle in your community you can create a call to action better. For example Newcomers need a different CTA than the Elders to engage.
- Key Influencers amplify the Ripple effect in social media - are you identifying your key influencers and building relationships? Some PR companies just spam anyone on a top list - is there a better strategy?
- Voice and Etiquette - how do you speak to the community? What is appropriate on LinkedIn vs Vine? Assisting staff to stay on Brand Voice through a strategy. Are you getting back the community behaviours and customer voice that you expect?
- Social Media Campaigns and Activities - entertaining the community with planned campaigns works much better than letting staff simply put things up online adhoc. The 5 steps of a social media campaign from Monitoring to Creating social objects, building relationships, promoting and call to actions and finally measurement.
- Rituals and Content Calendars - conversation diaries are regular scheduled events that increase engagement on all platforms. Examples and downloadable spreadsheets on how to use hashtags and engage are included.
This course gives you a choice of FOUR briefs and then practical tutorials and Exercises as well as Theory lectures for you to complete a social media strategy. I'm here to help in the Discussion forum and I'll be adding additional briefs, lectures, tutorials and exercises from time to time. Let me know if there's anything you want added!
In this lecture we define Purpose and Values and the difference between the two. We develop our strategy to meet the Purpose and Values of BOTH the Organisation AND the customer/client and how to match the need with the response. We look at what happens when Purpose conflicts with Values to create public relations crisis online.
We look at examples of where the Purpose and Values of the organisation closely mirror the Purpose and Values of the Community. And where this hasn't worked so well showing a weakkness in the social media strategy.
Download the list and then Evaluate the Purpose for an Organisation such as brand education or improve employer branding or create new product awareness in journalists. Then create a list of Member Purpose to co-brand with a cool brand to learn more to stay informed. Develop a Values strategy - how does the mission statement resonate with the community members. Does the Social Voice reflect the values?
In this lecture we address the who of the strategy: Who are you trying to communicate with? Why is Avatar persona marketing important? What is the difference between Demographics, Persona (Interests, Attitudes, Opinions) and Behavioural (non-Declarative)? Why your strategy needs to be the Magazine, not the Ad for the different groups. What is the Cost of Inaction, of not targetting your communications?
WHO are you talking to? Facebook makes decisions about who your audience are - whether you agree or no - and then only shows your udpates to those people. Take a peep at the largest Focus Group online, for free, and see what Facebook does with that data.
Why is this important - we investigate Facebook FBO (Edgerank) and how the algorithm changes depending on who you are communicating with. Facebook will change your place in the Fans newsfeed depending on how well you do this part of the strategy. It also impacts Google search and soon, Twitter timelines (Twitter algorithm).
Greenpeace audience and Facebook Ads as a Focus Group
Developing the Avatar: The Questions. Demographics - where do they live, are they married, where do they work? Psychographics - Interests, Opinions, Values, Fears, Behavioural. What do they do on the weekend? Holidays? Give your Avatar a name.
What questions will you ask yourself of your different market segments? Do you have 2 or 3 different types of people that you engage with, that you need to communicate with?
Why do you need to understand tribes, avatar/persona marketing and targeted communications? These two examples show how comapnies have multiple Facbook Pages, not for each Product but for each type of Customer/Client. Without a targeted comms strategy, Facebook will remove your status update from client newsfeeds.
Section 1 Document: Fill in the avatar information sheet (psychographics, not demographics)
Example Persona 1 Judy is 33, she buys organic, vegetarian, likes dining out, does yoga, cross fit. Buys LuluLemon and Nudie, Likes to surf, Quicksilver, Billabong. Hates negative thinking but loves reality TV shows like Real Housewives & lives in Bondi.
Examples and links to Avatars for Business.
Where are you going to reach these Avatars? Which platform is best and how do you find out? Also: Do you need a Social Media Press Room? We look at an example of a B2B company and their social media press releases, integrating social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, YouTube...
Scania have a main website and a social media "press room". The Press room has many of the functions of the different social spaces - it pulls in images from Instagram "content" spokes, and allows Press Releases to be shared through "distribution" spokes. The target market communicating your information to the target market!
PDF: Use the Homework chart to place Persona 1 and Persona 2 against Pinterest, snapchat etc and the type of content you could place on each platform for the different audiences.
Social Spaces and Platforms
You wouldn't send out a press release to the wrong journalists: how to evaluate different people in your community and tag them with a different role. Some people are welcomers and newbie helpers, others are engineers and explain how something works, teachers explain the softer skills and cops explain why you cant do something. Everyone has a role in a community. This is a key PRE Key Influencer part of your strategy - identifying what you already know about your customer and other communities.
Adjusting your content and conversation diary, developing new campaigns and activities will work with different personal brands. If you are building in gamification into your social media strategy, different personal brands need different Leaderboards, Badges and Reward Points.
Top Contributors, Most Popular Articles, Newest Members etc... Building Persona Branding Trust and Reputation.
We evaluate some examples of companies where the customers have taken on roles, become Brand Ambassadors, and created their own communities of interest.
PDF: Which of your customers have a blog? Which of your vendors have a podcast? Which of your staff has an active Google Plus account? What external communities already are in place - perhaps coupon communities that share your offers or a voucher community that share your tickets to events? Where do your customers go for customer service online if NOT to you? A forum? A Facebook group? A LinkedIn community?
This Lecture takes you through lifecyles of customers and other key stakeholders. A major part of the requirement for a social media strategy is to take members from finding out about your Facebook Page (visitor) to getting them to sign up through a call to action (Likes) to encouraging them to contribute and collaborate (Engagement) to bringing in more Leads and interested parties (Reach) right through to full Brand Ambassador programs.
RESOURCES: Link to Customer Relationship Stages for Marketers article
Well look at how Tourism and other social media Pages reward contributors and further engagement. A brief introduction to gamification for those who want to include gamifying of engagement in their PR social media strategy.
PDF: Write 500 words on how you can encourage members on one part of the lifecycle shift to another. Example is included for you to repeat the format.
Relationship Building with key influencers brings an exponential return on communications dollar investment. Imagine a podcaster with 1,000s of very engaged "verified" listeners hearing a review of your product or service? Or a blogger that talks to your Avatar and market segment suggesting people try your offer? or a journalist retweeting your press release to their community of editors, and other journalists?
In this lecture we look at the Social Media Ripple (Amplifcation) effect - how velocity is different from Traditional Media campaigns and how Influencers create a J-Curve of Engagement. Different types of Influencers (CEOs, Celebrities, Academics) add the Brand Avatar Voice and aid with distribution of content marketing and social promotion PR.
An example of the Social Media Amplification Effect in use and how the Ripple works from Facebook page to Facebook Page by engaging and linking and tagging Key Influencers.
Choose Key Influencers for your Client Brief project.
Examples of Social Media House Rules - do they work? Well yes, but only if you've done all the other steps so far of a strategy! Match your House Rules to your Brand Avatar Voice - not all rules are appropriate for all organisations.
Does the serious banking voice work when trying to attract Uni students saving for the first time? Does the telecommunications techie/geeky voice work with Senior Citizens investigating their first smartphone/phablet? If you are developing a communications strategy for working class people should you speak to them like you have a degree in public relations and marketing or should you adapt your content, your comments, your tweets, your voice to their voice? Is swearing ok, ever? If I say Yo Dude, fully wicked sick man! do I sound like Im trying too hard? (the answer is yes!).
We look at examples of companies who have their voice totally right and encourage their community and have a strong communications channel and also at those that struggle to get engagement from a too formal voice, a too lax OR strict etiquette and too wishy-washy a presence to make the most of social media.
Media Training needs to expand to include Social Media Training and for ALL staff: after all it's not only the CEO chatting with journalists now, anyone with Twitter has access!
Try connecting content with Persona, with call to action all the while using the right Voice
- Content type: Twitter tweets, Instagram photo etc
- Reader: Which Persona?
- Reader feelings: Encouraged to share
- Your tone should be: Excited, educational, discovering
- Write like this: Does anyone have any examples of really really GREAT uses of recycling we could share? if you do please post them here and then reshare to spread the word!
- Tips: Encourage reshare over like, contribution for social good, helpful and education rather than formal and broadcast.
See exercise for examples and suggestions.
In this lecture we look at the 5 steps of a social media communications campaign:
- monitoring and understanding the community you are attempting to communicate with,
- creating voice through social assets
- discussing with key influencers, and building relationships
- promotion through your community (this is 4th not 1st!) and
- measurement and setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
All 5 steps will be outlined in your strategy document so you can be confident they are repeated throughout the whole organisation.
NAB bank have a social media monitoring room and they adapt their comms strategies in REAL TIME based on the feedback from social media. Some companies have fallen foul of social media communities by missing a critical step in their strategy and their campaign. Learn from their mistakes and monitor, monitor, monitor!
Build a small! social media monitoring panel from scratch. OR use tweetreach and evaluate measurement OR one of the other exercises [PDF]
In this lecture we evaluate the conversation diary and choose rituals and rites of passage that affect our avatar and core market segments. Everything from Talk Like A Pirate Day to Fashion Week New York to natural disasters like floods to engagements and deaths in the community. All need to be addressed in the strategy document.
[Practical]: Creating a Conversation Diary and Content Calendar (Spreadsheet)
Create a conversation diary and research: beeroclock, #FF, #PRchat, Agchat. Also place times of the day and days of the week activities. What rituals can you use that are already popular such as Fan Foto Friday or Throwback Thursday? [PDF]
Additional Reading Material.
What is the target audience? This course is for students with some knowledge of public relations or marketing, and a need to write and implement Social Media
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