As the year draws to a close it is a great time to review your Social Media Strategy. As with all strategies refinement should happen continuously all year but I also like to do a year-end review:

These are just a few things up for review:

1. Audience – Are you engaging with the right crowd? Are you hitting your qualitative and quantitative targets?

2. Metrics – are you happy with the metrics you are collecting? Have you added new objectives along the way and now need to find a metric that relates to them? Are you getting the most out of your metrics tools- for example Facebook updates their Insights tool regularly but are you across the new components?

3.Listening/Monitoring – we all know we need to do it but are you happy with the data you are collecting? is it meaningful and is it time to review your social media monitoring supplier?

4.Staffing – if you are resourcing social media internally what are your staffing skillset gaps? is it technical? content creation? start a skills matrix so you can start the year fresh knowing what skills you need to buy-in or trainup internally

5.Content – as we know content creation is a vital part of engaging in social media – which pieces of content this year hit the mark? which ones missed and why?

6.Competitors – what did your competitors in the space achieve this year? how will this influence how you refine your strategy for next year.

These are just a few things you can review to ensure you start the new year fresh and on track.

Have a safe, happy and prosperous New Year!

At 5.55pm today News online ran with a story Mouthwash Recalled Over Bacteria Scare. My first thought was to view the Colgate Palmolive website where I expected to find at least a news item or ticker regarding the issue.  But nothing.

I then went into the actual product page for Savacol once again nothing!

Next stop Twitter – it doesn’t appear Colgate have a company Twitter stream if they did it would be an ideal crisis communication vehicle, if they do it is not advertised on their home page and is well hidden.

Finally off to Facebook to see if a product or company page exist? No – once again a lost opportunity to communicate and answer consumers questions and fears regarding the recall.

Are people discussing the Savacol recall online? you bet.  These are just a few comments that appear on Twitter from consumers:

-Thousands of bottles of #Savacol antiseptic mouth and throat rinse taken off shelves in Oz after traces of harmful bacteria were detected

Social Media strategy templates and Social Media strategy tools are often in demand by the social media marketing industry but is there such a thing? is there a one size fits all?

Recently Vocus has produced a Social Media Strategy planning tool.  The tool developed by Vocus and MarketingSherpa entails a Drag-and-drop module where you answer answer questions and create a social media strategy tailored to your needs. 

Overall it is a nice snapshot of some elements you will need to think about but it does breeze over concepts  rather than examining them in detail. The ability to compile relevant readings however is a particularly useful component to the tool.

Verdict? It certainly can’t replace an experienced online marketer who can view your online strategy wholistically but its a fun and reasonably well executed tool.

Internet marketing research company ComScore released a white paper this week that detailed which Facebook features receive the most usage and where users interact with branded content. The report showed that:

-27% of Facebook browsing is on the news feed and home page

-  21% of time was spent on profiles,

-17% on Photos,

-10% on applications, and 25% on the rest of the site

The report states that “Most engagement with branded content happens on the news feed, not Pages, yet the average brand in the top 100 Facebook Pages reaches only 16% of their fans per week if they post five days a week”

It is interesting how companies can spend a huge amount of money on Facebook apps yet the above report shows relatively little interaction within this area.

Methodology: The report is based on a two million person opt-in panel of web internet users that agreed to be monitored, so the sample size is ample though it might skew towards savvier, less skittish users.

It is certainly worthwhile viewing the report for additional insights.

Talk to us and let us help you grow your business through an integrated online marketing strategy. Unsure of where to begin with Social Media? we can help! Contact me jenni@digitaldemocracy.com.au  ps. we also still answer the phone 0423073099

Is your marketing looking slightly retro? Digital Democracy can help you navigate your social media journey.   We have social media packages to suit a range of businesses.  Connect with me on Twitter @jennibeattie or simply pick up the phone 0423073099

Recently the Harvard Business Review  surveyed over 2000 companies to examine the way they are currently using social media. While they found that uptake was high for many companies use was still experimental. These are just a few of the findings from the report:

• 31% do not measure effectiveness of social media
• Less than 23% uses social media analytic tools
• 7% integrate social media into existing marketing activities
• 12% identified themselves as effective users of social media
• 75% said that they did not know where there most valuable customers were talking about them.

Interestingly two-thirds of the companies are convincinced their use of social media will grow. For further information please Download the full HBR report free 

In a recent study by Digital Brand Expressions, 52% of social marketers are operating “without a game plan,” similar to the 50% found in April 2010 by R2integrated this was discussed recently in an emarketer article.

The following image shows the activities that organisations are currently participating in indicating that many organisations are clearly at the beginning of their social media journey building the foundations for more sophisticated activities.

The study also showed that the creation/maintenance of social media communications plans are being created predominantly by marketing and corporate communications which is to be expected.

It would however be interesting to know how many other departments had a seat at the table when the social media plans were developed.  For example, developing a thorough social media policy alone would need input from HR, IT, marketing and others gaining that buy-in from the majority of departmental areas is critical if you are (a) going to get the strategy off the ground and (b) gain the ROI that you need.

This week I was interested to read an article in Content Marketing Today regarding the success a bank has had with blogging.

The following is an excerpt from that post (ok it’s the weekend time is short!):

The company under the spotlight was in a niche area - banks that were trying to get started, banks that were looking to acquire other banks or banks that were working on implementing growth strategies. According to company owner, Wendell Brock, his website,denovostrategy.com, received almost no traffic.

Wendell decided to launch a blog called, BankNotes that was integrated with his website and within a few months he went from zero traffic to 1000 new monthly visitors. About 10% of these are returning visitors and 2.5% have turned into new sales leads.

Wendell noted another benefit to his new blogging strategy, “The blog has caused me to implement a new discipline to my marketing strategy by committing to writing a blog article at least once per week. This keeps me engaged in my website and inspires me to continuously strive to make it better.” Thus, even though he is a self-confessed ‘non-marketer’, his blog forces him to think regularly about continuous marketing improvement.

What happened here? By engaging with a relatively broad universe of professionals who cared about banking issues, BankNotes became a trusted source of information. As the subset of blog readers who qualified as prospects engaged with his content, they came to trust Wendel as the expert who could solve their problems about starting, buying or building a bank.  They would then take the next step to spend time on his buyer-focused website.

It’s worth noting that his blog is fully integrated with his website. Therefore, when blog readers are ready to consider becoming customers, his comprehensive website content is readily available to provide all the information they need to make a buying decision.

Summing up: Your website is necessary but not sufficient to draw in prospects before they are ready to do serious buying research. Your blog will engage a broader audience that will return again and again. An important subset of this audience will be ready to buy from you because you have effectively engaged them early on with relevant and compelling information.

**The case study regarding the bank was published in a new book entitled Marketing 2.0: Bridging the gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing

Could your business benefit from a blogging strategy?

As an online communicator with clients both in the corporate and non-profit sector I was interested in a post recently by Jennifer McClure of The New Communications Review discussing how the social web is a great place for philanthropic activity.

Jennifer’s blogpost highlighted new research “…funded by the Columbus Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation demonstrating that High dollar donors — especially 30-49 year-olds — use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. This was among the key findings of the new research study, “Community Philanthropy 2.0,” conducted by Beth Kanter, Society for New Communications Research Fellow Geoff Livingston, and Qui Diaz of CRT/tanaka.”

The Community Philanthropy 2.0 research study examined the use of social media by non-profits and causes, as well as existing donors and Internet “savvy” users’ traditional and social media usage patterns. The research was designed to determine if and how social media can be used to engage and cultivate high dollar donors.

Key Findings

* The online world of charitable activity is highly social, but also fragmented. No dominant voice for charitable giving exists online, indicating the social web is still in an early phase of philanthropic activity.
* Online conversations rarely evolve into meaningful discussions about how nonprofits are achieving their missions and impacting society. Donors don’t advise other donors, and generally, philanthropic experts from foundations do not participate in these discussions.
* There is a need for a trusted source, and a lack of authoritative philanthropic conversations.
* The 30-49 age group represents the best fit to cultivate major donors using social media strategies,
* More than 50 percent of 30 – 49-year-old survey respondents are interested in the following topics:
• “Whether or not a nonprofit is successfully making an impact” (75%)
• “Learning about organizations that are actively working on issues and causes I care about” (62%)
• “Success stories and updates on the progress of nonprofits I support” (54%)
• “Information/updates on the issues and causes I care about” (54%)
• “Financial accountability and governance of nonprofits I support” (51%)
* 80 percent of the Internet-savvy respondents aged 30-49 reported that they would participate in social media with nonprofits if the information was highly credible and of strong quality, and 77 percent said they would participate if it came from a trusted source.
* Online community-oriented social media is a preferred tool over most other forms of online conversation.

Source/Credit: New Communications Review