The Social Media Low-Down

The
Social
Media

LOW-DOWN
By Kathryn McMann

THE INS AND OUTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA,
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO YOUR BRAND,
AND WHY YOUR BRAND NEEDS TO HARNESS ITS POWER

© Kathryn McMann Holistic Marketing Consultancy 2013
www.KathrynMcMann.com

The Social MediaLOW-DOWN
What is Social Media?How does it work? Why has it had such an impact on the way consumers
consume?Why is it important for your brand?How does SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)contribute
to Social Media to support your online brand presence? And how can we harness its power using the
tools available?
Social Media Marketing: How did we get here?
Social media marketing is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to promote your brand,
to build, engage and connect with communities of interest across multiple communication mediums.
We are fast transitioning away from
slower analogue formats, print alone,and
surface brand values. With this transition
digital platforms will continue to grow
and are fast becomingintrinsic actions in
our lives. Digital integration has
impacted how we communicate,use,
group, find, researchand consume.
“We exist at the intersection of
technology and social issues,” Facebook’s
co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in
2011, an insight Steve Jobs oncehad
about Apple. Mark Zuckerberg is highlighting the natural transition from technologyonce being used
by affluent or stereotypical-gaming users, to being used for regular daily tasks by everyone and
anyone with a phone or access to a computer, without even being aware of the process between
technology and need.
The Brand and Consumer Relationship
It’s time to think of the brand and consumer relationship holistically. The consumer has one
relationship with the brand. One emotional impression of a brand. Just one. They don’t see the
difference between budgets and action, online and offline, between connecting
with your brand across Twitter or Facebook, on their mobile, or through advertising
or idents onTV.
The brand, however, has multiple relationshipchannels, customer touch-pointswith
potential and loyal/repeat consumers: through their website, by phone, on
mobiles,through interactions with their company Twitter feeds; throughcomments
made on Facebook pages, through testimonials or comments made by
friends/colleagues on affiliate networks, and of course, by window-shopping in the
virtual space with the intention to purchase in the physical space, (if they make it
that far of course.) It all adds up to create a universal emotive brand image to the customer.
How is your brand represented across the spectrum of customer touchpoints?
Social media offers a spectrum of locations to communicate, connect and recommend. Ideas and
comments go viral, but social media, like PR, takes time to build momentum

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.

throughrelationships, repetition and trust Once it has gathered momentum, the
community will be faithful and become the strongest allies and advocates of the brand.This can work
in any context, be it B2B as well as B2C (business to business, or business to customer), since Social
Media offers companies simpler ways to either build new business partnerships or communicate
with customers. Providing a clear communication between the brand representative and the
customer brings the customer closer to the product/service for their specific ‘need’.
Targeting Audiences
Multiple marketing mediums are crucial to help you reach different audiences.With many
competitors vying for consumers’ attention, it is critical to know what social media platforms your
targeted audience uses. Some people prefer regular sound-bites on Twitter; others prefer blogs for
greater detail about specific topics. Some people keep in touch with friends and family sporadically
on Facebook, others are on Facebook every hour, every day people watching and so on.
Knowing who your audience are helps to
clarify where and when they are likely to be
online. Mapping your target audiences
online activity and sentiment (emotive
metrics) helps to target their habits,
locations, their influence and nature. You
will often need to map out multiple paths as
your audience aren’t huddled together on
the same platforms.
For instance, one third of all posts to
Facebook come from mobile devices. This is
extremely valuable information when defining your audience and social media strategy as it will
have an impact on how your audience will be able to view and comment on posts, andhow they will
navigate and engage with the site through click-thru links. An over complicated link through could
lose their attention and withdraw their interest immediately. Consequently, having a good
understanding of where your audience are coming from and what they are interacting with is key to
building a following and real engagement across your networks.Another factor to consider is that
regular social media use contributes to increasing your company’s SEO which determines where
your company is placed on search pages such as Google or Bing. Interesting to note: most people
only really read the top three links in search results, let alone further than the first page, and mobile
internet users are only able to see the top three search results on first glance.So your brand needs all
the social SEO heavyweights that come with distributing across social networks.
Engagement
Engagement may seem a less than tangible term, however, the point of achieving engagement with
your followers and friends is to do with how algorithms of social networks and search rank results
are designed and calculated. For example, Facebook has personalised everyone’s news feeds so that
the user only sees their ‘friends’ feeds and posts with those that they regularly engage with.
Andregular social media use contributes to increasing your sites SEOwhich determines where your
company is placed on search pagessuch as Google or Bing. Greater engagement increases click-thru
rates, which raises your sites profile in search results.


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The takeaway: When it comes to reaching your audience, understanding which social media
platforms they commune on; tools they use; what topics they participate in (think simplicity); why,
when; and how they use them—then focus your resources (time, budget and people) on those tools,
adapting your strategy as you go along using metrics set out at the very beginning of the strategy.
SEO’s impact in Social Media
Distributing company content across social networks and regular social media activity contributes to
increasing your company’s SEO. Simple, huh? Not really. But it can be (greatly) simplified into three
aspects. Firstly, networking sites naturally have very high SEO ranking. This is because there are so
many people interacting within these sites (we’re talking billions) and the search scale measures this
and so ranks accordingly. Secondly, imagine the collective power ofmultiple social network
algorithms. The higher up each networks' internal rating system the greater the collective power
when all networks thread together. For example, creating a Youtube video, seeding it across
multiple networks, embed it on Facebook which is then Liked and commented on by unconnected
individuals, which in turns seeds across their own personal networks, who see it come up in their
News Feeds. If these people like the video this in turn increases its value up the algorithm chain yet
again.
The Obstacle – they have to be interested, and they individuals themselves need to be listening to
your posts/content/feeds in networks in the first place. Facebook is a good example of this. Even if
you have 100 millions Likes, if no one is engaging or interacting with your posts they won’t show up
in their feeds. This is the same for feeding across personal networks. If people aren’t talking or Liking
each other’s post, they will cease to see the posts, unless they have the same friends. This is why
community endorsement is important, it’s
not about the first person, or even the
second, it’s about shared trusted friendships
across the networks that will give power to
the content. Of course, the content needs to
not only grab the eye but grab the heart, and
make people click on the Like or Comment
buttons. There are many factors, such as time
and money to create the right content
targeted for that your audience will enjoy as
well as be relevant. An obvious but key factor
neither is it easy. If it’s not relevant it won’t
be of interest, and if it’s not of interest it
won’t be Liked or Shared or even be considered within the individual areas of interest in future.
Thirdly, regular social media activity, conversation and engagement with your audience will keep
your audience interested. Content doesn’t need to be costly but your audience needs to feel there is
someone on the other end of the conversation which will increase their interest and reaffirm their
brand loyalty. There are additional technical check points such as metadata, keywords, backlinks and
navigation that contribute to the list of how social impacts traditional SEO, but that will take another
whitepaper to explain them all. Please refer to my blogfor future posts going into greater detail
about Social’s impact on traditional SEO.


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Buying Decisions
Technology can help time-poor consumers who already have too many choices when making buying
decisions. The key is not what the technology is, but how it can help them.
Cores factors in making a purchaseare:
1.
2.
3.
4.

To solve a problem or need
To save time
To save money
Convenience(which outweighs saving money when time is the greater commodity)

The internet gives the buyer what they want, when they want it. They can shop online in the middle
of the night or the middle of the afternoon. The buyer can consult expert sources and crowd-source
their purchasing decisions through trusted networks of colleagues, friends and family for peer to
peer recommendations. When it comes to buying decisions, comments by strangers, families and
friends (using star rating systems, unbiased reviews, testimonies, blogs and opinions) have a very
strong impact on helping decide and offer transparency, and build trust.
There are additional technical check points such as metadata, keywords, backlinks and navigation
that contribute to the list of how social impacts traditional SEO, but that will take another
whitepaper to explain them all. Please refer back to my blog for future posts going into greater detail
about Social’s impact on traditional SEO.

TO SUMMARISE:
Social media helps youtoinform, interact, engage and create discussions in your community. Your
community is not bound by platforms but constructed and managed by brand/company principles. If
you build “bases” across the internet, interested consumers will come to your brand because it’s
seen as the source for its specialism. In marketing, this is known as a “pull” tactic. “Push” tactics—
such as advertising, banners, SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay per click) and
sponsorship—are still valuable because they let youreach out to potential followers/fans/users.
Tools and Applications
Here areseveral coresocial media and networking sites that spread informationdirectly to interested
consumers, who then interact and share the content to
their networks.There are many more platforms and
applications which have additional capabilities—i.e.
images, music/sound,real-time comments—to create a
richer customer journey and expand the reach of a
marketing strategy.A marketer who specialises in
Social Media can help your brand navigate this
landscape of opportunity, delegating resources where
they are most relevant. It’s advantageous to know the
main social networks and applications but you do need to have a good breadth of knowledge of how
to fully utilise these networks and combine specialist applications of varying mediums to create a
strong online brand image,withregular engagement to gain a foothold above your competitors and
keep your social media strategy up-to-date and constant. If you don’t have the full resources to do
this,it would be advisable to consult an expert who should know a wide range of the technical
capabilities.

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Key Platforms and their Capabilities
Facebook:A perfect platform with a very powerful SEO punch to gather, create and sustain both B2B
and B2C communities and their curated content. It centralises community conversations by enabling
other social platforms to create tabs within Facebook profiles. Facebook’s new algorithms
track what updates its users “Like,” comment and click on, prioritizing posts in its “News
Feeds.” I go into greater detail about how it works in my previous post Targeting Audiences.
The result connects users with the people they communicate with most and lets Facebook
advertisers target their campaigns with greater precision. The most popular content is seeded across
personal networks, ensuring a post goes viral, even if for a temporary time. Facebook has recently
updated ‘Read by’ applications for news sources and ‘currently trending’, a valuable commodity
within this empire. Facebook is constantly updating, changing and expanding the way content and
social media data is shared, re-shared and tracked on the web. These changes will be heralded in the
tech news first.
Twitter:A 140 character messenger tool that delivers content through links from sites or networks to
interested audiences. Twitter main site also holds images that are tweeted through. Twitter also
connects interested audiences with brand advocates who will then “seed” tweets across into
their networks, blogs, forums and websites. The power is in the network: If a tweet is retweeted by someone with a wide-reaching influential network, the network creates a greater
ripple across the “Twittersphere”. Tweets can go viral, even turning up on blogs, forums, embedded
in social apps (for example, Storify, Twylah, Scoop.It), other social networks, and now collated in
traditional offline press. Twitter hashtags- aggregate tweets with identical keyword hashtags (e.g.
#social media or #arabspring), making them easy to find by interested users – cross pollinate
networks, build interest in a particular topic and crowd-source opinions and tweets. Hashtags are
particular good for collating or following event knowledge such as seminars, however they are often
hijacked by self-promotional ‘trolls’.
Google+: A social networking platform that, in its initial conception, was considered a strong
competitor to Facebook. However Google+ operates in quite a different way. Contacts in
Google+ are organized into groups or “circles”, which allows users to be selective in what content
they share, with specific ‘circles’. Unlike many other social networks, the profile owner chooses
whom to follow but this doesn't mean the recipient is required connect. This means that the quality,
popularity and context of content is the only way to engage and increase followers. This factor
makes the platform a valuable place to target content for categorised groups, but also to receive a
positive concentrated response from die-hard brand advocates who join the conversation and in
turn share on the media. Being a sister application from the larger Google search engine means it
integrates well with the search engine results highlighting +1’s (similar to the ‘Like’ button on
Facebook) from fellow followers within search results. The more 1+ the even greater the
contribution towards SEO. Additional capabilities of Google+ are Hangout – allowing free video calls
for up to ten people; Events – making, managing and integration of events; Local – supporting
locality for businesses that uses search results; specific and personable Photo sharing and cloud
storage solution for both business and personal use (unique compared with other image based
platforms); Games integration; all of these features reach and engagement is enhanced with the
powerful search engine as its underlying foundations. There is a place for Google+, 103,216 users
think so (as of August 2012.)Google+ is more than a social media platform; it offers a way to
integrate personal actions with social interactions, while personally benefiting from platform
integration without having to tell your entire network about it.

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LinkedIn: A professional networking website designed to build up connections between users
who previously know each other. It can be used to find jobs, gain new contacts, follow
companies, join groups of interest or upload a CV and a portfolio of work. Since it launched in 2003,
LinkedIn has created a whole new way of understanding professional networking and job hunting. A
user’s profile in LinkedIn might be seen as a CV 2.0, where you can easily get immediate and
accurate information of every company that a user has worked for. In 2008, LinkedIn launched a
mobile version of the site, adding some updates to the original version. (As of 10th Oct) LinkedIn has
recently redesigned and updated its site the whole user-experience, to include the personalprofessional feed (with counter) for the new centralised landing page, through to being able to
follow business pages, access products and services directly through content. It’s very early days but
it looks likely to become a far stronger platform within the social scene, particularly centred on
professional growth on a Global scale. It already has a very high and powerful SEO ranking which
reflects in the backlinks from articles posted. However on the flip side this does mean that this has
also resulted in an increase in low-quality content clutter but LinkedIn new trending feed works in a
similar way to Google search, showing only personally relevant and popular top ranked content.
Because it is for a professional network this contributes towards professional filtering, unlike the
lower quality of content that travels across Facebook. There are so many new capabilities that this
site now has to offer that I will be writing a new blog post addressing these at a later date.
YouTube:Video-sharing website, now owned by Google, that has quickly become a search
engine in its own right with the option to post comments, tag video and create personalised
channels- all of which increase the rank, or popularity, of content. Video is a valuable tool for social
media marketing because it reaches across social networks, demographics, cultures, generations,
nationalities, education levels etc. YouTube videos are easy to embed on blogs and social networking
sites (Facebook, Twitter, et al.) increasing the reach and benefiting keywords. YouTube is home to
multiple established television channels that increasingly drive traffic direct to the site and it now
enables instant subtitle translation capabilities meaning: video content can reach international
audiences. Another technique to keep viewers engaged and keep them watching is to offer a
multiple choice videos – off-shoots from the original video. The viewers choose by clicking in ringed
areas (created during editing and the uploading process) within the screen. This can mimic the
navigation of website, offering off-shoots of informational videos, or before and after videos, or lead
the viewer to a website or goal-page. The opportunities are endless; it just depends on the concept
to engage, influence and sustain the interest of the viewer.
Tumblr: An enormously popular blogging platform that offers a simple and quick-to-update
framework making it easy for anyone to produce a professional looking blog. Imagery and
videos are particularly popular (both viewed and posted) on Tumblr because of the clean layout and
sustained professional quality. Tumblr’s power is that it lets users search by blog topic, supporting
and building upon its highly engaged community of Tumblr users. There are close to 50 million blogs
on Tumblr, which says something about its popularity. Their unique visitors to its blogs increased by
more than 200% in the U.S (in 2011) as well. Because of this high level of engagement, Tumblr posts
rank higher within search results than blogs on other platforms, offering more opportunities for your
brand to be seen.
WordPress: A highly popular and simplistic blogging framework that comes in a vast range of
designs. Wordpress is so popular that there are a huge choice of widgets and plugins that
personalise a blog or create a unique static website. Much like Tumblr,WordPress has a strong
WordPress community that drives traffic by grouping topics creating a higher than average return of

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visitors. But its real value lies in the ability to mould your own site to embed widgets and content,
and the simplicity of integrating social feeds and links. This site for example has been created using a
WordPress framework.
Reddit.com& Digg: User generated multi-stranded discussion platforms that seed and
discuss links, news and content. Reddit users can vote conversations up or down, raising the
search rank of popular links, using the original link of the landing site for the material that is being
discussed. With 4.6 million unique visitors on Digg, and 5.5 million unique visitors on Reddit (as of
August 2012) the power lies in the popularity of a link within a discussion meaning that it can
dramatically increase traffic to your site, however the quality of the visitors may be questionable.
Both services contribute to internet memes and trends, potentially turning messages about your
brand into viral hits on the internet. But be careful. There is a fine line between what your company
may think is exciting and what a rabble of Reddit or Digg users may consider ‘naff’. You wouldn’t
want your content to go viral for the wrong reasons and become a negative meme.
Diigo: A web research and bookmarking tool, and knowledge-sharing community. It is a
stand-alone site as well as a convenient widget that works within your browser. Based on
the bookmarking format of Delicious.com, Diigo also offers collaborative options such as sharing
links within communities and groups of interest. You can also ‘highlight’ selected text or imagery
with a range of colours and include ‘post-it note’ comments on web pages, all supporting
collaborative working. It’s not great for chronological management but then that’s not the point.
Being part of a group means you can choose to be kept informed of progress by email, which
increases the reach across multiple networks by sharing information directly with an interested
readership.
StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is an application that works within your browser. Users can
discover new sites and articles of interest by pressing the StumbleUpon button which
refreshes the web browser offering a new web page completely unrelated apart from being of
similar topic – literally stumbling upon new web pages across the World Wide Web. It works on a
similar principle to Reddit and Digg. Web pages are voted either positively or negatively based the
users opinion. When a new page is refreshed the user literally lands on a whole new site. This in turn
means that StumbleUpon could be seen to drive an enormous amount of traffic direct to your site.
However, because the page refreshes are random, the traffic isn’t targeted and will show a very high
bounce rate, meaning the new unique visitor statistics are showing invalid results. This is counterproductive if you are trying to measure a campaign with Google Analytics. If your website has an
article about a professional topic you may be voted down because the audience isn’t looking for
your content specifically. If they were, they would have searched for it. Comedy, imagery and lighthearted topics go down well in StumbleUpon.
Quora:A social network search engine based on topic specific Questions and Answers. Great
for researchers, fans of specialist topics, influential thinkers and future advocates of your
brand as well as being a good source of “research and responses” too. Quora enables community
members to ask questions about a topic of interest, which anyone within the wider platform can
answer. Quora can connect through to Facebook (tab) and Twitter (app) highlighting your input on
Quora, showing your expertise and interests and reach wider crowd opinion.
Instagram: A mobile app that allows users to take pictures, edit them using filters and
instantly share them with the fast growing Instagram community. Users can follow others, like
or comment on their photos and find friends by connecting with their Facebook or Twitter accounts.

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The main difference of Instagram is that it’s exclusively for smartphones and unlike most photosharing platforms, it doesn’t classify the photos that a user uploads – so instead of being an
organized online photo album, it’s a way of sharing with others what you are seeing in a specific
moment.
Pinterest: A visual sharing website where users can upload, ‘pin’, organize, categorize and
share their images, videos, slides and even webpages on virtual pinboards. Users can connect
with others by ‘repinning’, liking or commenting on their content (or ‘pins’), which connects users
with common interests and tastes. Users also have the option of connecting the Pinterest widget
with their Facebook accounts to highlight or notifying their Facebook friends and Twitter followers
about their choices and recommendations in Pinterest. This works incredibly well with visual based
industries and products such as fashion, design, and art as well as being a static memory board for
collating post-event content. In spite of the fact that it’s one of the newest platforms around there
are more active users using Pinterest on a daily basis than are using Twitter. Enabling a ‘Pin It’
button on your website will vastly increase traffic from the amount of back-links from images on
your site, however like StumbleUpon, the traffic is undirected unless you are selling actual items
shown on your Pinterest boards. Pinterest is great for gathering traffic from showing true-to-life
items however it is more difficult finding a direct sale for conceptual ideas or services. But being
connected via your social networks it’s a great way to leverage your content across networks.
Seeding tactics to support Social Media Strategies
It can be valuable to include these tactics in your social strategy as they complete the circle of
customer touch-points, directing interest into sales.
Google Search / SEO: If you don’t know this one it may be a lost cause. The most powerful
search engine that enables organic searches of interests, its closest competitor is Microsoft’s
newer search engine, Bing. Users can search for specific terms within blogs, video content, updates
and discussions. The more that a term is searched for, the higher it ranks on Google’s website. An
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialist, working as a part of a larger marketing strategy, helps a
website appear as close to the top of Google’s search results. SEO management must be an on-going
process as search terms and social media discussion trends constantly change..
E-marketing:A form of direct marketing that can increase your customer base. If you request
that email newsletters, for example, be forwarded to recipients’ networks, the “pull”
influence can be extremely strong since messages shared within a recipient’s network are typically
more personal and reach specific targets (the digital civic organization Avaaz.org has developed a
large customer base established on this tactic alone). Subscription-based emails or newsletters
receive a medium to high response, but are often marked as spam when this technique, a primary
“push” tactic, is overused..
Blogs and RSS feeds:Sites with dedicated content that build and promote a brand’s product of
service, and expand its presence in other social media networks. For example, inventing a
marketing blog for a fictional character can elicit an engaging emotional reaction from an empathic
audience. Consider the impact of Aleksandr Orlov, from ComparetheMeerkat.com, a character
invented for an advertising campaign. Orlov also has more than 750,000 fans on his Facebook page,
close to 35,000 followers on Twitter, and has starred in television ads promoting the price
comparison website. Not only are this fictional character’s blog posts, Facebook updates and tweets
seeded across networks, the social media-based marketing campaign has produced remarkable

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results: about two months after its launch, awareness of the company more than doubled and the
company’s cost to acquire new customers dropped seventy-three percent.
Glossary
Feed: Real-time stream of tweets or Facebook comments and links; found on a homepage or within
a widget/application
Hashtags: Meta-data tags added to social networking sites such as Twitter and Google+ and
aggregate social media conversations under a particular hashtag. They help group collective ideas,
events and Global topics. Helps to see what particular topics or news issues are trending to the
second.
Metrics: Benchmarks designed to measure the success of online tools and application.
Push and pull marketing tactics: Push tactics bring your product or service directly to the customer
(e.g. via retail stores or trade shows), while pull tactics bring the customer to you (e.g. via social
media marketing.)
Tools: Social networks, forums, platforms and social media applications that carry your messages to
the masses.
Twittersphere: Entire universe or world of people who use Twitter.
Widgets: Software application that can be added to a website such as Facebook or a Wordpress blog
to enhance the user experience (for instance a Twitter widget live-streams your company’s tweets
on your website.)


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Need help with your Social Strategy?
Kathryn McMann Consultancy offers social media marketing consultancy and a range of
intensive training workshops to suit your preferences.
For a free consultation contact me, Kathryn at:
Office: 44 (0) 330 111 0630
Email:kathryn@KathrynMcMann.com
Twitter: @KathrynMcMann
Web:www.KathrynMcMann.com

If you would like to be kept up to date with the latest news and cutting edge ideas in marketing,
communications and technology, follow me and join the conversation at:

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Copyright © 2012 by Kathryn McMann Holistic Marketing Consultancy. All rights reserved. No part of this document may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent
of the copyright holder.
Kathryn McMann Holistic Marketing Consultancy has made every effort to ensure that the information in this document is
complete and accurate, however we do not accept responsibility for errors or omissions.


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The Social Media Low-Down