What the-heck-is-a-social-media-playbook-and-why-do-i-need-one

WHAT THE

HECK IS A

SOCIAL MEDIA

PLAYBOOK,
AND WHY DO
I NEED ONE?

© 2013 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and Confidential 0713

What the Heck is a Social Media Playbook, and Why do I Need One?

Table of Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Begin at the Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Determine Roles, Responsibilities and Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Determining What to Respond to and What Not to Respond to:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Using Workflow to
your Advantage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Setting Engagement Classifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
. .
What Types of Posts Should You Assign to Other Departments?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
What to do When You Are Assigned a Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
What about Escalation of Issues? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
. .
Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

© 2013 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and Confidential http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/

2


Introduction
In today’s business environment, listening to
conversations about your brand is critical.
Building and developing an engagement
strategy for your community is essential. The
question that we are asked most often is
“where do I start?” The best way to get your
company started on your social media journey
is to develop a Playbook. This document is a
guide to help you create an effective, clear
Playbook. Here are a few topics we’ll focus on:
• Business Objectives
• Roles, Responsibilities and Expectations
• Determining what to respond to and what not to respond to
• Using Workflow to Your Advantage
• Knowing the Who, What and Why of Conversations
• Knowing the Who, How and When to Respond

• Escalation
• Reporting
This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is a starting point.
By having a Playbook that addresses these topics, your organization
will have a consistent and documented approach to listening and
engaging with your community. It will also enable you to develop a
workflow that provides reporting, metrics and accountability.
Finally, we all know the importance of C-Suite buy-in. The Playbook
provides a framework that demonstrates a well-thought-out
approach. It helps contextualize the breadth and depth of social
conversations. It also helps the C-Suite to understand their role in
terms of escalation and crisis planning.

The best way
to get your
company started
on your social
media journey,
is to develop a
Playbook.

Before jumping in, let’s lay
some groundwork to get
the creative juices flowing:
• This document is based on best
practices, and of course our
experiences and tools.
• In addition to having your Playbook,
ensure that your organization has a
clear social media policy. Employees
need to know what they can and
cannot do or share.
• A Playbook should always be a
living-breathing document. It should
be revisited at least twice a year
and updated consistently based on
the ongoing experiences of your
organization.
• Not every Playbook will look exactly
the same. Your Playbook should
reflect your organization’s unique
policies and procedures.
• Be sure to keep your company’s
goals and objectives in mind while
developing your Playbook.
• Use this Playbook Guide for
inspiration to get your creative juices
flowing.


3


Begin at the Beginning
When you begin planning your Playbook, make
sure you understand your corporate objectives.

Why You Need to be an
Active Listener:
Because of the speed of social,
being an active listener means that
you can alert appropriate teams, and
management when necessary, to any
issues AS they occur. Using a good
listening tool will also help you collect
sufficient detail to act quickly to
determine the appropriate response.
Having this information at your
fingertips and being able to share
with the appropriate parties can really
make a difference when you need to
take action to correct an issue or stop
a crisis from taking root. For example
you can:
• Get a quick snapshot or a
detailed report on the volume of
mentions and specific nature of the
conversation around your brand
• Track posts to measure the impact
of your brand engagement or your
company’s reputation

Once you have determined what is most important to your
organization, you can build this into your Playbook. For example,
if you are focusing on customer service issues, your hours of
operation, messaging and response times should all be geared to
meet your corporate goals. Once you know your objectives, it’s time
to define roles, responsibilities and expectations


• Gain a better understanding of the
competitive landscape

4


Determine Roles, Responsibilities and Expectations
When establishing
your Community Team,
there should be clear
roles, responsibilities,
job descriptions and
expectations for each
team member.

With your corporate objectives in place, you’re ready to
develop your Community team. Community teams are
comprised of people who are most actively listening and
engaging on behalf of the brand. This does not mean that
other parts of the organization are not actively involved
in the conversations. Ideally, your whole organization is
social and, therefore, the Playbook holds even greater
importance. Playbooks should be shared across the
organization to help guide all employees.
When establishing your Community Team, there should
be clear roles, responsibilities, job descriptions and
expectations for each team member. Some common titles
associated with Community Teams include: Community
Managers, Community Engagement Specialists,
Community Analysts and Social Media Specialists.

General Things to Consider for Your Community Team
Set up a listening schedule for your team. This has to be a schedule that works for your operation
and your available resources. From our experience, we’ve found that assigning people chunks of
time between two and three hours is most effective. This allows for people to focus on engaging on
behalf of the brand while monitoring all mentions around your organization. It also ensures that the
non-monitoring time is sufficient for other Community work, including content development, personal
engagement and reporting.
The following is a typical list of activities for those listening and engaging:

• Monitor your organization’s Topic Profile for all mentions of your company during the regular
working hours.

• Be sure to leverage your CRM system and add any context around the conversation, customers
and leads.

• Assign posts to appropriate team members for response, follow-up and resolution.
• Assign sales leads to the business development team to capitalize on potential sales
opportunities.

• Email posts to partners and follow up on their engagement
• Ensure that when and where appropriate, that source tags and post tags are used appropriately.
• Ensure that your engagement team reviews and closes all posts that have been assigned.


5


Things to consider for your Community

Why?

It’s also important to define your responsibilities so that your
community knows what to expect. For example, begin by
determining what your “regular” hours of operation are and when
you will be actively listening and engaging on behalf of your brand.
Once you establish those hours and have agreement from your
internal stakeholders, be sure to post this information on your various
channels. Don’t forget to indicate the time zone for your hours of
operation as well.

The expectation in social networks
is far different than traditional
communications. Conversations in
social are real-time and people expect
responses in real-time. Establishing
response times, and sharing them,
demonstrates your commitment to
your community. Meeting these
expectations will also help to ensure
that you solve an issue before it
escalates or potentially goes viral.
Outside these hours of operations,
good listening tools give you options
for “Alerts” to be sent directly to
the email of a designated person therefore, enabling your Community to
respond in a timely fashion.

Next, determine what an appropriate turn-around or response time is
for your team. For example:


6


Determining What to Respond to
and What Not to Respond to:
As a part of the listening process, it is recommended that you
determine the types of comments/posts that you will and will not
respond to.

QUESTION: IF THE CONVERSATION IS REALLY PEERTO-PEER AND THERE IS NO ASK OF YOU, SHOULD
YOU JUMP IN?
The general rule of thumb is - no. Let the conversation continue
without jumping in. If however, there is a question about your
company, product or service, then that could be a good point to
introduce yourself.

The following are some conversations that are good opportunities for
engagement:

• Mentions of your company participation in industry events or

Why You Should Determine
this Up Front:
Have you heard the saying: “Don’t
feed the trolls?” This is an important
phrase to remember. Knowing when
to take the high road and when not to
engage is as important as knowing
when you should respond. On
occasion there will be people who
want to engage in a public debate
and perhaps embarrass the brand. If
you respond to these types of posts,
you will be feeding that need. Most
people see through the effort of these
people and they don’t expect you to
feed the trolls - so don’t.

presentations

• Compliments of your product, service or people
• Recommendations or referrals of your products and/or
services

• Customer service/support issues or enquiries
• Sales leads or product enquiries
• Product requests


7


The following are some examples of the types of posts that you may choose to avoid responding to:

• Generic mentions among a sea of competitors, without commentary that’s positive or negative
• Sarcastic, snarky or potentially inflammatory comments
• Straight retweets of company content or company news without any additional commentary
• Peer-to-peer conversations that mention your company in passing, in which your involvement
could be perceived as intrusive

• Posts/forum threads that require membership to respond to, unless it’s a customer service issue,
negative post or misinformation you need to correct

• Rumors


8


Using Workflow to
your Advantage
Workflow is all about tracking, consistency of recording information,
metrics, reporting and ensuring you respond in a timely manner
in order to protect the brand. It helps with the who, what and why
around conversations.
The following section highlights how our Engagement Console can
be used to track information, engage and analyze and report data.
Before responding on behalf of the brand, we need to ask ourselves
a few key questions to make sure that we are responding within our
corporate guidelines. We will apply this information in our workflow,
which can be used for reporting purposes, as well as providing us
with a clear snapshot around the context of each person we engage
with, for future engagement.

• Who is posting?
• What are they talking about?
• Is it negative or time sensitive?
• Who should respond?
• Any further context to add?
• Where does the post stand? Has it been closed off?

QUESTION: WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO KNOW
WHO IS POSTING?

It is important since we respond/route posts differently
depending on whether a person is a customer, partner,
employee, competitor or a general member of our community.

Why Do You Need
Workflow:
Workflow can help both the
Community Team in their work to
listen and engage on behalf of the
brand by:
• creating a record of the conversation
tracking:
• sentiment of conversations. This can
be very useful for marketing to adjust
plans to better reach customers and/
or the community at large
• whether or not a response has been
given for a particular question or
concern and who responded

• finding your company’s advocates,
influencers or detractors
• separating employee conversations
from community members so that
you can focus your attentions in the
right areas
• escalating issues to other
departments or to senior
management
• creating reports that show Share
of Conversation, Share of Voice,
sentiment and much, much more
When applied correctly, it can save
you and your team a lot of time.

When first viewing a post you should research the person to
appropriately apply tags. For example, you may look at:

• The person’s social profile available through the Engagement
Console

• Their LinkedIn Profile
• Check your company’s CRM to determine if they are a
customer or prospect


9


To make listening and monitoring more efficient, we
recommend using macros to streamline the process. Here are
some of the most common macros that we use:

...the higher your Share of
Conversation (SOC) is the more your
brand name is appearing in on-line
conversations.

QUESTION: WHAT IS SHARE OF VOICE AND
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

It is the degree to which your brand is mentioned in terms
of your competitors in online conversations. It’s important because the higher your Share of Voice
(SOV) the more you are being discussed in relation to your competitors.

QUESTION: WHAT IS SHARE OF
CONVERSATION AND WHY IS IT
IMPORTANT?

It’s the degree to which a brand is associated with the
conversations in the industry. It‘s important because the
higher your Share of Conversation (SOC) is the more
your brand name is appearing in on-line conversations.
Of course, you want your brand to be top of mind when
making purchasing decisions.

...you want your brand
top of mind when
making purchasing
decisions.

What are they posting about
After you’ve determined who is posting (and used source tags), you next need to ask yourself what they
are posting about in reference to your brand name. This is what will determine your classification and
post tags.
Classifications are selected by assignee/traffic coordinator to track the nature of online conversation.


10


Classifications & Definitions
Product Review: Product feedback/review, including RT’s
Gen. Product/ Company: Passing mention
Industry Discussion: Industry conversations, including competitive references
Company Events: Conferences & webinars
Product Review: Product feedback/review, including RT’s
Gen. Product/ Company: Passing mention
Industry Discussion: Industry conversations, including competitive references
Company Outreach: Mentions by an employee/partner
Support: Existing customer support inquiry
Recommendation/Ref: Positive reference to using your
product or service
Sales Lead: Possible/potential lead
Partner/Reseller: Mention by a partner/resellers customer
Ensuring that you tag your posts appropriately will help with your reporting when you are looking at SOV
and SOC.


11


Setting Engagement Classifications
The following are the engagement level options available in
Salesforce Marketing Cloud:

• New Content Not reviewed –
Default when an on topic post is found

• Reviewed, Determining Best Response –
Qualified post, assigned to appropriate employee for
possible response

• Recommend Follow up – To be managed by assignee
• Commented, Awaiting Reply – To be managed by assignee
• Commented Closed – To be managed by assignee

Why?
Classifying engagement status
enables members of the Community
team to keep track of posts that have
outstanding issues. With people on
different shifts, they are easily able to
determine what is outstanding and
what needs action. Reporting can
also be done showing how many
posts were closed out in a given
period. This can demonstrate how
much work flow is being done by any
one person at any given time.

• Referred – To be managed by assignee
• Resolved, no further action required –
To be managed by assignee

• Reviewed, Closed, no response needed –
To be managed by assignee


12


Why?
Understanding the volume
of posts that are negative,
positive or neutral can
help guide marketing and
communication plans. It
provides a pulse of the
community. This can be very
useful information


13


What Types of Posts Should You Assign to Other
Departments?
Social listening and engagement
should not be restricted to just
the Community team. Social
organizations are just that - social.
The entire organization participates.
While the Community team will
often be the first to encounter
a conversation and assign post
and source tags, they will often
assign posts to other departments.
Assigning a post could be required
because it should be handled by
another department, or, it could be
to alert management and the C-Suite
of competitor activity, an emerging
issue or a mention. Assigning posts
helps with the Who, How and When
to respond.
The following table represents a variety of topics that could be referred to other departments. This list is
by no means exhaustive. Each company will have their own unique items that they wish to classify and
address.

What to do When You Are Assigned a Post
1. Review the post to ensure that you are the right person to address it. If you are not, reassign the
post to the right person.
2. If you are responding publicly ensure that you are following your corporate guidelines.
3. If applicable, copy the response if made from a personal handle, into the notes section in the
Engagement Console.
4. Update the “Engagement Level” in the engagement level to reflect the current status of the
post after you have taken action. For example, “Reviewed, No Engagement Required”, may be
selected.
5. Close out all posts that have been assigned to you, even if they do not require engagement. This
will provide more accurate reports.


14


What about Escalation of Issues?
Every Playbook should have an escalation process. This will be unique to your organization. You should
determine what categories of posts you want escalated and to whom.
For example:

• Competitor mentions and/or
conversations

• Libellous comments

Every Playbook should have an
escalation process. This will be
unique to your organization.

• Social attacks
You should also plan for increased volumes due to company events and/or announcements as well
as the worst case scenario of a full out social media attack on your organization. For each, be sure to
know who will do what - when, and how you will handle each scenario. Map this process out in your
plan, including how to reach people in an emergency and designate exact roles and responsibilities. Be
sure to practice this plan at least twice a year.

Reporting
A great way to keep management informed of how your company is doing socially is through the
generation of reports.
Ad hoc reports can be prepared to report on specific events.
Weekly reports can give a quick summary of the top issues and where competitors stand in
comparison to your organization.
Monthly reports can provide much more detailed information around your overall objectives.


15


Final Thoughts
Playbooks are living, breathing plans that take you through the who,
what, when and how to listen and respond on behalf of your brand
in both every day business operations as well as the unplanned and
unexpected.
Start with defining and aligning your:

• Business Objectives
• Roles, Responsibilities and Expectations
• Plans to respond and not respond
• Using workflow to Your Advantage
• Knowing the Who, What and Why of Conversations

Other Resources
For additional information on listening
and engaging, please check out the
following:
How to Develop Your Social Media
Strategy
Social Media Listening, Measuring
and Engagement Primer
20 Ways to Succeed at Social Media
Engagement

• Knowing the Who, How and When to Respond

• Escalation
• Reporting
This will result in processes that guide your entire organization and
ensure buy-in with your C-Suite.
By having a Playbook that addresses these topics your organization
will have a strong plan of action in place.

Get Started


16

Ebook/Data Report Title

Glossary
Listening

Engagement

Most people perceive someone who listens as
someone who cares. This type of listening has
to be visibly demonstrated; it is not passive or
unidirectional. It is two-way listening. Message
reception is not enough; the listener must respond.
This is two-way, conversational listening.

First and foremost, engagement is not a goal;
it is a result. Our approach to engagement is
the result of building a community by focusing
on the people that are in the community. It is
about sharing content and information that will
benefit our community. It is about expanding our
networks and connecting with more people through
conversations, likes and shares. Finally it is about
being present and being able to have conversations.
Being human and being appreciative is important.

Conversational Listening Builds Relationships:
One-way data gathering is a stealth activity. You
may be doing it to better listen to your customers
and there is tremendous value in analyzing
what you hear and acting upon it. Why stop
there? Let customers see that you are listening
by acknowledging them and strengthen your
relationships too!
Conversational Listening Sends a Message: On
the surface, listening seems to be about receiving.
However, conversational listening sends a message:
you are important to us.
Conversational Listening Personalizes Your
Brand: A listening brand is an unmasked brand that
is more personal and less institutional. As you listen
& build trust, you will also increase the quality of the
feedback you receive since people will share more
openly when they observe true listening behaviour.
The online community’s awareness that you are
actively listening will influence the conversation
significantly. Your very presence changes the
dynamics. Let people know you are listening.

Playbook
A playbook lays out the processes in which your
organization will listen and engage. It helps provide
information to all the players to ensure that they
are consistent in engagement and workflow, while
also guiding them through what can sometimes be
murky waters.

Post Tags
Provides a summary of the content in a post or
posts. They enable you to categorize posts. For
example, company outreach.

Source Tags
Used in Salesforce Marketing Cloud to identify the
source of the post. For example, sources could be
tagged as an influencer or a competitor.

Workflow
Provides the methods and processes for tracking,
measuring and responding to conversations about
your brand.


17

What the-heck-is-a-social-media-playbook-and-why-do-i-need-one

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Mehr von Shamsher Khan

Mehr von Shamsher Khan (11)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

What the-heck-is-a-social-media-playbook-and-why-do-i-need-one