Social Media Strategy for the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry

COMMUNITY EBOOK / MARCH 2012 / www.radian6.com / 1 888 6radian

Social Media Strategy for
the Consumer Packaged
Goods Industry
Copyright © 2012 - Radian6 Technologies

CPG Industry Ebook

CPG Industry Ebook / 2012

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY FOR THE
CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS INDUSTRY

Introduction Chapter 5:
How Do I Start Listening?
Chapter 1:
What Is Social Media? Chapter 6:
Where Did it Start? How Do I Start Engaging?
Where Do you Start?
Chapter 7:
Chapter 2: How Do I Start to Measure,
How Do I Get Started in Social Media? Analyze & Report?
Social Etiquette
Chapter 8:
Social Sites
What Are The Key Social Media
Chapter 3: Opportunities For CPG?
How Do I Train My Staff for
White Paper:
Social Media?
Managing Your Social Media Campaigns
Chapter 4: within the Radian6 Engagement Console
What Does a Social Media Monitoring
Case Study:
Platform Do?
Radian6 Accepts the Beachbody
Challenge to Monitor its Shape on the
Social Web

www.radian6.com / 1 888 6RADIAN 1 888 672-3426 / community@radian6.com / Copyright © 2012 Radian6 Technologies

CPG Industry Ebook February 2012 / Social Media Strategy for the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry 3

Introduction

The consumers you’re targeting are overwhelmed with a huge
selection of products and many buying factors. How will your
CPG brand stand out?

In this ebook, you’ll learn how your brand can connect with your prospects and customers.

Here are some of the things we’ll cover:

• ● How to avoid “The Three Ds” that could cost you customers, or your job.
• ● How often you can talk about yourself without driving your customers away.
• ● How to use social media to gain valuable competitive intel.
• ● our simple phrases that can get you through nearly any difficult social media situation.
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• ● Five things you should be listening for to get real business value from social media.

Social media provides CPG brands with a unique opportunity to engage with customers
that did not exist ten years ago. Traditionally, CPG brands have used mass media one-
way communication channels, such as television and print, to market their products to
customers, but with the rise of social media, this landscape has changed dramatically.

Consumers now research their purchasing decisions, big and small, online, seeking out
review sites, turning to friends on social networks, and reaching out to brands directly.
Successful CPG brands are meeting today’s consumer by establishing a social presence,
directly engaging their customers, sharing helpful content and learning their customers’
needs and interests.

Want to:

• ● hare the mission or story behind your brand?
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• ● Learn what new products or improvements your customers would like to see?
• ● Engage your fans and followers with exclusive content and rewards?
• ● Find which brands stack up as your largest competitors?
• ● Identify influencers to watch?
• ● Keep a finger on industry trends?

Our ebook will provide you with the framework you need for your social media strategy.

Let’s get started!



Chapter 1
WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?
Where Did it Start?

In the business world, we’ve seen memos transformed to email, conference calls morphed
into virtual meetings, and sticky notes go digital. The way we do business has changed
rapidly. Just as the amount of information we’re able to access has increased exponentially
since the dawn of the Internet, our personal and professional connectivity has increased
significantly since the introduction of social networking.

Social networking is no longer just a personal means of keeping in touch with family and
friends. Companies use social media on a daily basis for everything from marketing and
advertising to client care and feedback.

The social web is fundamentally changing the practice and culture of how CPG brands
do business. It’s shifted how CPG brands communicate within their own walls and with
customers. It’s also given customers a voice for feedback, opinion, discussion, and
collaboration that’s never been heard before.

Where Do you Start?

Your CPG brand may already have a social media strategy of some kind, even if it’s simply
listening. Maybe you were prepared when your boss said it was time to get serious about
social media. Perhaps you’re still waiting for that conversation to take place. Regardless
of where you are at, you’re probably full of questions. What do you do to tie your social
media activities to your bottom line objectives? How can you make sure your social media
presence is as effective as possible in helping you reach your goals?

Step one? Breathe! Let’s begin or refresh your social media journey by talking about how
you can get started using common social media platforms and the etiquette that goes
along with it.



Chapter 2:
HOW DO I USE SOCIAL MEDIA EFFECTIVELY?

Social media covers a variety of communication technologies. It
can be a lot to take in, so before we discuss how to use these from
a business perspective for a CPG brand, let’s spend some time
making sure that you are comfortable using these platforms and
engaging effectively online.

Social Etiquette

Before you start to look at the social networks, think about online etiquette. It will help you
to make your experience even more successful. For starters, we probably all remember
that big poster board from elementary school listing the rules for proper etiquette in the
classroom:

“We say please and thank you.”
“We use our indoor voices.”
“We treat others the way we would like to be treated.”

These were posted as reminders and were referenced whenever we fell off track. In terms
of etiquette, not much changes over the course of our lives. Being polite and respectful to
others is still Social Etiquette 101. Having proper etiquette on the social web means being
aware of your audience, understanding how they communicate, and being a valuable,
welcoming contributor to the community.

There are three main points to keep in mind to exhibit proper etiquette. They are:

• ● Reciprocation - Go beyond give and take. A good rule of thumb is to promote
others more than you promote yourself, such as Chris Brogan’s 12:1 ratio.
• ● Respect - Add value, be helpful, and show appreciation. People want to interact
with and buy from companies that treat them with respect.
• ● Reliability - Since social networks, for the most part, are public, always put reliability
in the forefront, whether you’re an individual or a business. Identify the people
behind the handle and/or include what days and times your account is active so
your customers know who they’re talking to and when they can expect a response.



Now that you have the three points, how do you execute them? Think back to those
elementary roots.

• ● conversations because you’re interested in the subject and have something to
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add, not because you have an agenda to advertise your CPG brand.
• ● aying hello and goodbye when you jump online and off is a nice way to alert your
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connections when you’re available to chat. No one likes to be left hanging in the
middle of a conversation. If you do this consistently, your community will come to
know when they can expect you to be available.
• ● ntroduce yourself and others. Anytime you friend, follow or engage with people
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who may not know you, it is always a good idea to introduce yourself and share
basic information about who you are and where you are from. You can also make
introductions between other members in your community.
• ● ay please and thank you. If you want to share someone’s content, ask politely. If
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someone has shared yours, thank them. Though you may not be able to respond to
every comment on your blog or Facebook page, you can take a moment to respond
to a few and perhaps make a general statement thanking everyone who shared your
content.
• ● f your social circle is large, there are probably people in it who you don’t know as
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well as others. Set some time aside each week to expand your connections and
manage your following/follower ratio. It’s okay to step outside your comfort zone
and expand your horizons when it comes to connecting. Not everyone you connect
with has to be like-minded. Diversity breeds inspiration.

The Three Ds

Whether you are using social media for personal or professional purposes, take some time
to familiarize yourself with The Three Ds. Remembering what they stand for should help
you steer clear of potentially disastrous situations.

• ● Disclosure - Steer clear of disclosing trade secrets or intellectual property. This
could cost you your job and give your competitors an unfair advantage.
• ● Defamation - Do not make false statements about someone that could potentially
cause economic consequences.
• ● Discrimination - It should go without saying not to discriminate. Remember, the
social web is a public place so your voice is amplified.

For more detailed and in depth looks at proper social media etiquette across platforms,
check out these great posts:

An Insider’s Guide to Social Media Etiquette by Chris Brogan
The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook by Tamera Weinberg
Do we Need to Revisit our Settings for Trust and Transparency? by Valeria Maltoni



Social Sites

Once you feel comfortable with how you will be speaking on social sites, you’ll need to
know a little more about the sites themselves and how to use each one. Let’s cover some
of the major sites you’ll encounter and how to use them.

Twitter

If you’re already on Twitter, you know it’s more than just talking about what you had for
breakfast. It can be used as a form of “conference call IM,” facilitating the exchange of
news, ideas and information to supplement in-person, industry-related conversations. In
many ways, it has become the equivalent to having another phone on your desk.

If you’re just getting started on Twitter, you’re probably a bit overwhelmed. Here are a few
pointers to simplify your experience:

• ●
When setting up your profile, use your real name and a profile picture, or include the
real names of the people who are tweeting on behalf of your CPG brand. It lets your
followers know that there’s a real person(s) behind the profile. Craft a bio as a way to
introduce yourself or your CPG brand the same way you would in person.
• ● earch Twitter for people you know or topics that interest you to see what people are
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saying. Follow accounts related to your industry. As you get more followers, check out
the people they’re following. That’s the most organic way to build your network.
• ● reat Twitter like a conversation. Start with 30 minutes, twice a day. The best way
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to build relationships and a community on Twitter is to participate. Spend some time
sitting back and listening, then join the conversation.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the virtualized and interactive version of that pile of business cards on your
desk. True, it’s home to your online “resume,” but it’s also a mechanism to demonstrate
your expertise and share in the expertise of others, make business connections, and help
connect others in your network with each other. So here’s our down-and-dirty guidebook
for LinkedIn:

• ● Use a real photo. The real you.
• ● hare your goals more than your daily tasks. Focus on what makes you and your
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abilities different from the next person with the same title.
• ● re you a blogger by night? A passionate public speaker? Share that too!
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• ● Connect! Find connections, request them and watch your network grow.
• ● sk for recommendations from those who know your work and display them on your
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profile. Offer to write recommendations for those whose work you’re familiar with.
• ● oin the conversation! Check the LinkedIn Answers section for opportunities to
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lend your expertise. Join relevant groups and contribute content and questions.



Facebook

Often more of a personal social network than a business one, there’s no denying
Facebook’s reach and popularity, and it can be a comfortable way to get acquainted with
what it means to participate in social networks.

• ● emember: Social networks are searchable, and you never know who might come
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knocking at your virtual door. Use a picture that you’d be proud to show off in public.
Set privacy settings to ensure the public sees only what you want shared publicly.
• ● ou can choose who you’d like to connect to. Some people prefer to keep their
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connections to people they know personally. Check in once a day or so to catch up
with friend requests and peek at the “people you may know” sidebar, just to see
who you could say hello to.
• ● acebook has a lot of applications. Choose wisely as they are a reflection of you and
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how you spend your time.
• ● f you’re thinking of starting a group, this is where a business can make good use
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of Facebook. However, Facebook groups need to be nurtured and tended to by the
people who build them. Group members are looking for dialogue, interaction, and
discussion. As a CPG brand, consider taking your group discussion a level above
your brand, and give your fans, friends and loyal customers some meaty topics to
digest and discuss.

Blogging

Blogging is such a ubiquitous form of media today, but people are still intimidated by
starting a blog. Do you have something to say? Do you want to share your thoughts,
interests, and ideas? Are you keen on others weighing in on what you have to say? If so,
starting a blog may be a great idea.

Our getting-started philosophy: learn on the job.

• ● he very best way to learn about blogging is to read. Read lots of blogs, both inside
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and outside your interest area. Pay special attention to things like tone, writing
style, and how writers organize information. Try Google Reader to aggregate your
blogs and make it easier to organize them.
• ● hare your voice by commenting on blogs. The authors want to know that they’re
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writing something of interest to their community.

Ready to start writing?

• ● et a goal, such as three posts a week. They don’t have to be mammoth. Focus on
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getting comfortable with the medium. Talk about what you know. Get feedback and
ideas from across your organization.



• ● cribble down post ideas when you have them. Start post drafts and save them
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unfinished. You can always come back to them later when inspiration strikes. If you
get a burst of writing done, schedule your posts in advance.
• ● Share. Ask questions. Get people talking. You’re a conversation catalyst.
• ● taying plugged into the comments on your blog is important. Commentors like to
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know that you’re listening and paying attention to their contributions. How often
and how deeply you respond is up to you, but it’s polite to respond when someone
take the time to provide feedback.
• ● ink to the posts that have inspired your writing. Point your readers to more
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resources relevant to your topic. Disclose relationships you have that may have
bearing on the opinions you write about (especially if you’re being paid to do so; it’s
the law now). If you’re including other people’s work, make sure to attribute it.

Once you’ve got a handle on the different sites, you may be wondering how you can start
training your staff to use social media both for personal use and for your CPG brand. Let’s
dive into training!



Chapter 3:
HOW DO I TRAIN MY STAFF FOR SOCIAL MEDIA?

Training your staff on how to use social media can be a daunting
task. Since social networking and the concept of social business
are relatively new, many people entrenched in the world of CPG
are still learning how they can best use the medium. When you
start thinking about training your staff, you may notice that their
experience falls into the following areas:

Digital Native: They’ve grown up in a highly digital world and are very comfortable with
using online platforms and learning new ones.

Savvy Technologist: While not having grown up with them, they feel comfortable using
most online social platforms and digital tools. These people approach new platforms with
caution and often let others fumble around before joining in.

Reluctant User: They are aware of the digital world and social media but hesitate to explore
and dive into the digital space. They do not think about or use digital tools more than
necessary and generally resist incorporating these tools into their lives.

Digital Contrarian: They are averse to the digital world. They’ve probably heard of social
networking but they think it’s a bunch of piffle, and they’ll use email only for work purposes
and rarely in their personal lives. These folks prefer traditional methods like phone calls.

Digital Newbie: Unlike the digital contrarian, the digital newbie isn’t opposed to the digital
world as much as they are simply unaware of it. Their life and day-to-day activities go on
just fine without any digital intervention, and they don’t see the need to change their habits
or behavior.

Knowing that all these different digital archetypes exists within your organization is
an important step. Even though not all of them may be as excited or involved in your
social media process, they should all at least have the overall understanding so they feel
comfortable with the space. This will help when you start building the framework of your
training program.



Training Program Prep and Framework

When starting to plan your training framework, you can go one of two ways: you can
involve your staff in initial discussions about their understanding of social media and how
they would like to use it, or you can keep all those initial discussions to your management
team. Either way, talking through your strategy is the right place to start.

With these discussions you’ll want to establish a few different things:

• ● Who within each team is going to be using social media?
• ● ill there be a single point person to oversee department social media activities or
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will everyone have an even distribution of tasks?
• ● Which tasks will each team be assigned?
• ● hat level of comprehension does each team member have in regard to the
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business use of social media?

The findings you glean from these meetings should give you a clear view of the various
user levels you must accommodate and inform you about how people are feeling about
your CPG brand’s social media plan.

So, you’ve gathered all the information you can about the current levels of social media
adoption and understanding within your CPG brand. Use that information to your
advantage. The folks within your organization who are enthusiastic about social media
could be a great help in planning and launching your CPG brand’s training program.

Social Media Training Team

Create a cross-functional social media training team that can coordinate training courses
and employee benchmarking and be a resource to answer questions and provide
constructive feedback. They can - and should - tweak the training program as necessary.

When the time finally comes to begin building your training program, you’ll need to make
sure it includes:

• ● learly-stated purposes for the CPG brand’s adoption of social media and the
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training program
• ● Clear goals and measurable objectives for each piece of the program
• ● ifferent course levels to account for different levels of understanding with multiple
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opportunities for achievement
• ● Tactical how-to training, as well as conceptual training and example scenarios
• ● esting or benchmarking to gauge the progress of employees as they move through
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the program
• ● A review process to assess the effectiveness of the program



Developing a successful team takes time and effort. Remind yourself that you’re
developing future social media rockstars.

While the people are crucial, so is technology. A social media monitoring platform is a tool
your team will utilize on a daily basis. Let’s take a deeper look at this technology in the next
chapter.

Now that your team is ready, you need a technology platform.



Chapter 4:
WHAT DOES A SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING PLATFORM DO?

Social media listening, tracking, monitoring and engagement
tools allow CPG brands to employ a social media strategy and
understand the impact of their efforts. This enables organizations
to become Socially-Engaged Enterprises, with the power to
understand and gain insights about social media through metrics,
measurement, sentiment and analytics reporting.

Social Media Monitoring
A social media monitoring platform allows you to view relevant conversations happening
around your brand and products in real time. Analyzing these conversations will yield
valuable intel and provide the data needed to create key reports for management.

Social media monitoring is beneficial not only for discovering public sentiment surrounding
your CPG brand, but also for dealing with customer service crises and benchmarking your
competitors. The insights gleaned from social media monitoring and engagement can help
you reach out to a whole new audience and enhance your online profile.

How Does this Sync up with Social Media Marketing?

With the rise of the social web, social media marketing is changing how you interact with
your customers. Instead of clamouring for your customers’ attention, it’s up to you to draw
them in with educational, entertaining, and intriguing content. Take your messaging to
where your customers are gathering online.

Make the switch from traditional marketing to a format that allows for increased
interaction with your customers, ensuring you’re engaging with them at the point of
need. Adapt content and messaging based on what people are talking about on the
social web. Monitor public sentiment to gain a better understanding of how your latest
campaign is faring in the marketplace. Once you’ve harnessed the potential of the social
web, your options are limitless.



Social Media Strategy

The key to a successful social media strategy is to align it with existing business objectives,
as well as existing sales, marketing and customer service strategies.

In addition to defining how your CPG brand will accomplish its business objectives using
social media, your social media strategy should cover the policies and procedures you
need to best interact with your consumers online. These include everything from
publishing frequency to handling negative feedback. Your social media strategy ensures
that you’re not only available via social media, but consistent in your interactions with
customers and prospects.

A social media monitoring platform can improve your efficacy by:

• ● caling your mountain of mentions. These platforms cull through data based on a
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number of algorithms so you don’t have to!
• ● Tracking trends. Over time, you’ll start to see trends emerge as you view the data.
• ● ightening your load when it comes to reporting. Platforms can aggregate your data
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so you can simply pull the information you need.
• ● etting information to those who need it most. Log in and grab the data - it’s that
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easy. You can often segment by different user settings or admin rights.

Social media monitoring platforms provide the opportunity to get to know your community
inside and out – when you’ve got an indicator of their preferences, you’re better suited to
give them a richer experience in the future. The discovery process gives you insight into
many areas, including who is most influential in conversations surrounding your CPG brand.
These loyal supporters are instrumental in spreading your message even further throughout
the social web.

As we’ll discuss in the next few chapters, a strong social strategy starts with listening and
extends through engagement.

• ● istening - Get tuned in to all of the important conversations surrounding your
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brand, the CPG industry, and your competitors.
• ● ngaging - Reach out to your customers and use their feedback to enhance your
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services. Be a part of the conversation.
• ● easuring, analyzing, and reporting - Extract meaning by measuring your results.
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Tracking and analyzing discussions will help you continually enhance your social
media strategy.

Let’s take a closer look at these steps in the next chapter.



Chapter 5:
HOW DO I START LISTENING?

It’s important to understand the impact information gathered from
social media could have on your work. Listening to the conversations
around your brand, industry, and competitors can give you valuable
insight when it comes to your social media strategy.

Listening – or social media monitoring – involves searching for the key words and phrases
used online to discuss your CPG brand, industry, and competitors. Listening is about
harnessing the conversations that matter to your business and extracting the information
that helps you decide how, where, and when to engage with your community.

Listening: The Ws

Why Listening is Important:

A sound listening strategy forms the cornerstone of a sustainable, scalable social media
strategy. It helps you understand what’s being said, where it’s happening, and what kind of
volume you’re dealing with. Consider listening the initial research phase before crafting or
implementing a social media strategy, and an ongoing temperature gauge that helps you to
adjust your continued activities.

What to Listen For:

As you start with a monitoring program, the potential can be overwhelming. So much
information, so many sites, and all of it moving by at the speed of light.

Start with a tiered system that takes you from brand-centered listening to competitive
listening to industry-wide listening (we include more specifics on these below). Within
these categories, you can organize and prioritize conversations by classifying them into
relevant buckets, including:

• ● Complaints
• ● Compliments
• ● Questions
• ● Leads and Inquiries
• ● Opportunity Conversations



Where to Listen:

The answer to this question is different for every CPG brand. The important place to start is
casting the net wide. Use a tool or set of tools that will help you sweep the entirety of the
social web to help you find the conversations that matter to you. As you sort through the
posts and discussions you find, you’ll be able to sort out where the relevant discussions
are happening and what media types you need to pay attention to.

Although they are the primary social networks for the CPG industry, social media isn’t just
about Twitter and Facebook. It’s about the function of online social communication, which
is to more easily share, create, and distribute content. That means that for some industries,
the best places to interact are forums and message boards. For others, it’s LinkedIn or
niche online communities.

The searches you undertake as part of your listening program will help you focus your
efforts, uncover discussion and dialogue, and help you understand where you should be
spending your time and effort to engage the communities you care about.

Who Should Do It?

As you embark on a listening program, the first question is often “So, who’s responsible for
doing this?” To answer that question, you need to ask yourself:

• ● hat’s the central focus of our social media participation? Customer service?
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Marketing? Product ideas?
• ● o we have dedicated human resources for this or does it have to be part of an
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existing role?
• ●Is there someone on our team already interested in this?

Front-line listening as part of a “listening grid” – a workflow system of routing and
sharing the intelligence gathered from a monitoring program – can be a dedicated role
or part of many. But at its best, listening is wired into many roles and functions in an
organization. Much like having a telephone on every person’s desk, equipping employees
and departments with their own listening tools and stations means that they can integrate
social media information and intelligence into the work they’re already doing. They can
use the tools in the ways that support their jobs and treat social media as a new line of
communication from your CPG brand to the outside world and back again.

Listening: The How

So, brass tacks time. How do we build listening programs in all of the right buckets? What
do we search for?



Brand:

In the brand bucket, you’ll want to concentrate your searches around terms, words, and
phrases that are directly related to your CPG brand. You can go broad or narrow, but in
general, you’ll want to develop a stack of keywords and phrases that reflect:

• ● Your company name
• ● Your brands, business units, or product offerings
• ● Names of specialized services you offer such as rewards programs
• ● Names or terms around specific campaigns
• ● Key stakeholders in your organization
• ● Nicknames, abbreviations, or misspellings of any of the above

The general thread here is that it’s the terms that will help you understand whether people
are talking about you or not. If they’re not, that’s intelligence in itself. If they are, you’ll
want to know if it’s positive, critical, or indifferent, as all of those things will help frame your
future strategy.

Industry:

Industry listening is proactive. It’s intended to help you understand the larger landscape
that surrounds your CPG brand, the conversations that are above and around your brand.
It’s not about you, but rather understanding how you might fit into the larger profile of your
industry on the social web. Here, you might search for:

• ● Terms related to products and the CPG industry that are not brand specific
• ● Phrases that define the markets you serve
• ● Larger industry keywords or categories
• ● Professional organizations you belong to or that fit your business profile
• ● Names of thought leaders in the CPG industry
By listening, you can learn about overarching perceptions of your markets or your business
purpose. You can also identify and locate conversations that aren’t about your company, but
where you can engage and communicate expertise, meet new people, and establish your
online presence as a resource and authority, without a focus on sales or marketing.

Competitors:

Competitive intelligence used to be limited to expensive reports from business
intelligence companies or whatever information you could glean through your network
of acquaintances, friends, and contacts. The social web has brought a new dimension to
competitive analysis and put a wealth of information at your fingertips. You can look for:

• ● Names of competitive CPG brands, products, and services
• ● Stakeholders in those companies



• ● Buzz around competitive campaigns or promotions
• ● Nicknames, misspellings, or misspellings of any of these

If folks are talking online, they’re sharing information about your competition: who
they’re hiring, who just left, and what new product they’re coming out with. They’re
communicating what your competition isn’t doing, which presents all sorts of opportunities
for you. And it can pinpoint emerging crises or buzz swells that you might want to be
aware of for your own purposes. The same unfiltered, fast moving, and open information
that’s out there about YOU is out there about THEM. Pay attention.

Your listening program will set the tone for the rest of your social media activities, so fine
tune each piece of it to ensure you’re listening in the places that are most relevant to your
CPG brand and to the conversations that have the most potential impact. Once you’ve got
this part of your strategy solidified, it’s time to tackle engagement.



Chapter 6:
HOW DO I START ENGAGING?

Engagement is often seen as the holy grail of a listening and
monitoring program. For many CPG brands, it’s a natural evolution,
but for some, it’s more complicated. Engagement has become a
hot-button term for something that really is more fundamental in its
marketing need: gaining and holding the attention of customers and
prospects through regular brand-to-community interaction.

Engagement usually means talking directly with your target audience, but the method and
depth of engagement is individual for each company. If you get someone engaged with the
messages you’re putting out there, they’ll buy what you’re selling, and, if you’ve done it
right, come back for more.

Engagement: The Ws

The social web has made it easy for people to share their opinions about everything to
everybody, making it harder for brands to break through those opinions. In the best cases
of online sharing, brands are being stewarded by their loyal fans and long-time customers;
in the worst cases, CPG brands are losing business because people are sharing negative
opinions that are deterring possible prospects from taking that next step to buy.

Most of those negative cases can be turned positive if the CPG brand takes steps to show
they care about their customers’ and prospects’ experiences with them. That can be
done through direct interaction, acting on customer feedback collected either passively or
actively, or making sure the purchasing cycle for people is as easy and positive as possible.

What to Say:

“What do we say?” is often the hardest question to answer, largely due to the fear that
letting people speak on behalf of your brand could create problems like mixed messages,
the spreading of inaccurate information, or even legal issues.

There are basic comments you can make to reassure people you’re listening to them
without causing problems for your brand, including:

• ● We’re sorry.
• ● Thank you.
• ● How can we help?
• ● We’re listening and we hear you.



Despite common fears about responding to negative comments, addressing those
mentions openly with an eye to calming the issue can turn a potentially sour situation into
an opportunity to create a loyal brand fan, much like what your support team members do
on a daily basis, but via social channels.

Where to Engage:

Figuring out where you should be engaging starts with looking at where your audience
currently exists. Whether your audience is active in only a few places or very social in
many, you’ll be able to identify exactly where that audience is through your listening
strategy.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t put effort or resources into interacting on big social
networks if that’s not where your audience happens to be. Software companies, for
example, are often mentioned on support forums or communities, thus showing a much
larger portion of customer activity than, say, Facebook. Just because certain social
networks are more popular than others – or even more popular than other types of media
– doesn’t mean your market is there. Do your research before you commit to engaging on
a particular network. The audience of one CPG brand may, in fact, not be frequenting all of
the same social networks as the fans from another CPG brand, for example.

Who (Internally) Should Engage and Who You Should Engage With:

There’s a good chance some of your workforce is already out there on the social web
talking with your customers. Identify these folks, not to make examples of their behavior,
but to bring them into the fold and gain an understanding of how and why they choose to
interact online. Embrace their passion, feedback, and buy-in, and work with them to create
a more structured and effective engagement strategy.

Depending on your goals for social media involvement, you might want to engage with a
few different types of people, including:

• ● Customers with inquiries in need of support
• ● Brand evangelists
• ● Brand detractors
• ● CPG industry veterans and influencers

Interact first with just one group to gauge what kind of time and resources your engagement
strategy will require to succeed. Add more groups when you feel you’re ready and able.

Engagement: The How

So, how do we build a solid engagement strategy? How do we start talking?



Brand:

When it comes to speaking on behalf of your brand, the possibilities for engagement are
seemingly endless. From saying thank you for a positive mention to calming down an angry
customer who’s thinking of switching to your rival, the one thing to remember is there is
no right, industry-standard way to engage – the right engagement for you is defined by the
goals you set for your social media program.

Don’t leave your team hanging. Establish guidelines for engagement that give those
engaging on the frontlines the freedom to be themselves while still properly representing
your CPG brand.

Industry:

Getting involved in the conversation surrounding the CPG industry is essential for
establishing your brand as not only a thought leader but also as a helpful CPG brand that
truly cares about its community. At the end of the day, you’re providing a service that
solves a deep human problem. Sharing your knowledge about how to solve that problem
without a focus on selling will engender trust among your customers.

You’ll want to spend a certain amount of time being reactive to your community first,
catching up with their direct mentions of you before delving into industry discussions. But
when you’re ready, creating and adding to conversation threads will provide a wealth of
perspective to both your CPG brand and community. Some conversations you might want
to get involved in include:

• ● General questions about the services and special campaigns your CPG brand offers.
• ● Requests for opinions on a subject matter your CPG brand can share expertise in.
• ● Detracting commentary about why a service you provide is not useful.
• ● onversations about specific professional roles, where team members can grow
C
their own educations.

Competitors:

Competitive engagement isn’t about interjecting yourself into conversations about
your competitors carte blanche. However, it can be useful to help you highlight points
of differentiation and allows you to reach out to people interested in products when it
naturally makes sense.

Competitive engagement can also be used to stay on top of industry happenings like
mergers and acquisitions, as well as help protect and build your CPG brand through
ongoing interaction with people who mention you as well as your competitors.

Many would say that engagement is the most important aspect of a social media strategy
– it gives you the chance to get involved with your customers, potential customers,



and greater industry community in ways that weren’t previously available via traditional
business communication channels. From market research to community assistance,
engagement gets you tuned into what your market really needs from a CPG brand like
yours and allows you to build relationships that carry into repeat business and referrals.
Those are the ultimate successes.

Now that you’re listening and engaging in conversations on the social web, you’re probably
becoming interested in really tracking what’s being said. Maybe you’re even ready to work
some of your results into your social media strategy. Although the idea of tracking millions
of conversations can be daunting, the next chapter is here to help.



Chapter 7:
HOW DO I START TO MEASURE, ANALYZE AND REPORT?

Just as putting together a list of items makes your customers’
shopping experience more organized and efficient, you’re going
to need to chart your course to define the objectives and key
performance metrics that will show you if you’re really making the
most of the social web (as it relates to your goals, of course). To
get where you’re going, you need to know where you’ve been and
where you want to be, and this is where that charted course comes
in handy.

Measurement: The Ws

Measuring the progress of your social media program isn’t an option – it’s a business necessity.
Social media is a business channel, just like direct mail and other traditional communication
and marketing channels, but unlike many traditional methods, social media unlocks the
door to instantaneous, two-way dialog, creating a new level of necessary measurement.

While traditional metrics still matter, it’s essential that you select highly relevant and
measurable objectives specific to your social media program to make sure your efforts are
indeed providing strategic and financial value.

What to Measure:

Are you familiar with the phrase, “You are what you eat?” This principle holds true with
social media. Define your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) carefully, because you will
become what you measure. Understand what your brand wants to accomplish and
what market you want to target to determine the metrics that are relevant to your brand.
It’s important you establish both qualitative and quantitative measurements for your
goals because both matter in providing a holistic view of the progress of your social
media program.

And while you’re at it, don’t settle for measuring only outputs and outtakes, either. Impact,
especially in terms of ROI, is determined by measuring outcomes (the quantifiable changes
in attitude, behavior and opinion). If you only measure superficial results such as number of
followers or fans, your social media and engagement strategy will also remain at that level.



Here are some metrics to help you brainstorm what you might want to measure and why:

Revenue and Business Development
• ● % Repeat Business
• ● % Customer Retention
• ● Transaction Value
• ● Referrals
• ● Net New Leads
• ● Cost Per Lead
• ● Conversions from Community
Activity and Engagement
• ● Members
• ● Posts/Threads
• ● Comments or Ideas
• ● Inbound Links
• ● Tags, Votes, Bookmarks
• ● Active Profiles
• ● Referrals
• ● Post Frequency/Density
Cost Savings
• ● Issue Resolution Time
• ● % of Issues Resolved Online
• ● Account Turnover
• ● Employee Turnover
• ● Hiring/Recruiting
• ● Training Costs
• ● New Product Ideas
• ● Development Cycle Time
• ● Product/Service Adoption Rate
Value Awareness and Influence
• ● Brand Loyalty/Affinity
• ● Media Placements
• ● Share of Conversation
• ● Sentiment of Posts
• ● Net Promoter Score
• ● Interaction with Content
• ● Employee Social Graphs



How to Measure:

Go beyond measuring traditional web analytics that provide data about channel use and
begin layering on metrics that explore audience behavior and engagement found within
social media analytics. Having a hypothesis to start from will help you pinpoint which non-
traditional metrics you should be tracking. For instance, “We think that an increase in blog
subscribers over six months will correlate with an increase in online purchases,” or, “Post
activity on our help forum will decrease call center costs” are strong hypotheses to get
started measuring and benchmarking.

Build your goals and objectives based on these hypotheses, and measure against them to
see if you’re on the right track. The beauty about setting a baseline with your hypothesis
is that you have a roadmap to keep you on track; you’ll know exactly where you stand at
all times and course correct in real-time as you track changes in the level of content and
customer engagement.

Brand:

Measuring engagement around your brand can help you understand if your messages are
resonating with your intended community or whether there’s a disconnect between how
your CPG brand is presenting itself and how your community perceives you.

To gain insight on just how well your brand is perceived on the social web, begin measuring:
• ● everberation: The total volume of inbound linking and generations of retweeting
R
of a post.
• ● epetition: The average times per month a source inbound links/retweets your content.
R
• ● ctivation: The monthly total of new sources that have shared your positive content.
A
• ●Engagement: The amount of repeat commenting and length of those comments.
Industry:

Keep your finger on the pulse of your industry to spot emerging trends and topics of
interest that can help you drive content creation or product and service improvements and
ideas. By tracking the trends of your industry, you’ll also be able to find out who the key
players are and get early insights into the new voices in the industry, and you can apply all
these insights to help mold your outreach, engagement, and future business strategies.

To see which sorts of topics and issues are gaining traction in the CPG industry, begin
measuring:
• ● Exuberance: The monthly count of testimonials and positive posts.
• ● Attention Span: The average span of time a post is commented on and retweeted,
or shared on Twitter.



• ● Resonance: The total volume of “in sync” conversation around an idea.
• ● Potential: The monthly comparison of declared need and estimated revenue from
successful referrals.

Competitors:

Competitive intelligence can clue you into rumors and insights about your competitors’
business moves, how their customers perceive them, and help you identify unmet
needs of the crowds. This information will also help you establish if you’re ahead of the
social media game, behind the curve, or somewhere in the middle. Benchmarking your
competition on the social web can help you clarify how your social strategy should emerge
and evolve, too.

To get a handle on how you’re comparing in the competitive landscape, begin measuring:
• ● Conversation: The total monthly relative share of conversation versus competitors.
• ● Infatuation: The score of the relative direction of inbound and outbound links/tweets
between sources.
• ● Bucket Volume: The monthly count comparison of post types (i.e., complaints,
referrals, etc.).

Measurement, as a practice, should already be wired into your organization – if it’s not, take
the time to figure out why that’s the case and how you can remedy that situation before
embarking on your journey into social media.

The most important truth to keep in mind about measuring any business initiative, be it
social media or a traditional marketing/customer service/sales program, is that the metrics
you select to track your progress must relate directly to your goals. There is no template or
best way to measure anything, but the information we’ve shared here should get you started
brainstorming which metrics make the most sense for tracking your social media program.

Analysis

Defining the measurement that you are going to use for your social media program can
be different from the stage where you are analyzing those results against your business
objectives. The thing to keep in mind is that analysis takes time and you’ll need to benefit
from some others who are already doing great work in the space.

Share the Knowledge

We’re not talking about exposing internally sensitive or trademarked information here,
but rather methods and metrics that have been found to work well in the social space. If
we are sharing this information, we can start to learn from each other in a collaborative



environment. Collaboration can be done through conferences, white papers, or councils.
Perhaps you have an idea for a Twitter chat for collaborating ideas? Check first to see if it
already exists, and if not, be the leader!

Try, Try Again

There will be metrics and methods used that will seem very promising, but, at the end of
the day, won’t work in the social space. Instead of getting frustrated, we need be able to
take an objective view to discuss what works, what doesn’t work and where to go from
there. If you want to see this in action, just take a look at the search engine results for
“What is Social Media ROI?”. Some articles discussing this topic are Social Media ROI for
Idiots , 2011 Trending Topic: Social Media ROI, and How to Measure Social Media ROI.

Believe in the Integrity of the Data

Data doesn’t lie, but it can be misinterpreted. Make sure that no matter what you’re doing,
you are letting the data speak for itself. Draw insights from your data, but don’t force the
data to say anything that isn’t there. Sometimes as much as we want 1 + 1 to equal 3, it
just isn’t meant to be.

Reporting

Keep in mind that, at some point in your social media journey, you may need to create a
report that shows your progress. Don’t look at this as a daunting task; instead, think of
something in life that we are all very familiar with and able to read: a report card.

From kindergarten to high school and beyond, we’re all used to seeing our semester
grades in an easy-to-read standard format. Whether it be the letter scale of A – F, a
percentage,or a GPA, each of us could probably take someone else’s report card and
understand whether they were doing well or needing improvement. Here’s what this can
teach you about your own reporting.

Grading Scale

The point of a grading scale is to be able to compare your marks semester-over-semester
and year after year. It also enables anyone familiar with the scales to jump right in and
understand. This touches on the idea of standardization we’ve been talking about. We don’t
have across-the-board standards in the social media industry yet, but you can still have a
system that everyone internally is comfortable with so, no matter who you hand the report
to, he or she will be able to understand it.



Labels

You would hate to confuse your English grade with your Math, which is why report cards
have very clear labels. These are essential to a good report. From the proper date and time
period to the labeling of information, these are all a must to make sure nothing in your
report is misunderstood.

Easy to Read

Short and sweet is why parents love the one page format of a report card. In five minutes,
they know exactly what’s going on with the most important parts of their children’s
education. Here’s an inside secret: executives feel the same way about their CPG brands.
Give them a report that’s short and hopefully sweet and they’ll love the five minute read.

The Shifts

Most report cards will show you how much you’ve improved or slipped, semester to
semester. This is one of the most effective things to show on a report because these shifts
are the bread and butter of progress.

Teacher’s Comments

“Johnny is progressing at an expected pace, but needs to pay more attention in class.”
Even though some of us might have cringed seeing paragraphs of writing on our report
cards, our teacher’s comments were great analysis points. Including comments like these
on your reports will help to draw attention to what’s working and what’s not.

Pass or Fail

The part of the report most of us jumped right to the bottom to see: the pass or fail. This
gave us a clear answer as to whether or not all the grades, notes, and shifts meant we
were moving on or giving it another go. Incorporating a clear way to indicate whether or not
your efforts and results line up with your business objectives is key to any report. Not only
are you giving the “why,” but also the next steps; whether they are to move on to the next
grade or take a step back and try it all over again.

Now that you have the knowledge to leverage social media for your brand, let’s look at
other CPG brands that have taken that path and succeeded in their social endeavors.



Chapter 8:
WHAT ARE THE KEY SOCIAL MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES FOR CPG?

Hopefully the previous chapters have provided you with lots of
helpful ideas on how you can use social media as a CPG brand to
engage with your customers. We gave you a lot of material to digest,
so let’s review what we’ve discussed today to make sure you have
everything you need to deliver a new or renewed strategy.

If you are already active in the social web, or are at least taking a peek at what your
competitors are up to, likely you have noticed that no two CPG brands have identical social
media strategies. With the possibilities as endless as the products on the shelves, the last
thing we want to leave you feeling is overwhelmed.

Let’s look at the key uses of social media for CPG brands like yours.
• ● Customer service: directly responding to customer’s questions, complaints and
inquiries via social media.
• ● Crisis management: having your finger on the pulse of a crisis just as it unfolds or
directly after it occurs and being able to respond, diffuse and assist quickly.
• ● ampaign or promotion management: the use of social media channels to spread
C
word about a contest/sale/exciting change that you want your community to hear
about and participate in discussion about
• ● Shopper loyalty: keeping your customers engaged and interested in the community
you create and making it difficult for them to ever want to fall out of love with your
CPG brand.
• ● eeping tabs on the competition: understanding the successes and failures of rival
K
CPG brands, and using this intel to earn more loyalty points for your CPG brand.

We hope we have inspired you to find new ways to leverage social media for your CPG
brand. Don’t feel as though you should dive in and attempt to hit all of the aforementioned
use cases at once; instead, identify your top priority and begin there. Emphasize what
makes your brand memorable or unique; tell your story and what you stand for; show your
customers that you are listening; ask questions; share helpful content; be authentic; and
most importantly, have fun! Once you’ve rolled out your new or improved strategy, don’t
forget to come back and tell us all about it.



White Paper:
MANAGING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS WITHIN THE
RADIAN6 ENGAGEMENT CONSOLE

With the introduction of social media, marketing and PR campaigns
have become more interactive than those carried out over
traditional channels alone, such as television and print. Brands can
monitor and engage with their fans and followers in real time and
assess the success of their campaigns almost immediately. This
changing landscape means that keeping organized and responding
to mentions in a timely manner is extremely important. Let’s look
at a few ways you can use the Radian6 engagement console to

Manage Your Social Media Accounts

Social media campaigns can focus on a single brand
channel or be integrated across several. Through
the engagement console, you can manage both
your brand’s Facebook and Twitter accounts within
the same application. You can also manage multiple
Twitter accounts, if necessary.

This allows you to respond to comments
and questions from your fans and
followers, as well as outpost your own
content.

When promoting your campaign, you might use
both Facebook and Twitter to get the word out. The
engagement console also allows you to outpost to
multiple channels simultaneously, making managing
your campaign outreach more efficient.



Plan Your Workflow

Before you launch your campaign,
determine the post tags and source tags
you will apply in the engagement console
(you can build off of your brand’s existing
playbook for this) and that you will use
to assess your campaign’s results come
reporting time. Create a unique post
tag for your campaign (here, we used
“campaignXYZ”) to identify mentions.
This can be combined with existing source
tags you might have, such as advocate,
customer, influencer, etc.

Capitalize Focus Your Efforts

When tracking your campaigns, you will most likely
get mentions across several media types. Whether
you have one person managing your campaign
engagement or many, you can focus your efforts to
make your mentions more manageable. One way to
prioritize is to dedicate separate stacks to different
media types. For example, since Twitter mentions
require a shorter response time than blogs or other
media types, dedicate a stack solely to Micromedia
so you can track and respond to them easily. You can
also have one stack dedicated to Mainstream News
mentions to see what kind of media coverage your
campaign is receiving.

In addition to prioritizing by media type, you can use a
Topic Profile Trends stack to identify what topics are
trending around your campaign. Just remember that
the Topic Profile Trends will work best if you have a
topic profile dedicated to your campaign rather than a
keyword group set up within a larger topic profile. Here,
we can see the topics currently trending around Small
Business Saturday, which we covered in this post.



Monitor Sentiment

In addition to media type and trending topics, you
might also want to prioritize mentions around
your campaign based on sentiment, which is the
overarching mood or tone of the post. If you have a
topic profile set up around your campaign, be sure to
include sentiment subjects in your configuration.

You can then filter your mentions in the engagement
console by sentiment and engage with them in real
time. Filter by negative sentiment to see where your
campaign is missing the mark or filter by positive
sentiment to identify your advocates.

Social media campaigns require a
coordinated effort when it comes to
promoting, listening, and engagement.
The above suggestions are some of the
ways you can use the engagement console
to streamline your interactions with fans
and followers, prioritize posts, and keep
a finger on how your campaign is being
received.



Case Study:
RADIAN6 ACCEPTS THE BEACHBODY CHALLENGE TO
MONITOR ITS SHAPE ON THE WEB!

January is the time for fresh starts, new plans and great intentions
– a time when we resolve to be our best self and set in motion the
tactics to achieve it. A healthy, balanced lifestyle – with a renewed
focus to lose weight, get in shape, become trim, sleek, slim and fit –
is often at the top of the list.

That’s exactly what makes this a busy time of year for Beachbody, a company that started
almost 12 years ago, specializing in DVD-home fitness programs featuring online support,
fitness gear, and supplements. Among the best selling programs are P90X, 10 Minute
Trainer, Turbo Jam and Slim in 6 – brands which may be familiar through TV infomercials.

Beachbody owner Carl Daikeler recognized early on the potential of infomercials to sell
fitness. When he was just 24-years-old, he helped build the first infomercial network in
the US viewed by 50 percent of all TV households in the country. In the mid 1990’s, he
helped build an affiliate network of more than 100 radio and TV stations to promote fitness
products. Now social media figures into the business plan. Daikeler has a blog where he
discusses business ideas and customer success stories. It’s one of four featured on the
website, with fitness advisors and trainers penning the other blogs.

How Fit is the Social Web?

Beachbody, including trainers and several product brands, is active on Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube and Flickr. While these are new initiatives, Facebook fans for the P90X brand
have reached 30,000. There’s also a blogger outreach program where fitness and mommy
bloggers are offered a free fitness program and asked to blog honestly about the experience.

Social Media is part of Beachbody’s strategy to proactively connect with customers and
passively gauge its online reputation. Beachbody monitors mentions and conversations on
the social web for most of its product brands. In fact, before it was anybody’s job to listen,
a motivated employee was monitoring and took the initiative to alert the Customer Service
VP what was being said to enable a response. That employee now has the only job in the
company with ‘social media’ in the title! Pierre Abraham is the Social Media Specialist for



Beachbody and at that earliest point he was listening for disgruntled customers. Now he
uses Radian6 to sort through and prioritize 26,000 mentions per month (and they’re all
positive, he says!).

Most mentions are about P90X – a favorite among celebrities like actors Demi Moore and
Ashton Kutcher, singer Sheryl Crow, and professional athletes including Philadelphia Eagles
football kicker David Akers. Akers started using P90X after a disappointing 2007 season to
regain his strength and flexibility. He went on to break an NFL record for consecutive field
goals in 2009. But that’s not the NFL record that would have earned his charitable Foundation
$1Million dollars from Beachbody (the 2008 Beachbody challenge Akers accepted was to
break the NFL record of a 64-yard field goal during a game). While that NFL achievement still
eludes him, Akers is on his game and was selected to play in the Pro Bowl January 31st.

Listening Creates Opportunity

“Beachbody isn’t responding to just actors and actresses; Abraham is always on the
look-out for influencers, too. Recently, the CTO of networking systems giant Cisco,
Padmasree Warrior, mentioned on Twitter that she suspected Santa would give her P90X
for Christmas instead of chocolates! Abraham quickly saw that she had more than a million
followers, and jumped at the opportunity to respond with a word of encouragement.
Warrior jovially reciprocated the connection from @Beachbody, creating the opportunity
for her approximately 1.4 million followers to see the P90X brand, experience the personal
outreach, hear the message, and learn that Beachbody is listening.”

The Radian6 platform enables Abraham to track these connections over time and measure
the success of word-of-mouth on the web – whether that’s tracking a rise in mentions
after launching a new ad campaign or product, or seeing if a new contest builds attention
and excitement. One of the strengths Abraham sites is the ability to save data so he can
graph and analyze trends. He also likes the convenience of having one platform to easily
track ten brands across the social web instead of using several tools then aggregating
results manually.

Beachbody is in the beginning phases of using social media, but its already informing and
shaping the company’s business strategy. For Beachbody -- whether you measure results
in 10 minutes or 90-day workouts -- 2010 is already shaping up to be a good year.

Find us on the web: www.radian6.com
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/radian6
Read the Blog: www.radian6.com/blog
Author: Zoe Geddes-Zoltess
Editor: Amanda Nelson
Designers: Lise Hansen, Lindsay Vautour


Social Media Strategy for the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry

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