Presentation by Kate Bradstreet on creating a social media strategy in support of ACT Digital Enterprise Program

1. Creating a Social Media Strategy
Presented by:
Kate Bradstreet, Managing Director
Kate Bradstreet Communications
http://Katebradstreetcommunications.com.au

2. Agenda
The current digital landscape
Why is Social Media so important?
What do you want to achieve using Social
Media?
Linking your Social Media Strategy to your
business objectives
Getting it right!
Measuring your success

3. Who is Confused?

4. The Social Media Revolution
Australians are the most
prolific social media users in
the world
Australians spend more time
on social media per month
Roughly 1/3 use social media
every day
Social media brands are
consistently among Australia’s
Top 15 sites

6. The importance of Social Media
“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO
Social Media, the question is how well we do it,”
-Eric Qualman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SuNx0UrnE
o

7. What do we use Social Media for?
 Sourced from - Yellow Social
Media Report , Censis 2012

8. What do people search for?
 Sourced from - Yellow Social Media Report ,
Censis 2012

9. Offers and feedback
 Sourced from - Yellow Social Media
Report , Censis 2012

10. Consumer use & purpose

11. Why, What and How?
How well we do it comes down to knowing why
we are doing it, what is the best approach to it
and evaluating the outcome =
STRATEGY

12. Strategy versus Tactics
Strategy: a plan to
achieve a long term
goal
Tactics: a series of
actions to achieve
those goals

13. Why this is a new approach
Social Media is not like other channels. As a
marketer you can’t just talk about your own
brand and expect people to listen.
The KEY difference is YOU have to earn the
right to talk and drive conversations. You have
to first listen and then respond.

14. What can my business use?
Facebook – 845 million users
Twitter – 300 million users
LinkedIn – 135 million users
YouTube – 3 billion views per day
Google + – 62 million users
Blogs

15. Planning your Strategy
This simple checklist of questions should guide
your thinking when planning social media
strategies for your business:
What is the social aspect of it?
How does it capture the imagination?
Why would someone share this?
How does it fulfil your brand’s goals?
Where could it fall down?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQd_DlkdQ1w

16. What’s the point? – Top 10 tips
1. Increase loyalty by showing the real you
2. Get feedback
3. Answer and address complaints quickly
4. Create product incentives
5. Capitalize on and boost your word of mouth marketing
6. Share photos and content to increase location and product
awareness (Influencers)
7. Grow your mailing list = growing your potential customer base
8. Promote new products or promote an event
9. Hold contests or offer incentives to increase your following
10. Look at what others are doing and copy.

17. Connect with your customers
As far as deciding which platform works best,
it's a simple matter of asking customers:
“Do you use Twitter? Are you on LinkedIn?
What about Facebook?"
Business owners cannot be afraid to ask their
customers how they would like to
communicate with the company
What motivates your customers?

18. Facebook
Customers use Facebook for two reasons:
1. Connections and Conversations. Any marketing
efforts made on Facebook must be cognisant of
these two fundamental aspects.
2. Customer engagement is key to your success on
Facebook. Unless your customers are clicking links
to your Facebook page, liking or commenting on
your photos and posts, voting in your polls or using
your apps, your page will have minimal visibility

19. Check-in deals on Facebook

20. Why use a Blog?
Popular Blog platforms:
Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, Posterous
Popularity:
o Over 156 million blogs in existence
o About 175,000 new blogs are created each day
How marketers can use it:
o Add a human touch & personality to brands
o Demonstrate thought leadership & subject-matter expertise
o SEO benefits – Linkages to your website

21. Shopping around Blog style
63% of online Australians read blogs to find
out what other people think about products
or services they are interested in
People read an average of 6 blogs before
making a purchase decision

22. Twitter for business

23. Support your customers
Most research on
the reasons why
Twitter users follow
brands shows that
being an existing
customer is high on
the list
This explains why
Twitter is used by
many brands as a
customer support
channel

24. Sharing for success
Social bookmarking is increasing in size
because of its sharability
Pinterest is currently the fastest-growing
platform (May 2012)

25. Crowd sourcing campaign
One Big Switch wanted to empower
Aussie consumers to get better
deals for the regular household
bills using mass consumer power
A campaign to cut the cost of
mortgages using the power of
group switching - 40,000
Australians took part
Now has 300,000+ members
Thousands of One Big Switch
members have cut the cost of their
household bills

26. It’s not all about your product
Endota Spa, Canberra Salsabor Dance Studio

27. Creating interest
Me & Mrs Jones Visit Canberra

28. Developing an effective strategy
Begin with the End in Mind
If business goals aren't dictating your social
media activities, then you're wasting your time,
effort and money
Because your goals dictate how you organize your
daily activities or short-term tactics. So it doesn't
matter how many times you update Twitter, or
what hashtags you use if you don't understand
why you're using Twitter in the first place

29. What do you want to achieve?
People often want to get started on the
tactical side of things without giving due
consideration to the key task of understanding
and defining Goals & Objectives
Answer the WHAT and WHY rather than
straight into the HOW. Without doing this you
end up with a lot of activity, but none of it is
directed back to the higher objective

30. The 101 of strategy
1. Conduct a Situation Analysis
2. What are your goals?
3. What are your objectives to reach your goals?
4. Who are your target audiences?
5. What message are you trying to get out?
6. What tactics/channels will you use?
7. How will you implement it?
8. Evaluation – How will you know you have been
successful?

31. Setting communication goals
Goals are broad statements of what needs to
be done.
Goals deal with:
o Reputation
o Relationships
o Task

32. Setting your objectives
Precise, measureable statements about what
needs to be done to achieve your goal
Objectives deal with changes:
o Increase brand awareness
o Build acceptance
o Encourage action
o Are outcome specific

33. Who are you?
Dairy Australia
The national services body for dairy farmers and
the industry. Our role is to help farmers adapt to
a changing operating environment and achieve a
profitable, sustainable dairy industry

34. Goals & Objectives
Goal – To promote the health benefits of low fat
milk
o This is a broad goal but it covers identity, image,
perceptions, recognition and reputation
Objectives = Change + % + Time
Objective – To create awareness among 50% of
Australia’s early childhood nurses that low fat
milk has the same calcium properties as full
cream milk within 12 months

35. Tactics and channels
Key – Determining appropriate and effective
tactics to reach audiences
o Reach and coverage of audiences provided by
the channels
o Creative match of message and channel
o Control over the message (ability to turn off
comments on Facebook/YouTube)

36. What to consider
The competitor’s use of the channel
The ability of the channel to enable discussion
and interaction with your target audience
No point in using Facebook to generate
discussion if that’s not what you want to do
RESOURCING – Is it worth doing if you don’t
have the resources to do it properly?

37. Now let’s try it out
What does your business do, or want to do?
Keep it simple. It might be your mission for
the 2013 – 2014 financial year
o Who is your target audience?
o What is one of your communication goals?
o What are your objectives?
o Now let’s think about which is the best social
media channel/or channels to use and why

38. Has your strategy worked?
What did you expect would happen?
What did happen?
How do we attribute the impact of each
channel?

39. What does success look like?
Most evaluations should be based on four
measurement categories
Input Output
- What you put into the strategy - What tactics were
- Research/resourcing used/frequency of use
Outcome Outtake
- What did the audience do? - Did they change behaviour?
- Did they take action? - Share content/buy your product

40. Keep it simple!
Use and re-use the same content on multiple
channels. You don’t always have to create new
material!
Be prepared to try it out and be prepared for
criticism. Embrace it and respond promptly
Get your tone and frequency right – be
personable
Be authentic and engage in two-way
conversations with your audience

41. Questions ?