Drill Tip: A Portfolio Approach to Managing Your Social Media Platforms
Setting up an official profile on most social media platforms has no initial cost, so many companies go wild signing up on every site they can find. Inevitably though, they come to the realization that once you sign up, you have to spend time and effort to manage and maintain those presences.
If you find yourself in that situation, or simply wondering how to maximize your investment by finding the “right platforms,” allow us to offer a helpful model:
We call it the “Portfolio Approach to Social Media Management” and it’s based off the Boston Consulting Group product mix strategy. The idea behind the model is that social media platforms, like products, lie somewhere between four scenarios, based on their relative growth in users and mind share, or how many people are aware of the platform.
Starting from lower right, clockwise, the first scenario is when a social media platform is considered a Cow. Cows are like the blue-chip stocks of our model – they’re always a safe bet, but you’re not going to be seen as an innovator just for having a presence. Great examples of cows are Facebook, Linkedin, WordPress blogs and even email.
When a social media platform has low growth and low mind share, it’s a Dog. Dogs aren’t necessarily bad investments, but these platforms aren’t great long-term. You may get a negative return on investment because they don’t have the audience to justify the effort spent on them. Examples of dogs are MySpace, GrooveShark, and Blogger.
A slightly better scenario is when a social media platform is considered a Question Mark. These platforms have high growth but haven’t reached a critical mass of mind share. Question Marks could be hidden gems. Early investment can be the ticket to being seen as a social media innovator. However, the reason they are called question marks is that no one knows what will really happen. They could just as easily lose momentum and become Dogs. Current examples of question marks are SoundCloud, Stumble Upon and Google+.
Finally, when a social media platform exhibits high growth and high mind share they are considered Stars. Stars are the social media equivalent of biotech stocks. They can generate great return on investment. The only risk with stars is that they can fade into dogs or question marks or mature into cows. They also don’t provide the same kind of “first mover advantage” that you may be able to achieve with a question mark. Examples of stars are Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
The key to an effective portfolio strategy is to determine how much risk you’re willing to take and allocate your time and effort appropriately among the four scenarios. For example, if you want a high risk, high return strategy invest heavily in Stars and Question Marks. If you prefer a more moderate return with lower risk, stick with Cows.
Ultimately, the sites on this particular graphic represent just one set of social media platforms rather than all. Viewed as a blank slate, though, the model is a great way to gauge where the sites you’re currently investing in stand relative to what kinds of returns you want to achieve.
Drill Tip: Planning Effective Use of Social Media Advertising
If you launch the most brilliant social media campaign ever conceived but no one hears about it, does it generate ROI? The answer is, most likely, “No.”
The fact is you have to have some method of generating awareness about your campaign. Spreading the word organically among a well-established, active fan base is one way. Getting marketing and trade media interested is another. A third, particularly if you’re just starting your brand out in social media, is to engage in social media advertising.
Social media advertising does for great campaigns what exercise does for great nutrition. It helps take advantage of an input to extend and strengthen the brand as a whole.
Though it should always be the last item on your list accounting for even a small amount of social advertising spend, anywhere from $50 to $250 per campaign can help ensure your campaign has the best possible chance for success.
Here’s a tactic to help identify just how much social media advertising you really need:
First, determine your ideal awareness to engagement ratio. A good way to do this is to take your last social media campaign and identify how many users were exposed to it. Look at the number of fans or followers on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter as well as the number of impressions on campaign microsites or landing pages.
Once you have a reasonable estimation of how many people saw your last campaign, divide that number by how many users actually engaged with it. This number is your awareness to engagement ratio. If you don’t have a previous campaign to use as a benchmark, start with a smaller ratio - such as 1000 users aware of your campaign to every 1 user engaged with it.
Now, identify your goal for users engaging with your new campaign. Select a goal that is both aggressive but attainable given previous attempts. Multiply that number by your engagement ratio and you should have a rough idea of how many users you need to reach to meet your goal.
Twitter’s new self-service dashboard helps users identify the right amount of spend to reach their target audience size.
Twitter’s new self-service dashboard helps users identify the right amount of spend to reach their target audience size.
Using self-service tools like Facebook Ads or Twitter Ads, you can now identify how much it will cost to reach a certain amount of users. Build that cost into your campaigns, along with media outreach and collaboration with partner brands that may have more established social media audiences.
By planning ahead, you can effectively evaluate and identify how just a few social media advertising dollars can help you achieve the kind of momentum you need for an amazing campaign. After all, if your strategy is as creative and innovative as you think it is, you should give your campaign the very best chance for success my making sure it reaches the best possible audience.
Drill Tip: Asking Customers for Online Reviews
A recent survey stated that 3 out of 5 customers will turn to online reviews for information about a product or service before they make a decision. At the same time, Google’s search algorithm gives greater visibility to social media reviews like those found on Yelp!, so that makes asking for online reviews a part of your customer engagement process more important than ever.
If your business is confident enough in its product that you believe the vast majority of your customers would express satisfaction with your business you should always ask for online reviews. Yet, many business owners feel that asking for online reviews outright is too self-serving.
There is a right way to ask. Done correctly, you’ll not only help build more frequent reviews but the added content will actually enhance the customer experience. Here’s how:
- Use a eminder email or other collateral – Even when prompted in person, customers often forget that they were asked to leave an online review. A useful tactic is to remind customers with a follow-up piece, perhaps a postcard or email sent out to the customer after their visit.
- Explain the “why?” – Customers are more likely to complete an online review if they believe their feedback is going to improve the business overall. Explain why you’re asking for honest feedback. Encourage customers to leave comments that will help both improve the business as well as inform the decisions of potential customers.
- Use an appropriate incentive – When you do ask for an online review, offer an incentive. This can be in the form of emailing a link to the review in exchange for a discount or an entry to win a free related service.
Together, these three steps can help make the “ask” for online reviews easier and more natural. More importantly, with potential customers turning more frequently to social media for purchase decisions, upping the volume of your online customer reviews can be a very cost-effective way to help grow your business.
Drill Tip: Need a Quick,Top-Line Analysis of a Topic or Trend? Use TrackThisNow
Sometimes you just need a “quick and dirty” tool to help find the major sites influencing a topic or trend.
Though subscription-based social media monitoring programs like Radian6 and NetBase are useful, they tend to do a poor job with more general topics or trends in discussion, such as “politics” or “public relations.”
The time drain associated with setting up a single, broad search on these programs creates the need for a lighter, less complex tool. That’s where TrackThisNow comes in handy.
TrackThisNow combines the advantages of Google with the ability to drill down by social media platform, i.e. by blog, forum or online news site. The site also displays the top sources within some of the larger social media communities, including Facebook, WordPress, Vimeo, Flickr and Yahoo! Groups.
The only disadvantage of TrackThisNow is that it restricts results to sources based on reach rather than allowing you to look for authority within a specific audience. This makes TrackThisNow ideal for researching macro-trends and macro-influencers. However, if you’re looking for a social search based on more niche trends and influencers, subscription-based programs are better suited for your needs.
TrackThisNow makes for a great tool to bookmark on your browser for those broad searches where you need more social media specificity than Google but less search complexity than a Radian6 or NetBase.
Drill Tip: Upgrading Your Twitter Profile [w/PSD Header Template]
This week, Twitter rolled out the availability of their new profile design. This new design gives brands the space to present more visual detail about their brand in a way that was only previously available for big advertisers.
First, Twitter now places your profile icon against a header much like Facebook and Google+ have done. Here are a few guidelines on creating an image for your header:
- Until you upload an image, your profile will remain in the old design
- Your image should be 1252 pixels wide by x 626 pixels tall
- Avoid using light backgrounds as most of the text that Twitter will overlay will be white
- If you want to get creative, use the PSD template below to create a header image that works with how Twitter will overlay your profile image and text.
[sws_button_icon_ui label="Download The PSD Template Here" href="http://brandwarepr.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/Twitter%20Header%20Template%202012.psd" ui_theme="ui-smoothness" icon="ui-icon-triangle-1-s" target="_blank"] [/sws_button_icon_ui]
Second, Twitter now allows you more options to control your background image. You can now left align, right align or center your background image giving you more creative flexibility. You can also now specify a white or black translucent overlay between your design and the Twitter feed.
All of the cool new options can be found by logging into your Twitter profile and then going to https://twitter.com/settings/design.
