Social Media Campaign Management: Best Practices from the Experts at #SMX #SocialMedia #Marketing

Like any marketing strategy, managing your social media presence takes a well balanced mix of knowing your audience, knowing what action you want them to take or what impression of your brand you want them to walk away with, and having the resources at your disposal to stay on top of it all (this last piece may prove to be the most challenging for most social media managers).  The key to being successful in social media is to spend some time researching as much as you can to learn what resources, tools and strategies are going to make the most sense for your business… and that’s going to be the focus of this, my final SMX Social Media Marketing post.

John Carcutt on HootSuite

If your role puts you in the position of managing the social presences of multiple clients, as is the case for John Carcutt of Advance Internet, then you’re probably intimately familiar with the concerns of there being several people with access to the company’s Twitter or Facebook accounts.  In order to reduce that risk and to ensure that only those who need full access have it, and others have enough access to do their job, but not so much that they could be a liability, John recommends HootSuite.  Offering a tiered hierarchy of access, you can manage access for your newest intern up through your own access as the account owner.

• Advanced: Administrator level, all access, all privileges
• Basic: Can post and approve posts by Limited users
• Limited: All posts need approval prior to publishing

I’ve been using the free, personal version of HootSuite to manage my Twitter accounts and can attest that it’s a great tool, very intuitive and I can see why John would recommend it for the added functionality that comes with the professional versions.

Ty Downing on The King and Queen of Social Media

Switching gears to talk a bit more about strategy than tools, as someone who’s been a social media aficionado since the old BBS systems back in the early 90s (remember how cool and state-of-the-art Prodigy was when it debuted?), I like to think of myself as someone who “gets” social media.  Ty Downing left me with the impression that he “gets it” too.

We’ve heard time and time again throughout this conference that content is key.  Ty contends that if that’s true, then engagement, or talking with your community, is queen.  Good content is absolutely crucial to catching people’s interest and attention, but you’re not making any connections within your community unless you’re getting people to talk to each other (and to you).  Keep in mind that Facebook users are most active between 11am and 3pm EST time, with Wednesday being the peak day of the week, so plan your top priority content accordingly!

Ty added the caveat that with Facebook, you can’t just set it and forget it.  Once a user likes your page, they’ve given you the opportunity to add information to their feed (they rarely will visit your page again, preferring to stick to their own walls).  Make sure the information you’re adding to their feed is useful, relevant, helpful, entertaining… anything that’s going to make them want to keep you in the mix. 

One tool Ty recommended for managing your Facebook campaigns is Roost.com, which will help you design short-term campaigns that will add 8 different types of posts to your users’ walls in 7 days.  Check out the intro video on their site for an overview.

In closing out his session, Ty added the reminder that there is one social media tool that sits head and shoulders above all others… YOU!  The worst thing you can do is put your campaigns on auto-pilot.  Social media is about engagement and real people.  Make a conscious effort to adopt the 3 Ts of Talk, Trust and Transaction, and you can’t go wrong.

Lisa Williams’ 6 Strategies for Kickin’ It Old School

Although social media is on the cutting edge of today’s online marketing strategies, there are certain elements of it that harken back to the most basic tenets of winning friends and influencing people that Media Forte Marketing’s Lisa Williams pulled together into her presentation to close out the conference. 

Here are her top recommendations to keep in mind when planning your strategies:

Lose your fear.  Join organizations like SEMPO, PRSA, Social Media Club, or local chapters of marketing organizations where you can meet other people who do what you do and can offer their insight, expertise or maybe even just act as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of. 

Embrace a cause.  Coordinate with a non-profit organization or cause (or create your own).  Consumers want to be socially responsible, give them an easy way to engage and create brand awareness. Examples: Tide landry detergent’s Loads of Hope, Amex’s Statue of Liberty Restoration and Famous Amos’s Literacy campaigns.

Create connections between your brand and the cause. Amex recently partnered with the Small Business Administration and Google to promote Small Business Saturday with the aim of getting people to shop small all year long.

Find (and reward) your evangelists. Coordinate with multiple organizations and tools, have clear benefits for your evangelists. The afore mentioned Amex Statue of Liberty Restoration  project raised 1.75M, grew new users by 17% and transaction activity jumped 28%.

Engage long term. Build longevity into the event or campaign.  Going back to Tide’s Loads of Hope campaign that was born out of the hurricane Katrina disaster, this campaign now mobilizes anytime there’s a natural disaster and people need their help. In addition to Tide showing up with machines and soap for those affected by the crisis, Tide usres can  help by registering the caps from their bottles of Tide on their website, which will trigger at $1 donation to the effort. 

Be genuine.  Get behind your cause, make it something you believe in and are passionate about. Wally Amos (Famous Amos) became spokesperson and highly effective advocate for literacy.

So, that’s for this years’s SMX Social Media Marketing… I hope you’ve found this series of posts on it helpful!  Overall it was a great conference – if you’re in the social media game or want to learn more about it, I highly recommend attending next year’s conference in fabulous Las Vegas.  Hopefully I’ll see you there!