Make Social Part of Your DNA – Social Media Week London #smwdna #smwldn #social #socialgood

At a random street in central London three people turn up from different directions looking at their phone then at a closed black door. Then they look at each other, then at next door where people almost fall out of a small theater type building. It’s Social Media Week and a mix of marketing professionals, community managers and small business owners has found their way to ‘Make Social Part of Your DNA’ to get new insights on the ROI of social media, generating insights, lead generation and more.

As everyone looking after social efforts is looking at several sites at once (whilst keeping internal stakeholders happy with lots of reports) I thought some structured tips and resources may work best:

Photo’s by @adebrophy

‘I’ve got you under my skin’

• To make social part of your DNA: 1. know your customer’s social profile, 2. empower your employees to know this DNA (they are more than an account number!) and allow them to connect with your customers. 3. Allow customers to talk about you amongst themselves (they do anyway) and join their conversations (keynote speaker JP Rangaswami, Salesforce.com)
• Go to place where people talk about you & interact (Fergus Boyd, Virgin Atlantic)
• Listen to the long tail (Fergus Boyd, Virgin Atlantic)
• Know who your influencers are – their Klout score is one way to find out (Fergus Boyd, Virgin Atlantic) Identify which ones are driving the conversation (Kerry Bride –Dell & Neville Hobson, For Immediate Release)
• What keywords do your customers search for? Are you connected with that?
• Not best but next practice: combine all your social media tools to create one exceptional experience for your customers (Kerry Bride –Dell & Neville Hobson, For Immediate Release)
• Become part of a customer peer group and share advice (Kerry Bride –Dell & Neville Hobson, For Immediate Release).
• Enable customers to fulfill the 3 things they like to do: share ideas, product knowledge & solutions' (Kerry Bride –Dell & Neville Hobson, For Immediate Release)

Social Reflection

• Search has become more social, being socially engaged gives you better social SEO results. (Fergus Boyd, Virgin Atlantic)
• Assess your social maturity level, where should you be investing? (Fergus Boyd, Virgin Atlantic)
• What is your share in the customer conversation opposed to your competitors?
• Hard to get budget for your social efforts? Don’t just share numbers internally, tailor what you do to the stakeholder and give it some wow factor (Jacqui Taylor, FlyingBinary)
• Media strategy – less tweets resulted in a higher CTR per tweet (Andrew Walker, Tweetminster)
• What causes your social peaks? Use this insight to keep your social presence strong between campaigns (Andrew Walker, Tweetminster)

Scaling Global Social Efforts:

• We all know the big social channels but in some markets there are secondary social channels worth looking at that you may not have heard off. The use of social networks is also not the same in all markets (Kerry Bride –Dell & Neville Hobson, For Immediate Release)
• Don’t be too protective and give social control to local community or marketing managers (Fergus Boyd, Virgin Atlantic)

Social Resources and Test Cases from #smwdna

• Dell promoted a social toolkit for small and medium businesses. Have a look.
• SMB Test case: Clever social media only for big companies? Read how Wiggly Wigglers (‘the Good Life Made Easy’) won a global small business award in New York through the use of social media.
• Find and share social insights at #socialgood
• IABUK social measurement
• SMB tip: follow what your competitors are up to with the help of Twitter lists.
• A rather impressive O2 social follower breakdown was demonstrated. Get a free (but somewhat more simple) insight into your top followers, geographic impact & most re-tweeted posts from Tweetsheet it did not work for me today but these screenshots look great!

Come and talk to us about digital advertising, SMB best business practices, search, social (and anything else..)

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Were you at social media week and picked up another good tip / best practice? Why not share it below?

Simone Schuurer – EMEA Community Site Manager