Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts

Wednesday, 27 July 2016

Marketing lessons from the #IceBucketChallenge

Have you heard the great news today about the #IceBucketChallenge that went viral in 2014?
The campaign raised $115m (£87.7m) from people pouring cold water over themselves and posting the video on social media. This has funded an important scientific gene discovery in the progressive neurodegenerative disease ALS.
Here's a quick look at the lessons marketers can learn from the success of this viral campaign...








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Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Managing social media for business

Managing social media channels on behalf of an organisation means balancing the interests and reputation of the business and individuals alike.

As there is no specific social media law, existing laws must be applied in the social media context. This is further complicated by the global nature of social media – which inevitably crosses legal jurisdictions.

Whilst having a robust social media policy in place is important, its scope and application may not be as black and white as first appears.

Protecting confidential information on social media
Control of confidential business information must be maintained by employees interacting via social media (both on their personal accounts, and when posting on behalf of a business). It is critical for people to understand which data belongs to the organisation, and which is in the public domain. The importance of this is illustrated in the case of a UK based, human resources executive who included company attrition figures on his personal LinkedIn profile. Disciplinary action was taken against Mr. Flexman by his employer who accused him of posting confidential information online.

Similarly, an ex-employee of Hays Specialist Recruitment was ordered to disclose business contacts uploaded to LinkedIn, because they constituted confidential information belonging to the organisation.

It is remarkably easy for employees to be unwittingly caught out. For example, when setting up social media profiles, many encourage the user to import contacts from other systems (such as email address lists):


Imagine the ethical issues in the scenario where a medical professional imports a contact list containing patients’ email addresses (who, unknown to the professional, are then invited to follow or friend them online.)
"All of this technology emerged fast, and employees at all levels of the organization might lack the skills and knowledge needed to leverage social media channels. The resulting digital skills gap can only be addressed through social media education." Hootsuite.

Retaining control over how business contacts and other online information, controlled directly by employees, must be planned for:

  • If an individual is a LinkedIn Company Page administrator, and their personal account is compromised, the unauthorised party automatically has access to the Company Page(s) they manage. Ensuring administrator’s personal account passwords are ‘strong’ and changed frequently will go some way towards mitigating this risk. Social media accounts have also been intentionally compromised by employees looking to establish rival firms.
  • Organisations need to be clear about the process for transferring contacts and business related conversations stored within social media accounts administered by employees. For example, there have been a number of instances where employees have taken a Twitter following with them when changing employer.
Social media profiles belonging to an organisation must also be protected as a valuable asset. Profiles with a large following may have a commercial value, and/or be part of brand valuation exercises.


Complying with the terms and conditions of social media platform is of paramount importance in protecting such assets. At the heart of Facebook’s governance, for example, is its real name policy (which goes as far as to prohibit practises such as the use of nicknames as middle names and the use of unusual capitalisation):

“We require people to provide the name they use in real life; that way, you always know who you're connecting with. This helps keep our community safe.” Facebook.

Failure to comply with the real name policy by an administrator (within their personal profile) could result in its removal - along with any company Facebook Pages managed by that administrator.

Well documented examples of Company Pages being closed down for violation of Facebook’s terms and conditions include:
As well as protecting their own assets, organisations must demonstrate respect for the intellectual property of others. For example, Twitter suspended the account of Bleacher Report in December 2014 on the grounds that it was displaying unauthorised video clips of football matches belonging to the UK Premier League.

Twitter clearly outlines its stance on trade-marked brands and infringement of copyright or intellectual property in its trademark policy.

Protecting online reputation

Adherence to well established regulations governing traditional marketing and communications must be applied within the social media context.

For example, laws governing the sharing of personal information, or sending unsolicited communications must be considered. Tools such as Facebook graph search have make it remarkably easy for organisations to send targeted, but unsolicited promotional messages.

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) guidance outlines how such techniques must be controlled within industry they regulate. However, the guidance highlights some important issue relevant to a number of industries. The first is in relation to the re-publishing of social media posts which may result in the exposure of promotional materials to unintended recipients:

“Firms should ensure that their original communication would remain fair, clear and not misleading, even if it ends up in front of a non-intended recipient (through others re-tweeting on Twitter or sharing on Facebook). One way of managing this risk is the use of software that enables advertisers to target particular groups very precisely.” FCA.

Think of exposure to promotion of alcohol, tobacco, or gambling related products to those under the legal age; via re-tweets, shares, and online reviews.

Secondly, the FCA guidance outlines the need for “adequate system [to be] in place to sign off digital media communications. This sign-off should be by a person of appropriate competence and seniority within the organisation”. It is sensible for organisations to keep their own records of communications published via social media, and record authority to publish. Further, organisations using third party agencies to create and post content on their behalf should satisfy themselves as to the knowledge and processes of their chosen partner.

A four-eyes review and sign-off process for social media posts may have saved face for US Airways who attached a pornographic image in its response to a complainants tweet – which was seen by hundreds of thousands of its followers.

Balancing the rights of the organisation and the individual

There are no shortage of examples of employees falling foul of social media policies, guidelines, and general etiquette:
  • A manager at JD Weatherspoons claim for unfair dismissal, after she was fired for posting comments about the pub chain’s customers on her personal Facebook wall, was unsuccessful. Although the defendants comments were only visible to her Facebook friends, the number of them (646) was an important consideration in the case as it was thought to large enough to constitute bring the organisation into ‘public’ disrepute.
However, protecting the interests of business must be balanced with the rights of the individual to express their own opinions and have their own online voice - as highlighted in the case of Smith v Trafford Housing Trust (2012).

Mr Smith posted a link to a BBC News article about gay marriage on his personal Facebook wall and commented “an equality too far”. This was visible to his 201 friends, and friends of friends – some of whom had responded to his comment. On his Facebook profile, Mr. Smith had identified himself as an employee of Trafford Housing Trust, who started disciplinary action against him for alleged gross misconduct (being in breach of their code of conduct and equal opportunities policy).

The decision went in favour of Mr. Smith on the grounds that (among other factors) his post could not be considered work-related because it was not specifically targeted at his work [Facebook] contacts. The Court also stressed that the views expressed reflected those widely held by other members of society, which were frequently reflected in mainstream media.

Individuals have the right to post information about their personal interests and beliefs online, and employers must be cautious about using this for purposes for which they were not intended. For example, personal social media profiles will often contain information about an individual’s ethnicity, religion, age, marital status and sexual orientation – which, in the UK, is protected under the Equality Act.


According to UK employment and HR specialists ACAS, “digging up sensitive 'protected' information that is not usually sought during the application process could leave employers open to discrimination claims. Rejected applicants could maintain that the real reason they didn't get the job was because of knowledge of the protected characteristic...

...On the other side of the discrimination coin, research suggests that vetting through social media may also encourage 'recruitment bias' according to age, gender or ethnicity. Some recruiters said they drew inferences about candidates from Facebook profile pictures”.

Protecting social media managers

Employees often take on responsibility for administering company social media accounts without having the pitfalls, risks, and legal implications of doing so explained to them.

The personal liability of individuals’ who publish on behalf of an organisation, should be clearly explained to them (including any re-posts or re-tweets of content originated by others) - the Crown Prosecution Service has made clear that such publications could constitute an offence. Where necessary, personal liability insurance should be in place to cover employees acting as administrators (the emotional and reputational costs of a court case being brought against an individual will of course, not be covered by this insurance).
About the author
Claire Cresswell-Lane is a UK based, CIM Chartered Marketer specialising in digital marketing strategy and communications. You can contact her via LinkedIn or Twitter.
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Tuesday, 17 February 2015

How to keep your digital estate on-track


Digital Marketing Managers are tasked with looking after an ever increasing number of online assets. 

Here are my tips for the key functions to monitor - keeping performance on track and ensuring a seamless online journey for customers.

Website Content

Content is still king, and runs through the centre of digital marketing planning. Make sure you monitor:

Titles -  optimise titles for the keywords or phrases your target audience is searching for. Remember to carry out competitor analysis as part of your keyword strategy.

H1, H2, H3 - tags should be used for page headings and sub-headings to increase on-page Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts. It's a simple rule that is often overlooked. This rule should also be applied to any PDFs that will end up published to your website. Check out these tips for structuring website content before you start to write.

Font size - should be large enough to comply with accessibility guidance, and avoid the need for pinch and zoom on mobile devices. 

Credibility - frequently updated content will prove to external search engines that your site is actively managed. It will also demonstrate to visitors that content is current and therefore more likely to be credible.


Blogs - what better way is there to maintain a stream of current content that will prove a long-term source of incoming traffic than through blogging? The more engagement your blog posts receive, the better your SEO results!

Lead capture - embedded into your content should be both micro- and macro- conversion opportunities (link follows, form completion, call-to-click, newsletter subscription, purchases, and so on).

Analytics - ensure you establish a baseline for your content before you implement changes, so you can see how effective they have genuinely been.

PDFs - content that doesn't need to be in PDF shouldn't be as it can disadvantage your SEO efforts in a number of ways. I talk more about this in an article I published in June 2014.

User Experience

Conducting both qualitative and quantitative analysis of how users interact with your online estate will provide you with a wealth of insight that can be used to inform continuous improvements to your digital assets. Make sure your plans include some or all of the following (depending on your size and capacity):

  • user experience testing workshops
  • content rating and review software
  • online surveys
  • mouse tracking studies.

Domain management

Effective domain management still pulls a lot of punches with search engines. It is also an important part of your branding, so deserves special consideration:

 Age - domain authority demonstrates to external search engines that your website belongs to a credible organisation with longevity. Secure domain names as soon as possible, and retain them after retirement as part of brand guardianship.


 Sub-domains - an effective way to maximise marketing efforts across a number of channels is via the use of sub-domains: http://subdomain.domain.com. This way, traffic generating activity benefits one central digital space, and both can benefit from the SEO advantages this brings.

 File structure - remember that the file structure following your domain extension provides search engines with important information about your websites content. The closer your keywords are to the root of your domain name, the better - for example:

 ...com/ladies-shoes.html

 is much stronger than

...com/our products/shoes/ladies-shoes.html

 All too often file structures focus on generic functional keywords (about us, contact us) instead of product and service offering (ladies shoes, ladies sandals, and so on).

Social media

Social signals are very important off-site search engine optimisation factors. The more engaging your content (that is, the more it is shared, bookmarked, liked, and commented upon), the more credibility it gains. Greater levels of engagement also contribute to a high landing-page quality score which will lower your Google pay-per-click costs!

 Brand guardianship - not every social media platform will suit your requirements - this depends very much on your product, service, and industry. But even if you don't plan on using a particular social media you should claim the vanity URL (before somebody does it for you). If you do this, it is a good idea to populate at least the landing-page with basic information which points back to your website.

 Integration - be sure to automate posts where it is sensible to do so. For example, you can configure Blogger to automatically post content to Google+, or post tweets to your Facebook Page. The important factor to monitor here is that you post content in a format appropriate to the platform - you will need to re-tweak your content in order to do this effectively.

 Cross-refer - most people use more than one social media platform, so remember to provide clear links to other ways that people can follow you, such as Twitter and Facebook.

 Conversation calendar - creating a conversation calendar will help to keep your content flowing and will ensure that you don't miss opportunities to capitalise on the buzz around planned events in your industry.

 Remember, there are a host of free tools out there that allow you to schedule your posts in advance (such as Hootsuite and SocialOomph).


Hootsuite - Social Relationship Platform

Compliance

Meeting statutory and best practice guidelines demonstrates to search engines, as well as your target audience that you mean business, and are safe to do business with!

 Schedule in time to review your governance policies to make sure they remain up-to-date.

 In the UK and Europe, you may want to include compliance with:
About the author
Claire Cresswell-Lane is a UK based, CIM Chartered Marketer specialising in digital marketing strategy and communications. You can contact her via LinkedIn or Twitter.
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Friday, 26 September 2014

5 Facebook Tactics to Increase Engagement

I recently attended a Facebook Master Class, run by Social Media Advance. Here, I share the top 5 tactics I took away from the course.

1. A (cover) picture is worth a thousand words

When the average user logs on to Facebook there are 1,500 potential updates could feature in their newsfeed. Facebook therefore serves what it judges to be the posts that will be of most value and interest. These are posts from individuals, pages, and groups that the user interacts with most frequently. If you are at the stage of trying to building an audience this can pose a particular challenge – only 5% of your posts are likely to appear in followers newsfeeds organically.

One tactic to overcome this is to update your cover photo regularly - as notification that you have done so always appears in news feeds of your followers. This provides a touch point between your brand and your audience, reminding them of your presence and increasing the likelihood of engagement.

Beware not to use cover photos in place of posts. No more than 20% of your cover photograph can be text - Facebook have a text overlay detection tool to help you stay compliant.

Updating your cover photo too frequently could also prove a turn-off for your followers, so use this tactic sparingly.

2. Pinned posts

If there is a message that you want to remain at the top of your Facebook page, you can pin it by hovering over the drop-down arrow in the top, left-hand corner of the post. Pinned posts automatically stay at the top of your page for 7 days – increasing exposure for important messages.

3. Less is more

Posts of up to 80 characters get 27% more engagement so keep them brief to encourage comments, likes, and shares.


4. Full length URLs

Posts with links detailing a full length URL generate 3 times more engagement as users trust the destination site as a trusted source. Keep  shortened URLs for platforms with character limits - such as Twitter.

5. Ask and you shall receive

Posts asking for likes, comments, and shares gets 30% more engagement, so design your messages in a way that encourages interaction.

On that note, if you have found these tips useful, please 'say thank you' with a share, follow (Twitter), or like (Facebook).
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Friday, 22 August 2014

Developing an effective SEO strategy



With so many online channels for the modern marketer to manage (websites, blog, social media channels, and so on) it can be difficult to know where to focus efforts in order to create an efficient SEO strategy. Here are 10 tactics that contribute to effective digital growth.

 Organic website traffic

 

1.  Increase organic traffic. Organic traffic proves that your content is relevant and current to your users’ needs, adding credibility to your website when it come to search engine rankings. To increase organic traffic, write content that is: 
·         easy for search engines to index
·         relevant to search queries of your target audience(s)
·         engaging and original
·         easy to share.

Return visitors

2.   Increased visitor loyalty. In order to realise the lifetime value of customers, you need to facilitate repeat visits to your digital channels. Visitor loyalty will stem from a good initial online experience where: 
·      relevant information is easy to find


·      queries are resolved first time: through FAQs, online support, or via user forums
·      content is personalised to the individual (via links to CRM, cookies, or account preferences)
·      service is above and beyond that expected.

Resolve queries online

3. By resolve queries online you can reduce: 
·     costs to the organisation (cheaper than handling calls via a contact centre)
·     customer frustration (faster than waiting in a telephone queue).

Reinforce your brand off-line

4.   You can reinforce your brand when customers are offline by providing downloadable content. Remember to:  
·     add genuine value – provide free information and special offers
·     provide easy routes back to your online channels (via tagged URLS).

Data capture

5.       Form completion. 
Whether it’s subscribing to a newsletter, providing feedback, or signing up to an online forum – capturing information via form completion can: 
·         inform your CRM strategy
·         help you to segment and target audiences
·         gain valuable customer insight about your services
·         encourage future touch points with your brand.

Be social

6.       Encourage social shares.
Word of mouth is a powerful and trusted channel. People are more likely to interact with a brand that is recommended by a friend or family member.  Make your content easy to share (via Twitter, Facebook, and so on) and comment on. Amplify compliments via your contacts networks. Minimise reputation damage in the same way. 

Offer incentives

7.       Competition time! 
Competitions are a great way to increase BUZZ, raise brand awareness, and engage customers old and new – which all boosts your SEO efforts.  If you are running a competition via Twitter, here are some simple rules to help you.

Online sales

8.     Sell your products and services online. Increasing revenue is the bottom line! Make it easy for your visitors to buy online by: 
·         providing clear calls to action
·         remember personal preferences
·         offering one-click ordering
·         allowing order tracking
·         reassuring that transactions are secure!

Cross-channel promotion

9.       Promote new channels.
Promote channels that your existing customers may not have tried before, to increase the touch points they have with your brand:
·         Follow us, like us, poke us, +1 us, and so on.
·         Encourage sign-up for off-line promotions.
·         Run targeted ad campaigns.

Accessibility is key

10.   Make content accessible. 
You can have the best content, the fanciest CRM system, and the most engaging graphics out there, but if your customers can’t access your channels, they will not serve you well: 
·         Invest in mobile optimisation.
·         Comply with W3C standards for accessibility.
·         Have a business continuity strategy so if one channel fails, others can step in!

About the author
Claire Cresswell-Lane is a UK based, CIM Chartered Marketer specialising in digital marketing strategy and communications. You can contact her via LinkedIn or Twitter.


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Monday, 18 August 2014

How to win the social media debate

Sometimes, the most challenging part of setting-up social media accounts is convincing your senior colleagues that it is a good idea! Here are some tactics to help you out...

The conversation is already happening

People are already talking about your brand and or activities online – but if you're not actively monitoring social media, you just don't know it, or if it is correct. There are lots of tools, both free and paid for, to help you monitor your reputation online. See what is being said, and make sure decision makers are aware of the frequency and tone of these conversations. Demonstrate the opportunities being missed.

Inform future communications efforts

By monitoring conversations that others are having online, you can understand how effective your communications have been to date – how well your key messages have been delivered and understood; where you need to correct or reinforce information, and so on.

Stakeholder database analysis

Analysing stakeholder databases can be a very powerful tool for convincing colleagues that social media is a must-do. Make a list of your top stakeholders, then simply list their social media presence and level of activity. Once you have identified where your stakeholders are present online, see how they are already interacting with each other. Mentionmapp.com is a free tool, that quickly provides you with a visual representation of who your stakeholders are talking to, and about which topics (you need to sign in with a Twitter account).

Make your content shareable

Making your website content easy for your audiences to share can help to demonstrate how actively they are participating in social media. There are lots of free tools around, such as addthis.com which you can include on website pages, in email footers, newsletters and press releases. These tools have reporting systems that let you see how many times content has been shared, and accessed as a result of those shares.

This will demonstrate two points: 1) your current audience is actively using social media and 2) social media can be a powerful way of amplifying your messages and extending audience reach.

Adding statistics like this to your monthly reports will serve as a passive reminder that social media should be on the agenda.

Ask your audience

Asking your target audience(s) about their social media use can be a powerful tool to convince colleagues that social media is no longer a nice-to-do. This could be something simple, like an online poll, or a questionnaire created in Survey Monkey, which is free to use.

Referrals from social media channels

Free tools such as Google Analytics can tell you all sorts of useful information to help with your arguments for developing social media channels, such as: number of referrals to your website via social media channels and the number of visitors accessing your site via a smart device.

Brand identity

Social media accounts are an important part of brand identity. If you do not claim your accounts, somebody else may do it for you in order to capitalise on your brand, or even to try to sell it to you at a later date (this is known as cyber-squatting).

Search Engine rankings

Having your website appear on the first page of Google is no longer simply about keyword placement, or how much you are willing to pay for an ad-placement. Google look at over 200 factors to determine whether they should return your website content to users who search for given phrases. Social media activity now plays an important role in determining your credibility as a trusted online source – social accounts linked to your domain; frequency of new content posted; number of quality followers/subscribers, click-through-rate, and so on.

Managing the risks

Resistance to using social media can stem from the perceived or actual risk associated with doing so:
  • Creating a demand for services that there is not capacity to manage.
  • Negative comments online about the brand, organisation, or individuals.
  • Passwords being lost, shared, or accounts being hacked.
  • Employees making defamatory remarks online – accidentally or intentionally.
  • Security and governance concerns over data being held by third parties such as Twitter, or Facebook.
  • Retaining ownership of online collateral, and so on.....
These risks are all real, and it is important to address them in order to provide reassurance about how they will be managed. Your social media policy should outline known risks to the organisation, and the methods you will use to mitigate them. It is important that the written policy is well communicated and understood by individual employees before any social media activity takes place. Here are some pointers to get you started with developing a social media policy.

Pilot projects

Rather than go for a big-bang approach to social media, you may want to start with one account and make sure you manage it as well as possible. Ensuring its success will be the best way to convince colleagues of the value of future social media use.

It can be useful to identify a specific project with a clear start and end date, and trial the use of social media as a communications channel for this. This is helpful because it legitimately allows the organisation to close the account after a fixed period of time. This means that if some of the risks identified above are realised, the social media account can be taken off-line after a short period of time without further risk to reputation.

Pilot projects also allow social media managers to gain all important hands-on experience, both in terms of dealing with the platform, and the types of responses received.

Need help with social media?

If you have any questions, post them in the comments below and I will do my best to help you out.

If you have found this article useful, please show thanks with a share, follow, or like.
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Thursday, 14 August 2014

Getting started with social media - an essential guide for beginners

Identify your existing audience

Social media enables you to reach out to new audiences, grow your markets, and network in new circles. Why then, do you need to identify where existing customers and contacts hang out? There are two good reasons for this: 

1.  Growing a social media channel can be hard work. People are less likely to follow, like, or share content from a name or brand they are unfamiliar with, or have not interacted with before. Connecting with an existing audience will give you that all important head start when trying to get a social media channel off the ground. Having them like, follow, or share your information will allow you to harness their contacts – amplify your messages, and growing your audience organically.
2.  You need to look after your existing customers in order to realise their lifetime value – it is more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. Social media is an added ‘touch point’ through which contacts interact with your brand – it will remind them that you exist, reinforce your key messages through a drip, drip, drip of information, and persuade them to follow your calls to action.

Finding your existing contacts

It is well known that different demographic groups hang out on different social networking platforms. Pew Research Center provide some informative and insightful statistics on this topic.

Therefore, you need to decide which segments of your audience to seek out.  To help you decide on this, you may want to examine your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, or stakeholder database, to find out what information you hold on existing contacts.

Tools like Socialeyezer allow you to identify which social networks your target demographic audience hang out on.

Next, examine whether the platforms you are considering are increasing or decreasing in popularity for your target audience. Do you remember articles like this - highlighting the number of young people movingaway from Facebook (11 million since 2011)?

Of course, these methods will help you identify the demographics of people that are already engaged, to some extent, with your brand. Your objectives probably include growing your audiences and extending your reach in one or more of the following ways: 

1.  Retain existing customers, and continue to sell them the same products or services (market penetration).
2. Identify and engage new customers, and continue to sell products and services from your current range (market development).
3.  Promote a new product or service to existing customers (product development).
4.  Promote new products and services to new customers (diversification).

Define your social media objectives

It is really important for you to stop and think about what you want to achieve by having social media channels. What does success look like? Knowing what you are trying to achieve should determine the methods and tactics you use to get there. For example, if your objective is to increase website traffic, you may measure the cost per click of advertising campaigns; if your objective is to have people sign-up to a newsletter, you may measure cost per acquisition instead.

Having clear objectives will also help you to identify key messages, decide on tone of voice, timings and frequency of postings, channels to use, levels of engagement required, and so on.

Objectives can be wide ranging and may include: 
  • raising awareness of your brand
  • selling a product or service
  • encouraging visitors to subscribe, make a donation, or try new things
  • improving SEO by generating user comments and increasing engagement
  • gaining customer feedback and insight.

Listen to existing social media conversations

If you follow the steps above, you will now know:
  1. who you want to engage with
  2. where to find your target audience
  3. what your objectives for opening social media channels targeting these audiences are.
You are now almost ready to join conversations in the virtual world. Joining a conversation on social media is the same as joining a conversation in the real world. Before you begin to speak you make a mental assessment to: 
  • understanding who is already talking
  • note the tone, pitch, and sentiment of the conversation
  • think about how you can add value to what is already being said.
You do not: 
  • speak without introducing yourself
  • interrupt the speaker to take the conversation off on a new tangent
  • talk without listening and responding to the comments directed towards you.
The same rules apply to your interactions on social media.
                                                                                                                                                            
Listening will enable you to assess sentiment around your brand and decide how to amplify or manage these feelings when you open your own social media channels.

By listening to existing conversations, you will quickly be able to identify who your greatest ambassadors and critics are online. You can then evaluate how influential these people are to inform how much effort you should spend in engaging with them.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

There are a number of tools, both free and paid-for, that enable you to listen to existing conversations .

Social media monitoring tools such as Sprout Social, Brandwatch, Gorkana, or Meltwater Buzz are paid-for services that will do the segmentation for you.

Tools such as Social Mention, Addictomatic, and IceRocket  are freely available online and will require manual analysis on your part.

Once you have identified who the key opinion formers and influencers are for your particular niche, you can monitor who they are engaging with, and on what topics, by using a great, free online tool called Mention map.

Keeping social media conversations flowing

Just as in real life, your contributions to conversation should be guided by what is already being said, the tone with which it is delivered, it’s value to taking relationships forward, and so on. As your experience with social media develops, you will also initiate conversations of your own. A tool that can help you to manage your online dialogue is a conversation calendar. Simply put, this is a roadmap of planned conversations that you will participate in throughout the year. Of course, you will take part in unplanned discussions too, as you react to unknown events related to your sector. Here are some ideas of what your conversation calendar might include: 
  • events that you will be taking part in, or attending
  • annual holidays or sporting events that may #trend – wishing your customers good luck in Olympic events, for example
  • known dates of publications or product launches – of course you will want to plan for their build up in your planned conversations too
  • inspirational quotes specific to your niche – likely to be reposted and add to your online credibility
  • did you know...posts to remind customers of your offering and reinforce your brand and key messages
  • the birthday of your organisation, a product, or service.

Assess your capacity to manage different platforms

Fully engaging on social media can become a time consuming business. Failure to fully engage or respond to contacts can be damaging to your reputation. You will need to be realistic about how much resource the channels you are considering will cost you on a day-to-day basis and whether you can manage this on your own or need help from an independent third party. Issues to consider include: 
  •  How often do you intent to publish information?
  • How many responses do you anticipate receiving?
  • Who will manage the responses?
  • How will responses be managed out of working hours?

Questions?
If you have any questions, post them in the comments below and I will do my best to help you out.

If you have found this article useful, please show thanks with a share, follow, or like.
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