To Stick with your Social Media Program or to Abandon It, That is the Question

Getting yourself into social media is a breeze. Membership is free and setting up shop on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn takes all of about an hour.

Getting yourself out of social media is another question altogether. How do you judge program performance? How do you know if the ends justify the means? How can you tell whether you’re one Tweet away from roaring success or only throwing good money after bad?

Here are factors to consider when determining whether it’s time to make a strategic withdrawal from social media.

Decide with Metrics

One of the silliest ideas floating around is that social media is somehow above or beyond statistical analysis. Don’t buy into this thinking. If your social media program does not have metrics in place, you’ll need to put them in place and track performance for several months in order to make an informed decision on whether to continue or terminate your effort. Whatever your program’s goal, there are performance metrics that can be associated with it. For instance, retweets and mentions are measures of brand awareness. Blog and Facebook comments are measures of engagement. Referred traffic and form fills are measures of conversion.

For a plug-pulling discussion, the key consideration is not magnitude, but the trend. If numbers are going up, keep going. If numbers are flat or declining – and you can’t think of ideas for improving – consider other marketing options.

Decide with Business Sense

Even though social media metrics exist, they are far from perfect and should always be considered in the context of your general business sense of what’s going on. Contextual issues to consider include:

Anecdotal evidence. Managing social media from an ivory tower can be deceiving. When you’re in the trenches, reading comments, responding to tweets, etc., you may find success stories that don’t show up in the analysis: For example, if you secure one new customer with a lifetime value of $100,000, this alone may justify your social media program. On the flip side, the numbers might show tons of retweets, but if they all involve strategically unimportant tweets, they may have little or no value.

Competitive evidence. How are your competitors doing in social media? If some of them are doing well, it indicates your program has the potential to succeed. However, if few (or none) of your competitors are thriving, it could mean that social media is not a good option in your niche.

Decide with Every Option in Mind

Withdrawing from social media to save money is risky; withdrawing to devote resources to another, more promising program is smart. The problem with eliminating social as a cost cutting maneuver is the difficulty of starting up again when your business returns to expansion mode. Certain Internet marketing activities, such as pay-per-click advertising, can be turned off and on like a faucet. In the social space, however, consistent presence is critical. A sudden withdrawal may inspire conversations that negatively impact your brand, and you’ll have a hard time winning people back if you return.

Decide by Process of Elimination

If you decide to abandon social, you won’t want to look back and wonder, “What if?” To avoid abandoner’s remorse, ask yourself and your organization the following questions before taking the step.

Have we given social media our best effort?
Were our goals clearly defined?
If we lack internal resources, would it help to outsource some or all of the work?
If we are outsourcing, would it help to bring some or all of the work in house?
Are there any bold ideas that we can try?
Would it make sense to scale back rather than eliminate social media, and give our customers time to catch up with us?

It is not smart to abandon social media because you are so repelled by the idea of social media that you are blinded to its high potential in your business. Neither is it wise to give up because of a negative comment or two, or even several. People are going to talk about your brand whether you have a social media presence or not … which, come to think of it, is a really good reason to have one.

About the Author
Brad Shorr is Director of Content and Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago marketing agency. They specialize in B2B, with clients in niche industries such as credit card processing and GPS vehicle tracking. A blogger since 2005, Brad writes frequently on social media and copywriting topics. Contact Brad on Twitter via @BradShorr.

Nov 30 2011

For the Non-Techie PR Pro: How to Better Understand Social Media and SEO

“Experience is life’s best teacher.”

Never have words been so true, but when it comes to technology, what you lack in experience, you can gain through simple self-teachings. This, like anything of value, takes loads of time and energy. Luckily, I’ve taken the first step for you. Here’s what I’ve found:

You may think you know social media … but you don’t.

When asked ton he first day of my internship on a scale of 1 to 10 how social-savvy I was, I confidently replied with an “eight,” come to find a few weeks later that I may have swiftly inserted my foot directly into my own mouth.

Each day following I learned, the hard way, that the complex world of social media and monitoring is one that is seriously overlooked at a university level. To avoid the foot-in-mouth scenario I fell right into, here are some quick tips to improve your social-savvy score:

Follow social media trends VERY CLOSELY! Track social media and public relations-focused blogs using Google Reader (your new best friend!) such as social media explorer and the Buzz Bin.
Read up on and experiment with free monitoring tools like Twiangulate, Icerocket, Quantcast and Compete. Social media metrics are constantly changing and improving, so to be on top of this will be invaluable.
Familiarize yourself with tweet-scheduling platforms. Though initially (naively and adamantly) against any form of automated response, I’ve come to find Co-Tweet to be an effective stress-reducer and schedule simplifier. The content is still all you, but now your tweets are guaranteed to be on time, regardless of how busy your day turns out to be.

Search Engine Opti-what?

Have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Though as an intern, you may not have direct exposure to this right off the bat, your ability to have an educated conversation on link flow and keyword co-occurrence will knock the socks off your supervisor. The SEO Blog will be a great resource to get you started.

Mobile-Moguls in Training

Though tempting to use as a crutch, not having a smartphone is no longer an excuse for not knowing how mobile technologies work. The mobile apps, QR codes and text message campaigns being rolled out today are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s to come.

One common theme that can be drawn from each of these tech teachings is this: reading. I’m no expert, but I’ve learned the importance of constantly learning. The ability to consistently grow and the passion to do so will be an enviable skill at any stage of your career in public relations and beyond.

About the Author
Nikki Parrotte is an assistant account executive at public relations and marketing firm CRT/tanaka. Connect with her on LinkedIn or via @nikki_parrotte.

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Nov 22 2011

How to Solve the Question: Who Funds the Social Media Budget?

A few weeks ago, PR at Sunrise brought to light a very interesting debate happening between communicators and sales folks. The topic was, “Should the sales team pay for part of the social media budget?”

It’s an interesting question. At first I thought, “Yes, the sales team should pay for a portion of the social media budget.” But then I thought about it a little more and changed my mind.

First off, for the vast majority of brands it’s problematic to make sales the primary focus for their social media efforts. Instead, the communicators, tasked with managing the various social communities, should be focused on brand awareness, brand reputation and integrity, customer service, building positive connections with customers and potential customers, positioning themselves as thought/industry leaders and so on… Sure, sales can factor into the overall plan, but it shouldn’t be at the top of the list (for most brands.)

If the sales team starts funding the social efforts, they’ll want to control the messages and skew the objectives/plans in their favor. That said, saddling the communicators with strictly finding leads and driving sales puts them in a tough spot. How would you feel if before you went to a cocktail party, your boss told you to find sales leads and assigned you a sales quota? It’d be tough, because conversations between brands and people shouldn’t only be about selling.

I propose a new solution to this question, because obviously we want the sales team and the communications team to play nice. Let the communicators do their thing and fund their own projects. But, keep ‘sales’ as part of the overall strategy (second to other objectives mentioned above). And, if the sales team experiences some success as a result of the social efforts, a portion of their commission should be paid to the communications team quarterly.

Creative campaigns via Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, etc. can be used to drive sales and help show the value in the communication team’s social efforts. Sales can then pay a portion of the increased sales revenue to the communications team as a measure of good faith.

Perhaps this won’t work… but maybe it just might…. What do you think?

About the Author
Andrew Bartucci is a social media consultant and account executive from Toronto, Canada. He holds a BA in Communications and a Graduate Certificate in PR. His expertise is in corporate communications, digital PR and social media. Andrew also writes for and owns www.absocialmediasolutions.com. Contact him via Twitter: @bar2cci

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Nov 8 2011

Strategists Need to Continue to do ‘Punk Work’ from Time to Time

On a recent blog posting on Edelman Digital’s site, author Dave Fleet argues that new hires looking to break into agencies are describing themselves as a “strategist” before they’ve earned the title in a way to “avoid learning about critical elements of a communications function.”

Titles in the PR and social media industry often times can be superfluous, especially when words like “social media” and “strategy” are involved. Many folks who have the phrase “social media” in their title, for instance, wind up doing what is actually more like traditional media relations pitching—it just involves blogs instead of newspapers and radio shows.

Fleet’s main argument is that “you can’t be an effective strategist until you’ve got some experience to rest behind it.” It’s important for account level staff to learn from their mistakes and to see strategy plans written by more senior leaders and see how they work. In other words, “there’s a lot more to strategy than just idea creation” according to Fleet.

While his main argument is sound,even if a bit more pointed and argumentative than necessarily needed, it’s probably not best to call a new hire looking to enter the industry a “punk.”

It’s easy to see many new hires leaving college, being told by college professors and guidance counselors that they need to market themselves, and settling on a generic, but fancy-sounding title like “strategist.”

At the same time, it would likely benefit those who really deserve the title of “strategist” – for sake of argument, let’s say SAE and VP and above – to do some “punk” work from time to time.

How many times have we been told by senior leadership, whether it’s internal or from an external client, to execute on an idea they developed that doesn’t necessarily have all the elements needed for a successful campaign? A stunt event without a clear message? A PR pitch that’s generic and too self-serving? The invention of a holiday or a world record that nobody will be interested in?

As you advance in your career, you have to give up your time to activities that are often left to the punks—media pitching, event support, press release writing, etc. It’s not necessarily an arrogance thing—it might just be a time and budget issue.

However, those experiences are the kinds of things that can help you develop a sound strategy that is gleamed from what worked and what doesn’t. Just as there’s a lot more to strategy than idea generation as Fleet says, there’s something crucial to developing good strategy: experience. Just as the inexperienced may struggle with developing sound strategies, so too can the experienced if they give all the punk work – pitch writing, media relations, etc. – to the punks.

If you want to be a good strategy, the best strategy for achieving that, is to be the one that has to carry it out from time to time.

About the Author
Alan Danzis is a Vice President, Social Media Strategy at Ketchum PR, and his opinions here are his own and do not reflect those of Ketchum. He loves guest blogging but has no blog of his own–so follow him on Twitter at @adanzis. He currently lives in – and loves – Hoboken, NJ.

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