The Five Steps of an Integrated Social Media Campaign

Whitepaper
LET’S TALK:
Social Media ROI

With Connie Bensen

The Five Steps of an
Integrated Social Media
Campaign

6th in the Social Media ROI Series

Integrated Social Media Campaign

Campaign Strategy Tips for the Social Web

Executive Summary:
Many are seeking the secret to a successful social media campaign. Public relations agencies have been dabbling in this space for quite
awhile. Now marketers are dipping their toes in the water and adding the social channels to their marketing mix.

This white paper is the sixth in a series describing how a social media monitoring tool can greatly influence the return on investment (ROI)
of your social media campaigns by providing essential information that guides the strategy and engagement. This paper will outline the ROI
that can be realized and measured by engaging in social channels. Finally, it will provide best practices to help you maximize your efforts.

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.



Introduction Some companies create a Twitter account or a Facebook page and consider that a social media plan. It is
based on ‘everyone else is doing it’ and there aren’t any metrics behind it. It is a shot in the dark.

Engaging in the social web before listening is like being blindfolded and throwing darts at a bullseye across
the room. Not very effective is it? If you have created a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page just
because everyone else is doing it, you may not be directing your efforts towards the social channels that
make sense for your business – you are working as if blindfolded. Can you measure your results? Do you
have a strategy based on in-depth knowledge of where and how your target markets interact on the web?

If you could identify where your consumers are online, it would be like taking off the blindfold. And once
you reviewed their conversations then you could join the conversation in a tone that suited them. Now you
can see the bullseye! And finally what if you could count the number of darts that hit the target? You could
calculate ROI. So let’s change-up your game.

In addition to researching and understanding your target market, it is also important to integrate social
campaigns with traditional marketing efforts for online and offline efforts. This will maximize and extend
your campaigns on all fronts. The most effective marketing messages provide multiple points of contact
which cater to your customers’ preferences. For example, at the end of each white paper in this series a
number the following points of contact are provided:

• Link to Freemium version of Alterian SM2
• Link to corporate website listing resources on social media monitoring
• Link to request a different form of marketing collateral
• Email address and phone numbers around the globe

Layer that with interactions online and offline and you will have a winning combination that gets you
noticed!

Let’s Talk about how a social media monitoring tool can increase the ROI of your Social Media Marketing
Campaigns!




An Integrated Marketing As you know, a marketing campaign needs to be planned and executed around a timeline with given
Campaign in Five Steps resources. It also needs to have measureable goals in order to evaluate the success of the campaign.
There are five steps to an effective social media marketing campaign:

• Listen
• Plan
• Engage
• Measure
• Evaluate & Revise

1. Listen
A brand audit is the most important step in every social media campaign. A previous paper in the ROI
Series covers this topic extensively. It is imperative to understand the online presence of your target market
and your brand. Listening first and devising a plan based on that intelligence will provide the greatest ROI
for your online efforts. A recent report, Your Brand: At Risk or Ready for Growth, found that 75% of those
surveyed said it would have a positive impact on their experience as a customer if companies took the time
to find out more about their needs.

There are many free tools as well as professional ones available to assist with the online assessment. The
examples in this white paper are from Alterian SM2. The free version can be found here and a professional
version is also available.

It is impossible to skip this first step. The advantage of using a social media monitoring tool for a brand
audit is:

• It greatly reduces the time required to manually do so

• It provides extensive information about your target market ensuring that your efforts are in the right
directions:




The social channels where they are interacting at online




Demographic information

Ability to identify influencers and brand advocates




An overview of their sentiment and tone in regard to your brand and competitors

Most importantly, patterns and trends

2. Plan the Strategy and Establish Metrics
Listening Tips: Some of the social media monitoring tools available on the market allow you to review
• Utilize theme clouds to see trends. previous campaigns and evaluate their effectiveness. Alterian SM2 provides access to
data back to 2007. This information is invaluable when considering which campaigns
Search for industry terms to broaden
resonated with consumers. This allows you to reconsider past campaigns and craft much
your view of your target market (find out
more effective ones. That knowledge will make the ROI of future campaigns much higher.
what you didn’t know you needed to
This historical data combined with the research data from your brand audit will provide a
know)
clear path towards developing effective social campaigns.
• Search for competitors to see where
your target market is interacting Now, it’s time to put your creative hat on! Here are some questions that need answering:

• Dig into conversations and review the • What are the campaign objectives?
sentiment and tone • What will resonate with consumers?
• What will inspire and motivate them to participate?
• How can you make it easy for them to share the campaign with others?

And the technical side must also be considered:

• What resources will be needed? (technology, landing pages, staff resources)
• How will it be measured?
• How will you utilize tag lines, url shorteners, items that are easily tracked.

Social media monitoring tools help you identify a baseline for setting expectations. After the campaign is
over, these benchmarks will provide comparatives that make it easy to measure success.




The following chart is a Compare Dates report from Alterian SM2. It shows the results of Southwest’s ‘Bags
Fly Free’ campaign for the most recent quarter (blue line) compared to the previous quarter (red line).

What to measure will depend upon the objectives of the campaign. The easiest way is to keep the
objectives simple. What percentage increase or decrease in behavior would you like to achieve in a given
period of time? For example,

• Reduce demand on call center by 5%
Strategy Tips: • Increase conversations about new product by 15%
• Start small. A successful campaign will • Decrease product development time by 2%
• Increase customer satisfaction by 10%
take on a life of its own and grow
organically.
3. Online Engagement
• Be innovative. Get to know your A successful campaign needs to go beyond the technology. Creating a Facebook app is
community and find out what will inspire part of a bigger picture. The social web is based on human interaction and people will be
and motivate them to participate pleasantly surprised to have the opportunity to interact directly with your brand. They
• Tie the campaign into direct marketing want to talk with people though. The best people for this task are your own staff who are
web savvy and proponents of you brand. Invite those that are interested in participating
and place information, invites to
and provide them with training. They will be your most valuable resource in ensuring the
participate and links in email,
success of the campaign because they can use their networks to spread the word. You
newsletters. can’t buy viral, but you can mobilize your army of employees to encourage it.




As stated earlier a comprehensive social media campaign should go beyond a single
Engagement Tips: channel such as Facebook or Twitter. If you have done a good job of inspiring people to
• Make sure that responses are authentic participate, then they will be recommending others to join in. They will be doing so on
and not contrived. their blogs and in other social networks. The goal for your social campaign should be to
create something so talkable that people are discussing it everywhere. This is where the
• Don’t let fear hold your company back
social media monitoring tool comes into play.
from participating online. If you have
listened to the conversations and done One of the overarching goals for your social media strategy should include building
community around your brand. This is the premise of every social engagement. A
your planning then you are ready to
campaign is a small part of that and monitoring & responding to those that are
participate. participating are the essentials to success. You can grow the campaign’s success
• Realize that execution of a campaign exponentially by thanking participants and answering their questions. You will also be
can go very well or can go really badly able to identify brand advocates. The tool will show what online influence they have.
and could get noticed. All interactions A social media monitoring tool makes short work of this by providing daily reports and
online are subject to discussion so be real time alerts that allow you to immediately respond to those participating and
prepared to adjust your campaign for responding to your campaign.
unforeseen circumstances. The social Every campaign requires metrics and reporting in order to determine the extent to which
web requires flexibility. it has met the business objectives. It is agreed that the social world is shifting what and
how we measure. The good news is that everything is measureable. The challenge is
figuring out what is a blog post about your campaign worth to your company? Or a
Tweet? If the campaign increases sales by 15% then that is an easy calculation of ROI. But what if it
increased your brand visibility? What dollar amount can be placed on that? There is a lot of value in
increasing your brand presence and the best way to argue for it is to point to the alternative: having a
brand with little or no brand visibility.

A social media monitoring tool aggregates the conversations from all of the social channels in one place
and makes it easy to create high level reports for management depicting things such as the increase of
volume of conversations about your brand compared to the benchmark, the sentiment around the
campaign and your brand, and main topics of discussion around the campaign, etc.

4. Evaluate and Revise
Reviewing the success of a campaign is essential for planning future ones. Here are some
Measurement Tip: questions to consider:
It is best to keep the reporting simple. • What worked & what could have been executed better?
Social media monitoring tools offer a • Did the campaign increase customer satisfaction?
myriad of reports but you should decide • Was the effort worth the investment of resources? ie: was ROI realized both in value
early on which reports best show the (increased brand visibility through word of mouth) and bottom line (increased sales or
decreased demand on services)?
campaign’s progress.
A quick caution in regard to the nature of the social web: Social media marketing is not
about campaigns. It is about utilizing social channels to build relationships which can




augment your business objectives. Many have planned and executed a three month
Evaluation Tip: campaign. They created a situation where they engaged with their consumers online.
Create a list of new opportunities that Then after the campaign there weren’t any resources in place to continue the interaction.
have been created for future campaigns. This is confusing to consumers and creates a contradictory effect. At first you are actively
engaged then it is turned off and this sends mixed signals. It is imperative to remember
that effective social media marketing builds on momentum. It generally takes an
extended period of time for the momentum of word of mouth to build and for the community to grow. For
this reason it is highly recommended that you have a plan in place to support an ongoing online presence.

Conclusion One must remember that a social media campaign is a small part of a larger social media strategy that
needs to be an ongoing effort. A social media monitoring tool supports a campaign through every step by
providing insight that augments planning and deciding on objectives. It efficiently and effectively identifies
those that are talking about the campaign online making it very easy to respond and thank them. It also
identifies brand advocates that can be energized to extend the reach of the campaign. They can also
provide the foundation for future campaigns. A social monitoring tool is essential for measuring progress
and overall success. Reports are easily created that provide a high level overview of what the campaign
achieved as well as compare the results against the benchmarks. A social media monitoring tool has proven
to be an integral component of social media campaigns.

Next steps

• Try the Freemium version of Alterian SM2 ( a professional social media monitoring tool)
• Explore resources on social media monitoring
• Request a Little Book on some BIG marketing topics
• Email info@alterian.com or call

North America:
+1 312 884 5321

UK & Continental Europe:
+44 (0) 1202 250003

Asia Pacific:
+61 2 9968 2449




About the “Let’s Social Media marketing is providing a whole new dimension for brands to connect with consumers. The
Talk” Series with social web is a vast entity and every marketer needs a tool to harness the information in the most cost
Connie Bensen effective and efficient manner. A social media monitoring tool offers the ability to maximize the digital
portion of your marketing budget in order to create, execute, measure and report on a social media
strategy.

The Let's Talk Series, by Connie Bensen, is a series of 10 whitepapers describing the variety of ways that
marketers can increase the ROI of their marketing efforts. Topics will include how to use a social media
monitoring tool for SEO, Lead Generation, Social Media campaigns, Customer Service, Competitive
Insight, Corporate marketing, PR and reputation management, etc.

Connie is the Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian, which provides marketing
software to help brands engage with their customers. She is a key voice amongst online Community
Managers. Her blog, www.conniebensen.com is recognized as a leading resource for cultivating online
communities, providing best practices for this emerging role and it is listed in Forbes.com as one of the 20
Best Marketing and Social Media Blogs by Women.

SM2 Social Media Alterian’s SM2 is a social media monitoring and analysis solution designed for PR and
Marketing professionals. SM2 helps you track conversations, review positive/negative
Monitoring (SMM) sentiment for your brand, clients, competitors and partners across social media channels
such as blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, social networks, video/photo sharing sites and real-time
alerts.

About Alterian Alterian (LSE: ALN) empowers organizations to create relevant, effective and engaging experiences with
their audience that help build value and reinforce commitment to their brand, through the use of the
Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform. Alterian drives the transformation of marketing and
communications, making it practical and cost-effective for companies to orchestrate multichannel
engagement with the individual.

Alterian’s unprecedented integration of analytics, content and execution through industry leading tools,
such as the Dynamic Messenger email platform, SM2 Social Media Monitoring platform and the award
winning Content Management solutions, enables companies to build integrated communication strategies
which create a true picture of the individual.

Alterian works with marketing services partners, system integrators and agencies who recognize the need
to plan and deliver coordinated customer engagement services in partnership with their clients. For more
information about Alterian, products within the Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform or Alterian’s Partner
Network, visit www.alterian.com or the Alterian blog at www.engagingtimes.com.


White Paper

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T +1 312 704 1700
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Email: info@alterian.com

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© Alterian 2010

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