Brand presence on social is a necessity, and not only on one social network. Consumers now live on a number of social networks so the brand has no choice but to live there as well. The goal is to live and not just to create a campaign. If a brand is looking to initiate a relationship with potential customers it has to produce a value-based dialog which can be done only on social.
If you are a big brand or a small business, there is no way around it – you have to set up your own social zone or page on social. Without this strategic move, effective marketing activity is not possible.
There are a number of steps that need to be implemented in order to launch a brand zone or presence on social:
- Profile / Target Audience
At this initial stage, the characteristics of the target audience should be defined: who they are, where they spend their digital time, what influences them, who they influence, what their needs are, what their concerns are, what their media consumption profile is, what are their areas of interest.
- Triggers
This step defines the triggers which could work for the activity manager / content manager and direct the content on which he should focus on.
There are five trigger types:
– Information: news, research in the relevant field, articles, advice, etc.
– Knowledge – gossip on the industry, anecdotes and the like
– Community – connecting people with similar interests
– Thrill & Entertainment – games, humor, and the like
– Practical benefits – business opportunities, coupons, discounts and the like
Brands should choose 1-3 triggers that will lead the ongoing content plan of the brand’s social presence on each network.
3. Success Parameters
After defining the target audience accurately and laying the foundation for the content we are going to focus on, we should define what we would consider as success. In other words, what are the parameters for success and what are the factors to be measured continuously throughout the brand’s social activity: visitors, friends, brand followers, comments, sharing, user-generated content, conversion rates from friends to customers, brand awareness and social networking activities, and so on.
4. Launching- penetration activity
Assuming we have done everything right so far, this is the point in which we need to decide how to bring enough people to discover our brand’s social zone. This is the stage where we define and plan the launch of our page. It could be a game, campaign or collaborating with other relevant companies that will prompt a significant mass of people to visit our arena.
5. Ongoing management
After the launch, it is time to manage and monitor our activities, performance and planning over time as well as our promotional brand campaigns on social.
This step is done using a simple table called:
Channel Management Template – CMT.
Each row in the table refers to one week and notes the title of the weekly activity, the description of the activity, cost of production, cost of media (if there was budgeted activity), performance – members, exposed, followers, feedback, sharing etc. and finally – decisions, whether to repeat this activity again in the future or not.
We recommend creating a social presence / zone for each micro segment chosen by the brand, and target and envelop the social zone with complementary digital assets – site, blog, mobile application, bot etc. all the brand’s digital assets should support each other, with promotion activities as well as with content exchange between platforms.
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