ادغام رسانه های اجتماعی

Chapter 17

Social Media Integration

Social media is not about the exploitation of technology but service to community.

SIMON MAINWARING

For a time, social media and content creation may have seemed interchangeable, but they are actually quite different. Though there can be quite a bit of overlap, the easiest way to think about their relationship is that content is needed to drive social media, while social media is most essential during two key content marketing processes: Listening to the people in your audience to understand what they care about, so you can create content that they will find engaging and relevant Distributing content (from your business, as well as from others—i.e., the Social Media 4-1-1 approach) In short, you really can’t have one without the other.

If you are just getting serious about your social media distribution efforts, it’s best to start small. Consider the top social platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube), and see where the largest concentration of your target audience members are congregating.

FOCUS

B2B companies are traditionally hesitant about, say, Pinterest; yet if you really double down and focus on Pinterest as a key strategy, I’m absolutely sure you can make that work. It’s just [a question of] where are you going to direct your resources best [for] having a real potential to engage with the community better.

TODD WHEATLAND, HEAD OF STRATEGY, KING CONTENT

Choose the channels where you can build and engage with a genuine community, and focus your attention on those. Study what others are doing in this space so you can learn what people respond to the most favorably. And by “others,” I don’t mean your competition but, rather, anyone who may be taking your audience’s attention away from your social media content (such as your influencer group). Ask yourself how you can be more useful or entertaining than other content providers.

TEST

While it makes sense to choose the primary channels you will focus on, the landscape is changing quickly, and it’s important to experiment to keep your social media content efforts fresh and current. As Airbnb’s chief marketing officer Jonathan Mildenhall told us during Content Marketing World 2013, “If you don’t have room to fail, you don’t have a way to grow.” It doesn’t make sense to start using a platform simply because it’s become trendy or because your competitors have a presence there. But don’t let fear of failure stop you from trying something new. Follow these recommendations to guide you in your decisions: Don’t sign up for an account without having a plan for what you will do there.

Do prioritize the channels you want to experiment with, and spend a dedicated amount of time to test out what works—and learn from what doesn’t. You may discover something new about your audience, or you may learn that it’s not a priority channel for your business.

CUSTOMIZE

So, a Facebook post should be very different than [one on] Pinterest, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, but a lot of times it’s just “Ugh, just put it all out, because you’ve got the tool so you do it and you hit send so it goes to all your channels.” MICHAEL WEISS, SPEAKER AND CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIST

The easiest way to turn off your community members is to broadcast the same message across multiple channels. Instead, determine the kind of content that interests the members of your community in a way that is useful to them. Plan ahead to make sure you are leveraging your content assets in multiple ways but are still communicating it differently on your preferred distribution channels.

SOCIAL CHANNELS TO CONSIDER

Here’s a quick overview and my recommendation on resources to check out for each major social media channel. Remember, you should leverage social media to develop audiences, but you do not get direct access to them. That’s the domain of the platform, such as Facebook or YouTube. You should be using social media to ultimately drive people back to content offers so you can grow your e-mail subscription lists.

Facebook

According to Pew Research Center, 71 percent of adult Internet users and 58 percent of the entire population are on Facebook. That means Facebook matters. Most likely, at least a portion of your audience is leveraging Facebook.

As we discussed in Chapter 14, Facebook continually changes its algorithms to show the most interesting and engaging content to users. This means that promoting yourself on Facebook won’t work.

Britt Klontz, digital content strategist at Distilled, recommends these two Facebook initiatives: Provide exclusive access: One of the best ways to continually engage fans and create new “likes” is by providing exclusive access, as long as whatever you’re providing access to is rich and meaningful. PepsiExclusive does this with events, but you can also provide exclusive access to deals or even to fun or particularly helpful pieces of content. You might, for example, write an extensive guide for a process or procedure you know your audience will be interested in, host it on a microsite, and provide an access code to your fans. This way, they’ll feel rewarded with excellent—and free!—content just for returning to your page.

Make good use of hashtags: While hashtags can be effective across the board when it comes to social media, they’re especially effective for brands that already have cult followings on Facebook. Nutella, for example, incorporates a spreadthehappy hashtag throughout all of its Facebook content. This tag appears often in “vs” competitions (i.e., “New York bagel or New Orleans baguette?”), and is used to invite fans to share their own photos, videos, and recipes. Again, the hashtag makes searching easy, and it engages fans in a way that encourages their own creativity.

Best resources: Moz offers an excellent beginner’s guide to Facebook (http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-social-media/facebook), while JonLoomer.com is the absolute best place for more advanced Facebook strategies.

Twitter

Twitter has become the official broadcasting tool of the web. How do you make your story stand out on Twitter? Here are some tips to follow: Tell a story through your tweets. Present a consistent voice to tell the story of your industry and your brand. Each post should be compelling in its own right, but be sure to take a consistent voice into consideration.

Make use of hashtags. Including one to three relevant hashtags with your tweet makes it simple for people to find your content. (For example, we at CMI use cmworld for our annual event.) Creating an original hashtag and linking it to a specific campaign is an even better use of the tactic.

Use it as a testing ground. Tweet your original content, and keep tabs on which pieces of content get more shares. Use this information to direct your future content efforts.

Cover industry events. Tweet live coverage of events that are significant for your audience to offer insights in real time. That way, your brand can act as the eyes and ears for individuals who can’t make it to the event.

Best resource: Twitter Power 3.0 from Joel Comm.

A new app called Periscope has been growing rapidly in popularity since the beginning of 2015. Periscope, owned by Twitter, is an easy way to live-stream an event or interview, and then it works well with Twitter to let your followers know the event is taking place.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become so much more than a company Rolodex. It is perhaps the most powerful business publishing platform on the web. Since launching its “influencer” program where niche celebrities were able to publish content exclusively on LinkedIn, the company has now opened up publishing to every user—for free.

Here are some tips if you intend to publish:

Understand what audience you’d like to target on LinkedIn and publish content there to attract that audience to your subscription offerings.

Take full advantage of your profile by embedding your SlideShare presentations and YouTube videos and link to all your content resources.

Do an audit of your team’s profile to make sure each employee is representing the company properly.

Best resource: Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media by Neal Schaffer.

SlideShare

SlideShare is best known as the YouTube for PowerPoint presentations. But since LinkedIn purchased the company, SlideShare has added full video content to its arsenal. Over 60 million professionals visit the site each month looking for high-quality presentations.

SlideShare’s PRO feature (now free) is able to collect e-mail subscriptions while someone is viewing the presentation. This has now become CMI’s third-best subscription generator.

Best resource: The Marketer’s Guide to SlideShare by Todd Wheatland.

Instagram

Purchased by Facebook in early 2014 for $1 billion, Instagram is still the most dominant image-sharing social media site. Here are two ideas to leverage Instagram: Share unique, behind-the-scenes, and personal content. Get personal with your audience; give followers an insider view of the inner workings of your organization. A behind-the-scenes feel comes with an exclusivity factor.

Turn followers into sources of content. Ask your followers for pictures that represent your brand, and reward the best contributors with recognition. Offer them a sense of ownership to strengthen the relationship.

Best resource: The Power of Visual Storytelling by Ekaterina Walter.

Pinterest

Pinterest is an extremely popular photo-sharing site, where you can actively manage your own photos and share images and videos from others. It’s been extremely popular in the retail space to date. Interested in seeing if Pinterest can work for you? Here’s some ideas that will help: Decide if the platform fits your audience before jumping in. As an interest-driven community, Pinterest is geared toward 18- to 34-year-old women, but it’s beginning to expand. If a good portion of your audience lands in this category, it’s a good fit.

It’s more than just images. Videos are powerful (and pinnable). If you have a strong repertoire of video content, use Pinterest to drive traffic back to your website or YouTube channel.

Show your customers some love. Strengthen relationships, highlight success stories, and drive more traffic by creating a board showing off the achievements of your customers. It’s a great way to illustrate your work without much braggadocio.

Share your reading list. Share book recommendations that are relevant to your audience to establish a stronger bond. Leveraging books that you’ve actually read helps demonstrate your brand’s commitment to constant improvement.

Show your company personality. Instead of a lone product image or a posed staff picture, show your product or team in action for an image with more personality. Action shots help the people in your audience imagine themselves as a customer or client.

Best resource: Pinterest Power by Jason Miles and Karen Lacey.

Google+

In March 2015 Google announced that it was splitting Google+ into photos and streams. Some believe that this marks Google’s move away from Google+ into something completely different. In July 2015 Google went further and announced that they are dicoupling Google+ from all their other feeds, including Youtube.

A lot of people think that this means that Google+ is dead but Google has not yet announced that yet. So there still might be some possibilities for you to use Google+.

And if you’re interested, the best resource for Google+, go to Mashable.com for the latest changes in Google+.

YouTube

I’ve listed YouTube here because it is indeed a social media network, but I believe the best opportunities in YouTube are as a platform, as we’ve seen with Matthew Patrick and Claus Pilgaard. If you choose to share content on YouTube outside the platform model, consider the following: YouTube is the number two search engine in the world, so developing content specifically for search findability is something you need to focus on.

Whatever content you decide to publish on YouTube, do it consistently, just as you would on any other platform. The majority of companies publish without any particular schedule, which never works in building an audience.

Best resource: YouTube Marketing Power by Jason Miles.

Vine

Vine is a video-sharing service where you can record snippets up to six seconds long. As of August 2014, over 100 million people watch Vine videos each month.

Like YouTube, Vine is big business for Content Inc. models. Husband and wife Michael Alvarado and Carissa Alvarado are the folk-pop band Us the Duo. They have amassed more than 4.5 million followers and over 600 million loop plays of their vines, which they converted into a record deal with Republic Records, an international tour, and a recently released second album.

Best resource: The Beginner’s Guide to Vine on Mashable (http://mashable.com/2013/12/11/vine-beginners-guide/).

Tumblr

As of this printing, Tumblr now hosts approximately 500 million blogs, making it an industry powerhouse. Here are some tips to making Tumblr work for you: Use your tags. Tag content to help with searchability. Include descriptive tags on each piece of content to give your page much stronger visibility.

Post snippets of content. Snag an eye-catching quote from a popular post on your blog, include the link and tags, and share the preview. Other snippets (like pictures) work well to offer a preview of your content before the viewer makes the jump.

Reblog, comment, and “like” often. Use these features to share content from other Tumblr users. That way, you reduce some of the burden of content creation while still getting the attention of influencers. You can also create relationships that may result in more people sharing your original content.

Link back to your page. Attach a link to your Tumblr on every piece of content you post. If content goes viral, users can trace it easily back to your page. Without that link, your content may spiral off, giving you very little ability to track sharing.

Focus your content. Make sure your content fits a tight niche to help you dominate search results and focus in on the top ways your audience finds you.

Best resource: “Quick Guide” (Tumblr http://quickguide.tumblr.com/).

Medium

In 2012, Twitter cofounder Evan Williams launched a publishing site called Medium. Medium’s objective is for individuals anywhere to be able to share their perspective with others in a meaningful way. It is, perhaps, the best place to create content and get ongoing community feedback within the content itself.

Personally, I love everything about Medium, from the user experience to the community interaction … except … you have little control over your audience. That said, if you are looking for an audience to share a particular point of view, and gain rapid feedback from that audience, Medium is a solid solution.

Best resource: The Marketer’s Guide to Medium from KISSMetrics (https://blog.kissmetrics.com/marketers-guide-to-medium/).

Yik Yak and Snapchat

I’ve never used Yik Yak or Snapchat, but I’ve read enough articles to know that both services are going to be around for a while. Both social media sites give the users anonymity (if they wish). As more and more millennials move away from Facebook (this is happening), kids and young adults are finding a home on these two sites. If you target younger audiences with your content niche, you’ll need to check for opportunities. If I had to put my money on the next big app, it would be Snapchat.

THE KEY ELEMENTS OF A SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT PLAN

As mentioned above, for best results, you need a dedicated plan for every channel on which you intend to distribute social media content. Just because you can share something on every channel there is, doesn’t mean that you should.

To create a basic social media plan, answer these questions for every channel you are considering.

What Is the Goal of This Channel?

You need a reason to be on every channel on which you decide to publish content. “To gain followers” is not a viable reason, in and of itself, but “to gain followers on Facebook to drive traffic back to our website to enlist subscribers” is. The important part here is that your content on the channel serves as a method to convert viewers into taking the next step in your Content Inc. process—i.e., move them from Facebook follower to website viewer, e-mail subscriber, event attendee, or however you monetize the platform.

What Is the Desired Action?

Similar to the point above, figure out what you want someone to do in each channel. Share? Comment? Visit your website? Register for something?

What Is the Specific Type of Content the Audience Wants to Get in This Channel?

Customize the content you distribute on each channel. Consider what messages are appropriate for each channel and create a message you think will resonate with that specific audience. Think about the kind of informational needs people in this channel have and how you can help. Will you primarily publish text, images, or video?

What Is the Right Tone for This Channel?

As you consider the topics and content formats in each channel, it’s critical to determine what the overall tone for the channel should be. Friendly? Fun? Conversational? Professional?

What Is the Ideal Velocity?

It’s a smart idea to understand how often you want to publish content in each channel. How many posts do you want to publish per day or week? What time of day is best? You’ll have different cadences depending on if you are sending or responding to tweets, updating your Facebook status, or publishing a new SlideShare, for example. Our team found that posting on Facebook once or twice a day, monitoring Twitter all day, and spending time each day on LinkedIn works best for CMI. But every company is different, so you want to spend some time determining the schedule that’s likely to work best for you and your customers.

Key tip: Let your goals dictate the decisions you make in regard to social media content. For example, since the goal of your Content Inc. plan should be to increase e-mail subscribers, would it really make sense to broadcast all your blog posts on Facebook and Twitter? What reason would readers have to subscribe to your e-mail program if they can get the same information on the social channels they already visit regularly? Think about how you can tweak and repurpose the content you share on your social networks, as it applies both to your goals for the channel and to your overarching business objectives.

AN EXAMPLE FROM CMI

As CMI has grown over the past eight years, so, too, has our social media presence. At the beginning, we admit to being a bit haphazard with our approach; but over the years we have developed a more strategic plan and tailored our content marketing processes accordingly.

Here is how our marketing director, Cathy McPhillips, and community manager, Monina Wagner, approach some of our key channels in terms of both content and distribution: Twitter

We’re active on Twitter every day, sharing thoughts from our community, as well as promoting our own content. However, our favorite thing we do on Twitter is our weekly CMWorld chats (every Tuesday at noon ET). It’s something we started in the summer of 2013 as a way to promote the topics and speakers from our annual Content Marketing World event, but it was so useful that our community asked us to continue the chats throughout the year. Twitter, both during the chats and at other times, has helped us develop a community of influencers and a trusted network. This community has guided many of our efforts in regard to our daily blog posts and even some sessions and tracks for Content Marketing World.

LinkedIn

Our LinkedIn strategy focuses on discussing industry trends with the members of our CMI LinkedIn group. We have noticed that this group tends to like content specific to careers and to content marketing strategies. We’ve also used it to bounce around ideas we are considering for either our magazine or our live events. It has helped us gauge interest and needs and fine-tune some of our efforts, as a result. Also, by actively moderating posts within this community, our group members trust that the content appearing in our group feed has been vetted by the Content Marketing Institute, which helps maintain our position as a trusted content marketing resource.

Facebook

This is the channel where we like to share the fun side of CMI (after all, isn’t that what Facebook is all about?). We use it to discuss news, events, and a new content marketing example each week, as well as to share exciting news and announcements on things that are happening within CMI. We have a fun team, and this gives us all an opportunity to showcase our personalities. Our weekly coverage of content marketing examples has allowed us to share some great work by brands, which has given our audience a chance to see the work of others and think, “We could do that too.” We also try to inspire our audience with weekly motivational graphic posts (another great way to repurpose older blog posts and articles).

SlideShare

We aim to publish three or four new SlideShare presentations per month. It has been interesting to track which kinds of presentations get the most views and leads, and we make sure to mix up our presentations to align with our content marketing strategy and still generate interest and buzz. Since most of CMI’s content is ungated, publishing presentations on SlideShare give our community access to view and reference nearly everything we produce—all we ask in return is an e-mail address if our customer wants to download the content (this is an important e-mail subscription generator for CMI). The longer-form content we share here has increased our subscribers, since these presentations are better suited for downloading and referencing or printing, while our short-form and livelier presentations have a higher tendency to get social shares and to draw in new followers.

CONTENT INC. INSIGHTS

You don’t have to be active in every social channel. At the start, choose the best two or three (where your audience is hanging out) and put resources behind them.

Yes, we want to build out our digital footprint and audience on social channels, but remember the goal is to build our e-mail subscription audience as much as possible.

Most businesses don’t plan their content distribution on social media. It just happens whenever they get to it. Treat your social channels as importantly as any other communication channel.