What will your social media budget look like in 2011?

We touched on this briefly in our Friday Wrap Up – The Week That Was but with so many of us embarking on social media in 2011 it is worth exploring further.

As a marketer, we are all faced with the task of demonstrating Return on Investment (ROI) to senior management. Prioritising social media spend however, is something many companies have yet to master.

Mashable reported last week on a report released by digital strategy firm Altimeter Group in the USA, about ‘How Corporations Should Prioritise Social Business Budgets’. Data came from interviews conducted with 140 corporate social strategists to create a standard for categorising social media programs into novice, intermediate and advanced maturity levels.

The below is a depiction of priorities that each program should focus on.

Assess your Social Business Maturity Levels

The report also includes an assessment guide for figuring out where your business sits in the social web. It asks some basic questions around your social media program, leadership and organisational model. It looks at your internal processes and policies, how you intend to educate your staff, if not doing so already, measurement techniques, and the technology you have adopted.

You allocate points from 1-3 for each question and total the amount once finished. The total providing you with your Social Business Maturity Level.

Social Media Spend – it’s time to get down to business

Now that you know what your social business maturity level is, would you be surprised to know that the average spend in the USA for a novice program is $66,000? and the average team 3.1 people?

We certainly were, particularly when the report places the novice category in the testing or experimenting with social media phase.

Intermediate programs are enjoying a budget of more than $1million with teams of up to 8.2 people and advanced programs leap to 20.8 people on average with a budget of $1.3million.

Final thoughts…

Social media does require investment from a business, particularly if you want to be able to measure a strong ROI.

We are beginning to see organisations at this level in Australia but nothing like what we are seeing in the USA. Make 2011 the time for change, step into social media and explore, experience the benefits of engaging with you audience on an entirely different level and watch your business grow as a result.

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Friday Wrap Up – The Week That Was

Welcome to ‘The Week that Was’, our regular Friday blog post bringing you the very best from, well…the week that was.

The Week that Was will share with you what we believe was some of the best online info relating to social media, marketing communications, & PR, from the week that was.

Looking for a resource to provide you with a quick grab – subscribe to Rewire and make sure you never miss out on your take of ‘the week that was’.

This week we look at your social media budget in 2011, managing your ideas, and upgrades for Facebook fan pages. Enjoy!

Optimising your social media budget

Return on investment (ROI) is a part of any strategy and social media is no different. Using a calculated approach towards budgeting for social media marketing initiatives, prioritising spend and categorising for your level of involvement, novice, intermediate and maturity will be crucial in 2011.

Manage your ideas using FreeMind

How many times do you jot an idea down on a note pad and then 3 months later when you look for it can’t find it? FreeMind, free mind mapping software, allows you to document your ideas in a structured manner, like a tree-like editor. You can use it to document ideas, link to websites, documents on your computer etc.

Upgrades to Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook has announced this week upgrades to the way businesses use their fan pages. These include receiving notifications about fan activity i.e. likes and comments, and new page design similar to what we are seeing on personal profiles where photos are displayed in a slide at the top of your page.

Tourism NSW launches global marketing campaign

It began with Oprah and 302 Ultimate Viewers embarking on an unforgettable journey to the land down under, Australia.

Tourism Australia who made the ‘Ultimate Australian Adventure’ possible has now seen the trip broadcast to more than 10 million viewers.  The $4 million price tag for hosting the American talk show host was aimed at increasing tourism for Australia.

According to The Sunday Telegraph, Sydney.com had a 33 per cent spike in visits just days after the screening of the Oprah shows. This comes on top of Qantas Vacations in the US experiencing a 250 per cent increase in site visits, a 25 per cent increase in phone calls, and a 30-40 per cent increase in quote requests.

Next on the agenda, 10 huge electronic billboards are to be installed across Los Angeles to promote tourism in NSW. It is expected that the billboards will flash 1300 images each day, featuring some of the State’s most famous scenes. Who could forget after all the giant O on the Sydney Harbour Bridge during Oprah’s visit.

The LA campaign is just one of a series of campaigns expected to be rolled out by Tourism NSW across the globe in the coming months. Others include a $230,000 ‘Best of Australia’ print, billboard and online promotion in Germany and another $167,800 ‘Best of Australia’ online campaign in France aimed at young people and honeymooners.

The true test we think will come when results are in, showing just how many enquiries result in the actually booking and paying for a trip down under.

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Is the Commonwealth Bank social media policy defeating the purpose of the social web?

The Commonwealth Bank has been criticised over the weekend after it was revealed that its social media policy threatens employees with disciplinary action if they fail to report criticism made by others via social media outlets.

The policy requests workers inform the bank of any negative comment, including on their own personal Facebook accounts.  The policy, which has seen the Finance Sector Union (FSU) demand its suspension, states that ‘employees cannot comment on, post or store any information about bank related matters, or speak negatively about the company.’

Furthermore, it goes onto say that, employees could be held accountable for posts their friends make about the company. It requests that employees aware of any such comments should contact the company’s media and communications team, and provide them with any assistance if the company wants to get that material deleted or amended.

According to a report by smartcompany.com.au, the Commonwealth Bank considers social media to be a very important part of its communication and customer engagement processes.

Standard social media policies, similar to a media policy will always include standard requests i.e. employees should not speak officially for the company, but has the CBA taken this one-step too far by threatening employees with termination?

If they fail to keep employees engaged, how could they possibly keep their customers engaged?

Understandably, the bank needs to protect its own interests but may have crossed the line into the private lives of its employees.

All organisations that are embarking in social media should ensure that they have a clear policy in place to protect the company’s interests. A legal professional should always check it out and clear examples provided so as not to be misjudged by employees.

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Friday Wrap Up – The Week That Was

Welcome to ‘The Week that Was’, our regular Friday blog post bringing you the very best from, well…the week that was.

The Week that Was will share with you what we believe was some of the best online info relating to social media, marketing  & communications from the week that was.

Looking for a resource to provide you with a quick grab – subscribe to Rewire and make sure you never miss out on your take of ‘the week that was’.

This week we look at the best thing about online measurement and tools for the social web. Enjoy!

Social Media Measurement where One Equals One

Anyone who says that Social Media isn’t measureable is making up excuses. There may not be one simple way to measure it, and it may take time and discipline but the best thing about online marketing is that you can measure each and every individual. Offline marketing can be difficult to measure, for example, do you really know how m any people are driving past your billboard on that major road? Probably not.

Wordtracker Labs

A key part of any online strategy is to identify what your target audience is searching for. In our instance for example there would be no point in focusing on a search term such as ‘how to integrated marketing communications into our existing strategy’ if everyone is searching for ‘how to write a marketing plan’. This great tool Wordtrack Labs allows you to find the questions that people are asking in your market.

Additional functionality for Linkedin

If you haven’t yet added your organisation to Linkedin and you are an active user then it’s time, particularly with the added features for business pages. Check them out!

Buyers look beyond price to customer service

Consumers are looking beyond price to customer service during their purchasing decisions a report released today has shown. The Getprice 2011 Shopping report identifies the online shopping habits and behaviours of over 3000 consumers who use the site.

The report found that comparison shopping sites are the most useful when it comes to consumers researching products. Surprisingly this came ahead of search engines, online marketplaces and retailer websites. Retailer websites however were found to be the most widely used.

Buyers are looking beyond price to customer service, brand familiarity and user reviews to make their decision with price ranked 5th in order of importance.

Chief executive officer of Getprice, Chris Hitchen said, “This report has identified clear gaps and issues that offline retailers should be focusing on in order to work together with online retail channels to create the best retail experience for the consumer.”

As explained in our recent blog post ‘Customers pay more to do business with companies where people smile’, this report has highlighted the importance of delivering strong customer service over price.

Interestingly, 47% of survey respondents access the internet on mobile devises but when it comes to following brands on social networks the figure drops to just 25%. With so many organisations spending millions of dollars on social media strategies, it poses the questions – are they in fact connecting with their audience online?

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How to build customer engagement online

As we shift the focus from the masses to the individual customer, ask yourself, how are you building customer engagement online?

Similar to the way you recognise that every customer is different offline; the same should be applied online.  Through social media, we are able to learn, listen and engage with our audience.

Here’s how:

1. Create your online persona

Who will you be online? The persona you choose should be reflective of your organisation and interact in a way that would reflect the interaction an individual would have if they met you face to face. Keep it human like.

2. Understand your customer

Be your customer. Understand how to communicate and talk with them. Discover what they see as valuable.

3. Be proactive

Don’t wait for your customers, be proactive. Generate conversation, share experiences and ask questions. Allow your customers to be open and honest about theirs and try not to hard sell, it’s not the primary purpose of engaging in social media.

4. Monitor your brand

Ensure you are across what is being said about your brand and organisation online. It provides you with many opportunities to answer questions, respond to dissatisfaction, and gain the trust of your online fans.

As a brand, you have to be more committed than your customers want you to be. You want them to lead the discussion to grow your brand online. You do this by communicating, exchanging and engaging.

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Friday Wrap Up – The Week That Was

Welcome to ‘The Week that Was’, our regular Friday blog post bringing you the very best from, well…the week that was.

The Week that Was will share with you what we believe was some of the best online info relating to social media, marketing and communications from the week that was.

Looking for a resource to provide you with a quick grab – subscribe to Rewire and make sure you never miss out on your take of ‘the week that was’.

This week we look at ways to monitor your social media activity. Enjoy!

Facebook Fan Page Alerts

Facebook now has the functionality for administrators of fan pages to be alerted of any activity happening on their page.  It’s call Hyper Alerts and this week HubSpot explains how you set it up.

Post Post for Facebook

Post Post is a new curated content app for Facebook that allows you to create your own customised Facebook newspaper. The information used to generate it is the content that your Facebook friends share.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is certainly not a new social media management tool but I do know we have yet to explore it via the Rewire blog. Hootsuite is arguably the King of the social media tools. All run from the comfort of your web browser (meaning no software to download) it allows you to manage multiple social network accounts, keep track of trends and monitor keywords. The thing we love about it? multiple users can tweet from the same account.

A 101 Guide to Online Reputation Management

A great brand does not evolve overnight. It takes months, if not years, and up to millions of dollars to build.  It should be the thing organisations holds most precious.

Online Reputation Management (ORM) has recently emerged as the hot new term in digital marketing.

Brand loyalty can spread like a virus in the matter of hours with the praise of a single influential blogger. It can be destroyed in hours by an upset customer on an open forum. Longer term, it can fail, if you fail to listen to your customers.

By now, you will see the influential impact Consumer Generated Content (CGC) can have on your brand. Before you jump into the challenge of ORM, you need to determine which skilled marketing people can effectively read and understand the data resulting from online monitoring and then use this information to develop strategies to improve and grow the business.

I say skilled because your company intern who spends 80% of their day on Facebook may feel the most comfortable online but will not have the business acumen to develop and implement long-term ORM strategy.

What to track?

1. Anything and everything related to your company
2. Information related to your competition
3. Industry information

When you first begin to measure your online reputation via social media it is important to choose a trusted technology and stay with it long enough to see trending data. The idea is that you are discovering how your strategies are working and where improvement is needed.

Useful online monitoring tools to get you started

1. Google Alerts – keyword search
2. Google Blog Search
3. Board Reader – determine messages on boards & forums
4. Yahoo Groups & Google Groups – determine groups to track

The opportunities of using the social web for a business are endless. The challenge, ensuring you are building meaningful relationships with your audience and finding ways of measuring results.

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Friday Wrap Up – The Week That Was ‘Enhancing Customer Contact’

Welcome to ‘The Week that Was’, our regular Friday blog post bringing you the very best from, well…the week that was.

The Week that Was will share with you what we believe was some of the best online info relating to social media, marketing communications, & PR, from the week that was.

Looking for a resource to provide you with a quick grab – subscribe to Rewire and make sure you never miss out on your take of ‘the week that was’.

This week we look at ways to Enhance Customer Contact. Enjoy!

6 areas of your business that should be paying attention

According to Radian6 CEO Marcel Lebrun customer contact has changed from a central phone switchboard to the social phone. The dynamics of communication between an organisation and its consumer has altered, resulting in more areas of the business required to take note.

Here are 6 areas of your business that should be listening from Customer Service through to the CEO.

68% of Brands shift towards Branded Content

A recent survey found that 68% of brands were shifting away from traditional advertising towards branded content. We continue to see this more and more as the consumers journey to the point of sales changes.

In many instances, your first touch point with a customer will be via social media, an environment where you are not trying to sell to them. How are you building your social currency?

Getting to know your competitor through Social Networks, Search Engines & Other Outlets

Using social media to research competitors can provide useful information for any business looking to create a smart strategy.

It allows you to discover how they are positioning themselves in the market. Using Twitter for example, are they tweeting about discounts, product information or interacting with their following? Or in the instance of Facebook, how are they using their wall to engage with their fan base?

Since the introduction of the social web, interaction with an organisation and its consumer has altered significantly. Information available to competitors, has, as a result increased. Use this information to differentiate your business and engage with your consumers in a ways that’s meaningful to them.

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