Executing a Social Media Exit Strategy

Photo courtesy of xomiele

It’s a fact of life. Everything comes to an end sooner or later. The same goes for social media campaigns and accounts. The trick is knowing when to pull the plug and move on to something bigger and better.

One of the biggest reasons to hit the delete button is to avoid a social media time suck that drains budget resources and doesn’t provide a healthy return on your investment. You also may find that the property has exceeded its shelf life and you’re not generating optimal levels of traffic and engagement anymore. Whatever the reason, you’re now faced with the decision of what to do.

Obviously, you’ll need to consider the platform carefully. Whether it’s a blog, community, microsite or social networking account, each will have its own factors to consider. But once you put an end to that social media fossil, chances are you’ll find more time and energy to focus on something new. The guilt and baggage from those dated social media accounts will free you to do more. So here are a few things to consider.

Dead Blogs and Communities Serve Up SEO Benefits

If you decide that it doesn’t make sense to sustain your blog, don’t delete it without careful consideration. Blogs, and online communities for that matter, are fantastic repositories of knowledge and opinion for readers seeking out specific content. Depending upon the subject matter, they could yield a wealth of information for many, many years. More than likely, your posts and the reader comments are attracting a fair amount of visitors on a regular basis. You may find that much of the content is still valuable and people are coming across it through their online searches and via your SEO efforts. Check your analytics to determine the level of traffic that’s still coming to the blog, as well as where your visitors are coming from (referral traffic) and the search terms they’re using to find your blog or community. This data could certainly help you shape future marketing strategies or even help you plan your next blog. Make sure you draft and publish a final post explaining the reason for the termination of the blog or online community and thank your readers/contributors for their participation. Don’t forget to include a link they can click to find your organization online, join an affiliate community or a recommended group on a social network like Facebook or LinkedIn.

Expired Campaign Microsites Leverage Inbound Links

Your company may have built an online destination with a very specific purpose in mind. These microsites are usually tied to a creative campaign to drive visibility around a product or service, promote an event, or may even have been used to hold a contest or sweepstakes of some kind. Even though the product has been discontinued, the event has passed or the contest has ended, you may still be attracting visitors from inbound links. Again, it’s about taking advantage of that web traffic (and your brand equity) so don’t cut off that funnel of interested visitors wanting to know more about your organization. Go ahead and tear down the site (make sure you archive your digital assets) but hang onto the domain URL (those are super inexpensive and worth the cost if it means generating an additional stream of traffic). Use a website redirect to your new campaign site, social media page or official web property to connect them with content that’s current. Of course, if you’re not generating traffic than it won’t make sense to keep the domain name. Hit the delete button on the whole thing.

Unattended Social Media Accounts Aren’t Exactly Social

It’s disappointing to come across a business account on a social network that’s been abandoned or doesn’t respond to comments or customer inquiries. Of course, there could be several reasons for this such as budget cuts, inexperienced community managers or a poor social media strategy (brand conversation monitoring is required for all social media programs). Unlike blogs and online communities, social networks operate on a real-time basis. They are meant to provide ongoing dialogue and can become stale and out-of-date rather quickly. If that’s the case, an exit strategy is probably needed.

I wouldn’t recommend deleting brand name accounts on social networks. I’m talking about branded vanity URLs such as pinterest.com/KLMConsulting. While it’s common for businesses to quickly jump onto social networks to secure their brand names (before cyber squatters beat them), the accounts shouldn’t resemble a ghost town with tumble weeds either. If you’re not ready to activate the account, try to make it hidden (Facebook allows you to do that with pages and groups). If you can’t do that, why not post an initial message stating the obvious – “Thanks for visiting our page, we’ll be launching shortly so come back soon!” If it’s a mature page and you’ll only be gone temporarily, then state that in the last post you publish or in the profile. At the very least this sets the tone and shows your commitment to transparent communications. It also tells the visitor that there is some strategy being developed behind closed doors.

Research from Burson-Marsteller cited that the average number of social media accounts is 33 per company. If you have secondary pages that aren’t performing or you simply can’t sustain or maintain the dialogue, then you may want to consider deleting those. Frankly, they could be doing you more harm than good. Most likely, these will be social media accounts that aren’t imperative to your business and do not contain your brand name in the vanity URL. If that’s the case, you’ll want to send a message to your fans or subscribers letting them know the end is near. Just do so with caution since social media accounts cannot be undeleted.

The Art of Social Image Curation and Visual Linking

Photo courtesy of Vermin Inc

It seems like everyone is jumping on the Pinterest bandwagon these days and creating boards of their favorite images. I have to admit, I too, have found it quite pleasurable to browse the hundreds of pictures that range from cool products to delicious food to interesting architecture.

During my time on the site I’ve noticed that Pinterest is creating a new type of online sharer, the social image curator. This activity goes way beyond normal photo sharing that’s done on Flickr or Facebook. Users are connecting with images to self-identify with their needs, wants and desires. And it’s interesting to see how people are approaching this new art form by the items they “pin” and the boards they create. It’s important for marketers to understand this trend and learn from it in order to create and display images that users want to pin and share.

Visual Bookmarking and Storytelling

The truth is Pinterest gives users a care-free way of categorizing content on their terms. It’s such an effortless process without the labor of the creating a series of tags. Frankly, it’s the modern equivalent of online bookmarking. It’s no wonder that bookmarking tools such as Delicious, PearlTrees and others have developed sophisticated visual interfaces for their platforms. Finding and consuming information is much easier and quicker when it’s in a visual format.

Let’s not forget the current fascination with data visualization, a.k.a. infographics. Those creative illustrations combine information with compelling graphics (hence the name) to create perfect vehicles for storytelling. The popularity of them has many companies clamoring to produce their own infographics that convey authority or tell a story associated with their business. It’s no surprise that infographics have made their way to Pinterest as well with users collecting them like baseball cards.

Developing a Visual Content Strategy

While users are busy searching for images that resonate with them, marketers are looking for ways to attract those users and integrate this activity into their outbound efforts. Professionals in marketing, PR and social media functions not only need to quickly learn how to curate images for business-branded accounts, they need to think about content marketing in the visual sense. That means developing a visual strategy for blog posts, white papers, research insights, and other collateral produced for external consumption.

The challenge for many marketers will be how to represent text and numbers into compelling visual references. If your organization has a dedicated graphics designer on staff then you should leverage them to full tilt. If not, you should consider subscribing to an image database such as Getty Images where you can select and purchase images that suit your brand and content. I’d also recommend Flickr for its large inventory of images labeled under the Creative Commons license.

Visual Content Drives Traffic

The visual display model that Pinterest has built is actually an enormous driver of website traffic. It was reported by Techcrunch that Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Twitter, according to recent research from Shareaholic. With a growing number of people being conditioned to click on images for more information, it’s an opportunity for marketers to take note.

This is quite the eye-opener since most images we create and post online do not have links embedded in them. Start inserting URLs into your images to seamlessly create digital pathways to destination sites. In doing so, you may boost your SEO rankings in the process on sites that follow directives for links. (Note: Pinterest has implemented a “no follow” rule on their site.) While the majority of images on many sites represent consumer goods, there’s also plenty of opportunity to drive interested buyers of B2B services through imagery as well.

Hashtag Marketing on the Rise

Photo courtesy of DoubleGrande

Last week as I was organizing my Twitter account I decided to re-evaluate the search terms I was using to find interesting content. This led me to take a closer look at hashtags and their latest use by marketers for business purposes.

As many know, the use of the pound sign (#) is at the crux of the hashtag. Putting symbols in front of words for taxonomy purposes isn’t a new concept. The @ sign has been at the center of email universe for decades now. Not surprising, it’s also used to address someone on Twitter.

However, the Twitter hashtag is more than a simple way to categorize content, identify themes or track real-time conversations. They’re increasingly being used by companies to drive positive online conversation and build brand recognition and loyalty.

Hashtags Driving the Popularity of SocialTV
Television networks have been quick to leverage the power of the hashtag by displaying it in the bottom corner of the screen during a broadcast. Usually it’s the name of the program or TV show such as #Revenge, #TopChef or #PanAm. I noticed that LifeTime’s Project Runway gives each contestant their own hashtag for voting purposes, which is a fantastic idea and also provides more ways for fans to tweet about the show. Expect to see more creative uses of the hashtag by entertainment companies and TV networks in the near future.

Hashtags as Branding Vehicles for Companies
Many marketers are starting to use hashtags as branding vehicles for campaign awareness. A good example is Audi that recently promoted their new LED headlights with the hashtag #solongvampires. The unique hashtag was connected to a TV ad that showed the headlights destroying vampires because of their extreme brightness (part of the product message). The result was a memorable campaign with excellent integration between multiple mediums.

While hashtags can drive massive attention for a branded campaign, some companies are going even farther by using them organically to convey value proposition. Red Bull’s tagline, “It Gives You Wings,” has been parlayed into the #givesyouwings hashtag and is quite popular with consumers when discussing the brand on Twitter and referencing other activities synonymous with the tagline.

The Perils of Hashtag Hijacking
Just like any other communications tactic, careful consideration needs to be given to hashtags. Unfortunately, McDonald’s learned this the hard way when it decided to offer up stories on the healthy aspects of its food using the hashtag #mcdstories. Within hours of the first tweet, consumers hijacked the hashtag and posted negative stories damaging the McDonald’s brand. What started out as a solid communications platform for the burger chain quickly turned into a PR nightmare. (Read: When a Hashtag Becomes a Bashtag on Forbes)

Marketers need to think about how hashtags can be integrated into broader media campaigns without losing control of the narrative. This is especially important since hashtags are now moving beyond Twitter and into other media channels. We’ve only witnessed a glimpse of their true potential and the real opportunities that they can bring for brands and the marketers that use them.

Social Media Strategy Requires Brand Conversation Monitoring

Photo courtesy of LI Refugee

The digital landscape is rife with people talking about their brand experiences every moment of every day. Whether it’s expressing excitement over a new purchase or complaining about poor customer service, people are posting about brands and the products they love and hate.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that monitoring social networks is a great way for companies to capture customer feedback on products and services. With customer data being such an important piece of the social media strategy, I was curious to find out how many companies were actually monitoring their brands.

After a few Google searches, I found several studies attempting to quantify the percentage of companies that had social media monitoring programs in place. Many of the studies I found reported that over 60 percent of companies don’t use tools to monitor brand conversations. Are you as surprised as I am?

In 2010, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services issued its report, The New Conversation, which cited that 75% of the companies in the survey said they weren’t sure where their most valuable customers were talking about them. And more recently, a CapGemini study last July found that of the 302 executives surveyed, only 57% of them stated their companies were monitoring online conversations for brand and product mentions.

It’s shocking how low these figures are given that most companies have already implemented social media programs but don’t track customer conversations. At a time when many organizations are jumping into social media head first, getting an analytics program underway should be one of the first items on the agenda. The insights gleaned from a brand conversation monitoring program will provide hard data to help shape digital strategies.

Proactively monitoring the health of your corporate brand online works to identify discussions that could harm your reputation. On the plus side, it leverages positive online commentary to enhance your market offerings and positioning. Without understanding customer sentiment or market impact, social media strategy is missing a vital component.

I know from my own past experiences that collecting insights from online conversations can also be valuable to other functional departments within the organization. Funneling this rich data to your R&D unit, customer care center, or other internal teams can potentially inform additional business, product and customer strategies that aren’t even on your radar screen.

Discovery Tools for Better Living in 2012

Photo courtesy of JanneM

Now that we’ve comfortably slid into the New Year, many of us are thinking about making changes and implementing new practices to improve the quality of our lives. No matter who you are or what you do, it’s a perfect time to learn new skills, meet new people and set new goals. What better way to do that than to add some new tools to the online toolbox. It’s amazing how much inspiration can be found online if you know where to look. Skip the self-help websites and go for tools that you can use all year long. Below are four of my favorites that I’ve found to be extremely effective, enlightening and even entertaining. So in the interest of better living, why not put these sites to work and make 2012 a year of increased knowledge, productivity and enjoyment.

Plancast – Want to increase your network and get active in your community? Just head on over to Plancast where you’ll find a list of events that are happening near you. The site is a fantastic resource for finding industry conferences, local gatherings and social activities that you may have missed otherwise. The site has an integrated layer of community as well so users can find events that their friends and colleagues are attending, which makes going to them much more enjoyable.

Quora – Billed as a Q&A website, Quora, has amassed a huge network of subject matter experts in a relatively short time. The site provides a simple platform for finding answers to complex business questions, technical issues and random inquiries where members rank the best entries. There’s also an option to follow questions so that you can receive notifications when new answers are added. The site recently increased the value quotient of the site with its new “boards” feature allowing users to compile content from elsewhere on the web.

Scribd – Whether you enjoy reading poetry, scientific findings or baking techniques, you’re bound to find what interests you at Scribd. Called the YouTube of printed materials, Scribd offers a vast array of online literature that never disappoints. Personally, I’m always finding content that either inspires me, educates me or both. If you’re a writer then you’ll definitely want to consider setting up an account to promote your work and share it with the community.

Udemy – Education is a lifelong process and with online learning tools like Udemy, it’s now just a click away. The site offers an assortment of courses ranging from the academic to the artistic; many are taught by leaders in their field. The majority of classes are free of charge while some are nominal in price. Experts can teach others by becoming instructors and creating their own courses. Udemy’s mission is to disrupt and democratize education, and frankly, I believe they’re off to a great start.

Social Media Marketing Insights

Insights on trends and techniques for smarter social media marketing

Discovery Tools for Better Living in 2012