8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations

Transcription

1 8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations

2 8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations 2 Contents STEP 1. PROFILE YOUR AUDIENCE STEP 2. DEFINE YOUR OBJECTIVE STEP 3. INDENTIFY THE RIGHT PLATFORM STEP 4. DETERMINE YOUR TOOLS AND BUDGET STEP 5. DETERMINE YOUR METRICS AND MEASURE RESULTS... 6 STEP 6. DEVELOP YOUR MESSAGE STEP 7. PROMOTE USER ADOPTION THROUGH THOUGHT LEADERS AND CONTENT STEP 8. CONTINUALLY EVOLVE YOUR STRATEGY

3 8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations 3 8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations Associations are joining businesses from Nabisco to Target on the social media bandwagon. The Weber Shandwick Social Impact Survey found that 88% of nonprofits are experimenting with social media, with 51% saying that they re active users. Moreover, the 200 largest nonprofits are adopting social networking more quickly than both the Fortune 500 and the Inc. 500, according to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research. Yet many associations lack a social media strategy. Without a strategy, they are unable to effectively integrate social media into their marketing and communications plans and support their organizational objectives. Having a plan is particularly important for social media because this emerging area is undergoing considerable flux. With the number of available tools growing exponentially, organizations often use a trial and error approach to determine what to use and how to use it; what works and what doesn t. A strategy is critical to navigating the right path and lessening the time you spend on this testing process. A Step-by-Step Approach to Creating Your Social Media Strategy Ready to get started developing your strategy? These eight steps can help. STEP 1» PROFILE YOUR AUDIENCE. Start with your audience. Do your members use social media? If they do, what channels do they prefer? What do they think about your organization? Who are the thought leaders on issues that are important to your organization and what are they saying? Answering these questions will help you determine where to focus your efforts and what to say to your members. A number of tools are available to help you listen to your members or prospects. Fonteva s MemberNation, which is built on the Salesforce.com platform, gives your organization the ability to listen in on all relevant social channels to gauge what is being said and by whom, in addition to many other features. Radian6 from Salesforce is a great tool for associations and nonprofits to

4 8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations 4 use. It automates the listening process and attributes a sentiment positive, neutral or negative to each mention or phrase you re tracking. This allows associations to monitor their entire social media ecosystem from one platform. Understanding what your members are saying about issues that are important to them will help you develop your messaging. Associations not using a private solution to listen across all of their social channels can utilize a number of public tools to help them do so. Some of these tools are listed below, and can be used to easily and economically search the association s respective social channels. Associations that want to identify keywords to track can use search.grader.com. Just input the website address of their own site and any competitor sites to identify the keywords that are ranking on their site and their competitors sites. Once they have keywords picked out, they can be plugged in at hashtagify.com to identify which keywords will make the most effective hashtags for Twitter use. STEP 2» DEFINE YOUR OBJECTIVES. Now define the objectives you want to achieve by using social media. These objectives should support your organization s overall mission and vision. They need to be measurable and timebased. This will allow you to objectively measure the progress of your social media initiatives. You need to see if you ve been able to move the needle or if you need to adjust your strategy, trying new methods or platforms. Social media objectives can be soft and qualitative (e.g. creating a sense of community or brand awareness) or hard and quantifiable (e.g. increasing members or donations).

5 8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations 5 STEP 3» IDENTIFY THE RIGHT PLATFORM. Now consider if you want to create a public or private community. Your choice depends on the benefits you deliver to your members and how you position those benefits. Be sure your AMS provider offers a robust private environment such as the one offered by Fonteva, as you may want to use both platforms depending on your strategy. Public A public platform is a third-party platform, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, that anyone can access. This platform may be your best bet if you want to generate awareness, promote your association, establish a following, keep constituents informed, or direct supporters back to your main website. Private A private platform is one where you control who can access the information whether it s a member or simply a contact. A private platform can provide members-only information, such as announcements, industry news, and contact information, as well as groups, forums and libraries that allow constituents to tap into the collective wisdom of their organization. A private platform also enables members to discuss sensitive issues they would hesitate to air publically. For example, researchers may wish to discuss their work and exchange ideas with other researchers but may not be ready to go public. Both Is your primary value to your members delivering content that has a discounted member rate and a public rate? Consider using both platforms. Alternatively, use the public site to promote your content and entice contacts to become members while using a private site to give members access to that content. STEP 4» DETERMINE YOUR TOOLS AND BUDGET. Research the technology necessary to implement your strategy, including the platform and listening tools. Formulating a list of requirements allows you to tell the vendor exactly what you need rather than allowing the vendor to sell you a lot of unwanted features. Find out exactly what each vendor can and can t do and how much it will cost to build an accurate budget for your project. Since it can be difficult to determine what technology to use, look at the tools that major brands like Proctor and Gamble or The Coca-Cola Co. are using.

6 8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations 6 STEP 5» DETERMINE YOUR METRICS AND MEASURE RESULTS. STEP 6» You can t manage what you don t measure. Select and track metrics that can be applied against your objectives. Luckily social media platforms provide a wealth of real-time metrics that deliver immediate feedback to help you make adjustments early. For example, you can determine your user community s level of engagement by looking at different metrics. For private communities, you need to monitor the number of times a member logged into a private community, page views, comments and participation in association programs. For public communities like Facebook or Twitter, you need to monitor likes, comments, discussions, click-throughs, retweets, and more. DEVELOP YOUR MESSAGE. What do you want to use social media to accomplish? Do you want to inform? Motivate? Connect? Different platforms excel at different tasks. To get your messages in front of your members, use an platform or traditional advertising channels. But if you want to engage your constituents in ongoing conversations, there s no better platform for peer-topeer communication than social media. Social media networks enable STEP 7» PROMOTE USER ADOPTION THROUGH THOUGHT LEADERS AND CONTENT. A critical mass of adopters is necessary for your social network to succeed. Recruiting thought leaders whether they re volunteers, subject matter experts, or contracted content providers

7 8 Steps To Creating A Rock-Solid Social Media Strategy For Associations 7 is particularly important for getting the adoption ball rolling. Thought leaders drive the discussion and contribute high quality content. Since most participants join social networks to access content, it s much easier to engage additional network participants if you offer fresh, quality content provided by knowledgeable experts. STEP 8» CONTINUALLY EVOLVE YOUR STRATEGY. The social media marketplace is in a constant state of flux. New tools constantly become available. Users can abruptly change platforms. To keep up, you ll need to continually refine your strategy and monitor the tools and technology marketplace. Don t adopt social media simply because you think you need a social media presence. Start by doing some research and creating a social media strategy customized to your organization s needs. A well-defined strategy will help ensure that your social media efforts successfully address your members needs and support your organization s overall business goals and objectives. Contact Fonteva info@fonteva.com Connect with Us