A Social media strategy is exactly the same as planning your December vacation.  First you look at your budget, define where you want to go, then search for available places in the area and make a booking. Sometimes you need to decide which vehicle will be the best for the vacation months before your trip. You start to plan your route, which routes to take, where to stop for breakfast and approximately what time you will reach your destination. Planning your social media is exactly the same – your need to plan your strategy upfront and everybody in your company needs to know which vehicles to use and the direction you are going in.

Let’s start with your destination:  Say your destination is building a large fan base, your roadmap and vehicles will defer from a destination of having a high engagement rate. For a high engagement rate you will post richer media e.g. images, ask for likes and comments whereas for a large fan base you will rather run a competition.

Choose your vehicles: If you want more engagement you need to choose Facebook and Twitter as your vehicle to get to your destination. You need to keep your target market in mind and also what you want to share. On Facebook you can easily share blog posts, videos, images and ask questions. Twitter, however, is best for short to the point updates. On Twitter 54.6% are women and 45.4% are men.
The statistics will also help you define your vehicles.

Plan your route: Start every month planning your route to get to you destination. Sit upfront with your campaign and schedule all your updates and tweets for the month. Remember to re-view, revise and re-schedule your plan, there might be news in the middle of the month that you can share.

My key, my car, I’m driving:  Remember that your social media platforms are your company’s voice to the public. Never post negative comments on your wall, don’t be aggressive, have a crisis management strategy in place just in case someone wants to bad-mouth your organisation.

Lastly, you are part of the social media world, whether you have a Facebook page/ Twitter account or not, people are talking about you!

Happy Marketing!

The Academy Awards 2012 gave the Social Media community a lot to talk about as the number of Tweets and Facebook updates about Hollywood’s biggest night more than tripled from last year. Bluefin Labs reported that there was 3.4 million Oscar-related comments on Facebook and Twitter this year, up from 966,00 for the 2011 Academy Awards. “It was pretty big and pretty healthy growth from last year,” said Tom Thai, vice president of marketing for the Massachusetts-based Bluefin Labs.

The Infografic below outlines the Social Media Buzz for the Oscars 2012.

Some interesting finding in this Infographic is that

• The Help generated the most likes on Facebook and Tweets on Twitter, but is did not top the list in terms of Award Nominations,
• Hugo received the highest number of Award Nominations but not much social media comments or tweets.
• Meryl Streep generated the largest global share of voice of all the actresses nominated for an Oscar.

Being part of the Social Media community is like being there at the Oscars.

News spread fast on Social platforms but much faster on Twitter. The death of world class singer, Whitney Houston spread like wild fire on this popular social platform – and before the media announced it to the world. The first tweet was made by a person with only 14 followers, but spread so fast that another person in Nevada tweeted that his source had not only said Whitney Houston is dead, but that he also gave the location of where Houston was found.  This information was yet another detail of her death that took even longer to be announced by the mainstream media

This is the first tweet at 4:30 pm about Houston’s death and the location.

This tweet is by The Associated Press at 4:57pm without the location.

This sad news broke on social media 27 minutes before being picked up by die mainstream media.  Topsy Labs reported that about 2.5 billion Tweets and re-tweets regarding Houston’s death occurred in the first hour, amounting to about 1000 tweets per second.

This is the power of Twitter.

If you do not have a Twitter account, this is the perfect time to create one. To recognise the power and speed of a tweet and how it can become the ‘Word from your corporation’s mouth’ – and reach thousands within minutes.

Whitney might not have known, but her legacy lives on, and Twitter and all the Twitter fans worldwide ‘Will (really) always love her’…

During the last month, I have been keeping a keen eye on Google’s new approach to search. In my previous article, The Impact of Personalized Search on SEO, I mentioned that the decision to include Google+ social content in search results might not be welcomed by everyone. This especially stems from the fact that it seems as if Google places priority to Google+ information in its search results. One can argue that Google is entitled to include Google+ content, since they own the search engine. Also, Google mentioned that they would index data from Facebook and Twitter if they made their platforms open. One thing that is certainly sure however, is that Google has received significant backlash because of the decision.

Google’s social rival, the massively popular micro blogging site Twitter, are on the forefront of the accusing camp. After the new search algorithm was launched by Google, Twitter accused Google of trying to drive traffic to their social network by manipulating search results. A Twitter representative made the following statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users”.

Personally, I think Twitter has a point. Twitter has had a massive social impact over the last few years (the “Twitter Revolutions” for example) and breaking news can often be found first on Twitter. If results from Twitter (or any other site for that matter) is the most relevant, the information should be available first in Google search results. This also ties in with the aforementioned Search Engine Optimisation. If you have to compete with only slightly relevant data from Google itself, you’re in for a losing battle. One option is to embrace the change from a social marketing perspective. But is this really best for the user?

In conclusion, it seems that many are worried that relevant results get pushed down in favour of Google + content. Fundamentally, relevancy is what it all boils down to. Google might not be in the wrong here, they are certainly entitled to promote their social network, but they should not compromise the quality of their search results in the process.

Twitter/Facebook - image credit - www.cbsnews.com

With today’s technology you can invite all your friends and family to a show, even if they are not in the some country as you – or the event itself!

The New York Fashion Week kicks off this month and all the designers and the press are going online to reach viral audiences and they are planning to reach a larger amount of people than those present at the show. Most of the brands will make use of their Facebook pages to unveil their Spring/Summer 2012 collections and videos will also be uploaded onto Youtube. They plan to take snapshots live from the show and post that on their social platforms. Not missing out on the biggest Brand’s Spring/Summer 2012 collection ever, is becoming easier by the minute, and the strategy behind it is of great value to everyone planning their own events strategies.

So let’s have a look at some tips and hints on planning an online event. It is important to focus on your audience. Firstly, you need to capture and keep their attention. Your audience has the power to log-off, get side-tracked, lose interest, or evens get up and walk away. There must be a strong reason for them to stay connected. For this reason, a virtual event will be much shorter than a live event.

Secondly,, you need to look at a technical supplier. They need to help you with hosting and your presentation. They would also need to ensure that your website is running fast and that your presentation is seamless when you present it online. Lastly, make use of your social portals to communicate with your audience in advance. Tell them about your online event, do a build up to the day, link all your social portals, keep them interested, excited and informed; and then, make a video of the event and post it on Youtube when your event is over – giving them the opportunity to experience the event with you.

Virtual events are growing fast, try to make it part of your strategy.