Social media strategy
Tell them well
Overview
NOTE: Content here are my personal opinions, and not intended to represent any employer (past or present). “PROTIP:” here highlight information I haven’t seen elsewhere on the internet because it is hard-won, little-know but significant facts based on my personal research and experience.
The first photo uploaded to an app by Instagram, on July 16 2010, by co-founder Kevin Systrom:
It’s not enough just to have an account with some words and pictures.
What is the purpose of social media?
Influence
Influencers are “effective” to the extent they can get others to take action such as:
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Buy something (generate revenue)
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Register with their email, name, etc.
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Retweet to expand reach through their follower’s contacts
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Forward a resource to specific individuals (by providing emails of someone else)
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Connect with you on LinkedIn,
Friend you on Facebook,
Star and Follow you on GitHub -
Watch a video so you change their mind or strengthen their conviction.
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Download a white paper (pdf)
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Link to your site from their website so you get higher search rankings on Google, Bing, etc.
etc.
Some websites “gamify” their site with reward points for visitors to do the above.
Measurements
1st Level Connections on LinkedIn are the number of others who have connected to an individual user. An average LinkedIn user has about 1,300 contacts within this distribution in 2018:*
Among its 500 Million LinkedIn users, 70% are outside the USA, according to OmnicoreAgency.com.
A LinkedIn answer said there are 500 LinkedIn Influencers worldwide (called “Top Voice” since October 2022) Among the invitation-only the top 20 influencers, Bill Gates is #1 with 36 million (as of April 2023).
Number of Followers are also tracked on LinkedIn.
Hit count is the number of people who landed on the site. The same person who looks at 10 pages would register 10 hits.
Unique visitors is the number of unique IP addresses which visited the site. The same person who visited 10 pages would register as one visitor.
CTR (Click Through Rate) is the percentage of visitors who clicked on an ad banner. If an ad is seen by 1,000 people, but clicked by 200 visitors:
(Number of Clicks / Number of impressions) x 100 (200 / 1,000) x 100 = .02
Those who pay ad networks to have banners appear on that network’s sites need to calculate the cost of ad placements:
CPM (Cost Per thousand) uses M in the abbreviation because M is the Roman numeral for thousand. The “per” refers to the number of unique impressions.
NOTE: CPM rates were once (pre yr 2000 bubble-burst era) as much as $75, but have now dropped to as little as $1 CPM.
CPC (Cost Per Click) refers to the number of times some visitor clicks on an ad banner.
NOTE: CPC rates can be as high as $3 per click or as little as 5 cents per click. It depends on the product and market competition. “Chicago lawyer” was at one time the top rate.
CPR (Cost Per Registration) is based on a count of how many finish filling up a registration form (and confirmation email).
CPA (Cost Per Action) is an inclusive metrice that can include ad click, ad click, video view, registration, sale, or other activity.
CPS (Cost Per Sale) is the most desirable measure to sites because that’s the ultimate action for real revenue on ecommerce sites.
Helping association
An IT education school makes videos from useful blog articles.
- Is the effort of creating a video worth the number of views?
PROTIP: It is rare to get more than 5% on messages delivered. This means most tweets are never read by anyone.
PROTIP: However, tweets remain on the internet forever, so someone doing searches may find it days, months, or even years later.
Measure Engagement
Here are some services that measure engagement:
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Empire.kred game
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Hotspot
NOTE: One example of using AI/ML is to perform NLP (Natural Language Processing) which interprets text for emotional content.
No longer offered:
- Klout (Lithium) closed on May 25, 2018
Multiple Twitter accounts
Some companies find it useful to have several twitter accounts:
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One account for the corporate name
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A hashtag for each brand or product name
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AskXYZ for questions
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One account for the conference each year
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A hashtag for usersof each brand or product name
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The accounts of each person affliated with the above
TODO: Brand positioning.
PROTIP: If your website is .io or some other TLD, include that in your company hashtag name to avoid confusion.
Tags for Association
Here’s what I think is a great example of associating authoritative and inspirational messaging to a brand:
When an organization makes a media splash, competitors may hijack the hashtags being promoted by tweeting the competitor’s tag along with their own, which associates the communications together.
PROTIP: Copy the tags in others’ posts and paste the hashtags you want to use in a file. This not only helps you focus, it’ll also be quicker to copy and paste into your posts.
The ultimate aim of messaging is to be associated with POSITIVE EMOTIONS: #happy, #fulfilled, #satisfied, #relaxed, #committed, #sassy, etc.
PROTIP: Write the word after each emoji.
Robert Plutchik’s diagram (originally published in American Scientist in 2001) provides English words to describes different strengths of emotions - 4 sets of polar opposites:
- #Joy is the opposite of #Sadness. Physiology: Connect vs withdraw
- #Fear is the opposite of #Anger. Physiology: Get small and hide vs get big and loud
- #Anticipation is the opposite of #Surprise. Physiology: Examine closely vs jump back
- #Disgust is the opposite of #Trust. Physiology: Reject vs embrace
Notice the opposite NEGATIVE EMOTIONS: #sad, #weary, #scared, #afraid, #disgusted, #disgruntled, etc.
Different cultures associate different emotions with COLORS.
PROTIP: The (current) Instagram caption limit is 750 characters.
According to Track Maven, Instagram posts containing 9 hashtags perform 2.5x better than posts using just 1 hashtag. Here is a histogram of tags among all posts on Instagram (from the 2018 Social Medial Benchmarks):
PROTIP: Post a combination of niche targeting to broad hashtags:
Also consider these broad hastags:
POSITIVE ADVERBS: #mastering, #achieving, etc.
POSITIVE ADJECTIVES: #competent, #capable, #accomplished, #dope, etc.
ATTRIBUTION: #master, #lord, #respect, etc.
SKILLS: #mastery, #overcome, etc.
EVENTS: #happybirthday, #anniversary, #NewYears, #ValentinesDay, #Easter, #SinglesDay, #Halloween, #holidays, #Xmas, etc.
WEATHER: #sunshine, #raining, #snowing, #snowy, #blustery, etc.
TIME OF DAY: #dawn, #dusk, #midnight, #midday, etc.
LOCATION: #USA, #Africa, etc.
Best times to tweet
Some evangelists say that they tweet the same message several times a day to catch the attention of people in different time zones around the world.
Services such as HootSuite and Tailwind (for Instagram) enable messages to be stored for automated posting at specific times in the future.
More on evangelism
This is one of many topics:
- Evangelism dependencies
- Deliverables and Events Budgeting spreadsheet
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Evangelism Cost-Benefit analysis (Bang-for-the-buck comparion)
- Events and Conferences
- Calendar of Announcements
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Milestone events
- Social media
- Social media strategy
- Tweets
- Sentiment analysis (of favorable words or not)
- Responses to social media
- Competitive Comparisons (by analysts and others)
- Competitive Strategy
- Competitive Comparison Kit (for people to run for themselves)
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Objections, and how to handle them
- Target Customers
- Customer References
- Proof Points
- Email databases (User Acquisition)
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Remarketing of current or lapsed users
- Product websites
- Product wikis
- User Forums (Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.)
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Surveys
- Product Roadmaps
- Release Schedule
- Tasks
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Issues
- environments for development, testing, demos, training, etc.
- Demo presentation scripts
- Beta activities
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Release Notes
- Tutorials
- Live event sign-up administration
- Webinars
- Video production capability
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Live Video Streaming
- Spiffs
- Hackathons
- Participating in Conferences
- Running Conferences
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Dynamic projections of tweets, etc.
- Recruitment follow-up