How to Determine Objectives for Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Welcome to maximize your social actionable advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social, social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business. Neal Schaffer. Everybody this is Neal Schaffer. And welcome to a another exciting episode of maximize your social coming into today from the office here in Irvine, California. Usually, in all honesty, if you've ever seen me speak, I sort of like to pace around and walk around. And even when I'm here recording my podcast, I'm always trying to move around and engage those invisible people that I can't see but I know are out there listening to me on this podcast. And unfortunately, some of you may know that I play in two different teams in adult soccer seven by seven soccer here in Irvine. So actually nursing a, I guess a stubbed toe pinky toe, someone actually stepped on it in the last game as I was trying to defend this, this big dude who had to put all his weight as his cleat stepped on my pinky toe. And I am hurting for that. So one of my feet has to be a step right now as I set the toe in preparation for another game tonight, but you're not here to hear about my latest soccer injuries. You're here to learn about my latest social media strategies and how you can maximize your social. So let's get on to the topic of today's show. Now, I'll also say I'm really excited that I'll be at Social Media Marketing World this week. Hopefully, you'll hear this podcast before Social Media Marketing World, if you're going to be in San Diego, please tap on my shoulder, I'd love to chat with you. If not follow the hashtag S M M w 14. I'll be speaking on Friday, my own solo appearance on nine ways to differentiate yourself from the competition in social media, and then hosting a LinkedIn panel with the likes of Marriott Rewards. Dale and Cox Communications really excited about that. So with no further ado, you know, I always say at the end of every podcast, hey, if there's something you'd like me to cover, let me know, tweet me, whatever you want to do write a comment on iTunes doesn't matter. Following it all. And it just so happens that someone who bought maximize your social and was very, very happy with it, Seth Higgins out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, actually reached out to me on Twitter, he first said, and this was just a little bit over a week ago for said, Hey, really appreciate the social strategy framework you lay out and maximize your social, thank you, and then follow it up with hey, here's some topics that I have for your podcast. And you know, would you mind talking about them, and I love that challenge. It keeps me at you know, on top of my game, and it helps me better understand your needs. So, you know, I should say that Seth is a little bit unique. He does not use social media for business, but his a bio on Twitter, and it's set Hinze one word SE th h i n z says striving to equip church folks for social media ministry, you know, social media, in churches, and for religious institutions have blogged about it a few years ago. It's obviously a very, very powerful thing that a lot of churches are tapping into. And therefore when we talk about his first question, which is building social strategies that align directly with business objectives, now, I don't care whether you're a for profit business, whether you are a nonprofit, whether you're a government organization, or whether you are a religious organization, I think that when you build your social strategy, it has to align with something that you want to achieve. So when I say business objectives, I say that in a very, very broad sense. And, in fact, I recently talked at United Nation city during Social Media Week in Copenhagen, Denmark. And my topic was social media strategy for nonprofits and non government organizations. And part of what I was talking about there was you know, for for nonprofits, just getting the word out getting brand awareness, it's not necessarily about fundraising, although a lot of nonprofits do want to fundraise maybe getting political influence for the non government organizations. I did a case study with my marketing partner Komfo, who I've blogged about as well, they have a great Facebook page analytical tool that you should all get access to. That's K O M, as in Mary fo, and they shared a case study with me about how they worked with the city of Copenhagen, the city of Copenhagen. They wanted to launch a Facebook page, they wanted to engage with the citizens, and they wanted to get feedback about what they thought and through the process of doing that they gained a great number of fans. But as they were doing their surveys and asking citizens what they thought a few months after they started the page, they got an overwhelming positive response, right? These are business objectives, or these are social media strategy objectives that don't necessarily touch the bottom line. I always talk about you know, whenever I talk about social media strategy and creating those business objectives at the very beginning, I start with the language of CEOs right the language of exile. It's either more sales or lesser expenses. And either those lead to greater profit. And indeed, there's a number of things you can do to help you achieve that. But you know, taking a step back, it's also about intangibles. And there are a great number of companies and I interviewed the Vice President, public relations for Ritz Carlton and I'll be sharing part of that interview in my Social Media Marketing World presentation. But she said, Look, we want to extend the conversation, and have as many, you know, positive qualitative conversations with as many of our consumer fans as we can in social media, and right there, that is a very, very measurable objective, that keeps Ritz Carlton going and keeps their social media program going it is their flagship, it is the direction that they steer towards, in everything they do in social media. So when I say creating a social strategy that aligns directly with your business objective, it's that objective. And it really comes down to hey, you know, what are we trying to do as an organization? What what are we in business for? Why are we a nonprofit? What are we trying to do? And what are the things that we do to help us achieve that? Why do we have an organization whether you're a one person organization, or a 10 person, or 1000 person, go through each department, right? If you're a large enterprise, go through each department, try to understand your objectives for the year and see where social media may lend a helping hand. If you're a 10. person organization, what are the roles that every one of your 10 People play? And is there a social media overlap? And chances are there are, if I was going to put it even simpler? I think that social media and you know, I've been talking a lot about social selling, and employee advocacy recently. But obviously, social media really started out as a form of outward communications. So that's why you had public relations, you had marketing, and corporate communications are usually the early adopters. So if you have those people in your organization, there's definitely a role that social media can play. And that can help you determine one or a series of business objectives for using social for your social media strategy. But you know, moving beyond that we've seen, obviously, as more and more consumers engage with companies, we've seen social media for customer service come alive. Do you have a customer service department, is there a role that social can play, we've seen recruiters get involved, and LinkedIn provide a lot of, you know, HR departments with enterprise grade software that helps them really data mind and find talent on LinkedIn. So we have social recruiting, if you're recruiting, there's obviously a role that social can play. And then you know, you have your salespeople, bizdev people, the savvy ones are already using LinkedIn. And it's a matter of, you know, training, the rest of them, learning best practices, a lot of this training I do for a lot of companies, and really getting everybody involved in social selling. And then you have so many people in so many different organizations involved in your social media initiatives. And you also have just average employees that are already doing social, how do you get everyone involved for the company's benefit? And that's where you start looking at employee advocacy. So I hope that I've given you some ideas there. Every company has different business objectives. Every department has different objectives, different strategies for the year, but it really comes down to, you know, have a meeting, what are we trying to achieve this year, and it's very, very similar to how I consult with my clients. And I wrote about this in Maximizer, social, my whole framework really starts with bringing together all the internal stakeholders and say, Hey, what are your problems? What are you trying to do? What's the corporate strategy? You know, what keeps you up at night? What are your objectives for getting a bonus? At the end of the year, there's a lot of different ways of asking the same questions. But start with those things that are most critical to your organization. For a lot of organizations, that's going to be increasing your sales, increasing donations, maybe for nonprofits, NGOs, it's increasing political influence. Maybe for religious organizations, it's both engaging or increasing the engagement with your community, and growing your community and with social media, you can actually grow your community globally. And, you know, I've heard of alliances of churches that have come together, and they do you know, UStream live casts and the whole bit, and there's obviously a lot of compelling ways that you can be using social media. So, Seth, I don't know if this directly answers your question. As I always say social media is half science, how far I can teach the science. But there's a certain application or the applied part of it is something that's going to be unique to your company, to your brand, to your situation, to your strategy, to your specific objectives for who you are, and why your business or organization is in existence. So I can only go so far. I'm working on going that next mile. My presentation and Social Media Marketing World is going to be the first time where I share my research, looking at what makes great companies and social media. What are the common attributes and what can every organization learn from them. So make sure you follow the hashtag. I'm going to talk about that in future podcasts as well. But for today, that's, you know, I like to keep these short and sweet. And hopefully that gave you a lot to think about as you determine your own business objectives for your social media strategy. Or if you already have a stripe A GE and you're doing your monthly or quarterly checkup, it's time to do a reset button. And maybe you can be using social media a little bit differently. All right. Hey, Seth, I really appreciate you reaching out to me and anyone else, you know, Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook, LinkedIn, even Instagram, I'm everywhere. So if you want something or you have a question for me, please ask me and please, I found out today, do not use the hashtag ask Neil if you're gonna ask me something that was a trending topic. And that was not because of Neal Schaffer. That was actually because of a I believe a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey player with the last name and Neil, not a big hockey fan. So I can't tell you the details. But anyway, at mentioned me direct message me. And once again, I really appreciate all your support all your feedback. It's what keeps me going. It's what keeps my my content engine going. It's what gives it fuel. You know, wherever you are in the world today. Make it a great day. We'll talk to you again soon. Bye. Bye.

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