Leveraging Social Media to Grow Your Research Business

Presented by:AJ Gerritson, 451 Marketing

INTROToday’s Agenda

• Understanding your objectives for using social media

• Defining your personal measure of success (specific to social media usage)

• The importance of building a social media strategy

• How to construct a social strategy for growing your business

• How to shadow your prospects and relevant media through social channels

• Two case studies that you MUST hear

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Case Study: Ford Focus and the Lion Man

INTRODefine your objectives for using

social media• Why social media?

• What kind of social media use will help you best achieve our goals?

INTRODefine your goals for using social

media

Is your goal to:

• Generate more brand awareness?• Drive brand loyalty or build fan culture?• Interact with prospects?• Monitor competition?• Monitor and manage your brand reputation?• Generate awareness of your company’s services or offerings?• Attract new employees, investors, partners/vendors?

INTRODefining your personal measure of success with social media

Depending on your goal, you can approach the question of measurement in two ways.

The first is to tie your success directly to an outcome.

• How many sales leads were created?• How many contacts were made?• How many people converted to new customers?

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The return on investment from the campaign can be calculated. For example, Goodwill Industries launched a virtual fashion showroom and blog. Within two weeks of the launch of the fashion showroom, 48% of viewers made purchases from the Goodwill eBay store. To date, 15% of all viewers have made purchases from the online store.

INTROThe second is to take a measure that is more based on value.

Value is created when people become aware of you and engage with your content. Their influence can be spread as they recommend a friend, share a comment or bookmark your content. This is a process in which you are seen as valuable enough to continue the relationship. Over time, a transaction or recommendation may happen.

In the example of Goodwill Industries, they have over a 60% retention on their blog and one out of 14 people who read the blog click over to one of Goodwill's shopping sites (eBay, ShopGoodwill.com).

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• How many people shared a viral campaign?• How many people commented on your blog?• How many people took part in your online event or contest?

Metrics for value may include:

A measurement on ROI can be immediate, while a ROI on value occurs over time. The most successful social media campaigns consider both sides of the coin.

INTROThe importance of building a

social media strategy

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Take AwayIf Motrin had a clear strategy in place that incorporated an understanding of the company’s audience, designated social media roles, and a protocol that established monitoring tools, they probably never would have run the ad in the first place. Even if they had, they would at least been able to contain the backlash.

• 10.5 million coupons were downloaded, only 4 million were redeemed

• #KFCFail became a trending topic on Twitter quickly

• Oprah and KFC’s brands damaged

• According to Zeta Interactive, when KFC pulled the promotion without explanation, negative ratings shot up to 33% from 11%.

Take AwayIf KFC developed a comprehensive strategy for this campaign, the campaign would not have failed. The company was not ready to launch this campaign for several reasons: the stores did not have enough food to redeem the coupons; there was a lack of communication between KFC and its customers; and KFC did not respond quickly enough to angry customers on Twitter. Before a campaign can launch, a company must audit its resources, establish a crisis communication protocol, designate a messenger(s) and determine how it will engage with customers on social media sites.

How to construct a social strategy for

growing your business

Step 1 – Define goals and objectives

• Generate more brand awareness?

• Help recruiting and retention?

• Monitor brand reputation?

• Increase sales?

Step 2 –Where is your audience?• Where can I find my audience?

• Who and where are my evangelists?

• What sites are the most popular with these groups?

Step 3 – Audit your resources• Content? • Staff?

• Consistency? • Technology?

• Tools?

Step 4 – Assign roles and responsibilities

• Social Media Strategists/Managers: defines strategy as well as executes it• Public Relations: interacts with bloggers, assumes blogging responsibilities• Social Media Metrics: measures social media, reports• Customer Relations: responds to customer issues on the social web• Content Developer: constantly creates relevant and timely content

Step 5 – Define your measures of success

• How many sales/leads were generated?

• How many people are talking about your company?

• How have you reduced operational costs?

• How have you helped recruiting?

• How many downloads?

• How many people viewed a demo?

Step 6 – Establish a protocol1. What information do we want to keep private?

2. What kinds of information would we benefit from making public?

3. What personal social media use is appropriate? Inappropriate?

4. How will we measure which rules are helpful and which are not?

5. Who are our quality followers? How can we continually engage them?

6. How can we consistently send our messages?

7. Should we have a set of rules for proactive social media use? Reactive social media use?

8. How do we respond to positive engagement versus negative engagement?

Step 7 – Execute strategy

Step 8 – Measure results• Have your networks grown or changed? How?• Are there new social media roles to explore?• What worked?• What didn’t work?• What can we do differently?• What should we eliminate?• What should we focus more on?• How much time is spent on each social media initiative?• What is our most valuable feedback?• How is social media changing right now?• Are we ahead of our competitors?

INTROShadowing?

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Two case studies that everyone MUST hear

Campaign Goals

1. Find elusive candidates

2. Drive applicants and job leads through the website

3. Generate more client leads

4. Create USP

Execution• Developed Strategy • Optimized Website• SEO/PR• Created Social

Communities(3 Blogs, 8 Twitter Feeds, 7 LinkedIn Groups)

• Trained Staff (Utilize Tools)

• Launched “Recruiting 2.0”

Results• 65% Increase in

monthly traffic from Google

• LinkedIn Groups have become a tremendous applicant and lead source

• Over 100k PR impressions

• USP “Recruiting 2.0”

Pre-campaign monthly site traffic = 3,486Last month’s site traffic = 27,810! (a 900% increase in traffic)

Case Study

Case Study

Strengths New England’s largest regional full-service CPA, consulting, and wealth management firm

One of the top 40 CPA firms in the country, 34 partners, and over 340 employees

Outstanding reputation, very loyal client base.

Some of the most intelligent thought leaders in their respective fields

Challenges Difficult to develop new business in downturn economy

Website was not optimized for Search

No strong “calls to action” or “lead-captures” on website

No PPC/Online campaign in place

No social media presence Thought leaders were not well known, either in traditional media or online

Case Study

Before 451 Marketing Never had received any leads from the website

Very little positive press in the media

Web traffic around 4,500 visitors per month

451 Marketing’s Approach Developed demand generation strategy consisting of PR, Search (paid and natural) marketing, search-leveraged public relations, social media marketing, and content development.

Developed keyword strategies, optimized website, began link-building campaign

Interviewed thought leaders, defined expertise, identified appropriate media outlets

Case Study

451 Marketing Approach Setup (in)efficient frontiers Blog - http://inefficientfrontiers.wordpress.com/

Created LinkedIn Group “New England CFO’s”, setup Facebook recruiting page

Pitched firm’s thought leaders to targeted media outlets

Began paid online campaign Distributed search-optimized press releases

Distributing content through social media channels

Case StudyCampaign Components

Case Study

Media Coverage Received to Date

• InfoWorld – November 20, 2008: "Tech Bottomline" column by Bill Snyder (article featured Robert Kish, vice president)

• The Boston Globe – November 21, 2008 “Business loans still flowing” by Ross Kerber (article featured Jeff Korzenik, vice president)

• The Boston Business Journal – December 19, 2008 “How to: choose a computer network system consultant,” by Keith Regan (article featured Robert Kish, vice president)

• Mass High Tech - January 23, 2009 Announcement on Vitale Caturano’s Sharepoint “Focus Series” event. 

• Forbes.com – February 4, 2009 “The Tax Code Encourages Big Wall Street Bonuses” Opinion Piece By Jeff Korzenik

• New York Times.com - February 4, 2009 “Economix” column by Catherine Rampell “The Tax Code Encourages Big Wall Street Bonuses” reprinted Opinion Piece By Jeff Korzenik

• Risk Management – March 1, 2009 “Recipe for Disaster” By Lori Widmer

Case Study

Media Coverage

• BusinessWeek Small Business’ "The Digital Manager" column - Bob Kish was cited in an article on How Small Business Can Make the Best Use of IT

• Data Center Management Magazine - Diego Rosenfeld was featured in an article on a Green IT Initiatives story

• The Street.com - Jeff Korzenik was featured in a story on the history of Wall Street

• InfoWorld – Diego Rosenfeld was interviewed by Contributing Reporter John Edwards’ Editorial Assistant, Eve Kaiser, for a piece on the outsourcing of IT government risk and compliance services (GCR). Diego also put Kaiser in touch with one of his clients for additional insights

Case Study

451 Marketing Results (in)efficient frontiers receives almost 2,000 visitors per month

Tremendous media coverage (see upcoming slide)

1st page search results for their top 20+ keywords.

Over 8,000+ visitors per month (almost doubled their traffic) for their Caturano.com site

451 Marketing Results 2008 Q4 was one of their best for new business engagements

Over 2 million in business during December and January

On average 15-30 leads coming in through website each month

Our actions resulted in $650,000!

7% Who Is 451 Marketing?Founded in February, 2004

Located on School Street in Boston

A collaboration of 15 industry veterans committed to being best-of-breed social media, public relations, and creative specialists

Clients include Allstate, Westin Hotels, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Recently launched the MassItsAllHere.com website for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

AJ Gerritson, Founding Partner

451 Marketing

21 School Street, 3rd Floor

Boston, MA 02108

617-259-1605 x 204

www.451marketing.com

www.451heat.com

www.Linkedin.com/in/ajgerritson

@ajgerritson