Social channelS: a content ManaGeMent...

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of 12 © 2012 - Hippo B.V.

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Social channelS: a content ManaGeMent iMperative

introduction

There is no doubt that the Social Web is in an explosive growth mode.

A recent PQ Media forecast done in January of this year found that

Social Media as a share of the advertising and marketing dollar grew to

$2.83 billion last year – a 42% increase year over year. And, in terms of

enterprise strategies - despite the hype - there is real, actionable work

being done across the entire organization when it comes to actively

pursuing social as a strategy.

how enterpriSe Social content ManaGeMent

provideS a coMpetitive edGe for SucceSS


of 12 © 2012 - Hippo B.V.

There are inward facing Enterprise 2.0 solutions such as the one Phillips, a global

healthcare, lighting and consumer business has embarked upon – rolling out a social

network across its 100,000 employees. As their CIO Maarten de Vries said, they’ve

been “surprised” at the level of success they’ve achieved in such a short period of time.

Then, there are also outward facing solutions – such as using social channels for content

marketing and web engagement management for consumers. This has been hugely popular.

Social Media Examiner, the world’s largest online social media magazine recently conducted

a study of almost 4,000 marketers and found that 94% were using social media to drive

marketing results. Brands like Coca Cola, McDonalds, American Express and Red Bull have

been able to attract and engage millions of engaged community members across Facebook,

Twitter and Youtube – leading to higher sales and a huge amount of brand awareness and

loyalty.

One thing ties every successful social strategy together – and that’s content. It’s content

and conversation that’s creative, engaging – and most importantly managed well.

Managing Social content well provides Marketing advantage

Certainly the early adopters of successful social strategies have enjoyed a first mover

advantage against the competition as they captured early “mindshare” of the consumer.

But even these enterprises are realizing that the real key to providing a long-term

competitive advantage is the ability to manage social content successfully and effectively

through every channel. As Social Media expert Brian Solis blogged recently: “social media’s

true path is the integration of collaborative extensions to existing business units and

processes.” And, Web Content Management is one of those processes.

Social Content is, after all, content that needs to be governed – from creation, through a

workflow – and ultimately published out to a destination where it can be optimized, nurtured

and measured.

Delivering social content effectively is an important piece of the WCM process. Today’s

social channels – especially the outward facing ones (like Twitter and Facebook) - are

dynamic – but they are driven by the needs of the entire community not the individual

enterprise.

Savvy enterprises will start utilizing the data coming out of the external social networks to

drive content optimization for their own goals.


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For example, Facebook channels can be personalized with both what makes Facebook useful,

but also for what makes the enterprise content more relevant for that particular audience

member. Also, using data gleaned from an audience’s interaction with content on the social

channels will be vital data for the enterprise to hold. If a consumer clicks on a particular

product in a Facebook or Blog channel – that preference should carry through to the

enterprise website, ecommerce catalog or beyond.

Managing Social content well provides Better Governance

Finally, a centralized and effective social content management strategy helps protect

against the risk and danger that so many CEO’s and CIO’s are afraid of. Using a centralized

and governed process mitigates and creates protective measures for how social content can

be exploited for the benefit of the enterprise – without the brand risk of a rogue group that

may compromise the brand. While social media guidelines and policies will help direct the

process – a good content management system can enforce many of these policies.

This is true for both inward and outward facing strategies. When CIO’s were interviewed

recently by AIIM (The Association of Information Management Professionals) they echoed

the marketing studies saying that social applications are an imperative to the enterprise.

More than half said that it was of “significant” or “imperative” importance that the business

develop a social business strategy.

Figure 1: AIIM Study on Social Business


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And whether it is a process driven by marketing for a marketing result – or an internal

process driven by the CIO for a collaboration result, content is at the heart of it. And there

are some effective features to consider as the enterprise prepares to roll out a Social

Content Management process. Like any other content management process - it is facilitated

by tools – and effective Web Content Management tools are certainly driving many of the

solutions here. This white paper will look into some of the real benefits of the social content

management system – and outline some of the key features that a good tool should help to

facilitate.

Social content ManaGeMent: a BuSineSS iMperative

Despite the hype, many enterprises are struggling with keeping their outward social

channels updated. It’s not that they haven’t leaped in with gusto. In fact, a report by Analyst

firm Altimeter Group found that big brands are managing an average of 178 social media

accounts. But that same report found that the enterprises typically lack clear goals and

a process for success. Only 43% of those enterprises said that they have any type of

formalized strategy or roadmap addressing how business goals can be met.

Additionally, many CIO’s have not embraced the idea of Social Media within the enterprise.

Gartner predicts that by 2015 that only 40% of large businesses will have a “Facebook-

type-Network” within their enterprise. And, according to the Social Media Examiner study,

marketers are still finding that it “takes a lot of time” to manage social media channels.

60% of those practicing social media content marketing are spending 6 hours or more each

week – and a third (33%) are spending more than a day a week.

Does this slow success and fear of failure mean that that a well-governed and optimized

social content strategy is unattainable? No, it simply means that effective ways to manage

these channels have not been deployed in many enterprises.

This includes both inward and outward facing social channels. In that same AIIM Survey,

a quarter of the respondents said that the biggest issue with internally focused social

networking was employees creating content outside the normal enterprise content

management process. And, likewise, content governance and optimization is one of the

biggest reasons that managing social content across all the networks is so time consuming

for marketers.

There is no doubt that C-level executives are noticing the impact that Facebook, Twitter,

blogs and other social networks are having in the consumer world. And, there is also no

doubt that this mindset is changing the way in which we communicate.


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• Social Content Can Improve Revenue Opportunities: A study for the Center for Media

Research found that the number of people saying that social media content “strongly”

influences a purchase decision as risen 20% just in the last six months.

• Successful Social Content Efforts Provide Huge Internal Collaboration Opportunities:

A study done by eMarketer found that “internal collaboration” was a primary business

objective and an active project among 40% of businesses.

• But Successful Social Content Efforts Depend On Content Re-Use: In a joint study

done by both Content Marketing Institute – and MarketingProfs – more than 40%

cited sourcing engaging content across functional areas of the business as one of the

primary roadblocks to a successful content marketing and social media strategy.

So, it’s early days in the development of social strategies – and there is both slow success

and fear about the risk.

This provides an enormous opportunity for the enterprise that is ready to embrace these

new challenges and develop a competitive edge. It’s now time to build the capabilities for

effectively and centrally managing the content and conversations in both our outward and

inward facing social channels.

the Social content ManaGeMent SYSteM

So, like any function within the organization – a content management system is a process

facilitated by tools. Web content is no different. The Web Content Management System that

an enterprise uses, is facilitated by the software appropriate for that job.

In the first part of the 2000’s Web Content Management (WCM) software solutions were

focused on one thing — and one thing only; making it easier and more powerful for non-

technical people to move content from their desktop to their web site. Interfaces were

critical. Every enterprise web content management provider touted their “easy-to-use”

UI and how flexible and intuitive their solution would make the web content management

process. And power-user enterprise features were also key — with the focus on powerful

workflows, and approval processes — and the ability to integrate with other enterprise tools.

But now, as social channels have become such an integral part of the content and marketing

equation – IT is beginning to participate again (to look to inward collaboration networks)

Marketing needs some very specific social content publishing and optimization features.


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Effective WCMS systems are now helping organizations to publish, optimize and measure

social content. And, with the expansive and explosive growth of mobile and the “internet

of things” context is becoming an incredibly important piece of that content management

process. Consumers expect to see relevant and personalized content across any channel

on which they choose to engage. So, where content personalization, optimization and

measurement is a given on our Web site – it’s also now just as important (or maybe even

more so) on the social channels we are managing.

So what are the critical areas that the new Social Content Management System features

should cover.

• easy-to-add new & Multiple channels

As stated before, according to analyst firm The Altimeter Group, the average large

enterprise now manages more than 100 different social media channels. Now, certainly

these aren’t all active at the same time – but as the enterprise starts to add channels

for customer service, marketing, sales, product development – and all of them in

different languages – adding new social channels needs to be quick and easy. This is

where a social CMS and an easy to use Channel Manager comes to play. Marketing

and other non-technical personnel should be able to set up new channels for social

publishing without the need of developers to create new code.

• easy-to-find content for re-purposing through Social

One of the key benefits to managing all those channels centrally – is that social content

comes from all parts of the organization and a WCMS organizes and stores all of that

content in a central repository so that it can be accessed by multiple teams. Social

content is especially appropriate for content re-use and repurposing and using a Web

content management solution – where content can be search, filtered and ultimately

repurposed across multiple channels enables tremendous efficiency in the enterprise.

• role Based publishing

At its simplest and most basic – a capable WCMS should publish any content in a

shareable way. Any content that is managed by the content management system –

whether it’s articles, or press releases, ecommerce catalog content, images etc.. – it

should all be able to be published to a web platform in a way that it can be shared into

the social networks. But additionally, content should be able to be limited by, or specific

to, the channel it will ultimately live on.

Perhaps a great example of this is global content. Marketers are now spending a lot

of time strategizing how to manage their Web content across multiple languages. But

what about Social Content? How do you manage your Facebook page in different

languages? How will brands optimize blogs and other social platforms to meet

localization needs? This is where a capable WCMS can be very helpful.


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But beyond that, it’s the social channels that need to be managed separately from the

Website, mobile, blog or even the global microsites. The workflow needs to be flexible for the

ephemeral nature of social content (and conversation) and is important that this “two-way-

street” be incorporated. A capable WCMS that is socially optimized will have the ability to

both publish content into the social channels, but also to accept content from them as well.

This empowers the users within the enterprise to have notifications, and the ability to react

much faster to conversations happening in real time. It also empowers the organization to

begin to use this conversation to deliver more relevant messaging and content based on the

quality of that engagement.

For example, within Hippo CMS we often will assign users the role of “Social Publisher”.

This content management role has the ability to manage the social content for the

organization – and have the conversation with users – creating engagement and

conversation with consumers.

Figure 2: Managing Social Channels in Hippo CMS


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Social content Search & archiving

Additionally, content, especially when placed into the outward facing social channels, is

often completely outside the purview of the enterprise (e.g. comments and threads on

Facebook or Twitter). It becomes unsearchable from the Web site or Intranet, and (perhaps

even more importantly) isn’t archived as a critical piece of content. Fundamentally, a

reliance on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In or others to make this content available as an

“export” is not a tenable enterprise strategy.

By placing the content into a centralized repository – the enterprise is managing this

content in a way that it can be searched, archived – and retrieved at any time now or in the

future. As the communication – whether it’s across an outward facing channel or an internal

network becomes more important and valuable (e.g. customer service focused or marketing

focused) the need to have it available for search and archival purposes will be a critical

success factor.

Social content analytics

Beyond being able to show how many “Followers” or “Likes” a particular page has – a social

content WCMS should be able to utilize this data into both a dashboard – and also into the

way that it optimizes content. Using this data should be a natural extension of our content

optimization process – and the social content management system should enable users

to prioritize content based on how well it is resonating through the social networks. For

example, it should be easy to prioritize a piece of content on the front page based on its

“Likes” or if it has been “retweeted” a certain number of times.

Figure 3: Managing Social conent in Hippo CMS


of 12 © 2012 - Hippo B.V.

The feedback loop here is almost completely automatic – utilizing real-time data availability,

plus user behavior to automatically manage and change the interface, the design and even

the content. For example, Hippo CMS can monitor #Hashtags across Twitter – and based on

the “popularity” of a given hashtag across the customer’s social graph – the front page of

the Website can be altered to address that content need. Additionally, influencers and/or

other connections to the customer’s social graph can be monitored in order to personalize

the Web interfaces for this particular group of people.

This evolution may, indeed, feed the need to review how marketers look at Web analytics –

since we will be delivering very personal experiences. Marketers will need to separate out

analytics into persona – or even channel segmented strategies.

Managing compliance across channels

Adding different formats and compliance rules for different social channels is a must. For

example, serving up personalized content in the US falls under different compliance and

privacy rules than does serving that same content to a German audience. Using a CMS like

Hippo, for example, brands can associate different workflow to different channels (e.g. the

German users of the Facebook page) so that any unique compliance and or brand guidelines

are met.

a cMS that helps Build a fanbase

Of course the marketing group’s main goal is to build a fan base across the social networks

(e.g. Facebook). Using Social Publishing features like that in Hippo CMS can enable a much

more emotional connection with fans – as the interaction can be much more fluid. And,

using the Social Content analytics, the system can automatically optimize the content

cross these social channels (e.g. an optimized Facebook page) to create a more relevant and

emotionally engaging experience for the users.

Figure 4: Managing content in a way that it can be searched, archived - and

retrieved at any time


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contextual awareness and content personalization

The value presented by Web Experience Management (WEM) is that this process is, at its

heart, about managing the audience’s experience in such a way that they ultimately do what

the marketer wants them to do. But as users begin interacting through social channels more

– or even exclusively – the opportunity is to deliver a contextually aware experience through

them. This will be critical in developing a competitive platform which has real-time context

awareness where the content can be changed and optimized even AS the user is interacting

with the content.

For example, on Facebook, we may want to optimize content as the user interacts with the

interface. The system will “watch” the clicks, monitor the speed of connection, track the

user’s location – and utilize other real-time behaviors to make subtle, but perhaps important

optimization to the content. That’s not something Facebook controls – it is something the

brand controls.

This is where the use of metadata and user profiles that build over time will be key. Smart

and flexible metadata schemes will need to be employed to allow both content and user

matching in much more creative and flexible ways.

conclusion

As social media becomes an imperative part of the enterprise business strategy, it’s vitally

important that the organization get a handle on the explosiveness of all the content that

will be generated. While some of it will be trivial in nature – much of it will add extraordinary

value to the enterprise. And, managing it well will mitigate many of the fears that the

C-Suite may have about opening up new social content channels.

At Hippo, we are constantly focused on not only how to create better experiences for

audiences; we think that Context Aware Content Management will be the primary way for

organizations to deliver the future of social marketing – both internally and externally. We

know that customers now expect to be able to engage with a company at EVERY stage in

their buying process. And, by making it easier and more contextually relevant on both sides

– a good WCMS can facilitate the social conversation and empower the audience.

An enterprise that employs a Socially enabled Web Content Management System will:

Create efficiencies across the entire enterprise – as a repeatable, strategic process is

created to manage, re-use and repurpose content that is published out to the Social

channels.


of 12 © 2012 - Hippo B.V.

At Hippo, we are constantly focused on not only how to create better experiences for

audiences; we think that Context Aware Content Management will be the primary way for

organizations to deliver the future of social marketing – both internally and externally. We

know that customers now expect to be able to engage with a company at EVERY stage in

their buying process. And, by making it easier and more contextually relevant on both

sides – a good WCMS can facilitate the social conversation and empower the audience.

An enterprise that employs a Socially enabled Web Content Management System will:

• Create efficiencies across the entire enterprise – as a repeatable, strategic process is

created to manage, re-use and repurpose content that is published out to the Social

channels.

• Drive brand consistency across the multitude of social channels that they are managing

– and ensure that the content will always remain within the organization instead of

behind the walls of Facebook, Twitter or Linked-In.

• Create new revenue opportunities by being able to drive more engagement through the

use of personalized, contextual content through the social channels.

• Enable a much more agile marketing organization that can respond faster, and create

richer experiences for consumers from one, centralized dashboard.

• Measure engagement, conversions and customer service much more effectively from

one platform – rather than combining multiple platforms.

As content becomes such an intrinsic piece of the business infrastructure – Social Content

will also become an important asset for the business to manage well. The key is to add the

governance needed to mitigate risk and create scalability – without inhibiting the flexibility

for the business to “engage” and be conversational. That’s what social success is all about.


of 12 © 2012 - Hippo B.V.

resources

PQ Media Study

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-pq-media-forecast-us-mobile-social-media-

revenue-surged-30-to-454-billion-in-2011-and-projected-to-accelerate-31-in-2012-driven-by-

strong-growth-in-consumer-business-demand-for-access-content-2012-01-30

Phillips Enterprise 2.0 Case Study

http://www.cio.com/article/598921/My_Enterprise_2.0_Rollout_4_Keys_to_Success

AIIM Study on Social Business

http://www.aiim.org/pdfdocuments/IW-SocialBusiness-2011.pdf

Social Media Examiner Study On Social Media Marketing

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-industry-report-

2012/#more-16846

Altimeter Group: A Strategy For Managing Social Media Proliferation

http://www.altimetergroup.com/2012/01/buyers-guide-a-strategy-for-managing-social-

media-proliferation-altimeter-report.html

New Media Trendwatch: Social Media and User Generated Content

http://www.newmediatrendwatch.com/markets-by-country/17-usa/127-social-networks-and-

ugc

Rethinking Social Business

http://www.briansolis.com/2011/01/rethinking-the-future-of-business-and-social-media/

Social channelS: a content ManaGeMent...

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