I was recently given a social marketing plan for a large European Children's fashion company and asked to comment on it. To be quite frank it was depressingly bad but that's not uncommon.
Why? Because the effort is invariably put in to the wrong part of the plan - I read pages of audience analysis (because it's easy to get) of the miniscule audience which currently visits their website - this passes as customer insight; there were pages of SWOT analysis, which was of little benefit because it sat in vacuum from the rest of the document - a SWOT analysis is only of benefit if you the have a commentary on it and it's an integral part of your plan; there were pages of stats and big numbers about Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest et al, a billion this and a billion that, which gave no real insight or understanding of the Social landscape and then finally I got down to what mattered in the document, which was covered in less than a page - to brutally paraphrase, because it was a lot more jargon ridden than this, 'they will make their website more attractive to their 10-13 year old audience, improve their SEO and go on to Facebook and make it really interesting, (although in reality you shouldn't target anyone under 13 on Facebook).
Now you may be thinking this kind of document is rare but I would say to you that it's completely the opposite - very few brands think about the two things which I believe are essential before reaching out to their key online influencers (see my previous blog, Engage first, influence second). Those two things are: firstly work out what the Social Graph of your community is i.e. what is their online profile, where do they go online, what social tools do they use, how do they communicate, how are they connected and what are their motivators? The second thing is to determine what I call the 'Value Exchange'. It's what you need to offer your audience to engage with them in a meaningful social dialogue - no more old fashioned messaging at them remember. Now this will vary depending on your brand and the audience but it could be one, or indeed any combination of these for example: exclusive access, entertainment, specialist knowledge, sharing content, expertise, reward (in many guises and yes, including financial), product sampling, or affording enhanced status within their community.
How much better this document would have been if they'd asked themselves these two questions and really thought it through - it would have driven everything and forced them to come up with a true understanding of their young online audience (and their parents) and they would have needed to work out what the Value Exchange was going to be which would encourage this audience to visit their website and Facebook page.
Out of this could have come an SEO strategy, which is so often a throwaway line in a marketing plan, 'We'll improve SEO' - oh yeah , how?! As well as this they could have included some genuine insight in to the steps Facebook are taking for example to get under 13 year olds on to their social network through linking children's accounts to their parents, or the Silly Bandz phenomenon which took place on Facebook and as everyone is aware that teens and adults aren't wearing Silly Bandz, it must have been a pretty big under 13 year old Facebook audience amongst their 1.5 million likers! (The excellent white paper case study Facebook have produced on Silly Bandz could have also been included).
So dear reader if you're about to write a social marketing plan, you might want to ask yourselves the two key questions - what's my audience's Social Graph and what's the Value Exchange? Everything will flow from this - trust me.
And just one last thing about this document, under 'Budget' it said 'TBA'. Just remember Social Marketing is not free and implicit in my 'Value Exchange ' theory is that you offer something of value..... and that costs.
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