Transformation Consulting

Social media, as brands all over the world are realizing, is a not a fringe, “also to be done” activity. It is mainstream, driven by the increasing time consumers are spending on the social platforms such as facebook, twitter, linkedin, tumblr, instagram and others. The amount and quality of thought that has gone behind your social media strategy can be the difference between the success and failure of your marketing strategy. Our team, given its hands on experience of running the social media for brands of different sizes and industries is well equipped to add to your social media strategy.

What do we really mean by ‘social media strategy’?

We help brands and brand managers think through and make choices related to their social media strategy. For starters, for questions such as – is social media really needed for my brand? Or, how can social media help in meeting my marketing objectives? Our team’s experience helps answer these and many other questions objectively, weighing the trade-offs and options available. We substantiate each of our recommendation with data and drawing from our hands on experience from the past. Here are representative questions which we’d help you think through and come up with our recommendations if you chose to engage with us.

How to get started?

If you are getting started on social media, you’d like to know how to get started. What platforms work for you? How much money should be spent? Should you pilot and then scale or is there merit in taking the big-bang approach. Starting from these high level questions down to the tactics of getting things done, our team helps recommend the best approach possible.

What should your social media objectives be?

We help you decide what your objectives should be and in which order or priority. We help think through these in the best interest of the business. Whether the objective should be generate leads, or strengthening brand equity, to gather feedback of the consumers – we help rationalize why one should choose one social media objective versus another.

What should a social media dashboard comprise?

We strongly believe in measuring performance. But what should important social media metrics be? Likes, followers or beyond? Depending on the objectives set, we help put together a comprehensive dashboard for brand managers, CEOs and CMOs to be able to be on top on their brand’s performance on social media. We define ROI metrics going beyond the obvious cost-benefit ROI to the more evolved brand equity ROI which is often the more relevant metric to measure for every dollar spent on social media marketing.

Social media activities for your brand

These are derived from the objectives laid out. Our methodology involves creating a good social media calendar which details our monthly themes and how those would manifest in terms of posts, contests or #hashtag drives on a daily basis. This scientific approach keeps out randomness from the process. No misses on important days and conversations which are tightly tied to brand’s objectives improve the probability of success on social media significantly.

Following a process need not take away the spontaneity required on social media platforms. We can relate back spontaneous ideas to the marketing and branding objectives. This helps bring together the art and science of marketing together.

Social media budgets

Setting a percentage of total media budget on social is the most common but an ill-advised methodology to determine social media budgets for a brand. We consider only two factors while coming up with a social media budget, namely, a) What are the expectations from social media & b) what is the ROI from different channels being used versus social media. The answer to the social media budget could then range from nothing to the entire media budget. Trust our team to help you objectively evaluate the right social media budget for your brand.

Competition and peers on social media

Competitive analysis forms a key component of strategy in general. This is no different when thinking of competition on social media. Our team helps measure the share of voice of your brand versus peers on social media. Our engagement analytics tools helps measure the depth of engagement of your brand versus competitors. These metrics help understand and learn from your competitors and help improve your own social media strategy going forward.

Organizational setup for social media

Whether to keep social media activities in-house or to outsource this has many pros and cons. We help objectively evaluate each of these and recommend the organizational strategy around social media. Number of team members, their competencies, job descriptions, recruitment help, performance evaluation criteria, career path and training needs are all sub-topics which we advise brands on. Our experience of running a large social media team working on diverse brands help us give practical insights to create a productive and sustainable social media team for your brand.

Adapting to the ever changing platforms

The only constant which brand managers need to recognize is that social media will remain a very important part of your marketing outreach program. Platforms however can change. Remember orkut? From orkut to facebook to tumblr and further on to something completely unanticipated! Another constant to recognize is that brands will need to communicate and deploy rich content over popular platforms. The detail on which platform, what content, how is it best deployed? – you can trust our team with that!

Use our experts as a sounding board. Before plunging in deep and spending a lions’ share of your budget, our advice can help get the best mileage for your marketing dollars.