Social Media Marketing

for Everybody
Everything You Need to Know About Social
Media in B2B and B2C Marketing

sysomos.com
Table of Contents

The state of social 2

Which platforms matter? 4

Use social listening to 5

understand your audience

Conduct social data research to 6

inform brand strategy

Create a super-efficient social 7

publishing machine

Engage effectively and reliably to 8

build customer relationships

Get true visibility into social ROI 9

with unified social analytics

Takeaways 10
 The state of social

Like any nascent industry, social media was a crowded field for
several years as upstart companies battled it out for consumer
mindshare. This fragmentation created constant challenges for
brand marketers trying to reach customers using these new
and rapidly evolving communications channels.

However, since Facebook’s blockbuster acquisition of Instagram in

2012, the tide has turned toward consolidation. Today, the average
American social media user is on just three platforms1. Only 4% of
marketers2 still say their primary social media challenge is keeping up
with feature changes.

Analytics have also improved dramatically since the early days. Savvy
marketers can now use sophisticated real-time metrics to help them
understand how their social media efforts translate into improvements
throughout the funnel.

But despite the maturation of social media technology, making

meaningful connections and building an audience remains difficult.
Nearly a quarter of marketers surveyed named community building
as their number one social media challenge. Another quarter of
respondents cited creating a cohesive social media strategy as their top
priority.

If you’re one of them, this guide is for you. Read on for everything
you need to know about social media for marketing in 2018. 1 Pew Research Center
3
2 The Manifest. “Social Media Survey 2018.” February 8 2018.
 Which Platfoms Matter?

Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn

Founded in 2006 Founded in 2004 Founded in 2010 Founded in 2002

336M 2.190B 1B 260M

Monthly Active Users Monthly Active Users Monthly Active Users Monthly Active Users

How to use How to use How to use How to use

• Share content and amplify • Share content via owned • Share image and video • Share content via owned
campaigns via owned brand brand pages content via owned brand brand pages
accounts accounts
• Mine insights from billions of • Participate in conversations
• Listen and analyze consumer conversations and • Create branded “stories” that relevant to your brand’s area
conversations for market behaviors autoplay in succession and of expertise
insights disappear after 24 hours
• Boost organic reach with • Establish thought leadership
• Capitalize on real-time paid content promotion • Boost organic reach with by publishing long-form
marketing opportunities and sophisticated targeting paid content promotion, articles
capabilities which appears in user feeds
• Engage with influencers and • Connect with prospective
alongside standard content
their fan bases • Provide customer service customers via Groups
and shipment tracking via • Use image recognition
• Provide ad hoc customer • Mine insights from millions
Messenger technologies to surface your
service of conversations and user
brand in user-generated behaviors
content (UGC)
Risks
Risks • Promote content to boost
• Savvy consumers tune out
• Bots and fake followers can organic reach
obvious promotional material, Risks
mute the impact of owned
so branded content must • Because native ads appear
and paid posts
be highly relevant to attract inline with organic content, Risks
• Real-time conversation attention and shares promoted material must fit • Because LinkedIn is focused
requires 24/7 management in aesthetically to receive on professional networks,
• Comment moderation may
and a consistent consumer attention its utility is limited for B2C
require significant attention marketing
and bandwidth • Bots and fake followers can
mute the impact of owned
and paid posts

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 Which Platfoms Matter?

Snapchat Pinterest YouTube Blogs

Founded in 2011 Founded in 2010 Founded in 2005 Around since 1994

191M 200M 1.58B 70% of Marketers

Daily Active Users Monthly Active Users Worldwide Users blog at least weekly

How to use How to use How to use How to use

• Share ephemeral video clips • Share images via branded • Share video content via • Share long-form content with
and images in real time via accounts branded channels embedded images and videos
brand accounts • Compete for mindshare from
• Establish your brand’s • Engage with consumers via
• Reach a highly engaged aesthetic vision by curating video comments the 70-80% of consumers who
ignore paid search results and
audience (DAUs open boards of others’ pins • Provide product support go straight to organic results
Snapchat an average of more • Drive purchases with Rich videos to help improve
than 18 times a day) • Create a “home base” for your
Pins, which allow users to buy customer satisfaction and brand’s voice
• Work with influencers who items they see in images retention
have established large • Engage prospects and
• Extend organic reach with • Use image recognition customers with regular posts
followings paid content promotion technologies to surface your that keep your brand top of
brand in user-generated mind
Risks content (UGC) • Improve your site’s search
Risks
• User demographics may engine ranking and build
• User demographics may • Boost visibility of your content
limit reach, depending on inbound link networks by using
affect reach, depending on via paid content promotion
your target market; 78% of keywords throughout your
your target audience; 70% of
Snapchat users are 24 or • Reach new customers by posts
Pinterest users are women
younger working with influencers
who have established large • Demonstrate thought
• Maintaining a steady stream leadership
followings
of ephemeral content
requires significant staff Risks
resources Risks • Company blogs rarely see
• Creating quality video content significant organic traffic; you
can be more resource- will need to drive clicks by
intensive than other types of publicizing your posts in other
content social channels

5
Use social listening to
understand your audience

The first rule of marketing—know your customer—is also

the most critical guideline for developing world-class
social media programs. And to learn about your audience,
you must listen to them.

At any given moment, millions of conversations are happening

globally on social media. Marketers with the right tools to filter,
curate, and analyze these conversations can access a treasure
trove of invaluable information: who their customers are, what
they care about, how they make buying decisions, what inspires
them to recommend products and experiences to friends, and
more.

What marketers should be listening for:

Brand mentions
Competitor mentions
Competitor messaging and campaigns
Customer service issues
Potential crisis management situations
Real-time marketing opportunities
Prospective influencer partners
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Conduct social data research to
inform brand strategy

Is image recognition
Every conversation that has ever taken place on social ready for prime time?
media is archived. That means marketers with the right
research tools have access to a vast source of rich data In the past, “listening” traditionally
about audience behavior, trends, and attitudes. meant detecting specific words
within text-based social posts. But
Given the fast-moving nature of social conversation, most of in 2018, visual content is king. That’s
the data relevant to marketing strategy decisions will have why automated image recognition
been generated in the past year or so. Marketers should look technology is a must-have for any
for a social research platform with ad hoc search capabilities social listening platform.
across multiple social networks, unlimited access to recent
conversations, audience segmentation capabilities, influencer Image recognition tools use AI
identification tools, and the ability to export raw data in multiple to identify logos or trademarked
formats for further analysis. material in photos and videos on
social networks. With these tools, your
team can easily curate visual brand
What marketers should research: mentions and communicate with
Shifts in brand perception over time rights owners to secure permission to
Audience reaction to past campaigns and historical events republish.
What types of content get shared most broadly
What topics generate the most audience engagement
Topics your audience cares about that aren’t yet part of your
social content plan
Patterns related to service and support requests 7
Create a super-efficient publishing machine
Social conversations happen in real time. For marketers tasked with injecting a brand’s personality
into that conversation, drafting and distributing on-brand content across multiple channels at
scale—and at exactly the right times—can present a significant challenge.

Staying organized and using the right social publishing tools is the key to success. Look for a social
media management platform that offers:
Shifts in brand perception over time
Audience reaction to past campaigns and historical events
What types of content get shared most broadly
What topics generate the most audience engagement
Topics your audience cares about that aren’t yet part of your social content plan
Patterns related to service and support requests

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 ACTION ITEM: Prioritize your social channels

It may be tempting to try to reach customers in every channel, but spreading your
team’s resources too thin is unwise. Instead, choose 3-5 social networks that are
the best fit for your brand and your customers. Consider:

Who are your customers? What resources do you have for content
Let their demographics guide your choices. production?
Highly produced video and polished images
Do you sell to consumers or businesses? require more time and money than short
B2B companies should emphasize text-based posts.
professional networking site LinkedIn over
channels like Snapchat and Instagram, What resources do you have for
where users are more likely to have personal community management?
connections. Creating your posts is only half of the job
when it comes to publishing. Be realistic
Is your product highly visual? about whether your team has enough
If so, consider focusing on image and video- bandwidth to manage responses on each of
heavy channels. your channels on an ongoing basis.

Is your value proposition instantly

understandable?
If so, visual content may be your best match.
Offerings that require more explanation may
be better served by long-form content. 9
ACTION ITEM: Create an editorial calendar

Once you’ve identified your key social channels, build your editorial calendar in three steps:

1 Define your content pillars. 2 Brainstorm anchor content for your 3 Create a schedule with the big
Using what you learned from social chosen social networks. picture in mind.
listening and ad hoc historical research, Aim for at least one large-scale piece (a Use a single calendar to visualize and
select three to five broad topic areas that video, long-form blog post, white paper, automate publication timing across all
your audience cares about and in which report, or campaign) per month. Try to your social channels. Choose a publishing
you can offer expertise. design pieces that can be broken down into tool that includes draft approval
smaller chunks (e.g. snackable infographics workflows to ensure that everything is
or attention-grabbing statistics) and shared reviewed by all stakeholders before it
across all your channels easily. goes live.

Content Ideas In Development ? Review Pending Published

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Engage effectively and reliably Paid media:
to build customer relationships When, why, and how?
Each of the major social media
networks offers paid content
In 2018, social marketing doesn’t end after you get prospects into the
promotion opportunities, and many
top of your funnel. Your team can use social to educate consumers
also sell traditional display ads. But
about your brand, provide product support and training, troubleshoot
why pay for exposure on a platform
service issues, route conversations for one-on-one agent follow-up, and
where you can already get free
feed conversation data back into your CRM to provide a more holistic
exposure?
customer care experience.

In a word, reach. The posts you

The key to effective engagement? Consistency. Once you’ve chosen the social
make on your owned brand
channels your team will focus on, consider your resources. Then internally commit
accounts will be displayed for your
to target response times for engagement in your chosen channels. Over time,
subscribers/friends/followers—but
customers will learn that they can count on you to respond.
if you pay to boost your reach,
your content will be distributed
The right social engagement platform can dramatically simplify
to hundreds, thousands, or even
community management and customer service. Look for a tool that
millions more potential fans.
enables your team to:
View conversations across multiple social networks in a single dashboard
The most effective paid campaigns
Maximize efficiency with pre-canned responses to common comments and are based on content that has
questions already been proven to resonate
Have multiple people simultaneously respond to high volume conversations with your audience. Use organic
without duplicating responses by showing when content is already in progress social interaction to refine your
Categorize content automatically message until it’s irresistible, then
use paid media to shout it from the
Access real-time status via dashboards available on both desktop and mobile
rooftops.
Automate filtering and routing of messages
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Customize permissions and engagement interface by job role
Get true visibility into social ROI with
unified social analytics
The social media landscape may have matured and consolidated in recent years—but with multiple social
accounts, channels, markets, and agencies, it’s as difficult and time-consuming as ever for brand marketers to
compile data and analyze campaign performance.

A smart social media analytics strategy complements great publishing and engagement strategies by giving you near real-time
visibility into what works, as well as what can be improved.

Look for a social analytics platform that can deliver:

A single dashboard that aggregates KPIs and tracks progress across accounts, brands, channels, and markets
Benchmarking against competitors
Performance comparison between owned, earned, and paid media
Configurable alerts that enable key stakeholders to stay abreast of campaigns as they unfold 12

Easy-to-use APIs that enable integration of social data with CRM, sales, support, and other enterprise systems
Social skills: What makes a great social media manager?

As the daily voice and face of your brand, your social media manager may be your company’s most important
ambassador. But great social media managers are much more than talking heads—they’re also talented planners and
relationship builders who can use their skills to achieve business goals. So how do you find the right person for the job?

Look for candidates with these five qualities:

1 2 3 3 3

Sharp, strategic Deep brand Creative and Fluency with

Extroversion
thinking understanding technical skills data and
analytics

Individual social media Because social media At its core, social The daily work of executing Because social media
posts are short, but interactions unfold in media is about building a social media strategy management involves
relationships. Your requires an arsenal of
great social media real time, great social coordinating multiple
ideal candidate should content skills: razor-sharp
managers can craft media managers must copywriting, a keen sense channels, campaigns, and
genuinely love interacting
have a deeply ingrained of visual design for crafting objectives, using analytics
programs that make with people. They should
understanding of your compelling photo and to get a clear picture
a big impact over understand your audience. video content, and an
brand’s voice that allows of what’s happening is
the long term. They They should know how insatiable curiosity about
them to make quick, to leverage technology imperative. Your ideal
can align multiple new mediums that may be
confident decisions. to help find, recruit, and worth exploring for your candidate must be
goals, stakeholders, They should love being manage influencers. And brand. It also requires a comfortable with taking
channels, campaigns, plugged in to the cultural they must have thick high level of knowledge a data-driven approach
and content types with zeitgeist and finding ways skin; handling trolls or about all the available to understanding
ease. unhappy customers with social media channels,
to inject your brand into campaign performance,
grace demands patience, a how SEO complements the
trending topics. social strategy, and when then communicating the
certain emotional distance, results of that analysis to
paid content promotion is
and resilience. the right move. a variety of stakeholders.

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Takeaways

1. Even as the social media landscape consolidates and

matures, brand marketers need to stay focused on the basics:
accurately defining customer personas and building a strong
community of brand advocates.

2. A unified strategy for social listening, historical research,

publishing, engagement, and analytics can help brands
maximize the impact of available resources and continuously
leverage conversation data to improve the customer
experience throughout the funnel.

Sysomos makes powerful technology that drives social

media marketing for hundreds of global brands. By
empowering marketers to easily search, discover, listen,
publish, engage, and analyze at scale across earned,
owned, and paid media, the Sysomos platform drives both
insights and action.

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Sysomos is a unified, insights-driven social platform
that empowers marketers to easily manage
earned, owned, and paid media at scale.

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