The 90-day Social Media Workout

I’ve just finished my first round of a 90-day workout routine that has taken our office by storm. It’s called P90X and the underlying premise is muscle confusion: change your routine every day so your muscles don’t get used to the exercise. If they get used to it—the theory holds—you’ll get less out of the workout. By keeping the muscles “confused,” you get higher returns.

The exercises are actually pretty difficult, which is why they break up the routine over 90 days into an “adaptive” phase and a “mastery” phase. The adaptive phase is to learn the exercises and get your muscles used to moving in ways they may not be used to. The mastery phase is where all the benefit happens; you’ve mastered the moves, now—in the language of P90X—it’s time to Bring It!

I think it’s time for a social media workout. The explosion of social media in the last year has some PR professionals back on their heels, trying to digest and apply new technologies as sites like Facebook and Twitter become key message channels and new devices like the iPad disrupt the way we access information.
Amidst these changes, brand image can soar overnight and fade just as fast. PR pros have to learn how to leverage social media to communicate their message and measure results. Success in this environment requires an agility not previously known—an ability to leverage opportunities and react to unexpected changes in real-time. In the words of H.G. Wells, it’s “adapt or perish.”

But most PR professionals are still in the adaptive phase—learning the movements and cadence of social media. Many are not listening to the online buzz about their company or engaging with consumers via this channel.

Mastering social media takes practice, so if you haven’t waded into social media yet, here’s a workout program for getting started over the next 90 days:

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Shotgun vs. Laser: What’s your approach to engagement?

I’ve noticed a surge in discussion on the topic of engagement lately. And a flood of invitations to my inbox asking me to attend webinars or download white papers claiming to offer best practices on how to better interact with stakeholders and several new tools that allow you to respond to tweets in near real-time.

But engagement is nothing new in PR—public relations has always been about engaging with key audiences and establishing relationships, about distributing information and analyzing responses, and about building a dialogue with constituents. What is new is all the opportunities that social media now provides for this type of interaction.

Forrester estimates that the total number of online user-generated impressions about products and services exceeded 500 billion in 2009.

Companies that capitalize on these opportunities to engage can see high returns on those efforts. A study conducted by the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint found a direct correlation between financial performance and social media engagement. Companies that go deep and wide into social media are more successful financially than their peers in both revenue and profit performance.

The data also supports the notion that focusing on depth over breadth is the key driver. In practice, this makes sense: it’s almost impossible to keep up with the flow of information and engage with every Facebook post or tweet. Also, companies need to realize that once they start a conversation, they have to finish it—you can’t jump off mid-thread if the conversation starts to go in a direction you’d rather it didn’t.

The real challenge is in determining which comments warrant a response. Who is this person? How influential are they? Do others look to them for guidance and advice? In other words, should they be on your “A-list” for targeted outreach? Clearly, focusing on these people would yield a more efficient engagement model.

It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of online comments are made from a minority of heavy users, but it’s even more skewed than the 80/20 rule. In fact, what Forrester calls “Mass Influencers” make up 16% of online adults or 11m people and are responsible for 80% of all the influence impressions in social networks. These are the people who create impressions about brands on Twitter and Facebook and who create and share content via YouTube, blogs, forums, and review/ratings sites. They are more likely to read others’ Tweets, ask for opinions from other users, and say that other users seek their opinion.

Analysis tools exist that provide a more advanced way of looking at engagement by focusing on the key influencers for a particular company, product, or issue. The algorithms employed may differ but most utilize some combination of reach (the size of their audience), resonance (their ability to drive conversations), and relevance (how closely what they write matches your search terms).

Use of influence analysis can enhance the simple filtering capabilities of traditional media contact databases. As a result, large CRM players like Salesforce.com and SAP have started to include social media metrics into their datasets so companies can identify influential clients and create brand advocates.

So, you can try to respond to every tweet and be prepared to carry those conversations to the end or you can spend time identifying the key influencers for your brand and focus on cultivating those relationships.

What’s your approach to engagement—shotgun or laser?

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