There’s something really tricky about social media tools. Although they appear very easy to use for marketing and communication pros, they actually require solid strategizing and ample targeting knowledge. So while you can undoubtedly figure out how to use them quickly, using them effectively is another story entirely.

Using social media for business requires knowledge. Here are ten questions you should ask yourself before spending any time and money on a (new) social media platform. 

1. What (Long-Term) Goal Do I Want To Achieve?

Having long-term goals with your social marketing strategy is really the best way to help you obtain them. For instance, if your long goal is to create, say, 10,000 new followers a month after the first year, then you can start to develop and track different milestones, like your first 1,000 or weeks where you bring in 100 or more.

2. What Is The Competition Doing?

What your competition is doing in social media may bury you if you’re unaware. You don’t want to run around stealing everyone’s thunder, of course, but you also don’t want to miss the bus. Researching competition will help you to accurately develop a working strategy for the type of business you’re operating.

3. Are There Relevant Networks?

When you’re planning on using social media for business, you need to look at a variety of different social networks. You may not end up using a lot of them, but check out the pros and cons of a wide assortment: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, Google+, Orkut, YouTube, and even MySpace.

4. What Does My Market Look Like?

A market that hasn’t been researched is a market you don’t want any parts of. There are many vibrant markets out there (more on that below in #7), but if you do have a market in mind, you need to thoroughly research things like customer behaviors, customer age and gender, their browsing habits, and other tidbits of information that will help you target them.

5. What Is My Brand’s Vision?

Your brand is what creates the experience your niche ultimately identifies with. It’s this type of experience that brings more people in and keeps them loyal. What your brand says and how it portrays your company is something you need to cook up in the lab before you take it center-stage. On-the-fly brand-creation is bad business; work out your vision beforehand and stay true to it.

6. What Should My Posts Look Like?

This doesn’t necessarily mean how a post will “look,” but more specifically when you’re going to post and what the subject matter will pertain to. The actual look of your posts is going to change as your campaign evolves. For right now, research the best times of day, the best day of the week, etc, to post.

7. Is There A Niche Up For Grabs?

One of the best ways to decide which market you want to target is to check out an assortment of markets within your general niche. If you happen to find a market that’s trending and vibrant, then you may want to tweak your business a bit to cater directly to it. There’s nothing worse than planning out a marketing approach only to end up targeting a dead market.

8. What’s My Budget?

Many rookie marketers make the mistake of not creating a budget. Sure, they’ll have a rough number in their mind, but they quickly blow right past it because they took an uninformed, devil-may-care approach to budgeting. This can be the downfall of your business, so look into how much social advertising is going to cost you and make sure the amount of money you need is allocated to that particular resource.

9. What Tools Will I Use?

Your social media optimization relies heavily on the tools you’re using to construct, target, release and split-test ads. Maybe if you were going 100% organic, you wouldn’t need third-party apps to assist you as much. For example, if you’re going to be participating in paid advertising, having ad-management software will pay off tremendously.

10. What Is Plan B?

No matter how careful you were putting the plan in motion, things can always go wrong. And unless you have a way to track your campaign, how will you even know if something has gone awry? This is where tracking methods and additional software comes in handy. Learn to track your campaign and how to read your data so you’ll know when to switch up to your “Plan B” approach.

Social networks rely on advertising money, so you can bet your bottom dollar that they’re set up to be easy to use and to expressly help you obtain a following. That being said, however, you can’t just make things up as you go along. If you want to succeed in social marketing, you need to start out with a solid strategy. The tips listed above should help you in the development of yours.

Would you add any other tips to this top 10?

Eric Taylor is a social media enthusiast, freelance writer and business developer for a Facebook ad  campaign tool – Qwaya,. The company also provides extensive information, tools and up-to-date news about social media marketing strategies latest trends, most specifically in Facebook.

Let me take you through the top five things that I still benefit from every day in PR:

1. Convince yourself before you try to convince others: It is absolutely essential to believe what we say. I was convinced of the benefits of the removal of plastic bags because I asked the right questions to the right people. Believing in something does not mean to deceive yourself, it means finding the arguments that make you believe. To that end it is advisable to study all the information provided by the client. If you are still not convinced, you might want to take on the role of a journalist; keep asking questions, even to the CEO if that is necessary. With the right questions to the right person it will be very easy to find the arguments that make us believe and allow us to deliver our message in the best way.

2. Make people curious: When you address a group of people or a journalist, the first sentence will decide whether you will be listened to or not. I remember starting my bag conversations with statements like, “Good morning, I am here to ensure we keep our parks and beaches clean and free from plastic”. I could give a million examples of these opening one-liners that grabbed people’s attention. You’d be surprised what you can actually say, just by addressing somebody in the right tone and with respect and courtesy. No one should be afraid to say something if they are absolutely convinced 9although if it is clear that you get paid for doing so.)

3. Great straight to the point: Don’t waste people’s time repeating yourself or dragging out a story. If you delaying your speech, your arguments are weakened. As soon as your message is finished, and it has been communicated clearly, move on to the next audience!

4. Listen first: This is the first rule when you want to communicate or sell. Never pretend to listen to people if you don’t. Defend your stance; in my case, the most appealing complaint was that the supermarket only wanted to save costs on plastic bags and make money selling the new ones (and they were probably very right). But even if they did, why can’t it still be positive to contribute to the removal of plastic bags from beaches and parks? “The mall does not force you to buy bags, bring your own shopping trolley, let´s buy the way our grandmothers did!” Something similar happens with journalists, if someone tells you that what you are saying is not interesting, ask “why?” Not because it bothers you that he does not see it your way, but to find out what really interests him. If what you say does not work, stop talking about your book and talk about the book that interests the journalist. Remember his words and write them down if necessary, he may be handing you a good angle for another client.

5. Do not sell combs to the bald guy: Finally, the last thing I realised is that sometimes, no matter how hard we try, as much as we believe in what we say, we fail to convince. I remember a handful of ‘insurmountable’ customers, who just could not be convinced. If ‘the bald guy’ does not buy our comb, do not insist on selling it to him. Even in those situations, that same guy could still help us more than we think. He can refer us to other people that may be interested or he might even contact us again in the future. Translating this situation to PR, journalists know each other; they will refer you to someone that may be interested in your story.

Have you learned, and then applied, some PR lessons in an unusual place?

Watch Your Twitter Life Flash Before Your Eyes

For those that don’t have the opportunity to catch up with Dad too often, you might find it difficult to clearly explain what you’ve been doing for the past six months (or even longer). Fear not, check out Vizify.

Vizify is a quick and easy-to-use tool that will create a series of interactive infographics or videos based on all of your social media activity. Over the past week, Vizify released a tool to compile your Twitter “greatest hits” into one short video. Create your own Vizify video to prepare for your answer to “What have you been up to?” when Dad asks, but don’t forget to leave out any questionable activity if needed!

Read more here.

The 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference

Click here to view the embedded video.

If your dad loves tech, don’t forget to bring up the new products that were announced at the 2013 Worldwide Developer’s Conference. Apple announced the revamp of its new Mac Pro. The redesign now houses “two workstation graphics cards, PCI Express flash storage, Thunderbolt 2, Xeon processors and 4k video output for up to three monitors at 4k resolution.” In addition, Apple showcased the updated iOS 7 look-and-feel and capabilities.

Read more here.

Facebook Announces Searchable Hashtags

No Father’s Day would be complete without a hundred tagged photos on Facebook. Announced this week, Facebook users will now have the ability to follow conversations via hashtags. Don’t forget to add #FathersDay2013 to your posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram this weekend to take part in the nation’s greater Father’s Day conversation!

Read more here.

And before you head out for the weekend, here are 15 Exceptional Dads Who Deserve Parenting Awards.

Did we miss any big tech news? Feel free to link us to the latest trends of the week below!

Six seconds. On the surface it seems like barely anything can be said or accomplished in that amount of time. But in the same way that Twitter has proven that 140 characters can change the world, they are at it again with Vine, their six-second instant video app.

As marketers, we often strive for brevity in our messages. If we can make our messages very simple and direct, they tend to get received more frequently in this age of overwhelming communication. Vine is a tool that can help marketers and brands simplify their messages and create easily digestible, multimedia content that can be distributed, viewed and shared quickly. Here then are six ideas on how to do just that:

1)    Tease your audience. If you are about to launch a major new product or announcement, a six second “teaser” video shared on your social channels is the perfect way to do this. It can also reflect the personality of your company, your CEO or spokesperson.

2)    Start a conversation or respond to a trend. Start a conversation with your followers via a Vine video. Pose a question or respond to a trend or real-time event via video. Take advantage of the visual medium to demonstrate or highlight your point of view in an interactive fashion. Share it on Google+ and start a hangout to discuss it.

3)    Create a brand pitch. If you can summarize what your brand or company is about in six seconds, you have a very effective visual communication tool that can be used in PR pitches, recruiting efforts or for anyone who is quickly skimming your online channels and wants to instantly learn what your brand is about.

4)    Announce a special offer, sale or discount. “For a limited time only” lends itself well to a six second, disposable video message. Take advantage of Vine’s spontaneity and announce a promotion that your core fans or followers can instantly take advantage of.

5)    Juice your next conference or event. Use a Vine video at your next conference or event to drive traffic to your booth, or attract an audience to your keynote address with a video tease of what the speaker will be talking about. Attach the Vine video to your relevant hashtags on Twitter to let the audience know what’s going on. You can even challenge attendees to create their own Vine videos at an event for an opportunity to win a prize at your booth for the most creative video.

6)    Attract new employees as well as inform customers. Use Vine to show snippets of your employees having fun or showing the culture inside your company. This can be an ideal recruiting tool to showcase your company’s attributes to any prospective candidates.  It can also demonstrate to your customers and partners what goes on behind the scenes in a fun and engaging way.

Like all content you create, take some time to plan what you want to do in your six seconds. Keep in mind the objectives of the video and who your audience is. But with a little creativity, you can easily create some exciting new snippets of content that will easily distinguish your company brand and elevate your marketing messages in an engaging new medium.

Impressive, right? It is what PR professionals are working on every day: spotting a hype, developing content that rides the wave of popularity, and creating online buzz around it. If there is any industry that knows how to do that well, it’s the music industry.

The hype

Without any doubt, Daft Punk’s new album Random Access Memories is the most hyped album of 2013 (which is quite remarkable for a band that has not produced an album since 2005). The expectations for a new album were extremely high, making it easy for the band managed to create an enormous buzz with what you could call drip-feed marketing: releasing small bits of information bit by bit. It started with a single image on their Facebook page and website:

Gradually more information about their new project was released, including the names of contributors to their new album (Nile Rodgers and Pharell Williams, to name a few).

By the time their first single Get Lucky was released, their entire fan base (and the rest of the world) received it with open arms. It topped the charts all over the world.

The newsjack

Only days after the release of Get Lucky, the first newsjacks appeared. One of the most popular ones are a video with legendary moves from the TV show Soul Train.

But the video I’d like to share with you was produced in Daft Punk’s home country of France. The Evolution of Get Lucky is a chronologic cover that shows how the song would have sounded if it was produced in the 1920′s, 1930′s onwards until the 2020′s – each decennium with its distinguishing sound.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why this is so good

This video has all the elements of a brilliant newsjack.

1. It’s timely: the whole world is still listening to Get Lucky
2. It adds something to the original: although you might think that the song is very typically 2013, this video shows that the song could have been written in any moment in time. It  just would have sounded different
3. It’s relevant. Random Access Memories is like a trip through modern music, including elements from the sixties and seventies, combined with robotic music of the future. This is perfectly reflected in PV Nova’s video. One of the tracks on the album (Giorgio by Moroder) even mentions a project from the seventies that could have sounded exactly like that of PV Nova:

I wanted to do an album with the sound of the ’50s, the sound of the ’60s, of the ’70s and then have a sound of the future. And I said, “Wait a second…I know the synthesizer – why don’t I use the synthesizer which is the sound of the future?”

What PRs can learn from the music industry

The music industry has gone through some tremendous changes since the Nineties. Record sales have dropped dramatically, and the industry is still struggling to find new business models.

But when the pressure increases, creativity flourishes. Every now and then, an Internet meme arises that fuels creative ideas. When Radiohead decided to release their new album In Rainbows (2007) on their own website and encourage fans to ‘pay what they wish‘, a lot of producers supported the band by making remixes of one of their songs. The international hit single Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye (2011) was covered by many artists (like the one-guitar version by Walk Off The Earth we all saw on Facebook). Recently Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe and the Harlem Shake inspired thousands of people around the world to record their own video parodies.

Music gets people excited, it makes their heart beat a little faster. The passion that musicians, producers and amateurs alike use in their creative responses to hypes, is something that will always inspire me to do the same.

Which is your favorite newsjack in music?

The transaction deepens LEWIS’ presence on the US East Coast, and adds a broad range of marketing services to its proposition. LEWIS now has combined global revenues in excess of $45m and over 420 staff. The deal makes LEWIS one of the largest tech-focused public relations firms in the US, with US revenues of $20m.

You probably know that our strategy has always been to offer better service and better results on a global scale than the oligarch PR firms possibly can. This is the next part of that strategy, giving us even greater scale in the US – the largest PR market in the world.

So why DMG? Well first, their team does amazing work for a stellar client roster. Their reputation for delivering client success makes them one of the fastest-growing agencies in the US, and has scooped up more than 25 awards in the last four years. Second, and key to any integration, is cultural fit – we both share an international perspective, a practical can-do approach, and a focus on delivering results that tangibly and positively impact our clients’ bottom line. Plus we laugh at founder, Andy Murphy’s jokes.

Not just a PR firm, DMG also offers business strategy consulting and a full range of marketing services to its clients. We’re excited to broaden our service portfolio which, in combination with our digital marketing arm, LEWIS Pulse, now includes literally any marketing service a company could possibly need.

This is the third acquisition LEWIS has made in the last five years following the successful integration of Page One PR in San Francisco, and Leads United in Antwerp.

I’d like to take this chance to welcome all my new DMG coworkers to LEWIS, and of course to thank our clients and the LEWIS 360 community for its support.

Big Brother is Watching You

Every now and then, media gets flooded with news about the government spying on its citizens. Here in the UK where every street is wired with CCTVs, and people get oblivious of the fact that every time they have picked their nose in public is recorded and saved. This time, the internet gasped in horror when information leaked that the National Security Agency may be spying on phone calls and internet access of American citizens. Plus, to make their life easier, they’ve supposedly teamed up with some of the big tech boys — such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Skype —who help them access data directly whenever they want it.

Of course, this is not a laughing matter. Companies have been collecting our data for years now but the question is: how far this can go and where are the moral boundaries?

These questions may not have to be answered but they have to be asked.

Read more on the story here…

Let’s Get Digital

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nintendo, as many other gaming companies, has been known for its reluctant adoption of social media. So it might come as a surprise that it has decided to take a rather different approach to upcoming E3 event and stream their updates online as they announce them.

In general terms, this is not anything revolutionary. In Nintendo’s terms though, this is ground braking. Shame Nintendo hasn’t seized the opportunity to put their heads together and create a more engaging introductory video for this.

You can read more here.

Story that goes viral

Click here to view the embedded video.

We have talked about storytelling a lot. The Game of Thrones craze has been lurking around dedicated communities since season one but this week with the Red Wedding episode, it jumped in leading national publications such as Telegraph or BBC. Why? It was unexpected (if you haven’t read the book) and had a strong impact on every single viewer who did not wait to share their opinions online. Video of people’s reaction even went viral.

That’s a power of a great story.

Can you think of any other examples of great TV show crazes that disrupted the online world!  

Let us know what you think in the comments below!

On the subject of experience (I leave flair and sophistication aside on this occasion), it was fascinating to discuss comparing the development of brand journalism in Sweden with other parts of the world, from a global perspective. I am a firm believer that all industry trends are directly or indirectly caused by changes in the economy. If you have money, you can experiment – if you are short of it you have to adapt, survive and think differently – some would call this to innovate.

Technology, social and cultural developments will, of course, also define and shape industry trends. The popularity of social media has changed the face of communications as we know it – but its impact would be less significant if the economic crisis had not wounded traditional communications models such as print media and advertising.

So, Brand Journalism is following the same path. We can’t rely solely on traditional media to get our story out, advertising spend is tight and social media has turned us all into avid followers, fierce critics and passionate commentators about things we care about. So, the opportunity to turn an organisation into a story teller – a Brand Journalist – is ripe. Some are doing this with phenomenal success – such as Swedish bank Handelsbanken who has its own TV channel, Studio12. A bank with a news channel? Yes, it’s a fact. This is where the economy argument comes in. In a country that has weathered the economy and stayed on track, this is possible. If RBS had done this in the UK, there would probably be an outcry on wasting tax payers money.

Although the economy is the cause of these trends, we should never let it limit us – we must adapt and reinvent. A person in the audience asked: ‘What to do if you don’t have the money to set up your own TV studio, or pay Forbes to publish your organisation’s content (as another firm successfully did)?’. The answer is simple: start about thinking about yourself in a very different way. Don’t ask what your organisation or product does. Ask instead why it matters, what would happen without it and what bigger debate you cause and influence. This is what people care about and that is the start of a story. If you then tell that through a TV studio, a web portal or simply through a vox pop on your site doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you tell a story where others are at the centre.

Our role is to act as a central ‘hub’ and manage campaigns across multiple markets in the most efficient way possible, working with country teams to deliver the anticipated results for clients, ensuring client messages and material are consistent across markets and encouraging teams to share ideas.

In addition to country-based PR account teams – that speak the local language, understand the political situation and cultural nuances, and have relationships with local media –  with the international team, our clients benefit from the economies of scale of using one agency across multiple markets.

Here are three more benefits:

• CONSISTENCY & DELIVERY – One of the key benefits is a coherent PR programme. The global strategy and messaging will be implemented locally with room for local adaptations. This will ensure that the corporate messages are not diluted and at the same time the PR programme will be relevant to the local market needs. Moreover, we create standardised templates and define processes to ensure the execution of the PR programme is smooth and efficient.

• FLEXIBILITY & ECONOMY – Not only does a centralised PR approach provide clients with a cost-effective way of coordinating different teams and reducing management and administration burden. It also enables more intelligent distribution of resources and flexible budgets. This allows our clients to shift PR activities from one market to another or turn countries on/off for ad hoc projects, if and when needed. By having a hub team in place, knowledge will be stored centrally and transferred between markets, which limits the briefing time required during roll-out to further countries.

• CONTROL & EVALUATION – We regularly track activities/performance and highlight achievements as well as challenges to our clients. With centralised PR planning and strategy development, the local teams know exactly what activities to focus on and the budget will be allocated towards activities that support our clients’ business goals.

 Look out for the second part of this post to find out more benefits. 

Do you want to find more about our international campaign management services? Leave us a comment or contact us at internationalteam@lewispr.com.