In developing a social media strategy identifying who your audience is and where you can find them is critical. Given that there are currently more than 900 million Facebook accounts, and 155.0 million of them are in the United States, it is likely that your targeted audience is logging in on a daily basis. If you are a political candidate, elected official, or an advocacy group trying to influence public policy, a considerable portion of your audience resides on Facebook.

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2010, there were 229.7 million people over the age of 18 living in the United States, of which, 210.8 million (91.8%) were US citizens eligible to vote. During the 2010 election cycle, there were 137.3 million (65.1% of eligible voters) registered to vote, and 95.99 million (45.5% of eligible voters) who voted in the November election.

Though applying these percentages to Facebook will not provide accurate results, they can provide a sense of the size of the voting population present on the social networking site. According to Facebook, there are 142.5 million accounts registered to individuals over the age of 18. If 91.8% of them were citizens, we would have roughly 130.8 million eligible voters on Facebook. If 66.1% of that number were registered, there would be 86.5 million registered voters on Facebook, and therefore 59.5 million (45.5% of eligible voters) who might turn out in this years  presidential election (my guess is that this number will be hire as voter registration efforts kick into gear).

The most successful politician on Facebook is President Barack Obama, with 26.6 million people who “like” his page. That number represents 3.0% of all Facebook accounts. Though it is highly unlikely that 100% of his Facebook followers are US citizens who are over the age of 18 and registered to vote, if we assumed for the moment that they were, he could have as many as 12.6% of people eligible to vote in the United States in his audience. Certainly when President Obama speaks, Facebook listens.

Though his campaign expended considerable resources to establish this sizable presence, today his only cost to engage with this audience is the time it takes to update his status. Though the campaign should know what the average cost was per follower, the ROI on that investment every time he engages is substantial.  In addition, think for a minute about the insight data that they have to analyze about who their followers are, where they are located, and all of the other demographic data that comes with it.

When you compare the cost of reaching these populations with a single direct mail piece ten years ago, and multiplied that by the number of status updates posted weekly, the ROI for this candidate is stunning.

Do you think the effort of building an audiences on Facebook is worth the return on investment?  How should you be engaging your audience to strengthen your relationship with them? What content should you be delivering to keep these audiences engaged?

So this is the week that Facebook grows up and will need to provide an ROI to all of its new shareholders.  I don’t know about you, but I really am beginning to question where social media is headed.

It was not that long ago that we were warning brands and businesses that social media channels were places that you provided value to your audience eighty percent of the time, and only spent twenty percent of your time marketing your brand.  In fact, we warned businesses that too much advertising would turn your audience off, and they would choose not to follow, subscribe, or like you.

Since nothing is free in this life, it was inevitable that social media channels would have to generate a revenue model, and that advertising would ultimately be the source of that revenue.  As a baby boomer, I have been subjected to advertising my entire life.  Television, as you would expect was the primary delivery vehicle for Madison Avenue to reach me, and network programming was the hook – 20 minutes of free content in exchange for 10 minutes of commercials.

Cable television evolved with a new model that appealed to an audience that didn’t want to be bothered by commercials – paid subscriptions.  Pay us a fee, and we will spare you from being inundated by advertisers.

It is inevitable that Facebook will have to bombard us with advertising to generate the revenue necessary to sustain its initial public offering.  For some, that will be the price to pay for free social interaction.  Will everyone be willing to pay that price?

Since the average user wants to interact with their friends, I wonder what you and your friends might be willing to pay for a subscription based social media channel that provides the value of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, without the advertising.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that Facebook will go out of existence next week.  But I do wonder, given the rapid advancement in technology and innovation, where the evolution of social media is headed.  My guess is there are kids at some college or university pondering that question right now.   Anyone up for creating a social media version of HBO?

Local governments have made significant investments over the past decade in building websites and experimenting in what types of content they should contain. The question has been how to get the public and local businesses to take full advantage of the content local governments are distributing.

The Challenge For Local Governments

The challenge for local governments has been how to increase website traffic so that you can see the return on the investment.  Before the advent of social media, technology forced each citizen to monitor the website for new information as it was posted. Since only the most concerned citizen would do this, the vast majority of the public forgets that the site exists, and consequently, derives little value from it.

The evolution of social media has allowed the one-way conversation between local governments and the public, to transform into a two-way conversation. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr have made the internet more social, allowing communities with shared interests — be they families, friends, neighborhoods, brands, or local communities — the opportunity to converse with one another in real time by just hitting the enter key. Today, when local governments post new information on their website, theycan use social media to broadcast it out to everyone who is paying attention. No longer does the public have to come to you for information; the information finds them.

The Case For Social Media

The first step in determining a social media strategy is figuring out whether the people you want to reach are using social media. According to The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 79% of American adults said they used the internet and nearly half of adults (47%), or 59% of internet users, say they use at least one of the social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter.  This corresponds to two studies that were done, one in 2010 and the other in 2011,  that pointed out that almost one in two Americans have a Facebook account. With somewhere around half of your constituents logging into social networking sites—and 25% of them logging in daily on Facebook, your audience certainly is present.

The more valuable the information that you post, the more likely you will build an audience of citizens, who will “like” and “follow” your social media sites. Obviously what your community will view as valuable will be dependent upon each individual local government. But identifying and distributing that content will determine how successful your social media strategy will be.

Social Media Does Not Stand On Its Own

If you want to successfully communicate with your constituents, social networks are just one part of your overall communications strategy. As pointed out earlier, though half of your constituents might be on Facebook, half are not, and upwards of 21% may not even be on the internet. When calculating how you will reach as many of your citizens as possible, the larger the number of communications channels available to you, the broader the audience you will reach. In a time when budgets are constrained, and local governments are searching for ways to reduce costs, social networks might prove to be a low cost strategy to keep the public informed when printing and postal rates continue to climb. By viewing social media as part of your overall communications strategy, you may be able to reduce costs while at the same time increasing the amount of information you are providing to the public.

Too learn more, feel free to download my white paper, “The Case for Local Governments to Establish a Social Media Presence.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdIpbHlUxTE

I was invited to speak in front of members of the Pennsylvania Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus on how to effectively communicate with public officials.  As a government relations and public affairs professional who makes a living as a lobbyist, they believed that I might have some insight on how to build relationships with public officials.  I believe that they were a little surprised when I suggested that they should first consider creating something as formal as a strategic communications plan.

Why a strategic communications plan?

If it is your intent to build a relationship with someone you do not know, should you randomly approach that person and discuss the first thing that pops into your head, or should you have developed a strategic communications plan before you utter your first syllable?  If you chose the former, you are relying a lot on luck.  If you choose to have a strategy in place, you enhance your chances of building a relationship, with the long-term goal of effectively communicating your message.

Market Research

A solid strategic communication plan begins with market research. You start by determining what your audiences’s interests and needs are.  In the case of a public official or legislator, you can Google them and find biographical information.  When it comes to elected officials, many of them are now immersed in social media. You can start by “liking” them on Facebook and following their updates, subscribe to their YouTube channel and watch their videos, or follow their tweets on Twitter.  You should also pay attention to traditional news sources as well by perhaps setting up their name as a search word on your Google Reader or other news-gathering device. The more you learn about them, the more likely you will be to develop a communications strategy that will be successful.

Goal Identification

Though your primary goal is to ultimately tell your story, or convey the importance of your issue in the hope that a public official will support your position, your initial goal should be to establish a personal relationship that is built on trust.  Too many times individuals simply believe that their only goal is to convince a public official of the merits of their position.  The person who has established themselves in a trusted advisor role is far more likely to be listened to than someone who is perceived to only be concerned with their own enlightened self-interest.  A successful public affairs or government relations professional is someone who spends a considerable amount of their time becoming a trusted advisor. A solid strategic communications plan can set you on that path.

Developing the appropriate message

Once you have established your short and long term strategic goals, and have learned everything about the official you can, turn your attention to developing the appropriate messages to begin the conversation and build the strongest relationship possible.  Look for things that you have in common to get the conversation rolling (friends, hobbies, interests, geography, etc.).  Look to provide valuable information about what their personal or professional interests are, demonstrating that you have an interest in their success.  Solid market research in the initial stages should provide a valuable road map.

How do you communicate your message?

Determining how to communicate your message largely depends upon how strong of a relationship you have established with your audience.  There are many ways that you can communicate your message: a formal face-to-face meeting; a conversation at a reception; a letter, e-mail, fax or phone call; a Facebook post or tweet.  Everyone’s personality is different and consequently their level of comfort with each potential communications channel will be different.  Some might find it easier to use social media to begin building a relationship, while some would prefer a more casual meet and greet, while still others would prefer a more formal sit down.  Having the appropriate strategic communications plan in place for each channel will maximize your opportunity for success.

Measure your results

As with any strategic communication plan, measure your results and tweak your plan accordingly.  By creating a strategic communications plan to effectively convey your message, you will maximize your chance to develop a long-term relationship, which in turn, will allow you the best opportunity to successfully deliver your message.

Over the past couple of years we have seen political candidates and politicians increasingly using social media to connect with voters and their constituents. Many politicians have asked me if they should personally post updates to Facebook or send out their own tweets. They understand the increasing value of having a presence but just like the population as a whole, many are not comfortable using social media. My answer is always the same: Before you engage in social media you need to develop a solid strategy that helps you to define (1) why you are going to establish a presence; (2) who your intended audience is; and (3) what value you intend to deliver to that audience. I do advise them that if they are not comfortable personally engaging in social media, they should consider outsourcing that role to their staff or to a consultant.

Today the Daily News reported that Philadelphia City Councilman Jim Kenney had a firm under contract to assist him in reaching his constituents through Facebook and Twitter. I am not going to question whether the fee being paid to the consultant is appropriate or not, because the article does not speak to what the overall engagement entails. But if the firm is using Radian6 to monitor social media on behalf of the Councilman, has assisted in developing a strategy that allows him to bring value to his constituents, and works at keeping his content fresh and frequent, the cost would appear to be reasonable. In looking at the Councilman’s Twitter feed, it certainly contains the mix of content that I would recommend a politician to populate their social media channels with. Councilman Kenney’s tweets educate, engage, and entertain. The key to a successful social media strategy is to provide content to your audience that will cause them to “like” , “friend” and “follow” you.

The only advice I would offer the Councilman is that it is important to be transparent when engaging in social media. So if someone is tweeting on your behalf, let your audience know when you are tweeting personally and when someone is tweeting on your behalf, by adding your initials to your personal tweets. Just as Twitter has become an important tool for the news media to gather and report information, it is also an important tool to keep the public engaged and educated on the issues that affect their everyday lives. There is no shame in determining that your talents are best served in other areas. Doing social media takes time, doing it well can take a lot of time. I am sure if he were doing all of this himself, he would be charged by some with spending too much time socializing, and not enough time legislating.

I will disclose that I have known the Councilman for over twenty years. I did not write this post because of our personal relationship. I wrote it because I think it is unfair for anyone to be attacked for trying to engage with their constituents or customers.  Those constituents of Councilman Kenney, who primarily rely on social media to get their news and information, deserve the opportunity to be educated by their elected representative on those channels, even when their representative is not comfortable using social media on his own.

I am heading over to the Double Tree Resort in Lancaster this morning to conduct a workshop on Social Media and Political Change at the Pennsylvania Community Providers Association 2012 Technology Conference. At the time I agreed to conduct this workshop, I was primarily thinking of how I could assist these providers in establishing or enhancing their social media presence. Today, given the implications of a 20% cut in county human services budgets, and the proposed block grant, these providers will need to use every tool available to address this issue and communicate to decision-makers the impacts these cuts will have on their constituents.

Yesterday, the Triadvocate examined the critical role that social media can play as part of an overall advocacy effort. Though face to face communications are a critical component of a lobbying strategy, for many of the consumers who will be impacted by these cuts, social media may be one of their only means of reaching out to decision-makers. For those whose disabilities prevent them from accessing a government officials office, or simply picking up a phone, social media channels can be utilized by this community to convey their message.

Though my PowerPoint presentation outlines my traditional approach, I am looking forward to providing my audience with specific ideas on how they can use social media to address this issue. Social media has been a key component in revolutionary change throughout the world. Can it play the same role to address the budgetary needs of many of our most vulnerable citizens?

One of the more rewarding aspects of my social media journey has been the opportunity to speak at meetings and conferences on why individuals, groups and organizations should establish a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube.  This Thursday I will be leading a workshop at the Pennsylvania Community Providers Association 2012 Technology Conference, on “Social Media and Political Change.”  As I have said in earlier posts, I do not consider myself to be an expert in an area that is evolving so rapidly.  Rather, I believe my skill is taking what I have learned and applied both personally and professionally, and communicating it to an audience who is curious on how they can utilize these tools in their personal and professional lives.  By shining light on the path that I have taken, I can assist others in mapping out their own path that could have the potential to provide them with an ROI on their investment, whether that is time, money or both. Given the significant challenges that this association’s members face in the current budget climate, social media may be one way that they can continue to serve their communities while absorbing significant reductions in revenue.

In general, the audiences that have attended my workshops at association conferences tend to mirror the population at large.  Usually, 40-50 percent will not yet have dipped their toes into the social media waters.  Roughly half will be on Facebook and less than one in ten will be on Twitter.  Some organizations will have a successful social media presence, some will have started but with little success, while still others are debating whether they should invest the time.  The challenge is always on how to provide value to an audience that spans the social media continuum.

The beauty of discussing social media is that you can use the channels and their content to demonstrate the reasons why you should establish presence.  I always like to use Eric Qualman’s videos as a starting point.  For those of you not familiar with Qualman, he is the author of an excellent book, “Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business.”  He produced a number of YouTube videos that were both informative (he paid it forward), but also were a way to promote his book.  The videos were eye opening, and produced their intended affect (I ultimately purchased and read the book).

His most recent video uploaded this year provides an overview of all of the technology and products that your smartphone is killing, which reinforces the rapid changes we all are experiencing in our daily lives.

His classic video, “Social Media Revolution” which has been viewed by millions, opens the audiences eyes and provides a compelling case for why everyone should engage in some way with social media.

From this point I walk the audiences through the various platforms and how I have utilized them along with the success my company has had utlizing these tools. Since many of the audiences that Triad Strategies is attempting to build relationships with overlaps with theirs, many of our tactics can be adopted by the audience. It is also important to understand how members of their intended audience are using social media, so I will end the presentations by showing them an excerpt of a recent interview we did with State Representative Stephen Bloom, on how he uses social media.

It was certainly an honor to be asked by the Pennsylvania Community Providers Association to participate in their 2012 Technology Conference. It is my hope that those who will attend both my workshop and the conference, are able to walk away with the tools that will assist them in meeting the significant challenges they face in providing assistance to those who are at risk of or face the challenges of mental illnesses, substance use disorders, addictions, intellectual, and/or developmental disabilities.

In my last post, I offered some insights into how Triad Strategies has used news aggregation as a way expanding our social network. As a tactic in a comprehensive social media strategy it has certainly been successful in growing our following on twitter (we are now at 1,720 followers – an increase of 23 in the last week). On the other hand, it has not been an integral strategy in driving traffic to our website.

Our daily headlines strategy on twitter is simply providing our audience with a headline and a link back to the newspaper, radio, or television website. Our daily headlines email is a list of all the articles with a link back as well. Neither of these two strategies drives any traffic back to our website. We certainly could have driven all of the links back to our daily headlines page on our website, which would have added to our search engine optimization (SEO). But would have our followers and email subscribers been happy with the added step of being directed to our website before seeing the headlines? Probably not.

In our opinion, it was more valuable to make it easy for our followers and subscribers to access the news, than it was to use this tactic for the purpose of driving traffic to our website. Though one of our goals is to drive traffic to our website, you have to build brand awareness and a value proposition in the early stages of a relationship in order to successfully achieve that goal. By measuring the number of times our audience was clicking on our headlines links, we knew that this was a successful tactic. Again, we felt it was important to build that audience so that it would be there when we would have a need to reach it.

Since one of our strategic goals is to drive traffic to the website, we have developed other tactics leveraging our news aggregation to achieve that purpose. As an example, the day that Pennsylvania  Governor Corbett proposed his 2012-13 state budget, we unveiled our 2012-13 budget information page. Not only did we aggregate budget news, but we provided a one stop shop for our clients and any one else who has an interest in the state budget to access important information. On the Triad website you can download press releases from the Governor’s Office, the 2012-13 budget spreadsheet (before it was publicly released), analysis from legislative committees, as well as interviews with legislative leaders. We used our traditional social media channels and our subscriber list to create awareness of this resource, and saw our average website traffic increase by 400% in week one, and has doubled over the past five weeks. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette even linked back to our website, adding to the volume of traffic.

We added some additional tweets using the hashtag #PABudget, added a link to our daily headlines email, as well as occasionally adding status updates to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. In this instance because of the shear volume of what we were aggregating, posting it on our website, and providing an archive of the over 500 articles, seemed to provide more value to anyone who would want to access it.

We continue to look for ways to provide value to our clients and the political community in general.  Social media channels have provided the opportunity for building brand awareness and increasing the volume of traffic on our websites.

When I enter into a engagement with a client who wants to undertake, retool, or expand their social media presence, I spend a considerable amount of time discussing the audience that they want to reach. In my mind, any social media strategy is bound to fail if you do not spend time identifying who you want to network with, and what that network will find of interest.  As the number of people on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and even Google+ increases, and as timelines and twitter feeds increase in size, the ability to reach and grow your target audience becomes more difficult by the day.

Three years ago you could ask all of your friends on Facebook to become a “fan” of a particular page, and you might have seen 10% to 25% respond in the affirmative.  In those days, your number of friends was relatively small, and your timeline was manageable, so it was easy to “like” a page.  Today, with twice the number of friends, you might be lucky to get a handful to click the “like” button.  With only so much time to devote to social networking, people today are more selective in who they let into their on-line lives.  In order to break through, we see companies use traditional advertising to find friends and followers (television commercials, newspaper and magazine ads, and billboards are filled with Facebook and Twitter URL’s).  In addition, in the online world, we see more and more banner ads and advertisements designed to drive us to social media sights.  Whether you are trying to build your audience organically, or through paid advertising, in the realm of social media, the value proposition that you provide your potential audience, will be the ultimate test of whether they will follow you.

You can drive people to your site with the promise of a discount or a coupon, if you’re a retailer, restaurateur, or a consumer brand.  If you’re a professional services firm, manufacturer, advocacy organization, charity, politician, or candidate for office, you need to come up with a different value proposition if you’re going to capture and retain an audience. This is where small businesses, organizations and individuals struggle developing a winning social media strategy.  They either spend too much time selling their product or service, or not enough time providing the content that will keep their target audience interested or engaged.

As the owner of a strategic communications firm, whose primary work revolves around government, we had a pretty good idea of who our target audience was, consisting primarily of government officials (both elected and appointed), their staffs, advocacy and special interest organizations, business leaders, media.  Basically anyone who would have an interest in the day to day affairs of government.  In a state like Pennsylvania, this audience numbers into the tens of  thousands.  Having identified that audience, we asked ourselves what do we have of value, that we could give away for free, that would result in our ability to build an audience, and keep it.

Many of us who worked in the State Capitol, received daily newspaper clips containing articles of political interest.  Each legislative caucus and the Governor’s office prepared them, and most members and staff read them.  As a strategic communications firm, we used Google Reader and other services to aggregate news articles, read them internally, and pass on items of interest to our clients.  The media is one of the ways we keep ourselves educated on what is occurring around us.  We determined that we could take the information we were already collecting and leverage it, recognizing the audience we were trying to cultivate would have an interest in the content we were consuming.  We also thought we could add value by distributing that content before many members of our audience would start their work day. We do not claim to provide all of the news that is generated on a daily basis, but enough of a representative sample to still be valuable.

We deliver our daily headlines on Twitter between 7:00 am and 8:00 am Monday thru Friday. These articles are emailed to our subscribers list, and they are displayed daily on our website. On occasion, we will remind our Facebook friends that they can see the daily headlines on our website.  These tactics, have resulted in generating 1,698 followers as of today (we would love to get over 1,700), and a subscriber base in excess of 2,000.  We have also increased our SEO for our website organically, keeping us close to the top of the page when our keywords are searched.  We’ve been doing this for over two years.  We know that this has value since we are often retweeted by public officials and their staffs, as well  thought and opinion leaders.  In addition, we can measure how often our links are clicked, web pages are viewed, and emails opened.

This is just one of the tactics that we have utilized in order to build our audience.  Our goal is not to aggregate the news for the public.  All we are doing  is providing to others what we were already providing ourselves.   Our goal was to use the daily headlines as both a branding tool, and as a means of building an audience that would be attentive to original content, as well as that of our clients.  After all, we are in the business of developing and delivering our client’s message to the very audience that we are providing the daily news to.  We can do it exponentially, with just the additional effort of hitting the enter key.  In our mind, that is a win-win-win.

Are you finding it harder to build your social media audience?  What tactics are you utilizing for the care and nurturing of your audience?

I have a confession to make.  I have committed one of the cardinal sins of social media.  I started a blog in 2010, that had received a small amount of national attention.  A number of my blog posts were published on Social Media Today, and many of my posts received thousands of page views.  I had been quoted in articles, and used as a reference in a number of research papers.  Then in December of 2010 I went silent.  I only published 4 posts in all of 2011.

My Blog has laid dormant since July 31, 2011.  As someone who professes to practice what I preach in the realm of social media, this was a bit of a personal failure to me.  It is not that I had given up on social media, or did not see a ROI.  On the contrary, I had over extended myself.  I could no longer keep up with producing content for my blog, while at the same time, producing valuable content for my company’s social media platforms.

I shifted my focus from my personal social media strategy, to my companies social media strategy.  I set aside my personal branding, to continue to expand the social media reach of Triad Strategies.  By shifting focus to my company’s social media strategy, my team and I we were able to expand our content, our friends and followers, and continue to provide valuable content to our clients, prospects and political community.

The strategies and tactics we developed to build our brand have been quite successful.  We identified our key audiences, we identified the appropriate social media channels to reach those audiences, and we have distributed a significant amount of content (both aggregated and original) to them.  We have leveraged our social media strategy to cultivate clients and develop valuable relationships.  And like any successful strategy, we continually reassess and tweak it.

As a strategic communications firm, we believe that to be successful in the 21st century, we needed to not only understand how to use social media to broadcast a message, but be able to demonstrate that we could deliver that message.  Given the metrics that we use to measure our performance, we believe our strategy has been successful.

All of this took a considerable amount of my and my firm’s time.  Consequently I had to give some things up.  Many of those things were delegated to my staff.  The one thing I was not willing to delegate was my blog.  Since Triad has successfully launched the Triadvocate, I really could not ask my team to take on my blog as well.  Nor did I really want to delegate this personal outlet.  So I simply went dark.  No real explanation to my subscribers other than I simply stopped posting.

So why I am I starting to blog again?  When I came up with the idea for starting this blog, I thought it was important to help others understand how they could use social media tools in their personal and business lives. I think that much of what I have learned since I started my journey down the road of social networking can still help others start, build, and tweak their social media strategies.  So I decided that it was time to put my fingers back on the keyboard and get at it.  I believe it will personally help me to assess how successful Triad’s strategies have been, and in the process of describing what has worked and not worked for us, should help my readers think of what might work for them.

I still believe that successful strategies in the realm of social media still need to be predicated on a win-win platform.  I hope that you will benefit from my posts, just as I receive value from writing them.