Presentation from Magazine Canada conference

1. Get Serious About
Social Networks
#magnetsocial

2. The basics
A little about me
What is social
The Audience
The basics of social strategy
What you need to be thinking about

3. I work here.

4. But lets start with this.
If you need to hear a presentation that says “Get Serious
about Social Networks” in order to get serious, you’re
probably destined to dip a toe in, use most of the same
techniques you’ve always used, have an unrealistic set of
expectations and not enough investment.
In short, if you need to hear about how you need to get
serious about social networks, you’re not serious about
social networks.

5. 1,800,000 visitors per month
19,400,000 visitors per month

6. 270,000 visitors per month
(a 40% decrease in just one year)
22,500,000 visitors per month

7. That’s about 10 times more traffic.
Um, yeah, so...it matters.

8. Success here isn’t about
spending big dollars or
how massive your brand
is necessarily. It’s a
measure of whether or
not people care about
you. For anyone spending
decades paying for
audiences, it’s hard to
actually earn it.

10. The Difficulty of Doing

11. Just Act Natural
Now that we know
messaging doesn’t work,
we often get caught up
in trying to just be a
part of the space.

12. Naturally Insignificant brands.
Don’t be too natural. Understand the
values, yes, but the goal should be to
work in the extreme. To be decidedly
unnatural. Difference kills indifference.

16. The First Mover Caveat
The only potential caveat is when
you’re freshly moving into an
unbranded space. In those rare
moments, acting natural is being
different.

17. What do you mean
by social strategy?

18. Facebook has 500,000,000 users
YouTube is the 2nd largest search
engine
Twitter is a primary starting point for
brand conversation

19. Water cooler talks have very little to
do with what happens in and around
the water cooler.
What do you mean by social?

20. Is CNN social media?
Is CBC, NBC or CBS social media?
Are you social media?

21. Lets get some stuff straight.
Making a Facebook page isn’t a
strategy. Copying links to your own
content on Twitter isn’t a strategy.
Hiring a community manager isn’t a
strategy. Nor is adding like buttons to
your home page.

22. Marketing
Human
Public
Resources
Relations
In-Store
Products
Customer
Service What about the organization?
Is it a marketing issue? Public relations?
Human resources? Or a bit of all of it?
Just considering that has a huge effect on
the organization itself. Not just who is
managing it – but what are our legal
obligations? What role do employees play?
What about their personal accounts?

23. The Networked
Audience
A shift from classic individual decision-
making to group dynamics

24. There is no such thing as an unnetworked audience.
Everyone is networked and has always been networked.
We just never really thought of them that way.
What do you mean by networked audiences?

25. In the advertising world, we tend to speak in
functions and stereotypes, neither of which are all
that helpful when approaching these audiences.
We always assume that decisions are
individual and rational.

26. “Idioms are an anathema to innovation. They fuse
organizations to assumptions, cultural mythologies and
fossilized ways of seeing and talking about themselves,
their business and, more importantly, their consumers.”
Morgan Gerard

27. The insight.

29. The Audience
Or all the stuff we’re figuring out now
– to get all psychological for a bit

30. “Our more instinctual selves are
much more refined by time and
natural selection. It s the rational
that s new. So while natural
selection is still working out how
to make the rational bits work
better, our emotional bits are
much more fine-tuned.
Jonah Lehrer
We don t know where
instinctual stops and
rational begins.

31. The Argumentative Theory
"We do all these irrational things, and despite
mounting results, people are not really changing their
basic assumption. They are not challenging the basic
idea that reasoning is for individual purposes. The
premise is that reasoning should help us make better
decisions, get at better beliefs. And if you start from
this premise, then it follows that reasoning should
help us deal with logical problems and it should help
us understand statistics. But reasoning doesn't do all
these things, or it does all these things very, very
poorly."

32. These increasingly transparent social dynamics are
proving again and again that commonalities in values,
language and associations create connections.
Being in the in-group matters most.

33. “Never put a period where God has put a comma.”

34. “Never put a period where God has put a comma.”

35. Even weight
can be a social
phenomenon. If one person became
obese, the likelihood that
his friend would follow suit
increased by 57%
Christakis Fowler

36. What does a Social
Strategy look like?
We have some core toolsets we use.

37. People
The community management team, reporting structure and
code for all employees.
Tools
Social Media Guidelines, Tone and Manner documentation,
listening and engagement tools and editorial calendars.
Content
A content framework including content development,
production and curation.
Spaces
An approach to when and why a brand should create or
dismiss spaces.

38. Centralized Coordinated Hub and Spoke
One department controls all Cross-functional team with Groups act autonomously from each
social efforts. This is central community manager to other under a common brand.
recommended as a first step in support. Pros
giving community management
Pros Operating units are free to execute
more freedom in engaging
Central group is aware of what tactics as long as a common
audiences.
each group is doing. experience is shared amongst all
Pros units.
Provides holistic customer
Consistent customer Cons
experience to customers.
experience.
Cons Constant communication from all
Cons teams to be coordinated, creating
Executive support required,
Inauthentic if press releases internal noise.
with program management,
rehashed on blog or videos by Requires cultural and executive buy-
cross-departmental buy-in.
stiff executives. in and dedicated staff.
Sources: Jeremiah Owyang, Framework and Matrix: The Five Ways Companies Organize for Social Business
Social Business Organizational Models, Altimeter Group, 2010

39. Listening and Engagement
An enterprise level platform for finding,
following and responding to conversations
related to your brand.
Personality and Policy Documentation
Conversation training, clear community guidelines
and social policies keep the community active and
the voice on brand.
Coordination Calendars
Editorial calendars can ensure consistency
and coordination across spaces.
Measurement
A measurement platform allows the Community
Management to learn and optimize over time.

40. The Audience Framework
From here, the key focus is
understanding where key
audiences are and how to
effectively involve them.
Model via Gabe Zickermann

41. All of this is a
starter kit, just
your basic
infrastructure
build.

42. Sharing
Experi-
mentation Platforms
Culture
Interesting
-ness
Social
Purpose Brands
We need less focus in social places and
more on being social brands.
Being social in this space means being
meaningful, interesting and in it for the
long term.

43. Finding purpose.
"I think many people assume, wrongly, that a
company exists simply to make money. While this is
an important result of a company's existence, we
have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our
being.”
David Packard

44. Finding purpose.
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you
do it. And if you talk about what you believe you will
attract those who believe what you believe.”
Simon Sinek

45. Ask yourself
this: How a
What cause are you brand acts
a credible voice for?
How a brand talks
What a brand feels is
important
What a brand rallies the
community around
Why a brand does it

51. Cultural Integration.
Speaking the language of the audiences
we’re seeking to reach is the most
important skill we need. It’s also the one
we’re haven’t really figured out.

52. OKGO and Nike
Noah Kalina and NBA

54. Publishers often still own the niche
audience, but should move beyond
gatekeeper to a role of facilitator.

55. “Brands, especially those centered around
lifestyle interests or luxury, are increasingly
becoming media companies.”
Steve Rubel, Edelman Digital

57. This also means that those with the deepest
knowledge of the audience should be able to
fluidly create additional value beyond content.

58. “A company that provides entertaining, inspiring and
informative content and allows consumers to more
easily find and complete a transaction for the best
products and services is providing a great service to
their reader.”
Dave Chase, Entrepreneur

61. Actions not messages.
Do things. Do lots of things. Explore and experiment.
Create a culture of more yes. Think low cost, high return.
• focus the problem or opportunity
• encourage experiments
• measure and invite feedback
• build mutually beneficial partnerships

62. "You learn to like the excitement of mild, ongoing
risk taking…Sometimes it works, sometimes it
doesn't, but it's the creation of possibility.”
Brad Blanton, Founder of Radical Honesty

63. Focus the Problem or Opportunity

65. "We're pushed to take risks in everything we do as
long as we're enabling the athlete to be better. Sure,
we'll get some things wrong but you've just got to
go for it.”
Simon Pestridge,
UK Marketing Chief of Nike

66. Encourage Experiments

69. Measure and Invite Feedback

70. Create Partnerships

71. Communities and Networks.
It is not just about building a relationship between
you and your audience. It’s far more important to
build platforms that develop relationships within
your community.
Graph via Abhinav Singh

72. Networks
Relationship-driven
Communities High-audience investment
Interest-driven Stable
Disposable More difficult to scale
Less stable
Based upon weak ties Best for sustainability
Often more scalable
Best for spreading messages

75. Be decidedly and unnaturally original.
The DIS Principle.

79. The conversation
shouldn t be
about being better
in social media but
being more social
brands.

80. Thanks. You can find me on the internet.
Paul McEnany
Director of Strategy at Twist Image.
heehawmarketing.com // @paulmcenany
Credit to:
@min_0
Flickr: Katherine Squier, Alena Chendler, Lauryn Holmquist,
Mr. TGT, Sannah Kvist
Other photos: Mark Sloan, Hiroshi Sugimoto