The Social Media Strategy advisory council for ad:tech Sydney 2011 met to discuss the issues that are affecting the market and the content that should be on the ad:tech programme. Here is a summary of the key areas discussed:

Resource
• When social media goes well how do you scale up? Not necessarily with more people but with better skills, so upskill who you have. And need to change internal culture because social media has to be taken out of marketing and applied throughout the whole company
• External talent is a minefield, there is not a lot of availability
• The limiting factor in social media is resource so you have to focus on platforms / channels that are most effective: figure out where your audience is and use that platform
• At board level there is a reluctance for marketing spend to increase because social media is now an option; ‘we can do it for free now’. But in fact it should be used to enhance existing spend.
• The speed and growth of change in social media is an overall challenge
• Products change according to consumer adoption

Content
• You need a strategy around what the content of a group is going to be – how does it add value?
• Engagement, content, creative – what’s the plan to keep the community ‘with us’
• Think of yourself / brand as a publisher / broadcaster and then you have content
• Consistency and tailoring of content is important – you can make use of the flexibility that social media allows
• All content also has to be adapted for the medium or channel
• How to use social as a research tool
• Responding is the main thing in social media, if someone asks a question, respond etc
• When you promote social channels / platforms through core digital media you have to change the content so that it is accessible and share-able
• ‘Conversation marketing’
• For success you should decided what your brand voice is

Control
• How do you to take responsibility for what people are saying? And this includes the issue of providing a consistent message
• What is being said publicly and privately, there will always be a lot you don’t know and how do you stay on top of the changes
• Sometimes companies / brands try to control too much
• There should be guidelines for strategy but not execution – you need to give people some freedom

Strategy
• How much time do you spend strategising before implementing? Or, do you go beta?
• It is better to invest time initially in the project – so get your strategy right
• Know why you’re doing something is the start
• It’s important to strategise around contingency plans

Amplification
• Developing an amplification strategy (growing your following / friends / connections etc)
• If you’re driving membership strategy then you need analytics, data and measurement in place first
• Don’t forget you can still use off line to drive membership
• If your plan is to grow then part of your strategy has to be around how you will resource in the future it because you are going to grow…
• Incentives, rewards work well to drive growth – they need to be action driven; tangible-ness is key

Data / measurement / analytics
• Knowing what to measure is important first
• What’s in the strategy has changed, it’s now analytics and contingency, not content
• What’s the reach of your social media message?
• You must know the tools – what there is and the best way to use them
• At present everyone is using lots of separate analytics – there’s nothing holistic
• Numbers are one thing but tone is another. Looking at the volume of when your brand etc is spoken about is one thing but really you need to understand it plus or minus sentiment. At the moment people are working this out manually
• Do research before, during and after campaigns

Integration
• What are the strategies / steps towards social media integration?
• How do you have a successful social media strategy?
o Senior buy in
o Stakeholder involvement ‘globally’
o Training
o Technology

Have your say

This is a summary of the points that were made in the meeting. We’ll be working on this and integrating these topics and themes into the ad:tech Sydney 2011 conference programme. If you have feedback on these points or want to make suggestions about additional topics or speakers for the programme then please leave comments or get in touch with me here.

Notes from the other advisory council meetings

Data & Analytics
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Monetising Digital
Unwired Media
Creative & Brand
Entertainment & Experience
Core Digital Media

Who’s on the other advisory councils:

Data & Analytics
Unwired Media
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Monetising Digital
Brand & Creative
Core Digital Media
Entertainment & Experience
ad:tech Sydney advisory council groups named