#SocialMarketing

Planning Guide for 2015

Introduction
Social marketers, theres plenty of good news for
the year ahead.
Social audiences have grown, and are less resistant to
branded messaging, according to our recent Instagram
and Twitter studies. Content and social marketing have
become such large focuses for organizations because
they work. The audience is there, and theyre excited
to engage.
Heres a New Years-ready countdown of what has
changed in social marketing in 2014, what to expect
in 2015, and how to propel your brand to greatness
in socials ever-evolving ecosystem.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

#10

INSTAGRAM IS NECESSARY

What Changed in 2014

Instagram has changed from a Maybe we should to a

Must-have, especially for retail brands.
The mobile photo-sharing app, which launched in October
of 2010, now reports over 200 million monthly active users,
60 million photos posted daily, and an average of 1.6 billion
Likes every single day.
As our Instagram Q3 Study pointed out, 86% of top brands
have Instagram accounts, up from 71% in Q3 2013. We can
only expect this trend upwards to continue.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

What to Do in 2015

Put some serious time and resources into your brands

Instagram presence, whether its a well-used social network
in your industry or not.
If most brands in your space use Instagram, conduct analysis
on successful competitors to discover what your target
audience responds to well and what falls flat.
If most brands in your space arent on Instagram, take
the opportunity to pave the way on the network. Here are
some current strategies were seeing successful brands use
on the network.

Tag another user handle in your captions.

On average, posts that include another user handle in the

caption net 56% more engagement. Mention influential
users to engage new audiences.

Tag a location for engagement growth.

Posts in our study that were tagged with

a location received 79% higher engagement.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

Use hashtags.

Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more

engagement. Hashtags are an important discovery method
on Instagram, allowing brands to gain exposure to niche
groups and relevant areas of interest. These searchable
terms give audiences an organic way to find branded
content through topics that fascinate them.

In 2015, you will see a big increase

in mobile social marketing with
mobile advertising, apps and
crowd sourced mobile driven
content. Brands and users will
leverage the power of the two key
obsessive technologies (Social and
mobile) to new heights. Instagram
which integrates social and mobile
will maintain its high growth rate.
Jeff Bullas, Forbes Social Media
Power Influencer

#9

BEHAVIORAL TARGETING

What Changed in 2014

Facebook Sponsored Stories went away, and the new

Behaviors feature debuted. You can now target ads by
behavior within the following categories:
Automotive (DLX Auto Powered by Polk)
Charitable Donations
Digital Activities
Financial
Mobile Device User
Purchase Behavior
Residential Profiles
Travel
Within these categories, there are subcategories that allow
you to get even more specific about who youre targeting
with your ads.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

What to Do in 2015

Since ad targeting on Facebook is better than ever,

take advantage of the Behaviors feature.
With behavior-based targeting, you can reach Facebook
users with characteristics more likely to drive engagement
from relevant social audience members and hit your
engagement and follower goals.
You can target users who are interested in motorcycles,
or in animal welfare. You can target users who are console
gamers, or who are seeking auto insurance policies, or who
are active credit card users, or who are new smartphone
and tablet owners, or who buy home and garden goods
frequently, or who are likely to move soon, or who are
business travelers or users who fit into any combination
of the above behavioral categories.

Facebooks Behavioral targeting

allows advertisers to dive a level
deeper beyond some of the more
surface-level targeting methods
like Interests, Demographics, and
Locations. These methods make
inferences about users likelihood
of buying based on their
characteristics, but Behavioral
targeting identifies users who
have actually taken an action. Behavioral targeting finds
people who have recently invested their time and/or
money in something similar to what your product or
brand offers, which increases the likelihood that not
only are they interested in your product, but that theyre
willing to take action on that interest.
Danie Pote, Marketing Manager
of Paid Media at Simply Measured

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

#8

FACEBOOK AS A NEWS SOURCE

What Changed in 2014

Facebook debuted Trending Topics, which appear to the

right of your News Feed as a list of topics and hashtags that
are spiking in popularity on Facebook. This list is personalized
based on a number of factors, including Pages youve liked,
your location, and whats trending across Facebook.

What to Do in 2015

When people click on a topic, they see relevant updates from

friends and brand pages. That means you.

Create content around current conversations.

Use Trending Topics to know what Facebook members

are talking about, and capitalize on that buzz by creating
content that fits with relevant keywords and/or hashtags
on a quick turnaround.

Invest in right-column ads.

You can purchase ads that appear directly below the Trending
Topics section. By knowing which topics are trending within
your target audience, you can make sure these ads fulfill a
need or answer a question that a trending topic surfaces.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

Keep an eye on FB Techwire.

Facebook wants to be our go-to news source. With the

recent release of FB Techwire, the social giant has made
another step in that direction. Wherever your Trending
Topics-centric content creation forays take you, make sure
youre paying attention to FB Techwirea place for breaking
news before the topics get fully heated.

Brands now have the ability to

capitalize on trending topics on
Facebook just like on Twitter,
creating content based on what
the current conversation is and
reminding users of cultural
phenomena even if their own
friends arent talking about a
specific topic.
Kevin Shively
Senior Content Marketing Manager
at Simply Measured

#7

CROSS-CHANNEL CREATIVITY

What Changed in 2014

Brands created better integrated cross-channel campaigns

than ever.

What to Do in 2015

Fire on all cylinders. Depending on your industry and

budget, that might mean building campaigns with consistent
messaging across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, investing
in these networks in addition to traditional TV and radio ads,
or exploring growth networks like Pinterest and Wanelo.
From the Super Bowl to American Idol to the Oscars, this
year showed us that cross-channel social marketing efforts
offer brands major return worth devoting budget to.

Engage, engage, engage.

You dont want your content to fall on deaf ears, but you
cant expect your social audience to automatically engage
with your content. Give social users specific ways to get
involved in a dialogue, like asking them to post photos or
share opinions alongside a certain hashtag.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

Remain consistent, but adapt.

Your messaging should remain consistent across all your active

social networks, but your delivery methods and what you
expect to receive from each network must be flexible. This
includes how you set goals and benchmarks
for outcomes on each network.
For instance, you might kick off a campaign on Facebook with
humorous video content, expand to Instagram mid-campaign
with product-oriented photographic content, and use Twitter
to conduct the chats associated with your campaign, but your
brand voice and message should reinforce itself no matter
which channel your social audiences are tuning into.

In 2015, data-informed social

media content, promotion, and
engagement through more
sophisticated social marketing
platforms will also require trained
practitioners necessitating new
training, best practices, and
measurement.
Lee Odden
CEO at TopRank Online Marketing

Measure across all your channels.

Looking at each network in a silo means missing out on

important trends and opportunities. By comparing channelspecific metrics side-by-side, you can optimize your strategy
with detailed analytics for channel health, content performance,
and user engagement.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

#6

SAY YES TO INFLUENCERS

What Changed in 2014

In 2014, it became clear that the future of social media

marketing relies on influencer marketing. As per Nielsen,
90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while
only 33% trust ads. That means your popular friends and
followers, social audience members with high Klout scores,
bloggers, and journalists are more important than ever.

What to Do in 2015

Associating yourself with popular, brand-relevant influencers

gives you a unique opportunity to connect with fan groups
that are familiar with your brand, but may not have engaged
with you directly.

Klout score, and social audience size), Relevance (how well

the influencers expertise aligns with your goals and brand
identity), and Resonance (whether the influencer is having
meaningful, long, interactive conversations).

Reach out the right way.

According to KISSmetrics, the most effective way to recruit

influencers is via email, with contact on owned channels like
Twitter and Facebook a close second.

Identify the right influencers.

Use an agency that represents influencers and bloggers or

conduct a social media analysis of whos interacting with your
brand already and organically reach out to the folks who
touch your target audience regularly.

Keep Brian Soliss three Rs in mind.

When going influencer-hunting, digital analyst and author Brian

Solis suggest we think about Reach (the influencers popularity,

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

10

#5

VIDEO TIME

What Changed in 2014

According to Digital Sherpa, videos increase peoples

understanding of your product or service by 74%. YouTube is
now the number two search engine in the world. One-third of
all online activity is spent watching videos. Shall we go on?

What to Do in 2015

Put it everywhere.

Dont limit your video efforts to YouTube and Facebook. Post

snippets and teasers of longer videos on Instagram and Vine,
completely saturating your social presence and testing to see
which kind of video content is effective for your audience.

Its time to allocate some money to developing video

content. We know youve been talking about doing this
for a couple years now, but its really time.

Dont go long.

45% of viewers stop watching a video after one minute. By the

two-minute mark, 60% of viewers have tuned out. This means
your content should not be lengthy. If more time is mandatory
to get your point across, make sure youve engaged your
target audience fully before sixty seconds comes along.

Video is going to be gigantic in

2015. The social content marketing
world will put more dollars there, and
YouTube and Vine will increase their
impact.

Add it to email.

Michael Walton
SVP of Marketing and Product
at Simply Measured

Up your email marketing game and drive click-throughs

from your emails with video. An introductory company email
that includes a video receives an average click-through rate
increase of 96%.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

11

#4

EXPERIMENT WITH PODCASTS

What Changed in 2014

Podcasts are being taken more seriously in the social and

content marketing realms. According to Social Media
Examiners Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2014,
only 6% of marketers started off 2014 involved with
podcasting, but more than three times that planned on
increasing their podcasting activities in 2014, and 28% of
marketers wanted to learn more about it.

What to Do in 2015

Experiment with podcasts. Whats your brands expertise?

Find a unique way to educate and/or entertain people at
a regular cadence.

Figure out who youre trying to reach.

A great way to do this? Analyzing the people who feel

strongly enough about you to engage with your brand on
social, and using those questions and discussions as starting
points for your podcast vision and topic pool.

Coordinate with your social efforts.

If podcasts fall into the social marketing bucket for your

brand, make sure all roads lead back to your social
commodities and getting listeners to become followers.
#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

The ad alternative.

If you dont want to devote the time and resources to creating

a podcast series, consider advertising on a popular podcasting
series that fits with your target audience. Package your
advertisement with a discount code and/or social offer to keep
track of how much business you drive from this endeavor.

Podcasts offer the opportunity

to both showcase expertise and
humanize your brand by letting the
brilliant people behind it speak.
Theyre relatively low-budget
and easy to create. And, theyre
convenient for anyone who has
a smartphone, headphones, and
only a little bit of free time to learn
something new. Thatll be pretty
much everyone in 2015.
Bridget Quigg, Director of Content at Simply Measured

12

#3

LEVERAGE EVENTS

What Changed in 2014

Leveraging major cultural and entertainment events

to promote brand awareness went big in 2014, with
successful bandwagon-jumping and organically sourced
campaigns around everything from Game of Thrones to
the #ALSIceBucketChallenge.

What to Do in 2015

Social strategy in 2015 will require more vigilance and pulsereading than ever before. Dont miss an opportunity to get
your brand in front of the right people by capitalizing on
the success of social phenomenabut make sure you dont
compromise your brand identity while youre at it.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

13

Expect the unexpected.

Dont stick so stringently to your social plan that you lose a

sense of spontaneity and the ability to make social magic from
whats happening already.
In this landscape, your community manager is more important
than ever. If multiple brands live under your company umbrella,
invest in multiple community managers for optimal social
creativity and event-based involvement.

Crowdsource content.

Amplify existing behavior on social by creating campaigns

based on what people are saying around your brand already.

Social identity will start to

become a challenge in 2015,
as brands attempt to tie offline
identity with online identity. Social
identity solutions will start to
emerge and some acquisition will
happen in that space.
Uri Bar-Joseph
Director of Marketing
at Simply Measured

Surprise, but stay true.

Dont stray so far away from your brand voice that youre
unrecognizable, but take a chance, get creative, and get
involved in a cultural phenomenon people might not expect
from your brand for extra attention.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

14

#2

CUSTOMER SERVICE

What Changed in 2014

Social media is transforming customer service. A Nielsen

survey shows that more than half of all customers now turn to
social media for redress. Some 81% of Twitter users expect a
same-day response to questions and complaints.

What to Do in 2015

Invest resources into providing timely and efficient

customer service on Twitter.

Have a dedicated customer service handle.

By maintaining a separate main brand account and customer

service account, you can separate support inquiries from
marketing efforts. This means your customers get more direct
access to help and your marketing efforts remain undiluted.

Sign on, sign off.

The best-in-class in Twitter customer service let followers

know their customer service availability in their profiles and
send out Tweets at the beginning and close of business
hours. This makes sure community expectations are managed
and more often met.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

Focus on response time and Tweet resolution.

Measure your progress by benchmarking with these two

metrics. How long does it take your customer service team to
respond on Twitter? How many Tweets are necessary to close
a customer service case? Create response time and Tweet
resolution goals based on your industry norms.
The concept of a social business is
here to stay. With the emergence of
social selling, employee advocacy,
and other social business initiatives,
companies and leaders will begin
to shift their focus from using
social media for marketing or
communication, and start using it for
connecting and growing communities.
This includes investing in employees personal brands
and empowering customers to have a voice while talking
with, not at, them.
Brian Fanzo
Digital Strategist at Broadsuite

15

#1

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT

What Changed in 2014

With a well-recognized evolution from basic listening and

monitoring to more sophisticated performance measurement
and market analysis, brand storytellers paid attention to data
to develop a stronger understanding of their audience, and
their competitors.

What to Do in 2015

Better measurement means better goal-hitting strategies

and tactics for digital teams. By increasing your brands
social understanding and self-knowledge, you can improve
everything from cross-platform strategy to org structure
and make it very clear why you rocked that campaign.

Create your own ROI definition. What does social ROI mean

to you? The answer varies for every brand. Are you more
interested in brand awareness, driving your social audience
to your site, increasing engagement with customers? Find the
metrics that match your goals, and start benchmarking.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

16

Differentiate between owned, earned, and paid.

Which of your efforts are bearing fruit? Are you putting

your advertising dollars to their best use on social?

Target better.

Build your social content around your ideal social personas.

By knowing whos already engaging with you, youll get a
pretty good idea of who you should be targeting or which
tweaks you have to make to your strategy to attract the
audience you actually want.

In 2014, social marketing got

dramatically more sophisticated.
In 2015, social analytics will
be a primary focus as brands
continue to scale social marketing
investments.
Adam Schoenfeld
CEO of Simply Measured

Analyze your competition.

Like in any other branch of your business, you need to know

what your competitors are doing well and not so well. Make
this social analysis a centerpiece of your measurement strategy.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

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Conclusion
The social landscape is constantly changing, and as social
analytics experts, its our job to discover how and why those
evolutions are taking place. We know its crazy out there, but
weve been paying attention. You can put good money on
our top ten predictions and planning recommendations.
From investing in new content types to premium measurement
solutions to new ad buying ventures, its time to put a fresh
face on your social strategy and ring in the New Year right.

Lucy Hitz is a Social Media

Content Writer at Simply
Measured, where she works on
longform content and writes
for the award-winning social
analytics blog. Her favorite
musical artist is Taylor Swift. She
looks forward to seeing what
happens on social in 2015.

#SocialMarketing Planning Guide 2015

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