S OCIAL M EDIA D EMYSTIFIED Building effective strategies for business-to-business marketing communications programs

S OCIAL M EDIA D EFINED Social media: a broad set of online activities driving interaction among individuals and groups using technology applications.

S OCIAL M EDIA, S TATISTICALLY S PEAKING If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s fourth largest between the United States and Indonesia. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is year-old females. The second-largest search engine in the world is YouTube. Twenty-five percent of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. Seventy-eight percent of buyers trust peer recommendations — only 14 percent trust advertisements (traditional marketing). Twenty-five percent of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone.

S OCIAL M EDIA D EMOGRAPHICS Facebook 99.6 million visitors/month 54% female 46% between ages of 18 to 34 58% earn more than $60K 42% college- educated LinkedIn 28 million visitors/month 53% male 78% over the age of 35 68% earn more than $60K 50% college- educated Twitter 27 million visitors/month 53% female 72% between ages of 18 and 49 52% earn more than $60K 42% college- educated

S OCIAL M EDIA T OOLS Conversations Collaboration Multimedia Rants & Raves Brand Monitoring

T HE A RT OF C ONVERSATION Social media is a two-way conversation that requires brand-alignment and planning. One: Observe Yourself Two: Listen to Others Three: Define Community Expectations Four: Define Your Assets Five: Set Goals and Metrics Six: Concentrate on Channels Seven: Engage in Conversations

O NE : O BSERVE Y OURSELF At this stage, we observe: Brand personality Methodologies and channels Target audiences Audience involvement

T WO : L ISTEN TO O THERS As in the best practices of holding a real-life conversation, companies engaged in social media marketing should listen to stakeholders more than 50 percent of the time

T HREE : D EFINE C OMMUNITY E XPECTATIONS During this stage we outline our target demographics by listening to our community. Reach out to influencers and ask them 1) how they use social media and 2) what they wanted to see in a social media plan.

F OUR : D EFINE Y OUR A SSETS At this stage, we look at the dollars and cents of social media. A common misconceptions is that social media is free but it requires time, and time is money.

F IVE : S ET G OALS AND M ETRICS The goals of a social media program should evolve over time. During your initial program, track goals and metrics.

G OALS AND M ETRICS GoalMetric Build a community on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn that represents your employee base and recruits. Increase membership 10 percent month over month in each network Work with IT and marketing to create a solid process for recruitment tracking from social media activities to document effectiveness as well as employee participation.  Creation of a documented system  Lead generation of 10 percent directly from social media activities Increase website traffic to HR/Careers sectionDrive 25 percent of traffic to site from social media URLs Establish a hub – such as a corporate blog or LinkedIn company page – as a thought leadership tool and see syndication  See the blog referenced at least 25 times during test period  Earn at least 10 comments per month Increase qualified subscriptions to corporate e-news, etc.Increase subscriptions by 5 percent month over month

S IX : C ONCENTRATE ON C HANNELS Determine the channels that are recommended for your company’s social media HR portfolio and what you can expect from each.

S OCIAL M EDIA C HANNELS TO C ONSIDER Community Communication Brand ExposureTraffic Building SEO TwitterGood: use monitoring tools to track what people are saying about brand, products, and competitors Good: good website integration; engage customers in viral ways. OK: requires solid strategy OK: limited but tweets will rank high on results FacebookGood: for engaging people who like the brand and want to express opinions. good for sweepstakes Good: Brand pages are great for this, especially through ad platform. OKBad FlickrOK BadGood: heavily indexed LinkedInOKGood: great for personal branding. Have all employees maintain complete profiles BadOK YouTubeGood: good customer engagement Good: great brand building if channel is built and maintained OKGood: highly indexed DiggOKGood: great for objective press and blog coverage; cannot sound like advertisement Good: great for traffic spikes Good: great indexing StumbleBadOKGood: wide range of people will get exposed Good: if story makes it to top

S EVEN : E NGAGE IN C ONVERSATIONS Online conversations must mirror real-life conversations to be effective for company branding, recruitment, culture- building and organizational development.

C ONVERSATION G UIDELINES Be transparent Be authentic Be conversational Focus on our industry Respond to criticism immediately Thank profusely

C ASE S TUDY Printronix Path2Profit channel partner loyalty program launch

C ASE S TUDY : P RINTRONIX P ATH 2P ROFIT P ROGRAM L AUNCH Situation: Printronix sells its products and services through the channel. For many years, Printronix ignored its partner channel. In 2009, the company recognized that its partners are important and set out to launch a comprehensive loyalty program. Remarx Media was brought on to support the program by creating and distributing: Program name Program image Program materials: application, program guide, FAQs, Partner communications Employee communications Marketing options

C ASE S TUDY : P RINTRONIX P ATH 2P ROFIT P ROGRAM L AUNCH Goals Create website as central hub for the program Create easy to understand and use program materials Communicate program to internal Printronix employees to ensure support of the program Communicate benefits of Path2Profit program to existing Printronix partners Sign-up 40 qualified partners

C ASE S TUDY : P RINTRONIX P ATH 2P ROFIT P ROGRAM L AUNCH Results Website was created in one week using WordPress at

C ASE S TUDY : P RINTRONIX P ATH 2P ROFIT P ROGRAM L AUNCH Results (cont’d) Extensive materials were developed including: Application Comprehensive program guide Frequently asked questions Level specific presentations Marketing development funds (MDF) application Examples of MDF programs Developed employee communications including: Letter from Vice President of Sales announcing the program Separate incentive program for supporting the initiative

C ASE S TUDY : P RINTRONIX P ATH 2P ROFIT P ROGRAM L AUNCH Results (cont’d) A series of outreach communications were developed to encourage partners to sign up for the new program, including: Launch Application and 2-3 reminders over a one month period Out call campaign MDF announcement News release Channel eNewsletter

C ASE S TUDY : P RINTRONIX P ATH 2P ROFIT P ROGRAM L AUNCH Results (cont’d) More than 100 applications were submitted to Printronix. The applications represented partners in three levels: Platinum: 20 partners Premium: 30 partners Associate: 50 partners Reseller: 60 Client Reaction “Remarx Media is a dedicated partner and really knows the channel market. I rely on them as my outsourced channel marketing department. Their recommendations are spot-on and consistently result in positive outcomes for Printronix and our partners. – Lisa Reickerd, director, channel marketing, Americas and China

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Theresa Dreike ext. 102 Cara Stewart ext. 101