18 Social Media Use Cases: Conversation, Campaign and Community
I have been trying to build a simple but comprehensive framework for social media use cases (attempt 1, attempt 2), and here’s my present thinking on the problem.
The social media strategy process has six steps –
1. Context: Creating the right context in terms of objectives, metrics, structures, workflows and policies.
2. Content: Creating and managing a content calendar, to attract and retain the interest of influencers and evangelists on a regular basis.
3. Conversation: Tracking and responding to conversations amongst influencers and evangelists.
4. Campaign: Creating a series of campaigns, or short-term bursts of outreach to influencers and evangelists.
5. Community: Bringing together influencers and evangelists on a social platform hosted by the brand on a long-term basis.
6. Channel: Creating specific tactics for online and offline channels and integrating them.
Out of these six steps, we can structure three — conversation, campaign and community — as standalone social media programs.
In conversation-based programs, the brand plays an active role in engaging in one-to-one conversations with influencers and evangelists.
In community-based programs, the brand plays the role of an host and enables influencers and evangelists to engage in one-to-one conversations with each other.
Campaign-based programs can look like conversation-based programs or community-based programs but involve a focused high-intensity initiative from the brand over a short period.
When we apply these three types of programs — conversation, campaign and community — to six types of business contexts — marketing, sales, support, innovation, talent and corporate — we get 18 social media use cases.
Conversation-based social media programs can relate to –
1. Marketing: Tracking product brands & changing medium or message.
2. Sales: Identifying and converting leads.
3. Support: Identifying and solving problems.
4. Innovation: Identifying and implementing trends and ideas.
5. Talent: Tracking employee brand and mitigating reputation risk.
6. Corporate: Tracking corporate brand and mitigating reputation risk.
Campaign-based social media programs can relate to –
1. Marketing: Viral word of mouth campaign.
2. Sales: Referral or loyalty campaign.
3. Support: Suggestion campaign.
4. Innovation: Idea- or trend-hunting campaign.
5. Talent: Recruitment or behavior change campaign.
6. Corporate: Cause or thought-leadership campaign.
Community-based social media programs can relate to –
1. Marketing: Evangelist community.
2. Sales: Group-buying customer community.
3. Support: Self-service customer community.
4. Innovation: Ideation community.
5. Talent: Employee or campus community.
6. Corporate: Cause or thought-leadership community.
Although the 18 social media use cases are mostly self-explanatory, in a series of upcoming posts, I’ll add case studies from India, China, Japan and South East Asia, apart from the usual case studies from North America/ Europe, to illustrate how these use cases apply in different market contexts.
What do you think? Do these 18 use cases cover the full range of social media programs? Can you help me find case studies for these use cases for my upcoming posts? Do share your insights in the comments below.
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