Research and Insight// Research and Insight

Social Media Audits// Social Media Audits

Social media spaces provide an unrivalled opportunity for business to gain real-time intelligence about customers’ opinions and behaviours.

Our social audits provide you with the in-depth insight needed to inform your social media strategy. They will also highlight recommendations for how social can integrate with wider marketing activities to amplify reach and boost positive advocacy.

We look at where conversations are taking place in relation to your market sector and provide context alongside your key competitors. We also audit your existing social media presences and campaign activity to provide feedback and recommendations.

We can also provide in-depth research reports on a particular subject or issue as and when required.

Please contact us for further discussion.

Social Media Training

Half- and full-day workshops provide clients with a broader understanding of how to embrace the full potential of social channels – and avoid the pitfalls. The content of the course is tailored to the client’s needs, but areas typically covered include:

• Scene-setting – overview of the growth and importance of social media with relevant examples from inside and outside of your sector
• Current status audit – what’s being said about your brand, where and by whom. Insight is pre-prepared using our Social Media Reputation (SMR) monitoring and insight service
• Best practice guide – what are the successful brands doing right and what are the common mistakes?
• Tactics - How to apply best practice for your business. How to join and influence relevant conversations
  
  • How social be integrated with your wider marketing strategy and with other parts of the business – such as customer service
  • How should your business manage ROI?
  • Identify staff requirements, from executive briefings and staff policy guidelines, to best practice guides, crisis plans and access to monitoring information
  • Practical training on how to use and roll-out relevant social media tools across business areas
  • Community management training – the dos and don’ts of effective community management

Please contact us for further discussion.

Facebook Campaigns

We know how to drive trial and engagement on Facebook.
As specialists, we do it every day. To help you to define a relevant and effective strategy, our expert team will typically:

• Understand more about your objectives and other marketing activities
• Monitor what is currently being said in- and outside of Facebook
• Help define a content plan – we need to know how we might migrate interest from one campaign to the next
• Define design and development requirements. We can design and build your brand’s Facebook presence and customise functionality. Whether it’s an offer, a competition, an app or a game, we can help you to design and execute it effectively
• Community management – help to manage customer interactions and queries
• Optimisation – we work with you help to drive traffic and advocacy, maximise SEO benefits and integrate Facebook activity with other on– and offline channels

Please contact us for further discussion.

Reputation Monitoring & Improvement

Social monitoring tools are ubiquitous. They deliver stats galore, but very few add relevant value.

Our proprietary Social Media Reputation (SMR) service provides comprehensive tracking, but it also delivers:

• A benchmark popularity score, out of 100, using a credible metric which measures reach and customer satisfaction. Scores are also provided for your designated competitors.
• A customised online dashboard which tracks the stats that matter to you in real time
• Daily alerts from our Research & Insight team, to highlight opportunities or highlight possible threats so remedial action can be taken
• Human validation of sentiment: the best automated sentiment systems are only 60% accurate. Our experts check a representative sample of the sentiment around your brand, focussing on comment from key influencers, to boost this accuracy up to approximately 80%
• Regular analysis reports – usually once a month – which are uploaded to the app. This identifies the current trends around your brand and highlights several areas of interest, such as competitor learnings, representative comments, key influencers and recommended actions.

More details of our SMR service, and access our league tables including the Top 50 Brands in Social Media produced in conjunction with New Media Age, is available at mysocialmediareputation.com.

Usually once every quarter, we conduct a strategy review to plot progress against KPIs. Key learnings from the SMRreports are discussed with stakeholders and strategy is refined accordingly.

Please contact us for further discussion.

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Strategic Consultancy// Strategic Consultancy

Social Media Workshops

Linkad’s workshops are a way for everyone to get together to understand and begin to solve a business problem. No two workshops are the same - they are tailored to your specific needs. A typical workshop might contain all or some of the following:

• A current status audit – what’s being said, what you’re currently doing in context alongside competitors in your sector.
• A look at relevant best-practice case studies inside and outside your sector.
• A brainstorm session.
• The chance to discuss how to align objectives and KPIs with other measures of marketing effectiveness.
• The creation of a content plan and a look at delivery of outputs – how do we deliver the right content to the right people at the right time?
• A chance to understand how to integrate social strategy into all relevant business areas, from marketing to customer service in order to maximise opportunities and manage threats.
• A look at briefs, and how we will define and prioritise deliverables.
• Discussion of and responsibilities – internal and external – to maintain consistent responsiveness in social channels. How do we empower those best placed to add value?
• Identification of staff requirements, from executive briefings and policy guidelines, to best practice guides, crisis plans and access to monitoring information. We can even help you write job specs for any new hires you might need to bolster your social abilities.
• Investigation of your monitoring strategy.

After the workshop, we will write up a strategy document to plot a clear path to deliver all objectives. A workshop is attended by all relevant stakeholders, from the marketing department and beyond, with input from front-line staff and customers, as appropriate. It usually last half a day and include preparation and a strategy road-map written-up afterwards by our specialist team.

Please contact us for further discussion.

B2B Social Media Campaigns

More and more B2B brands are now enjoying the benefits of an effective social strategy. We can help to set relevant KPIs, run bespoke strategy and training workshops and design and execute relevant activities in social channels. For example, Linkad can help to:

• Set up, manage and refine official brand presences on relevant platforms such as LinkedIn
• Develop and manage groups, either closed or open, to boost reach and drive engagement
• Design and manage a relevant content plan to achieve your specific objectives
• Integrate social with other marketing activities and relevant business divisions such as customer services and HR
• Provide team-training (see Social Media Training &Workshops)

Please contact us for further discussion.

About us// read something about us and meet our team

Policies Guidelines & Toolkits

Linkad can produce ‘How to’ guides tailored to your business. These could include:-

• How to design and build your official social presences
• How to manage your social media community – practical tips
• Content plans: how to devise, manage and execute them
• Driving engagement on social channels
• Key influencers – how to find and interact with them to drive advocacy
• How to get the best from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
• How to manage a social media crisis
• How to monitor social channels effectively and meaningfully
• How to share best practice with internal stakeholders
• How to integrate social strategies with other marketing activities and your wider business

Please contact us for further discussion.

Delivery

Content Planning, Creation & Seeding

The critical component of all social strategies is a content plan. We will work with you to adapt existing content for social audiences and, where necessary, design and build compelling content for your key audiences. This might include:

• Design and build of official social presences
• Creation and management of community sites, video content
• The creation of social apps, including games, quizzes and competitions – and apps and games that can be integrated into Facebook

Please contact us for further discussion.

Our services// what and how we do it

Our range of services are provided by specialist teams.

We can report what's being said, improve the content on your official presences and help to identify and reach key influencers. We can design social games, build social apps and community sites. We can reach new audiences and turn engagement into positive advocacy.

We can track progress and, crucially, we have worked with major brands, media experts and academics to devise a model to quantify the value of social engagement around your brand. This helps to guide social media spend and evaluation across channels.

Competitor & Sector Analysis// Competitor & Sector Analysis

How does your social media strategy measure up against your key competitors? Is your community as engaged as it could be? What could you learn in social terms from competitors, both at home and internationally?

We provide in-depth competitor audits, researching social media conversations from key influencers to understand which platforms are most relevant to your market sector, brand perception and share of voice. Our reports highlight strengths and opportunities as well as flagging weaknesses and threats. Our recommendations will always be aligned with your social strategy and wider marketing activities.

Please contact us for further discussion.

Community Design And Build

The world does not (entirely) revolve around Facebook. Many brands are designing their own community presences, where they have full control over data, design, content and management of consumer conversations.

Integration with Facebook or Twitter is important, of course, but community sites can replace more traditional websites as the appetite for consumer engagement, comment and interaction grows.

Our specialist focus means we are able to suggest the most relevant and cost-effective strategies for designing and building a community presence to suit your needs.

Please contact us for further discussion.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Clients// who are our clients and what do they think about us

Blogger Outreach

The ultimate aim of all social strategies is to drive positive advocacy from relevant audiences. Our outreach team uses the latest technology to identify relevant influencers across the world. We then:

• Research their preferences and relevance on a one-to-one basis
• Refine long-lists into a short-list based on reach and relevance
• Suggest and deliver relevant content to the right people, in tune with the wider social content plan
• Track results and refine strategy appropriately for future campaigns

Please contact us for further discussion.
Case Study: Bowmore | Eaglemoss

Community Management

Our experienced, in-house community team will help you get the discussion flowing, whether you’re hosting a dedicated community site, setting up a Twitter account or breathing fresh life into a Facebook presence.

Few companies have a dedicated, experienced team in place with specialist knowledge of both popular and niche platforms. Our community management service provides flexibility to engage and build any audience in social channels. Perhaps you want initial set up and training combined with a guiding hand in those difficult first steps. Or maybe you’re looking for round-the-clock cultivation, or extra resource to support a new campaign. Whatever your needs, we will work closely with your marketing, PR and customer service teams to provide a seamless service.

Please contact us for further discussion.

Blog// check our latest post and get inspired

• April 11, 2013Why Linkad?

  
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• March 29, 2013Is Social Media the New Chocolate During Lent?

  
  Read

• March 29, 2013Facebook Opens News Feed to Targeted Brand Posts

  
  Read

Social Gaming

Many brands are now getting involved with social games to boost reach, interaction and even revenues.

Tesco had steadily built the number of ‘likes’ on its official Facebook page and was keen to boost engagement within the community. We designed and built a game – Delivery Dash – to sit within the Facebook framework, using Facebook Connect functionality to personalise the gameplay to make it more ‘personal’.

In the first month after launch, with no outside media support, the game was played 150,000 times, with some community members playing for it for over 30 hours!

Please contact us for further discussion.

Case Study: Tesco

Social Media Advertising

For brands looking to venture into the realm of advertising on social platforms, working with a specialist agency will help you to negotiate the minefield and deliver value for money.

For example, Facebook’s self-service ad purchasing system can prove cumbersome if you want to test multiple creative options and refine the campaigns around the ads that perform best. Working in collaboration with AdParlor, Yomego’s expert targeting and placement service helps you maximise the reach and longevity of your budget. Key features of our service include:

• Bidding Strategies, saving you between 50%-90% on traditional Facebook adverting spend.
• The ability to create and upload thousands of variations of an ad in minutes.
• Deeper statistical insights than those available via the Facebook ad purchasing system. For example, our keyword analysis feature identifies the top performing keywords in each ad.
• Conversion tracking and access to a real-time ad management dashboard.
• Access to a real-time ad management dashboard.
• Partnership with Getty Images, allowing use of their images at a heavily discounted rate.
• Niche targeting capabilities and use of a complex algorithm to eliminate campaign fatigue.
• And a varied cost structure

Linkad can also advise around how to plan your campaign across multiple social platforms, including LinkedIn, Twitter, forums and beyond, to reach the right people in the right place at the right time.

Please contact us for further discussion.

Contact// find us or contact us over contact form