3Point Communications

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

By: Graham Lubie
Online version available at: http://www.grahamlubie.com/social-media-marketing-framework/

This work is licensed by Graham Lubie under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
Overview
Social marketing is new and in many way unique, yet
success still relies on creativity and excellent

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

execution. This Social Media Marketing Framework
(SMMF) provides an execution blueprint that you can
used to structure your social marketing activities to
deliver exceptional results. This is not a framework for
all Social Media (ie. HR, Customer Support, etc.); it is
focused on marketing and communications and
defines common social components that can be
added by organizations to their marketing mix.

The genesis of this framework was a comment and

question from one of my clients: “There is so much
social ‘stuff’ out there, how can I get started now, and
then expand my activities in social marketing once I
am more comfortable?” This Social Media Marketing
Framework is how! It can be used to get your social
marketing programs off the ground, or it can be used
to structure and expand on the programs that you
have already started.
If you are looking for a “pretty” marketing presentation about why you need to get into social media marketing, this Social Media
Marketing Framework is not it; there are a lot of those available online. It is designed to be a practical and actionable blueprint that’s
based on my own experiences, and on the experiences of other marketing experts that have run marketing campaigns (traditional and
social), delivered interactive/technology services, and deployed repeatable processes and methodologies across multiple global
industries leaders.

There are five main components to the Social Media Marketing Framework: (1) Objectives, (2) Measures, (3) Methods, (4) Initiatives,
and (5) Operations. Each of these components has sub-parts that can work together and support the social marketing activities for
organizations of all sizes. The rest of this slide deck expands on each of these components.

Note: 3Point Communications believes in the intersection of traditional media and social media. We subscribe to the Social
Media Marketing Framework developed by Graham Lubie.

The Social Marketing Framework has been licensed by Graham Lubie under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Under
this License you are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, but you must attribute the work to the author, Graham Lubie.
This work is licensed by Graham Lubie under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK
Objectives

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

Measures

Methods
Activities

Monitoring Contribution Measurement

Content
Objectives
Internal
Produced Spontaneous
External

Conversation Channels
Public Channels Organizational Channels
(e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Industry Blogs, etc.) (e.g. Websites, Blog, Newsroom, Private Communities, etc.)

Initiatives
Steady State Campaigns

Operations
Strategize Plan Create Execute Measure Optimize

People Process Budget Technology Governance

To learn more about the Social Marketing Framework, visit http://www.grahamlubie.com

This work is licensed by Graham Lubie under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
This work is licensed by Graham Lubie under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Component: Objectives
Social media marketing, like any other marketing initiative, should
have well defined objectives that allow you to measure your success

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

and progress.

There are a number of main reasons to set your objectives:

• Objectives provide a measuring stick for progress
• Objectives ensure that all team members understand what success
“looks like”
• Objectives ensure that you focus on what’s most important

In the Social Media Marketing Framework, your objectives can

typically be divided into three main buckets:
• Revenue & Cost-based Objectives – impact your financial
performance
• Brand Recognition & Awareness-based Objectives – impacts the
reach of your brand
• Brand Perception & Loyalty-based Objectives – impact how
prospects, customers and partners feel about your brand.

Examples
Revenue & Cost-based Objectives Brand Recognition & Awareness-based Objectives (cont.)
• Increase product line revenues • Increase website traffic via referrals
• Increase volume of Leads • Build product awareness
• Acquire new customers
• Generate new sales from existing customers Brand Perception & Loyalty-based Objectives
• Reduce marketing spend (e.g. shift from print advertising, etc.) • Increase brand reputation
• Improve SEO : SEM ratios • Increase product reputation
• Increase customer retention
Brand Recognition & Awareness-based Objectives • Increase time on site
• Build brand awareness • Increase positive reviews (or reduce negative reviews)
• Increase website traffic via organic search • Increase Net Promoter scores

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Component: Measures
If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. We are so early in the
social marketing adoption curve, that the available tools and

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

techniques are still evolving. However, there still needs to be a way to
check your progress against your objectives. Each objective should
have at least one quantifiable measure that can be used to track
whether you have achieved your objectives or not.

Measures are typically tracked against a specific baseline metric at a

point in time. The key in setting up your measures, is to make sure
that you are able to attribute the data you are seeing to your social
marketing activities.

If you are just starting out, set a handful of goals and then iterate or
expand them based on your experiences.

Examples
• Objective: Increase Product Line Revenues
• Measure: Increase product line A revenues by 5%
from customers sourced via social marketing
• Measure: Increase annual customer purchases of
product line A from 2x to 3x
• Objective: Increase brand / product awareness
• Measure: Increase product reach by 10%
• Measure: Increase inbound links 30% [same
measure can be used to validate more than
one objective]
• Measure: Increase BuzzMetric score 50%

• Objective: Improve SEO : SEM ratios

• Measure: Increase inbound links 30% • Objective: Increase brand / product perception
• Measure: Decrease cost per customer acquisition to • Measure: Increase product sentiment ratings
$100 10%

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Component: Methods
Methods are broken into three groups:

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

(1) Activities: which includes monitoring of on-going
conversations, contributions to different sites, and
measurement of the results;

(2) Content: the types of media that are distributed

online; and

(3) Conversation Channels: the sites and services

where Content is contributed and consumed.

This framework identifies a variety of different

content types and conversation channels, but they are
not meant to be comprehensive. There are a lot of
new options constantly emerging, and these are just a
guide.

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 Component: Methods | Activities
Activities refer to the different tasks needed to execute social marketing
initiatives. There are a lot of people talking and producing a huge

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

amount of real time data, to be successful, you must have:

• Monitoring to track, synthesize and aggregate the online data

streams into usable information.

• Contribution where you add to the conversation and position your

organizations messages for the online community.

• Measurement to quantitatively measure the results of your

campaigns so that you can continuously iterate and improve.

Examples
• Monitoring: • Contribution (cont):
• Track mentions of your company, products, industry or • Run a series of “investigative” reports on CNN iReport
competitors • Run contests on Facebook
• Track your SEO / SEM key words for mentions
• Follow lists of topics on Twitter that interest you and apply to • Measurement:
your product / brand / industry • Set goals in your analytics package and track them
• Contribution: • Benchmark Google results for specific terms that are
• Add comments to industry blogs brand identifiable to you
• Add your own blog entries
• Tweet or Retweet on Twitter
• Add videos to YouTube or Vimeo

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 Component: Methods | Content
In social media marketing, content is king. There are so many
different content types that it would be impossible to list them all.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

Instead, I have segmented content by whether it is produced or
spontaneous, and whether it is created by internal or external
resources.

Produced content is professionally created content by internal

resources like your marketing department, or external resources like
your agency, your customers, or your partners. A lot of this content
will be generated by your “traditional marketing” but a lot is needed.

Spontaneous content is typically created “on the fly” and is more

informal. Spontaneous content can be created by internally or
external resources. Even when creating spontaneous content, the
message should follow predefined messaging guidelines.

Since social media marketing is so content intensive and requires

“fresh” content, an editorial calendar can be very useful to ensure a
steady stream of compelling info.

Examples
Produced Content: Spontaneous Content:
• Press releases using a social marketing PR template • Blog posts (your blogs)
• Messaging & Positioning Templates • Message board posts
• White Papers • Blog comments (other blogs + responses to comments on yours)
• Analyst Reports • Google SideWiki comments
• Product Demo Video • Retweet of an interesting article
• Product Images • Q&A postings
• Product Performance Benchmarks • Ad hoc customer videos (e.g. at a tradeshow or in the street)
• Blog post written as part of a editorial calendar • Product reviews
• Competitions / Contests (e.g. Facebook) • Wiki Entries (e.g. Wikipedia)
• Directory Entries (i.e. category specific or general)

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Component: Methods | Conversation Channels
There are a huge number of potential conversation channels where
you can monitor the conversation and contribute information to it. In

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

general, these “places” can be divided into public channels and
organizational channels.

The main difference between the two, is who controls the direction of
the information in those channels. With public channels (e.g. Facebook
or Twitter) you have limited direct control over the channel, though you
can guide or influence the conversation. In contrast, with organizational
channels, you own the venue (e.g. website or company blog with
reviewed comments).

Like content types, the list of conversation channels is constantly

evolving. Facebook and Twitter may be important, but there are plenty
of other industry specific channels that your should consider. (See
www.TheConversationPrism.com for an excellent list as of 2008)

Examples
Public Channels Organizational Channels
• Linked In • Company Website
• Facebook • Company Blog
• Twitter • User Community (public or private)
• You Tube • Social Media Center
• Vimeo • Product or Initiative Microsites
• Slideshare
• Squidoo
• CNN iReport

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Component: Initiatives
Initiates are where the Social Media Marketing planning and theory
meet reality. Initiatives = Social Marketing Execution. This is where the

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

proverbial Rubber Meets The Road.

To be effective, your Social Media Marketing activities need to address

two different types of Initiatives:

1. Steady State Initiatives: these refer to the on-going activities

needed to be current and relevant. Steady State Initiatives include
on-going Monitoring and Contribution activities as well as the
scheduled Measurement of existing initiatives.

2. Campaigns: Campaigns are specific, periodic initiatives with start

and end dates. They can be Social Media Marketing specific or
integrated into other more traditional marketing campaigns.

Examples
Steady State Initiatives: Campaigns:
• Blogging • Product Launches
• Blog Commenting • Integrated Lead Generation Campaigns
• Twitter updates • Clutter Buster / Thought Leadership Programs
• Facebook updates • Community building campaigns
• Comments on industry message boards • Event based campaigns
• Google SideWiki comments
• “Center of Excellence” articles

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Component: Operations
The “operations” tier of the Social Media Marketing Framework
includes two different “types” of operational components: general

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

program components and execution paths

1. General Program Components: these are the infrastructure items

that you should have in place to support you social marketing
initiatives. They include people in the right positions, processes
defined, budgets allocated, technology implemented and
governance understood.

2. Execution Paths: these are the traditional project and program

management tasks that need to be addressed. Essentially the
Execution Paths are phases that you need to go through to rollout
repeatable, successful social media Initiatives.
They include: strategize to identify your target audiences,
objectives of your social media programs and the measures that
you will use to determine success, plan who will do what by
when, create compelling content, execute on your Initiatives,
measure the success of your Initiatives, and finally, optimize what
you are doing based on your measures.

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Component: Operations [Strategize/ Plan/ Create]
Strategize:
Social media marketing must be included as part of your overall

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

marketing strategy. During this operations phase, you will segment your
target markets, identify objectives and measures.

Plan:
Because there are so many moving parts, planning is a key to social
marketing success. Identify your main initiatives and then schedule
resources to do the content creation, monitoring, contribution and
measurement tasks.

Create:
Create the content that will be used in your initiatives. Creating
compelling content is critical. While you can do this in house, getting
outside perspectives and creative designers can be very helpful.

Examples
Strategize Plan (cont):
• Segment the key audiences that you need to reach • Allocate resources (people + $) to execute the strategy
• Identify customers / prospects that need to be reached • Develop an Editorial calendar for content creation
• Identify digital influencers that need to be reached
• Identify the most appropriate conversation channels to reach your key
Create:
audiences
• Develop the content to be used within Initiatives and across
• Determine the Initiatives that will be executed
initiatives
• Allocate budget to different initiatives • Provide guidelines for content use
• Establish measurement timelines with metrics and KPIs
• Develop messaging templates (this is most important for
Spontaneous Content creation)
Plan:
• Schedule the initiatives and their components (needs to be aligned with
other marketing activities)
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Component: Operations [Execute/ Measure/ Optimize]
Execute:
Once the strategizing, planning and content creation is over, it’s time to

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

execute. This is where your plan meets reality and you deliver
exceptional results.
Measure:
Your measures provide a quantitative way to track the success of your
social marketing initiatives. So, I recommend watching your metrics
daily to check for irregularities and then doing monthly reviews to
check if course changes are needed. The frequency of measurement
will vary industry by industry.
Optimize:
Based on the results of your initiatives, start the operations cycle over
again. Shore-up underperforming initiatives and reinforce the success
of your top initiatives.

Examples
Execute Measure (cont):
• Launch a new product with social marketing components • Quarterly reviews to evaluate the overall program
• Add a Social Media Center to your website Optimize:
Measure: • Tweak your Initiatives based on your actual results
• Weekly or Monthly snapshots of progress against goals

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Component: Operations [People / Budget / Process]
People :
Many of the skills that you need to be successful in social media

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

marketing are already in your organization, but piling more work on
existing resources is not a blueprint for success. Make sure that you can
identify who is going to do what, and how existing roles are going to
evolve to include new responsibilities. If you don’t have the internal
skills, consider using outside experts.
Process:
Steady state initiatives and campaigns will have different process
requirements. Different processes will need to be established and
enforced to ensure consistency and repeatable success.
Budget:
Where are the $$ going to come from? New funding or existing
programs.? Either way, budgeting has to be allocated for the long-term.
Social Media Marketing is not a quick hit activity.

Examples
People (Roles): Process (Workflows / Process Maps):
• Community Managers • Monitoring processes
• Engagement Specialists • Measurement process
Budget (Line Items): • Contribution process
• Monitoring & Contribution Programs [agency run] • Content approval processes
• Blogging [ghost writer] • Engagement processes
• Video Production • Program Review process
• Facebook Campaigns
• Izea blogging program

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 Component: Operations [Technology / Governance]
Technology:
There are a lot of different technology options that can be used to

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FRAMEWORK

manage your social media initiatives. For the most part, the different
technology options map nicely to the activities of monitoring and
contribution and measurement. Which tools you choose is less
important, however, than how you use them.

Governance:
Every organization should have some level of social media governance.
Whether you are using IBM’s bullet point version or a simple statement
like: {Anything you do online needs to be well thought out, professional
and comply with the company’s code of conduct. When in doubt, ask
yourself: “Would I show this to our CEO or our biggest customer?” If
yes, go ahead and contribute it.}

Examples
Technology: • Measurement Applications:
• Monitoring Applications: • Google Analytics
• Filtrbox, • Hubspot,
• iGoogle, • Ominiture
• Radian6
• Biz360 Governance:
• Contribution Applications: • Social Media Statement of Conduct
• Social.com • Legal Guidelines (mostly for financial information / regulated
• Seesmic industries)
• HootSuite
• Tweetdeck
• Ping.fm
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3Point Communications

GOODBYE!

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