Social Media Audit and Strategy

NML audits evaluate the nature and utility of your existing digital presence on a standalone and competitive basis. We assess the effectiveness of internal organizational structures and policies pertaining to the management of social media by your company and individual business units, and by evaluating how the external market is impacting your business as well as your competitors'.

We start with a kickoff meeting that includes all relevant business units (Markcoms, sales, PR, HR, IT, legal, product, other) and work with each to get as much information from you as we need, supplementing what we learn from you with our own market research.

The audit also provides recommendations for organizational best practices that will scale with your business objectives.

The audit contains an in-depth evaluation of the following six areas:

• Brand Sentiment - measure and understand the sentiment around your brand and that of your competitors across the digital channel, broken down by social platforms, blogs and relevant online communities
• Social Media Platforms - understand your presence and that of your competition and customers across the major social media platforms
• Management Structure - review your management of social media relative to your business objectives, including staffing, processes and social media corporate policies and procedures
• Online Community - assess the prevalence and construct of blogs and other company or employee-run forums or groups versus other relevant communities
• Virtual Products and Marketing Tools (VPMTs) - review the completeness and utility of online educational and promotional tools and content, including video, podcasts, webinars, e-newsletters and other e-tools
• Just in Time Service Solutions (JiTSSo) - assess the ability of your company to provide real time responses to relevant online activity to acquire, retain and service customers and leverage opportunities to enhance your brand, and customer and supplier relationships

The primary deliverable will be a full analysis of these areas, including a SWOT analysis, and will provide relevant recommendations going forward.

After consideration of the audit findings with you and your team, we develop a corporate digital and social marketing strategy document, customized to meet your objectives and resources, which is a 12-month tactical plan which includes milestones and metrics across platforms. The strategic plan will be scalable to your business, consider your various products and services, and ensure that an integrated, phased plan is adopted. Key success metrics will be measured over the four quarters to monitor results and make the necessary modifications.

We also work with you to create strategies around a particular product launch or event, usually 'sprints' that range from 1-3 quarters in duration depending on the scope.

Finally, we partner with you where necessary to implement all or part of your strategy.

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Bootcamps and Training

NML will design and present Bootcamps to get you and your company up to speed on the evolution of social media, specific social platforms and/or the use of social media to achieve business objectives. Bootcamps are available in half-day or day-long formats.

These Bootcamps are designed around your needs, and include as many or as few stakeholder members as you need, from staff to c-suite. We present audit findings and strategic plans in Bootcamp format to management and/or staff, and can speak on a variety of other topics including, but not exclusive to, the following:

• Measuring social media ROI
• Location-based services and the integration of mobile, offline and online
• Achieving traditional marketing objectives using new tools
• The Digital Synapse Unit function and Just in Time Services
• Organizational impact on adapting to the digital channel
• Social media and time management – how to manage your time with new pressures and responsibilities
• Social media corporate policies and procedures
• Social media and crisis management
• Minimizing variable costs to achieve higher yield customer acquisition, retention and service
• New social media tools, platforms and practices, in general or broken out by
  • Linkedin
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • YouTube
• Case studies – social media used for business purposes
  • Launches
  • Branding
  • Customer service
  • Retention
  • Internal structures and practices
• Community engagement strategies and best practices

We also manage real or virtual Bootcamps around developments or changes being implemented in your company, such as sales training. We are able to bring in our own as well as other experts in digital, sales, and marketing to facilitate change implementation.

See the events page for a discussion of our DRIVER (Design, Register, Implement, Virtual Events) methodology which we use to drive awareness and registrations to your virtual events.

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Virtual Events Solutions Package

Design, Registration, Implementation, Management, Marketing and Reporting (DRIVER)

We run several of our own events each year, including The Inbound Marketing Summit, so we are able to design and market your virtual events, including all content and management.

For your event, we can use our TV studio to produce professional video. We can build in real-time Twitter feeds and chat capability to create best in class "Twebinars" which reach those that we target, as well as the exponential reach of their followers. Our own back-end registration and management system is available for your needs.

We can create an annual event or training meeting for your organization, designed to bring your company up to speed on a new initiative or product, or to simply host your quarterly sales meetings.

In designing your event, we tap our own network of sales, business, social and marketing professionals to work directly with your teams. These events can take place online, offline or be based at a site with virtual, real-time interaction from participants.

For each event we use our DRIVER methodology to drive awareness, increase registrations, and measure success through the following elements:

• Design - We design the complete event, including attracting speakers, composing agendas and creating tracks, audio and video, themes, timing and other event components
• Registration - We run all digital and social marketing, and also manage the back end of registrations
• Implementation - We manage the actual events, including moderating and assisting with any registration or technical issues, Q&A, and feedback
• Virtual - We do this all virtually, and can manage the events from our TV studio, your office, or from a third-party location to meet your needs
• Events - We utilize this methodology for a variety of events, launches, trade shows, training, annual meetings, conferences, Bootcamps and major presentations
• Reporting - We measure and report on all aspects of your event, including conversion rates, attendee sources, numbers of registered versus actual attendees, session popularity, feedback, financial ROI and sentiment analysis around the agenda topics, sessions and prospective topics for future events

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Presence Management

We understand how to develop your profiles across all social platforms and manage these profiles on a sustainable basis. After we develop the profiles, we teach you and your staff to engage within these communities. In doing so, you will engage with those you seek, including customers and community leaders.

It takes time and resources to effectively develop a consistent presence across social platforms and communities, and also to maintain these presences. Each of these communities has different nuances and protocols, so we tailor your messaging to integrate with each community. We make sure your voice is consistent and directed to achieving your business value while interacting appropriately across platforms.

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Blog/Community Design, Development, and Management

Communities include well-publicized social networking sites, web sites, blogs, forums and anywhere throughout the digital channel where your clients, partners, employees and other stakeholders access and interact, either passively or proactively, with content. These communities may represent everything from millions of members, either paid or free, to simple collections of your 20 most important customers interacting in a niche sub group. In either case, we will find them and engage them.

Each community has a unique protocol for engagement. Because NML has created and interacted within most major B2B, B2C and user-driven communities, we understand how to effectively engage within all forms of communities. We first work with you to identify your business objectives, and then we identify the communities where your target audience lives and engage them in a way that is consistent with the nature of the community. Through this process, we establish and evolve relationships. It is during ongoing engagements and discussions that we are able to appropriately achieve your business objectives. This is not a cold call; engaging before asking is normal.

Alternatively, we build these communities for you. We do this using the latest version of best in class platforms, and a combination of built-in features and custom widgets, which enable the site to provide (the):

• Ability to create multiple blogs, groups, and forums
• Microblogging - status updates, follow user, add as friend
• Customizable user dashboards
• Ability to tag, comment, and update blog and forum posts
• Search functionality
• Auto-generated blog for each community user
• Aggregate widget that displays recent and popular users posts
• Gigya for social media integration
• RSS Feeds for subscribing to blogs / feeds
• Custom widgets - user tag cloud, user badges
• Additional custom widgets (within scope hours)

The key steps and our value added include:

• Planning
  • Timeline for the design, development, launch, and management of the site
  • Functional specifications for all site areas
• Community Design and Development
  • Layout - Wireframes to be reviewed and approved by the client
  • Design - Full theme design including two design comps to be reviewed by you for approval
  • Development - Creation of theme, layouts, and widgets
  • Configuration - Creation of group/forum/blog structure, permissions, and other control panel updates
  • Deployment - Testing of the site in staging and migration to the production environment
  • SEO - Search engine optimization and submission
• Influencer Outreach
  • Utilize NML's outreach methodology to identify and recruit regular contributors to the site
  • Twelve (12) Month Content Schedule
  • A plan outlining your internal roles and resources
• Site Management
  • Timeline for the management of the site (including content schedule)
  • Ongoing management of community
• Content Development - We leverage our staff, industry and technical expertise, and utilize our in-house TV production studio to create all forms of electronic and audio-video content for both general and specific communities. These include the following types of content:
  • Web TV
  • Blogs
  • E-books
  • Webinars
  • Video blogs
  • Live streaming
  • E-newsletters
  • Email marketing
  • Vignettes and longer video production, both professional and web style

We have developed some of the top communities and blogs on the web, from design to creation. We excel in everything from implementing content calendars, to providing the content management system (CMS), to acting as the editor-in-chief of blogs and other media. These communities, branded or unbranded, drive SEO, enhance your brand, cultivate thought leadership, and move leads into the sales funnel.

Aside from creating and populating communities and blogs, we also work with you to evaluate your sites and communities. We make sure your sites are effectively socialized and designed to take advantage of the digital channel according to your business needs.

Our communities can also integrate mobile and location-based applications for all smart phones.

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Influencer Outreach, Product Launches, Promotions, and Capital Campaigns

The digital channel presents the opportunity to reach a larger general audience and to hyper segment your target market within this audience. It is important to understand where the segments of your market are spending time online, and who are the leaders of these relevant communities.

We use our proprietary methodology to target influencers to generate awareness, product test, drive sales and grow brand. Our outreach grows your reach by engaging these leaders, generating their interest in writing, tweeting, blogging or otherwise mentioning your product, service, campaign or company to their communities. The impact of these mentions is exponential, as the sentiments are then passed on by community members to their various networks.

We leverage our social and digital marketing expertise to promote and implement your product launches, capital campaigns and other events on a one-off or recurring basis. We create the digital trigger site for any on- or offline call to action, tracking all users as they are collected and transitioned through the various stages of the sales funnel. We are able to create awareness, drive visitors, fill the sales funnel, and raise funds for charitable causes and not-for-profit partners.

We have a methodology to find and engage influencers relevant to your business, product or service by using a protocol appropriate to their communities. Our process involves listening to your objectives, designing the outreach, implementing the program, engaging with the targeting influencers and providing you with regular reports on progress and success.

We send our bloggers content regularly and have a symbiotic relationship with them. We provide them with a variety of content to blog about, while they create a substantial buzz surrounding the events and topics that we give them. The NML program is tested and effective: generating awareness, communicating with customers and partners, and engaging with them in a personal manner to deepen these relationships. This drives sales leads directly. Outreach may take place around a product launch, as part of a marketing or branding campaign, or for customer acquisition and service efforts.

In addition to your specific target market, your reach is often wider than you might expect given the effects of the discussions taking place. NML's digital engagement strategies can predominantly drive the nature of this coverage, leading to greater on- and offline coverage and awareness.

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Web TV and Video Production

Our state of the art TV studio produces top quality web and IP TV for our partners. NML provides the production, hosting, content and creative expertise. We maintain relationships with top TV personalities and a deep network of online and industry talent across verticals and programming types, including business, politics, news, sports and special interests.

We work with you to develop relevant programming and we produce half-hour and hour-long programs in accordance with our partners' production requirements. We can record and provide extensive post production editing and work, shoot programs live in our Boston-area studio, or from any location you like. Additionally, we provide our partners access to our professional hosts and personalities, from our staff or in our network, and train our partners to either host or be guests on the programs.

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Mobile Applications

We create mobile applications for all mobile devices, including the BlackBerry, iPhone, Droid and others. We integrate these applications into our partners' digital marketing strategies, as we believe mobile will only continue to become a larger part of the digital channel going forward, and location-based services will continue to mature and screens/speeds will drive increased data consumption and usage.

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