Segmenting Audiences for Social Media Engagement

To maximize an organization’s effectiveness in terms of marketing goal attainment, an overall audience (or “market” in the private sector) should always be segmented into groups of clients with common attributes (segments)  and then prioritized accordingly (target audience). Unfortunately, for most government organizations, a comprehensive market segmentation study is rarely a top priority. As a result, many public sector marketing initiatives are not optimized for maximum impact.

A quick note on social media governance

There are some general best practices and trends that I’m noticing are emerging in modern “social” organizations. Here are some governance recommendations based on these “best practices”:

• Social media strategy should fall under the portfolio of marketing , communications or equivalent
• Official social media engagement should fall under client services, customer service, or equivalent.
• Social media content should come from the various content experts in the organization
• Social media guidelines should be created by the “strategy” team and approved by HR and Legal
• Unofficial social media participation can come from anybody at any time. Nobody “owns” it. Need to follow guidelines, which are merely reminders as opposed to restrictions. Note: It is crucial that your organization positions them that way as well.

I’d be curious to hear thoughts from other consultants and/or practitioners. What are you noticing?

Strategic Social Media Marketing 2-day Workshop Finally Launched!

When I first launched the CEPSM social media marketing workshop in April, 2008, I really had no idea that it would garner such a positive response. In fact, we quickly stopped going through the logistical hassle of organizing public workshops since there was more than enough demand for private ones (organizations inviting me in). CEPSM was never meant to be solely in the workshop business, but this way all logistical items were taken care of by the client. However, over the last year, CEPSM has been getting numerous requests from individuals in the public and non-profit sectors to once again offer a social media marketing workshop that is open to the public. Well guess what, we listened.

To solve our logistical dilemma , we decided to partner with an organization that has been conducting workshops successfully for decades, The Centre of Excellence for Communications. Yes, I know it’s ironic that we happen to share similar names, however don’t let that confuse you. The CEC’s core business is workshops, whereas CEPSM’s core business is the consulting side (although training is part of our consulting process). I’ll stop confusing you though. The bottom line is this, on November 25-26, 2009 CEPSM/CEC are jointly launching the 2-day Social Media Strategies for the Public Sector workshop. The intent is to offer this workshop in major cities across Canada for the first year and then see how it evolves from there.

Those of you familiar with my 1-day workshop will notice the switch to 2-days. I wanted to change things up a bit and add a hands-on session where each participant can get their hands dirty by actually using all of the tools I introduce during Day 1.  Further still, we will be using a live Google Doc to fill out certain sections of the workbook collaboratively.I like to practice what I preach as much as I possibly can. This is a great opportunity for me to do so.

For those of you interested in receiving this training as part of a University Certificate, be sure to see if our Professional Certificate in Public Sector Marketing course offered through Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business is a right fit for you. I’m really looking forward to being part of the instructional team this year!

Ok then, if you have any questions whatsoever, fire me an email or give me a call. Also, to stay up to date on my speaking schedule visit the Upcoming Speaking Engagements page on my blog. And yes, we will still be offering our private workshops for those interested. This is not meant to replace them.