Engage!
Build your community. Enhance your reputation. Increase sales and customer satisfaction.
Resources are limited and time is tight. We know … we live this stuff! We bring clarity and focus to your new media marketing efforts. We help you build and maintain a successful online presence.
With deep experience in marketing, content development, small business management, contract management, and corporate and nonprofit new media consulting, Surefoot Communications maximizes your marketing program spend by helping you engage your customers, prospects, employees and peers in meaningful ways where they are most active in the online space.
Surefoot advises clients on integrating a social media toolkit into their existing, traditional marketing initiatives with the least possible impact on their resources. We focus on back-end, infrastructure-related strategy including the following elements:
Online Branding
Editorial Calendar Development
Blog Strategy
Campaign Strategy
Reputation Monitoring
Crisis Management Process Development
Corporate New Media Use Policy
Training
- Online Branding. So you want to promote your brand. The “how” can be easy. The “where,” the “when” and the “why” … well, those require some careful research and thoughtful application of those findings if you truly want to succeed. We serve you the perfect blend of strategy, reasoning and yes, the dreaded action items, to deliver the results you want to achieve.
- Editorial Calendar Development. A solid editorial calendar makes the most of the content you generate or choose to share from other sources. Hint: In most cases, you should do both! We’re complete process geeks when pondering a client’s editorial calendar. We find multipurposing content across several platforms an entertaining puzzle. We introduce methods of reworking and reusing content to populate the feeds, streams and timelines of your different online audiences appropriate for those specific platforms.
- Blog Strategy. You employ experts to craft the perfect brand, campaign or PR message for you, and we’re telling you — you, yourself … the one reading this — to write your own story for the world to see. Blogging as a tactic serves many worthwhile purposes. It raises brand awareness; it provides a solid path to meaningful engagement with your online community; it personifies your brand; it can position you as a thought leader among like-minded folks; and it identifies the tone, the voice of your organization. We know our clients, their wants and needs. We point you in the right direction with a strategy that suits you, a division of labor to carry the load, and idea generators to turn that blank page into a masterpiece.
- Campaign Strategy. The economy is warming up slowly. Are you casting your recruiting net as widely as you can? Surfing LinkedIn, Beyond.com or Indeed for potential recruits will take you far, but effectively presenting your organization’s personality via social channels will bring the candidates to you. Are you leading a charitable campaign? New media done right can add a huge boost to your traditional fundraising efforts. Whatever your campaign, we identify the strongest options for conversion and develop an integrated, multi-platform plan consistent with your campaign objectives and corporate voice. We also keep an eye on your campaign’s progress and suggest modifications as conditions change.
- Reputation Monitoring. People are “talking” about you, your brand, your latest success. Are you listening? We show you how and why. We help you understand how effective you are at engaging a certain audience against a specific objective. We work with you to develop an engagement strategy to accent your strengths specific to your target audience(s).
Crisis Management Process Development. Did we mention that people are talking about you? On occasion, this may not be a good thing. New media empowers all of us to say what we really feel (even when we should sometimes stick to old-fashioned journaling) and not all experiences — in reality or simply perceived — are positive. What is your plan for negative feedback about your brand, your products or services, your customer support? Do you have one?
Ideally, you would have a legion of empowered, knowledgeable employees and a strong community of happy customers and friendly media types to help lessen the impact of an undesirable situation. At the very least, you should have a plan in place to extinguish a social wildfire. Authorized points of contact, case studies of what to and what not to do, response scenarios, employee training and executive buy in are some of the elements of a solid crisis management plan. We get to know your organization and identify potential issues. We prepare a plan that makes sense for you and train your team on how and when to implement it. Hint: Not everything is a crisis. Friendly outreach and moving the conversation offline often goes a long way. Sometimes someone just needs to blow off steam. Do your best to make sure you’re the ear he or she needs.
- Corporate New Media Use Policy. Speaking of empowered, knowledgeable employees, are yours handcuffed by fear of posting a comment with which their bosses might take issue? Or are they allowed, encouraged even, to serve as your most effective brand ambassadors? Employees, your most valuable asset, know your brand, your goals and your culture better than anyone. Whether using corporate assets, home computers or their personal smart phones, they are already actively engaged within their individual networks. Why not make that work for you? Among other things, a sensible use policy can aid in bringing your brand’s personality to life in various new media platforms, and can help build stronger relationships with employees, customers, prospects and peers. Surefoot helps to compose a social media policy that makes sense for your culture … allowing the most freedom to promote your brand while providing solid protection for intellectual property and your corporate reputation. We have extensive experience working with corporate attorneys, so are comfortable defending your “case for social.” We’ll also conduct training or assist your human resources representative(s) in training your team to participate in your online brand chorus to the greatest possible effect.
Training! We don’t just teach. We’ve lived this — did we mention that? We bring a great deal of experience in each of these areas, and a serious passion for solving others’ problems in this space. Far beyond a “dinner and a handshake,” we’ll be there to educate your team in what will likely be a corporate culture shift. We will help you secure buy in from on high, and train the masses of potential brand ambassadors within your organization.
