Video: How SAS Publishing got started with social media

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In this segment of “The Nuts & Bolts of Social Media,” Kirsten Hamstra outlines the details of how SAS Publishing planned and executed its social media strategy. SAS Publishing was the first SAS division out on Social Media and they achieved good early success through planning, and are able to share a few key learnings, too.

Deb Orton, host of this series, asked Kirsten what the top 3 priorities were in their social media strategy, and Kirsten answered:
1. Raising awareness of SAS Publishing and its role in supporting customers by providing documentation,
2. Building a community, particularly one focused on their authors, including a LinkedIn Group, a Facebook Group, a Twitter Account and the “Open Mic” blog at blogs.sas.com.
3. Increased sales of SAS publications, which is linked to awareness of the materials.

Deb and Kirsten explore why its important to have a consistent look and feel across all channels, which means that corporate brand management extends to social media presence. Doing that enables customers familiar with the brand to know what to expect and get a better experience.

Some of the key learnings included the fact that not everyone has the same level of familiarity or comfort with social media, so an important part of getting started in social media is educating people about how to engage. Also, in a corporate environment, both internal and external marketing of the new presence in social media is key to gaining momentum.

Finally, establishing goals and how to measure them up-front were deemed an important part of the planning and execution of SAS Publishing in social media. In their case, they wanted to be sure to measure reach, as well as referrals from the different channels and the quality of the engagements. As the person leading the effort, Kirsten found that Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are both very helpful.

Click on the screen below to tune in – this is an engaging discussion with a lot of practical take-aways.

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About Author

John Balla

Principal Marketing Strategist

Hi, I'm John Balla - I co-founded the SAS Customer Intelligence blog and served as Editor for five years. I held a number of marketing roles at SAS as Content Strategist, Industry Field Marketing and as Go-to-Marketing Lead for our Customer Intelligence Solutions. I like to find and share content and experiences that open doors, answer questions, and sometimes challenge assumptions so better questions can be asked. Outside of work I am an avid downhill snow skier, hiker and beach enthusiast. I stay busy with my family, volunteering for civic causes, keeping my garden green, striving for green living, expressing myself with puns, and making my own café con leche every morning. I’ve lived and worked on 3 contents and can communicate fluently in Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and get by with passable English. Prior to SAS, my experience in marketing ranges from Fortune 100 companies to co-founding two start ups. I studied economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and got an MBA from Georgetown. Follow me on Twitter. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

1 Comment

  1. Thank you for this post. Having worked as a summer intern for SAS a few years ago and coming back as a SAS contractor for the SGF, I was excited to see the advent of social media at SAS. Within a span of three years, its exciting to see how SAS has embraced social media and engaging their employees to explore and utilize the social media platforms to communicate with each other and their clients. Undoubtedly there is huge potential to create awareness and create a brand presence across the board. Glad to see how SAS publishing is taking the lead on this!

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