Social media is a fast-moving channel, which means proper planning is vital to success. Effective social media strategies come from embracing the fact that social media is a two-way communication channel: organizations interacting in this space need the resources not only to push messages out but to deal quickly with the messages coming in, too.
Planning is the foundation of success. Here is one method to approaching social media strategically.
1. Get buy-in
It’s important that there is buy-in for your foray into social media. It may be seen as a free resource, but even if you are not paying for exposure, there is a time and resource investment required. A number of stakeholders will need to be aware of your social media plans, and these may be both internal and external. And, of course, you will need to sign off for any budgeting or additional resourcing requirements.
Addressing the various stakeholders will also force you to do the necessary research and plan to take the next steps.
2. Listen and understand the landscape
It’s important to take a step back first. Social media is more than the social spaces you may interact with in your personal capacity. A good first step to understanding the landscape is to listen.
Some important questions to answer include:
- What conversation already exists around your brand, your industry, and your competitors?
- Do they have the facts?
- Where does it take place?
- Who is doing most of the talking? What can you, as a brand, add to this conversation? Is it valuable?
Online monitoring tools such as BrandsEye (www.brandseye.com) or Radian6 (www.radian6.com) can help you with the listening part of your planning, but in the early stages you may want to start with free tools such as Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts).
3. Analyse
Using all the data you have been gathering, analyze! Think critically about social media and your brand, as well as your brand’s broader marketing, communication and business challenges. All of this should be looked at within the context of the information that you already know about your local marketing and business environment.
Your outcomes here should include:
- A list of the social channels and platforms your brand should be in. This is based on who your customers are, where they interact, and where they expect to interact with you.
- Non-official groups or communities that already exist, may have been created by fans.
- Overview of the existing conversation (volume, frequency, and sentiment), as well as any content or conversation themes that occur.
- Review of what your competitors are doing in this space.
- A list of potential brand evangelists and influencers in your industry.
4. Set objectives
Your objectives are the desired outcome of your social media strategy. These should be based on the context of your marketing and business challenges.
Firstly, you need to address how you will use social media for your organization. You then need to set objectives for each of those.
To make them tangible and measurable, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for your objectives, with benchmarks and targets where appropriate.
Determine SMART objectives:
For example, your objective could be to grow a community of fans around your brand in a particular country. Your KPI might therefore be fan numbers, and you could set a target of 5 000 Facebook fans over six months.
