5 Steps To Building A Cohesive Social Strategy
- Details
- Author: Aaron Mann
- Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Last week Jeremiah Owyang and Altimeter released “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation”. This is a must read for anyone dealing with social media presences, whether one account or many. One stat that will surprise a lot of people – global companies are managing on average 178 different social accounts!
One of our first recommendations to clients is to implement a Social Media Management System (SMMS). However, even the right SMMS is only as good as the company’s management of the accounts, content strategy, measurement plan and internal/partner systems. It is also clear one size does not fit all. We have been involved in 3 vendor selections in the last couple of months and the evaluations ended with 3 different vendors. As is often the case with software – ongoing success depends upon both a successful implementation and a solid ongoing management plan.
Jeremiah’s report outlines some excellent pragmatic steps (page 20 for reference) to get ready, pick partners and rollout the program. We have a similar approach with 5 steps to a cohesive social strategy. These are the building blocks you want in place before starting to choose a tool:
1. What am I trying to do? This is about being clear on the business objectives and how social efforts tie back to those objectives.
2. What do I want to say and how do I want to say it? Before we set up a content strategy, we work to identify a specific theme and voice for every social property. This makes developing content, often a vast and varied amount of content, much easier.
3. How do I measure success? All too often this step is forgotten in the rush to execute in the fast-moving social space. We want to establish success metrics upfront and put in place the right tools to make sure they are measured and tracked back to the business objectives. It’s important to set both internal goals and to benchmark against competitors in the space.
4. What resources, policies and guardrails do I need? This is where strategy meets tactical execution. Some of the elements include:
a. Social Presence management resources, workflow and expectations
b. Guidelines on when and how to launch a new social presence
c. Current Inventory and sunsetting plan as applicable
d. Response and Escalation Plan including FAQ’s, Wikis and people resources
e. Governance Plan
f. Media Integration Team & Resources
5. How do I implement and train? This is not a one-time question. The underlying platforms change incredibly often. In the last year we saw the launch of Facebook’s Timeline, Facebook Sponsored Stories, and Google + to name just a few. As fast as platforms change, tools change even more quickly. Therefore, training and implementation needs to be a dynamic and continual process.
Our perspective is that any tool, no matter how robust, needs an overarching social strategy to be truly successful.
We’ve embedded the report for easy reference:
A market-leading social program is not about command and control, it is about support and empowerment. Help your SMMS tools succeed by making sure you have the right plan in place before choosing and implementing.
