04 coreconcepts { social media }
al issue
By Piet Levy//Staff Writer
 plevy@ama.org
Setting Social Strategy
What to know before you start blogging, Tweeting or posting on Facebook
Digi
I
f you want to make a significant impact
in social media, you can’t just start
Tweeting and blogging away. You need
to first develop a strategy that will help you
achieve your business goals, social media
experts advise. “Most companies skip that
step. They think of the best way to write a
Tweet or put together a Facebook fan page,
and then they look around and say, ‘Now
what?’ ” says Jay Baer, founder of social
media strategy firm Convince & Convert
in Bloomington, Ind. and co-author of the
book The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make
Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More
Social. “People focus more on how to do
social and less on how to be social. Ulti-
mately, the social media strategy at an orga-
nization is a reflection of your culture.”
Consider the following when setting
your strategy.
Define Your Business Goals
Setting your strategy starts with under-
standing your business objectives, says Dave
Evans, co-founder of social media consul-
tancy Digital Voodoo in Austin, Texas,
author of the book Social Media Marketing:
The Next Generation of Business Engagement,
and an American Marketing Association
seminar instructor on social media market-
ing. Not only will the mindset take you
beyond the realm of tactics and dabbling,
it will help with internal buy-in and provide
direction and purpose, he says. Jason
Falls, principal at social media consultancy
Social Media Explorer in Louisville, Ky.,
and editor of the marketing blog of the
same name, says there are generally six
buckets that business objectives for social
media marketing fall into: branding and
awareness; reputation protection; commu-
nity building; facilitating and supplementing
customer service; facilitating research and
development; and directing sales or leads.
Know Your Audience
and How They Use Social
You should already know your core audi-
ence, but you also need to know how that
audience engages with social media.
“One of the great fallacies in social media
belief is there is a behavior that people in
social media tend to engage in,” Baer says.
“There’s nothing further from truth. There
are 600 million people on Facebook and not
a lot of generalities about behavior.”
Evans and Baer recommend using
the B2B Profile Tool or the Social
Technographics Profile Tool, both free
and provided by Cambridge, Mass.-
marketingnews 03.15.11
based Forrester Research Inc. (available
at Forrester.com/empowered), to begin
to understand your core audience’s social
tendencies. The tools break down
AMA_031511_composite.indd 4
demographics you select (based on
age range, gender and country for the
consumer tool, for example) into seven
profile categories defined on the site. This
helps you assess, for instance, if your
core customer is more prone to passively
peruse the Web or more inclined to join
groups and participate in contests. Know-
ing how your customers use social will help
you understand how you can use social
to achieve your objectives and lead you to
prioritize which platforms to explore.
Think too of your audience’s needs. If, for
instance, your business is an airline or based
at an airport, you should know that issues
have to be addressed swiftly before custom-
ers are in the air, Evans says. It also helps to
talk to customers through surveys or direct
communication (via e-mail, phone calls,
face-to-face chats at conferences or social
media) to figure out what they want from
your organization that social media can
provide, Baer and Falls say.
Look at Other Companies
If you’re just starting out, it’s good to follow
some social stars and your direct compet-
itors to see what they’re doing. “It’s not
necessarily bad when you do that,” Falls
says. In fact, spying on the competition
can open your eyes to social’s possibilities
and your company’s possibilities. Ideally
you’ll be able to develop social tactics your
competitors aren’t exploiting or brainstorm
ideas for how you can beat them at their
own game.
See What People
are Saying and Where
Baer says Socialmention.com and
Addictomatic.com are good free sources
to get a sense of where your company is
being discussed in social media and the
sentiment behind those conversations.
Falls also recommends browsing through
Search.twitter.com and signing up for
Google Alerts so you can receive links to
blog posts and news articles referring to
your company. Studying up will better
prepare you for when you join the fray
and direct you to certain platforms where
conversations about you are happening
most frequently. You also can use these
same tools to see what people are saying
about your competitors and your indus-
try and on which platforms those conversa-
tions are happening, Falls says.
Set Milestones to
Track Your Progress
Set up some reachable objectives to
start, for you to definitively do, such as
the number of Tweets you’ll post per
quarter, and optimally attain, such as
a specific number of sales leads you’ll
generate through your blog. These goals
will help direct your path. Make sure
you’re patient and flexible, Baer says.
“Social media is so culturally impacted,
and because there is no model you can
just steal, you have to really embrace
the spirit of testing and optimization,”
he says. Baer says there is no universal
magic number to indicate success, but
his book The Now Revolution features a
flow chart that can direct you to more
than two dozen metrics to consider for
particular scenarios. m
With a strategy in place, you can
put together a social media operations
manual. Read the March 17th edition
of our e-newsletter Marketing News
Exclusives for tips on how to do just
that, available at MarketingPower.com/
marketingnews.
2/14/11 12:34 PM