Framework of a Successful Social Media Strategy
Much of my focus in the industry of late has been geared around social media. If the search marketing industry is still in its infancy, social media is still in a race to the egg. There is still much to learn and discover, many techniques to master and even more to develop, but most of all, it is going to take us time to fully understand the impact social media is having on our industry. What do we do in the mean time to build a successful social media strategy?
Understand the Specific Social Environments
As the phenomena of social media reaches into the deepest nooks and crannies of the internet, specific social market segments are starting to define themselves. Knowing where and how these different market segments will make the most impact is of key importance. This means as you identify targeted social communities, you will need to evaluate these communities based on their specific effect on your current strategy. It is a bit more granular than just finding a community which focuses on “investing” if your client is selling stocks.
It is still a function of targeting, however, you need to look beyond keyword or market segment targeting and evaluate behavioral targeting as well. All social communities behave differently. Each will have unique rules imposed over a rule base which is common among many social communities. Additionally, these communities usually attract relatively like-minded participants who will normally use a common thread of social interaction. These unique rules and common interaction traits will combine to give each social media community its own social behavior fingerprint. A successful social strategy will evaluate these fingerprints and only utilize the communities which will best support the goals of the campaign.
Focus on Goals First Technology Second
Too often a client or even a team member will jump directly into the how of the strategy and assume everyone was together on the goals of a project. More often than not, technologies to be implemented should be based on the goals or objectives of the campaign. Social Media falls into two basic “social classes”. On-site social media is the building of a community on your web property, off-site social media is participating in pre-existing 3rd party social media sites. The goals of your strategy will determine which of the two can be used in what quantities.
For example, if the goal of the strategy is to do brand building or content distribution, a strategy which focuses on off-site participation would be more prudent. This decision significantly impacts the technologies which would be implemented. On-site community building and combination strategies are also valid solutions depending on the goals. Josh Bernoff, analyst at Forrester Research, has published their method of systematically building a social strategy. Its called the POST Method and is the foundation of a paper Mr. Bernoff published in October of 2007 called “Objectives: The Key To Creating A Social Strategy“. “Post” is an acronym for “People”, “Objectives”, “Strategy” and “Technology”.
- People references the audience and its capabilities as well as its social habits
- Objectives is really about setting the goals for the activity
- Strategy focuses on how the activity will change the relationship between the client and their customers
- Technology is the how is it going to get done portion of the equation
If you are not comfortable or unable to pony up the $279 for the report, Mr. Bernoff recently posted a basic overview on his blog which goes in to a bit more detail than I did here. Read “The POST Method: A systematic approach to social strategy” for a first hand explanation.
Control the Message not the Reaction
Once you have your social communities identified, your goals solidified and your technology implemented you have finished the easy part. From my experience, it seems the trickiest part of the whole strategy is managing the participation process within the social communities. This includes both on-site and off-site communities. The basics are easy because they are logical and don’t require a large shift in behavior of the participant. Participate in the community on a regular basis, add value to the community, build relationships with existing community members and do not over self promote are the basic rules of social engagement.
Once you have built the trust of the community, you have the ability to promote your agenda from time to time. You have complete control of the message you publish and with your intimate knowledge of each community you should be able to craft targeted variants towards specific communities if required. If you send the same message to each community expect different reactions. It is probable that you will get negative responses to your message. This is the point most clients balk. I hear over and over again, “Delete that post” or ” Ban that user” or “Get that off the site”. Well, this is where the users starts to have problems and should adjust their own social behavior if possible.
Censorship is probably the number one sin in social media marketing. The power of this entire medium is it’s community aspect. Different people with different opinions who what to share those opinions with anyone who will listen. Companies who wish to engage in social marketing need to understand for the beginning that they will not be able to control the content related to their message that is published by other community members. Some of it will not be nice… its the nature of the beast. There have been many examples of companies and even social media sites themselves trying to control content, usually with disastrous results. Being a good community member means you listen to what others have to say, even if you don’t like it. This is especially hard when the community is on the clients own property. I always try and educate my clients and help them to understand that on your own web property, a small amount of censorship can cause greater problems than a ton of negative content.
A Typical Social Media Strategy
The “typical” social media strategy does not exist in my eyes. You can have a standard process to create the strategy, however, each client or project will have its own structure. Just like the social fingerprints we spoke of earlier, a social media strategy should be specific to the unique needs, goals and markets related to the client. If you have two clients in the same market with the same goals you may find yourself able to use the same social media strategy… however you should do some reading on “conflict of interest” first.
I guess the over riding message in this post is .. “When working with Social Media, focus on the “Where” and “Why” before you tackle the “How”… then keep it wide open.”
