It’s undeniable that the new world of social media can have a dramatic impact on your organisation. All it takes is a quick scan of today’s headlines to learn the effects of successful – and not so successful – social media campaigns. While it seems that social media presents an endless amount of opportunities to build awareness, it also presents risk, which means that creating an effective strategy isn’t just nice to have – it’s an absolute must.

Creating an effective social media strategy is as much about what to do as what not to do. Before you jump in, it is important to develop guidelines to not only help you understand the current landscape but to help shape it.

Evaluate the Potential

An important thing to consider when creating an effective strategy is the potential impact social media can have on a campaign.

Perhaps the most powerful example of a highly successful social media programme was used by Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign.

David Plouffe, Obama campaign manager, integrated a host of social media tools in his strategy to engage, monitor and measure his social media strategy. Through careful monitoring of social media sites, blogs and other online news sites, the Obama campaign was able to see potential negative publicity before it reached traditional media sites. The campaign was able to use measurement tools that would be able to gauge the tone of a story about Sen. Obama and the campaign.

Using social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, the campaign engaged voters and allowed them to grow the campaign by creating an opportunity for them to create groups of supporters, participate in grassroots advocacy campaigns and make and solicit contributions for Obama’s campaign. Campaign organisers also kept their audience updated and engaged through constant e-mails and mobile alerts about the candidate and his campaign.

In another recent example, Skittles redesigned their homepage using a social media overlay – a Twitter feed including all of the sweets mentions. The Twitter feed was not edited and all Tweets – favorable and not so favorable – were posted directly to the Skittles homepage. While many conversations simply related to the validity of the campaign, the unedited feed allowed for pranks involving more controversial and offensive postings to appear. Fortunately for Skittles, the actual damage to their brand was very low and many say they were able to use this to build awareness, but the experience demonstrates the unpredictability of social media. There is risk with engaging in social media. There are no guarantees and your strategy needs to recognise the risk to help you reap the benefits.

Building Your Strategy

Do Take Time to Listen, Don’t Just Jump In—The first step in putting together an effective strategy is to understand the dynamics of the landscape. With social media, it is more important than ever to listen to what is being said before participating. What are people saying, how is it being said and where are they saying it?

Using a comprehensive monitoring strategy will help you define your online corporate brand identity and help ensure you are engaging with these new platforms effectively. Monitor the social media platforms for discussions on both your company and the competition to determine the value of the platform and the discussion and to help understand what is impacting your brand. Look for the platforms that your customers, prospects and the industry influencers are using. If you find your brand or industry discussions are focused on one or two platforms, you can concentrate your efforts.

Monitoring will not just help you understand which platforms are the most important for your brand, but also the style and tone of the discussions. All social media platforms are different. While some lend themselves to a more formal tone, such as Linkedin, others are about more informal conversation and thoughts, such as Twitter. Both may be equally valuable to your overall strategy but require different approaches. By listening to the discussions on each you will understand how to best approach the different audiences. Some may be used as a way to promote company activities and others may be more useful in interacting with your customers, uncovering potential sales opportunities and learning more about your industry. Be careful not to use the forum as a means of selling your products and services, some groups may consider this to be a form of spamming.

In addition to determining which sites to monitor, you need to define which areas to monitor. There are three key areas you should be tracking—company, competition and industry. This will help you see how your company is perceived in the social media world and will also provide context and comparison to your industry as a whole. You will be able to see how your competitors are positioning themselves and what’s actually resonating. Using this intelligence, you will be able to define a social media strategy that will give you an advantage over the competition.

Once you’ve had an opportunity to monitor evaluate the landscape, a great way to start establishing your social media foothold is through Facebook. You can create a Facebook page for your company for free and use it to share information about upcoming events, latest news and industry insight and start tapping into more than 53 million people who are already using Facebook.

Do Identify Spokespeople, Don’t Dilute the Message—As with traditional media strategies, you must also determine spokespeople for your social media strategy. You wouldn’t pull just any employee to speak to The Times and social media should be no different. Despite the informal nature of the conversations on some platforms, the person responding is still a company representative and the image of the company is reflected in those discussions. Unlike traditional media, social media puts you in direct communication with the public and different company representatives may be better for these audiences. While your traditional media spokesperson may be the CEO, your customers and prospects will be best served by a company representative who deals with more everyday tasks and not the overall company strategy.

You need to take the information you have gathered from monitoring social media and determine your ideal spokespeople. Identify a spokesperson to respond to corporate questions, customer feedback, support services, sales opportunities and other industry trends. Be sure you spend time training your spokespeople just as you would for traditional media so that they know and can communicate your company message effectively. Be sure to keep the channels of communication open to gauge feedback from your spokespeople. As the business climate changes, there may be opportunities to change your message so that it accurately reflects the needs and concerns of your customers.

Once you determine who will represent the company, come up with a plan to respond that fits the needs of your company. Depending on frequency of requests and availability of resources, you may decide to designate an initial responder who can identify the needs of the situation and route the inquiry to the appropriate person. While it is also an effective strategy to have each designated spokesperson respond individually, be careful, as too many voices in social media can be confusing to your audience and also dilute your message. Whichever strategy you choose, make sure the company message is very clear both externally and internally.

Do Communicate the Strategy, Don’t Allow for Confusion—While you may have created a strategy and identified the spokespeople who will participate in online conversations, if you do not share that strategy with the rest of the organisation it will lead to confusion. Social media turns everyone associated with your brand into a potential company representative. Whether you are a large or small company, the nature of social media requires specific guidelines for conduct.

Make sure employees know their role in the discussion. Just as you communicate guidelines for media calls or other media activities, share guidelines on what is and is not appropriate for social media. While many employees are tempted to participate in conversations, giving clear directives on company policy will help you control the message. While 99% of the participation is likely harmless, in some cases, it may impact company brand and reputation.

Do Set Priorities and Goals, Don’t Try To Do It All—Not all online conversations carry the same weight. Many will have no impact on your company and not every mention of your company or brand will require the same amount of attention. The trick is to understand what does and does not matter. While a discussion on the latest product release or customer feedback may be worth engaging in, other discussions may be trivial and will not require your participation.

In a recent example, Domino’s Pizza’s decision to not to react to a YouTube video showing two employees tampering with a customer’s food order backfired and negatively affected the company’s brand. Within a day, the clips had been viewed about 200,000 times, while anti-Domino’s comments began to spread on Twitter and other social media sources. Two days after the initial release of the video, Domino’s Pizza USA President Patrick Doyle did respond to the video in an attempt to restore consumer confidence.

While knowing what conversations are taking place and using the valuable insight gained from them is important, understanding impact will help you define the priority to the company. Just remember, you may not be able to do it all. The world of social media is rapidly growing and changing, focus on what will help you meet your goals.

Do Provide Consistent Content, Don’t Simply Dabble—Now that you’ve got spokespeople, guidelines and an understanding of the landscape, you are ready to engage in social media. Social media is about contributing to the conversation, not just selling your product or service.

It is acceptable to tout company announcements and activities, but participation means going beyond promotions. Share third party resources with your followers, fans and social media network. Offer them interesting articles and opportunities that will help them better understand the industry and see the value you can provide. If you have a blog, tweet links to interesting articles that may provide valuable information on emerging trends or other educational materials within it and drive people back to your content. The more valuable your content, the more your audience will grow.

Commit to your social media network. Be consistent with your updates, while you may not be able to post your own content on every occasion, regularly offer general thoughts and opinions on other content. Staying involved with your network is the only way to really leverage the platform. Anyone can create noise in social media; it is up to you to provide valuable insight. Staying on top of trends in your industry and having the ability to deliver well thought out analysis positions you as a thought leader, builds your organisation’s credibility and can positively influence your organisation’s online reputation.

Do Find Quality Followers to Engage, Don’t Worry About Numbers—We all want thousands of followers on Twitter, but the number is not as important as the quality of your network. If half of your Twitter followers are there simply to boost your number, you will not be reaching the right people with your message.

Promotion is key to building your social media network. Make sure you share your Twitter handle, Facebook page or Linkedin profile with your business contacts to help build your network. Add it to company promotions, include it in your email signature, and list it on your website so the audience you want to attract knows where to find you.

Many social media platforms have created their own methods to promote valuable contributors. Twitter has #followfriday, a designated day to recommend influential or interesting people to follow on Twitter, is a great way to get quality followers and establish your network.

Once you begin using Twitter, Facebook and other platforms regularly you will build a network that will help you meet your goals. As people recognise the value you are providing, they will want to listen to you.

Do Be Prepared for Success; Don’t Forget to Plan—Social media’s ability to spread your message or promote a campaign can be very powerful. Be prepared for your social media campaigns to succeed and plan for a greater response than you are used to.

Make sure you aren’t overselling to your potential customers through your messaging. Know what your limits are and your strengths. If you can’t deliver, don’t try to make your customers believe that you can.

Do Evaluate Impact, Don’t Continue Blindly—Value is determined by the contribution you’ve made to the goals of the company. While it is important to generate online buzz, the quality of the postings and impact on the company is still the ultimate judge.

Companies need to not only track where and how often their brand is discussed but assign a value based on the importance of the outlet to the organisation and determine if the conversations are positive, negative or neutral to get an accurate read for the company.

Discover which platforms and techniques have had the greatest impact and who they have influenced. Use criteria that matters to your company to determine that impact – whether it’s the number of sales opportunities uncovered, leads generated or attendees at an event – measuring results is critical to determining your success with social media. By comparing your activity and effort against results, you can gauge what activities are most effective and concentrate your efforts on the platforms that will give you maximum return. Use this information to determine whether your current strategy is working or if you need to make changes.

If you don’t track the results generated through social media outreach, it will be very difficult to improve upon your strategy and fully reap the benefits social media can offer.

Do Manage your Investment, Don’t be a Twitter Quitter—Finally, don’t make the investment in social media without the commitment. Social media takes time. Establishing your network and leveraging the platforms may not happen overnight, but if you follow your strategy they can extend your reach and get the most out of your efforts.

By creating a solid social media strategy and sticking to it, Goodwill of Greater Washington D.C. was able to provide outstanding results from a social media campaign to attract younger professional women to their stores and drive sales.

They launched a blog,  that offered seasonal style advice, fashion industry news, event coverage and recommendations from leading fashion bloggers. Goodwill took things one step further and established a presence on MySpace, Twitter, and Pownce to spread word of the blog and online fashion show. Finally, “Fashionista” swapped links with other fashion websites, which helped drive even more traffic to the blog. Their efforts even got the attention of the American Marketing Association, who is presenting the organisation with an award for their successful strategy.

Do Show Measurable Results, Don’t Depend on Superficial Results to Show Real Value of your Plan—

Goodwill entered the social media landscape with a vengeance – and a negligible budget. So, when measuring their success, it wasn’t enough for Goodwill to merely show followers and tweets, but the campaign also yielded concrete results:

• One out of 14 people who read the blog clicked over to one of Goodwill’s sites (eBay, ShopGoodwill.com) to shop.

• One out of six people who visited the virtual fashion show then went to ShopGoodwill.com or its eBay store to buy goods.

• The blog retention rate is over 60 percent and the “Fashion of Goodwill” marketing strategy has already received three awards from the American Marketing Association and is a finalist for an International Special Events Society (ISES) award.

The campaign also yielded impressive sales results as well:

• After the campaign launched, sales tripled compared to the prior month.

• Almost half (48%) of those who viewed the fashion show on its premier date shopped at the organization’s eBay store in the two weeks that followed.

• Some 15% of all viewers to date have made purchases from the online store.

How you determine success depends on your company’s overall goals and objectives. However, if you want to get and keep the Executive board’s attention, tying your results to your organisation’s bottom line is one of the more effective ways to go about it.

Tools to Get Started

Today’s technology offers many tools to help you get started:

• Online Distribution Tools—The majority of traditional wire services now offer an online distribution option to help you reach into social media. Additionally, online news distribution services such as PRWeb have been specifically designed to get your message directly to consumers and include social media friendly features to assist with your outreach. For example, PRWeb allows you to TweetIt, automatically posting a tweet when your release is distributed. News sent through PRWeb also appears in social media platforms such as LinkedIn making easier to share your content with your entire social media network.

• Free Online Tools and Applications—There are numerous free applications to help sort and monitor social media conversations including Tweetdeck, TweetBeep and more. These applications help you track the latest Twitter discussions and get a feel for what people are saying as it happens.

Conclusion

Creating a social media strategy is really no different than building a traditional media strategy. However, unlike traditional media, social media presents far less barriers to reaching your ultimate consumer which may leave you vulnerable and more open to risk. Be prepared to invest time and research into creating your social media plans to ensure its success. You need to know your audience, know your objectives, know your outlets and know your message.

And remember, the most important “Do” in social media is “Do” get started so you “Don’t” get left out of the conversation.