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.