A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim – that’s how Oxford Dictionary defines Strategy. Simple and bang on! Every marketing media and media vehicle that brand chooses has to fit in its overall strategy seamlessly. TV, print, Radio, Internet portals, Mobile did that and now it’s time Social Media follows suit.
We have reached a point in time where the question has moved from ‘Why Social Media’ to ‘How Social Media’. Social Media is everywhere. It is hailed as the biggest revolution in recent times. To put it in perspective, if we assume Facebook to be a country, it would be the third largest populous one after China and India. If Youtube was a TV channel in India, it would have been the 11th biggest. Twitter is the second largest search engine closely followed by Youtube. While you were reading the above stats, more than 100+ hours of video has been uploaded on Youtube. Aston Kutcher and Britney Spears have more twitter followers than the entire population of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama. More than 25% percent of search result for any brand would link you to user-generated content on social media. All these things work in favour of social media in spite of Facebook and Youtube being banned in China (stats courtesy – Socialnomics). The return on investment (ROI) in the case of social media is tremendous considering you’re still in business after 5 years! There is no escaping this media.
One should not enter social media without a proper strategy in place. Any mistake done on this media is amplified to a great extent. In this article, I will explain the way to build a successful social media strategy from group up. Follow the below 5 steps and you will have a successful social media strategy.
Step 1: Listen
Before deciding to enter the social media hemisphere, listen online. Listen online to what people are saying about your brand, about your company, about your products, about your services, about competitor brands, what the wants are and what are opinions of people who could be your prospective customers, listen to the influencers.
Through effective online listening, you can create an all-encompassing picture of your web presence, brand favourability and online reputation. By listening to online conversation, you can identify areas of opportunity and begin to develop a strategy. Listening will tell you which platforms you should be more active on. Listening will give you the starting direction to your strategy. PepsiCo shifted its focus to football from cricket in India by listening to its prospective customers views/opinions on social media. Listening is the first step for your strategy and the most important step.
The other steps will and can follow only on successful implementation of this step. To help you there are lots of tools in market like Technorati, Google Alerts, Twendz, Google Blog Search, Twitter search, Google analytics. Another important thing to identify is the people driving communications in regard to your company and industry. They are known as ‘Influencers’. They can make or break your reputation online. A good tool to identify and listen to influencers is WeFollow.
Step 2: Goals and Objective
Now that you have ’listened’ to your audience, you should be in a better position to establish your goals. The goals can be creating a platform on social media for customer interaction, reputation management, new customer acquisition, feedback mechanism, driving web traffic, increasing sales, etc. Remember, social media is more about your audience than you and therefore consider not only your goals, but also theirs. You must understand, ‘What are their needs? What are they interested in? What are they talking about?’ Design your goals in such a manner that it addresses 80% to your audience’s demands and 20% to your senior management’s demands. Promote less and address more. You will find you can build more influence and trust with the value you provide your followers.
Step 3: Develop your plan and content
Your goals will guide you in deciding the content you need to create. Will you reach out and leverage Influencers? Will you provide free material or samples? How will it be delivered? You may have products that are environmentally friendly. Will you moderate and lead a conversation about environmental issues? There are many creative ways to approach your audience. Be innovative. Every company worth its salt has a marketing calendar in place. If you don’t, do it now. Include social media in that calendar. Plan ahead regarding which festivals or occasions you need to address on social media. Develop your content in such a way that it addresses your goals. It’s a good practice to schedule the whole week’s content. Your followers should know at what time you will be addressing them so be consistent. Content can be tips, promotional offers, white papers, opinion polls, case studies, news, photos, opinions, statistics, etc but should be in line with your goals. Next, decide which social media sites you need to be present in. Ensure you start with one or two sites at a time and develop them so they are solid before moving on to another social media site.
Please note: It’s very easy to be creative and drift away on social media. To avoid this, always refer to your goals which you decided on in step 2 after listening in step 1.
Step 4: Engage
Armed with smart objectives, a solid timeline, great content, and the right social media sites you are now ready to post your content. Engage in the conversation and express your point of view. Remember to keep to your schedule and be consistent. Have the resources on hand to respond to comments and feedback so you can keep the conversation going. This is not an "if you build it they will come" type of scenario. You have to keep at it.
Step 5: Measure and Optimize
Measuring and Optimizing are the most crucial elements of any strategy and should never be ignored. Clearer goals will lead to accurate measurements. Facebook has its own inbuilt measurement system known as ‘Insights’. Use it extensively. For other sites there are ample of tools available in the market both paid and free. My advice is to try out tweet deck, Google analytics, Klout, Facebook insights and Youtube insights before you graduate to paid tools. Some of the parameters you should measure in addition to achievement of your defined goals are share of voice, awareness, engagement, influence and popularity of your properties on social media. Work on the insights gained to optimize your content and plan. Remember, one should always learn and grow as the nature of social media is never static.
Follow these five steps diligently and you will have a successful social media strategy in place. A good social media presence will help you in executing successful campaigns. You can get in touch with me any time through my social media handles mentioned on this site. And yes, don’t be present on any media just because your peer/competitor is.
