Assess, plan, and dive in: A 5-step social media strategy for beginners

Even if you’re a social media rookie, you most likely have a great appreciation for the new opportunities available in the world of business with the leveraging of social media. Here’s a five-step beginner’s plan to get you in the game.  

1. Assess the territory and culture / learn social media
2. Listen to the conversation about you
3. Define your objectives
4. Assess your organization and team
5. Develop a social media policy

1. Assess the territory and culture / learn social media

Before diving right in, you will want to gain an understanding of how people are best using social media to engage communities, build relationships, and share valuable content. You will observe important characteristics of the social media culture that will help you succeed. For example, talking only about yourself and selling doesn’t work. Pushing out your traditional marketing messages doesn’t work. Helping others, being transparent and considerate, sharing value, and finding and engaging with your communities does work. 

Here are some basic tools you should know about:

News Alerts

If you’re haven’t already, set up Google News Alerts so you’ll be informed of search term hits – such as your company name, team members, industry, and partners or competitors. Google News Alerts notifies you via email any time your search terms are mentioned in traditional or social media channels. Considering that the service is free, it’s reliable and covers a significant amount of outlets.

Managing your content and conversations

The following free tools are helpful for managing the content and conversations you will want to monitor:

Google Reader (This RSS reader seems to be the most popular – use it to subscribe to and organize categories for the blogs you want to monitor.)

Google Blogsearch (This tool can be used to search for blogs and blog posts that contain content you’re interested in.)

Technorati (A blog search engine.)

search.twitter.com (A tool to search and filter information on Twitter.)

Tweetdeck (A free application to connect to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts and monitor and manage multiple accounts and searches.)

Social Media University

Read the key social media blogs where the best and brightest leaders are conversing and sharing their insight. Six top-ranked blogs related to social media that I follow are:

1. Chris Brogan (his recent bestseller Trust Agents is a must-read)
2. Convince & Convert
3. CopyBlogger
4. Mashable – The Social Media Guide
5. PR 2.0
6. Social Media Today

2. Listen to the conversation

Now that you’ve set up some basic monitoring tools and begun to gain more familiarity, monitor what’s being said about you. Depending on the prominence and context of your business, you may not have much of an online presence yet (but that will change). 

Listening to what’s being said about you, or verifying you don’t yet have much of an online presence other than perhaps your own website, will give you a starting point and help you define your objectives.

3. Define objectives

Next, what are your key objectives for using social media? It’s important to realize that social media does not replace a solid marketing or PR program. With varying approaches, many goals can be achieved or amplified with social media. 

It might be wise to keep your initial objectives fewer in number. Your list will help you to decide which tools, including blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, are the way to go.

Here are a few possible objectives to consider. (If you want to add others in the comment section, that would be fantastic!)

1. Gain new customers
2. Strengthen existing relationships
3. Engage your brand evangelists
4. Humanize your brand
5. Gain insight as a learning organization
6. Empower your internal team
7. Communicate during a crisis
8. Provide enhanced customer service

4. Assess your corporate culture and team

Now that you have a good idea how social media facilitates engagement, you are familiar with the most popular tools and channels, and you’ve established your key objectives, it’s time to think about your corporate culture and your team.

Social media magnifies what already exists

Social media magnifies what already exists, so this may be a good time to be hyper-honest about what kind of organization you really have going and establish or reinforce the kind of organization you really wish to be. Straighten up the house and be as self-aware as possible before company arrives via the transparency of social media.

Work with your IT folks and executive leadership team. If you haven’t already, you will want to fast forward to the year 2010 and align your IT infrastructure and policies with the way people need and want to communicate.

Transparency, two-way conversations, and relationships will dominate the marketing landscape going forward. If you’re not yet convinced to “tear down that wall,” even the Department of Defense has a social media policy. (Take care, of course, to define and protect confidential intelligence and comply with any regulations that apply to your business.)

Whether you decide to enlist key team members or all of your employees in your social media strategy, one crucial decision is which individual or department is going to be responsible for leading the charge.

I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV: The use of social media affects valuable intangible assets of your organization

As with the overall function of organizational communications, social media will affect key intangible assets that represent a significant part of the value of your organization – assets such as relationships, business intelligence, brand recognition, and the ability to successfully manage a crisis. I would recommend employing a person or team offering expertise and leadership –people who know your business, stakeholders, and organizational brand and voice.

Some companies make the mistake of hiring a recent college graduate to manage “the new media thing” because youth is equated with social media savvy.  I am all for crucial new talent as part of every team, of course, but a social media director should be grounded in a hard-earned understanding of marketing, communications, and business – an expert in your business objectives and your organization. 

The voice you amplify should be empowered

The voice you amplify with social media should reflect your authentic and most empowered (and friendly) version of your organization, and the person or team behind that voice should have a seat at the management table. They need to have a presence on your behalf that not only promotes your brand on a good day, but also is capable of responding with a level of authority and sensitivity on your worst day.

5.  Develop a social media policy

Though current consensus is that less than 30 percent of businesses engaged in social media have formal social media policies in place, a policy is a good idea. Your guidelines will depend in part upon your corporate culture, the size and nature of your organization, and the decisions you made in steps 2 to 4 above. 

Many progressive organizations already have generously shared their social media policies so the rest of us can learn from them. Here’s a helpful post that appeared in Mashable entitled Three Great Social Media Policies to Steal From.

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