You wouldn’t dream of starting as business without a plan, so why do so many business owners start social media campaigns without any real planning or strategy. Typically, they start blogging, Tweeting, building Facebook pages and checking in on FourSquare simply because everyone else is doing it.
In other words, they approach social media marketing as if they were a kid playing with a shiny new toy. Ask a six year old what his “strategy” is in playing the toy truck and he’ll look at you like you were crazy.
Ask a small business owner what his social media strategy is, and you are likely to see the exact expression.
“I’m looking to get more customers,” is the most common answer.
The only problem with that statement is that “getting more customers” is a goal, not a strategy.
The Strategy Stage
Effective social media strategy begins with self-reflection.
- What is the core of my business?
- What differentiates my business?
- Who is my target audience?
- Once I get an audience, what messages do I plan on delivering?
- (Most importantly) How can I turn my audience in revenues?
Once you have clear answers to these questions, then you will be able to look at a variety of social media platforms and see which ones are best suited to deliver your messaging.
For example, if you are looking to establish yourself or your business as experts in your field, blogging and social community involvement may be the best way to go. If you are looking to enhance your customer service or make specific offers to your target audience, Twitter may be the best platform. For businesses looking to work with other businesses, LinkedIn may be the best bet.
In virtually all cases, though, a combination of platforms and campaigns is the best option.
The Best Choices for your Business
Unfortunately, many businesses go the “trial and error” route. They dip their toes in the social media waters and fail to achieve their desired goals. The reasons for the failure can be a lack of understanding of the etiquette of the particular platform, poor messaging or a failure to make a sufficient commitment of time and resources.
This “trial and error” method can cost companies (especially smaller companies) enormously. Time and money spent on bad campaigns can never be recovered. Most than just costing your company resources, a poorly executed social media campaign can cost your company credibility and even destroy your company’s hard-earned reputation.
Because of limited resources, many entrepreneurs make the mistake of putting their social media marketing into the wrong hands. They hire an intern who knows every social media platform, but doesn’t know the first thing about your business.
This isn’t just reckless. It is stupid!
Think about it. If you have the wrong person blogging, posting on Facebook, Tweeting or commenting, you can see your business’s goodwill destroyed overnight. Remember that every word you broadcast online is both permanent and searchable.
That’s why it is so important to either have social media expertise in-house or to hire a company with not only real social media experience, but one that understands your business and your messaging.
Getting Started
When I work with clients on their social media strategy, we go through a detailed question and answer process. There is no single social media platform or combination of platforms that work for every business. In earlier Business Learning Center articles, we have discussed the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging.
The objective behind the Q & A process is to understand the client’s short term and long term business goals, to see what the client’s other current marketing and advertising efforts are and then determine what the client hopes wants the results of the social media campaign to be.
Some of the questions we typically ask are:
- What is your commitment to the social media campaign (manpower, time investment, budget and duration)?
- What are the goals of the campaign?
- What are the criteria for measuring the success or failure of the program?
- How do you plan on measuring the success or failure of the campaign?
- Who will be at the “steering wheel” of your social media campaign?
- Does anyone in your company have social media expertise?
- More importantly, does that person(s) have the skills to deliver your key messaging through social media?
- To what extent are you willing to outsource your social media campaigns?
Armed with the answers to these questions, I work with clients to build their social media campaigns. In some instances, we just handle the front-end work: creating a strategic plan and launching the campaigns. In many cases, clients want us to run all aspects of their social media campaigns.
In Conclusion
Social media can be a very powerful business tool, but it must be treated with the same respect as you treat other marketing and advertising efforts. Don’t begin a campaign until you have the right strategy and the qualified personnel to execute that strategy. For most entrepreneurs, it means going to a company that really understands both business and social media.
Gabriel Shaoolian is the founder and CEO of Blue Fountain Media, a results-driven website design and online marketing company based in Union Square, Manhattan. Shaoolian has grown Blue Fountain Media from a one-man operation to a full-service agency with over 70 employees. Clients range from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Shaoolian is an entrepreneur who loves working with hungry, entrepreneurial clients. View his full profile here.
Fantastic article. I have seen countless companies operate under the belief that if they simply utilize Twitter or Facebook, then they are enacting a sound social media strategy.. Wrong! One of the gems of this article is that you can use the typical questions asked by Gabriel as a checklist for your company. You can basically print off the following section (I am):
* What is your commitment to the social media campaign (manpower, time investment, budget and duration)?
* What are the goals of the campaign?
* What are the criteria for measuring the success or failure of the program?
* How do you plan on measuring the success or failure of the campaign?
* Who will be at the “steering wheel” of your social media campaign?
* Does anyone in your company have social media expertise?
* More importantly, does that person(s) have the skills to deliver your key messaging through social media?
* To what extent are you willing to outsource your social media campaigns?
This article is highly actionable, and something that every entrepreneur should bookmark. Unlike many ‘theoretical’ articles on blogs, you can actually use this one immediately. Nice article Gabriel
Jason
http://twitter.com/StartupSidekick
Great discussion today,
I agree that many new entrepreneurs lack the planning stage of small business and assume that throwing themselves out there will draw in the potential clients. They rarely consider that all their actions need to be in accord with their company message. How they deliver their message (social media outlets) and what exactly they say in their message should all incorporate the company’s business goals. I hope more entrepreneurs see this article in order for them to take advantage of social media marketing. Having a Facebook account is great but knowing how to use it to help your company’s bottom line, is something many new entrepreneurs lack knowledge in. Again, great post!
I am bookmarking this site for future reference.
Great article Gabriel. Many companies view social media as sort of an extra “thing” to focus on in addition to their main marketing campaign, but it definitely deserves the same amount of, if not more, attention. It’s important to come up with a plan and identify exactly what social networks will be most effective for your plan. It’s important to update your pages constantly too so your customers won’t get bored!
I agree that many new entrepreneurs lack the planning stage of small business and assume that throwing themselves out there will draw in the potential clients. They rarely consider that all their actions need to be in accord with their company message. How they deliver their message (social media outlets) and what exactly they say in their message should all incorporate the company’s business goals. I hope more entrepreneurs see this article in order for them to take advantage of social media marketing. Having a Facebook account is great but knowing how to use it to help your company’s bottom line, is something many new entrepreneurs lack knowledge in. Again, great post!
Great post! This is why having a social media strategy is important. Before plunging headlong into the social media marketing void, you should first outline why you want to be on a social media site, how do you intend to use the site and its tools/apps to promote your brand and what do you want to achieve from all of these.
Does integrating social media into your business/marketing plan mean your employees can access social media sites in the office? after all your fan page and/or Twitter account needs to be updated right? This is where a social media policy comes in. Should you permit or prohibit social media access in the workplace? Decision-makers and IT managers should know the issues surrounding social media in the workplace.
First of all let me give an appreciation of this wonderful post.
Social media is a time consuming and most of the people who wants to build their presence needs to park some time for this activity. If most of the business are part of this. If not, later they will be thrown out. Now, the question is how effective and leveraging is a different issue.
I heard that many other platforms are under development like you mentioned. If you look at google, they want to be in this space with their buzz.
Social media is not part of the one person job. It has to have a guideline in place, so that many people in the company and business can speak out their voices through this media.
Robert