Six Key Considerations for Your Social Media Strategy

By Joe Pulizzi | Published: September 26, 2008

I just finished a speech at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego where I discussed the trend of “marketers as publishers” for about an hour. Great group, excellent questions. During the speech, we discussed social media applications like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (among others).

I spoke at an OMS event six months ago, and the number of people using these three social networking applications have easily doubled (as measured by a raising of hands) over that time. Social media is literally part of a marketer’s life today. With that, most of the audience is still confused on a social media direction.

Throughout the event, the biggest questions revolved around issues like “Should we do a blog?” – “How do we create ROI from Facebook?” – “What resources should we allocate to a social media effort?”

All good questions, and the answers are different depending on your target audience and goals. Overall, here are some key considerations to a social media strategy that were discussed throughout the day.

1. As a marketing professional, use social media yourself before you make any decisions. Whether it’s a blog or a Facebook account, there is no way you can make an educated decision about their place in a marketing program unless you have some idea of how they are used. So, whether or not you are going to do anything in social media, you must first be a user to properly direct your company’s social media strategy in the future.

2. Forget about ROI. Social media (when you get there) will be a cost of doing business. Defining ROI with your social media strategy is much easier for a smaller company. You can track people you’ve met through the blog or Twitter and began a business relationship. For larger companies, social media activities are mandatory for getting involved in your customer and prospect conversations. Treat it as just part of having a business. Your customers are talking about you. As a company, you just need to make a decision about whether you want to be part of that conversation or not.

3. Assign a Reputation Manager. Since customers are talking about your brand, someone needs to be a champion for listening to that conversation using tools such as Google Alerts, Boardreader and Technorati – or dig even deeper with these reputation management tools.

4. Focus on the audience. Don’t let social media scare you. These are just tools to help you communicate with your customers and prospects. Keep the focus on your customers’ informational needs and you’ll head in the right direction.

5. Don’t make up marketing objectives to fit social media. Don’t try to force objectives into online tools that just don’t fit. As with all marketing tactics, there are marketing objectives behind each one. Keep your fundamentals in place, and then decide if social media can help you get there.

6. Honesty and transparency is required. No brands can hide anymore, so don’t try. Just accept it and move on. We have no control over our brands – they are in our customers’ hands. All we can do is be a part of the conversation and shape it best we can. Once you throw your hat in the social media ring, be completely honest – or get burned.

Steven Roll

Interesting post. There was a great story in the New York Times Magazine about Twitter and Facebook that helped me understand the big picture a little bit better. Here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/4ccof6
I find most Twitter messages or “Tweets” to be pretty inane. But, as this article explains, the point is to create “ambient awareness” or the feeling of getting to know someone by simply being near them.
So in a sense, all of these messages from Twitter or FB have the same effect as passing someone in the hallway at work and saying a few words to them.
Even so, I find Tweets letting me know that someone is eating Indian food somewhat intrusive.
I prefer the status updates on Facebook. At least, there, I can access the Web site whenever I want to see what all of my “friends” are up to.
I’ve found that updating my status on FB at least once a day has dramatically increased the contacts I’ve had on FB. I’m having short interactions with friends, neighbors, and other ASBPE members on almost a daily basis.
I was thinking how great it would be if my company had its own Facebook application, so I could interact someone in a different department such as marketing even though their office is on the other side of the building.
http://www.allurefx.com Sekhar Ravinutala

#1 is a good one – one that’s easily missed. I used to work in Oracle and had a very different (and wrong) idea of social media till I actually started using them.
Not sure about #2 though. At the end of the day, this stuff does sink a lot of time. Unless you negotiate with your management with some kind of an ROI argument, you/your team could easily be overwhelmed.
http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

@Steven…thanks for the article post. I did read this one…gives a good overview of the benefits of Twitter.
You never know where business can come from, and social applications are a great example of that. A little bit of time on each one goes a long way.
Thanks for sharing. I agree with you on certain Tweets. It’s an art to scan for the good content, but worth it.
@Sekhar…I see your point, but think of it this way. There is a conversation going on about your brand right now. Whether you are involved in it or not is your decision. What’s the ROI of shaping a conversation about your brand and topics that are important to you. Priceless in my opinion.
Problem is, this is hard to prove…but it is possible. Personally, I can point directly to new business through the blog and other social media apps…just takes a bit of work.
Thanks for sharing…
http://www.payparade.com Andy Clibanoff

I like this post entry because it contains good advice – like starting with yourself before promoting social media. If you take this approach, follow your curiosity, ask a lot of questions about how you want to engage with others, and use the wisdom of “message your neighbors as you would have them message you,” you will be able to get others to follow along.