Implementing a Social Media Business Strategy

What to consider when implementing a social media strategy in your workplace.

Just having a policy isn’t good enough — you need a plan to put it in place. Here are five areas to discuss when implementing a social media strategy.

1. Determine Your Objective

social media strategy is a complex exercise because “it includes not only looking inside the organization to establish appropriate practices, usage policies and content parameters, but it also includes looking outside the organization to determine the proper degree of engagement.”

Figure out why you’re getting on the social media bandwagon and what you want to accomplish with it. This step is absolutely necessary if you plan to measure ROI or develop your own internal metrics tracking.

Specificy objectives you want to accomplish some examples below

A. Become more responsive to people/consumer audiences

B. Incorporate audience/consumer feedback into your organization more quickly and effectively than has happened traditionally

C. Make your brand a little more “human” to the outside world, and show people the smarts, personality and passion of the people behind your logo

D. Increase awareness of the strength of your current product lineup, and provide perspective/accurate information about your company

The other benefit of defining objectives is that they can guide the timetable for implementation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an organization’s list of objectives and knew there was no way they could implement everything at once or in the timeframe they intended. Having well-defined objectives can assist in prioritization and creating the best way to phase-in a social media strategy.

Developing objectives and a timetable could also prompt a conversation about content management. Ramos suggests including in the strategy the position responsible for updating content as well as the update frequency. “Many organizations have grand plans of updating content on a regular basis only to quickly run out of topics, leaving content to become stale. As a best practice, a specific employee is typically assigned to create and manage the company’s social media pages, so he/she can respond to messages and questions within 24 hours.”

2. Find an Internal Evangelist

This is a constant source of discussion right now on the Internet, but the bottom line is, some department needs to “own” social media. Lots of departments might be consulted when it comes to decision making, but ultimately someone has to be held accountable for the outcomes.

Which department ultimately gets the responsibility could be dependent upon the size of your organization and corporate culture. Social media leadership has a seat at the communications leadership table and acts as an integral part of the larger corporate communications function.”

Smaller organizations might not have that amount of structure, so responsibility might simply fall to sales or marketing.

Another option to consider is using external resources (i.e. consultants) for certain aspects of the strategy and internal resources for the rest. Barger explains, “We use internal resources whenever possible; given that two of GM’s main goals are to become more responsive to the public and to incorporate insight back into the organization, these are things we can only effectively do if it is our team who are engaged. We use agency partners for monitoring/measurement, for identifying new opportunities and new influencers for us to reach out to, for video production, and for counsel on tactics/strategy.”

3. Consider Your Employees

This is a biggie. Organizations need to understand their employees’ level of knowledge and interest. Offer training.

4. Check Your Tech

While most social media doesn’t need a huge technology investment, you should still take a look at the technology capabilities of your company and make sure the system can support the strategy.

- Who will have access to the sites?

- Are there any firewalls that would prevent access?

- What are the rules about time spent and content posted on the sites?

Due to some of the technology access restrictions, some organizations have opted to build their own internal technology to offer social media type forums without the complexities of changing firewalls or altering access rules. This also allows further features like locking down postings to help control inappropriate content.

5. Listen First

A lot can be learned by watching others. Don’t be afraid to ask questions on and offline so you can learn more.

Conclusion

During 2010, more companies are expected to explore and engage in social media activities. While some might categorize using a social networking application as easy, that doesn’t mean developing a strategy is simple. Proper planning and execution is the key to integrating social media into your organization.