Social media is still very much a hot topic for many organisations, in this post we look at the key points required to establish activity in your organisation.
Groundwork And Preparation
Preparation is extremely important when looking at how your organisation can use social media. Engage your colleagues, stakeholders and customers in finding out their perceptions based around social media. Do your colleagues feel positively about engaging customers through online communities, do your customers want to communicate via these channels or not?
Don’t try the technical sell,; the reality is that most individuals in your organisation do not understand the technical aspects of many social media tools (who can blame them with an ever increasing number of tools and an increasing degree of complexity). Remember to discuss social media with colleagues in a way that links directly to organisational benefits and concerns.
Discussing control, or lack of it, in the brave new world of social media is an important first step for those establishing social media in high security or more traditional organisations. Education and flexibility of approach are often required to get buy in to commence social media activity and not everyone in your organization may be happy undertaking activity that cannot be controlled in the conventional way.
Assessment of risk is also an extremely important stage of preparation, what if things go wrong? Look at some scenario planning and work closely with other in the organisation to communicate potential risks and make people aware.
Security may also be an issue and an assessment of the risk of commercially sensitive material being used on social networks is also another consideration.
With all of the above, communicating with other content owners and finding the comfort zones and tolerance levels within which to propose activity will be key to successful implementation. Try to focus on each business area and look at who owns content in each, empathise with your colleagues and what they may require. Sell each content owners the benefits of implementation of social media and communicate clearly how that applies to their content.
Social Media Research
Research is the second important stage of social media implementation. What are your competitors doing? What has worked well in your industry.
If your organisation has external suppliers who have experience in the area of social media then why not ask them to present some of their success stories and talk you through options covering potential strategies. This process will also strengthen external supplier relationships and provide a potential ally to help make the case for social media.
If you undertake market research in your organisation then think about developing questions around social media. Find out more about what your customers and prospects expect in terms of social media content and strategy.
Social Media Strategy
Formulating a social media strategy is the most important part of the whole process of implementation.
Start with asking ‘what are the organisation’s objectives?’. Link social media objectives to marketing and wider organizational strategic objectives. Different stakeholders will have different objectives,. For the PR team the objectives of social media engagement may be reputation management, for the marketing team it may be increased audience engagement.
Also remember to integrate social media activity with other marketing activity. Look at capitalising on relationships formed in social communities through other offline channels.
Monitoring Social Media
There are a number of tools commercially available that can help organisations track social communities. There are also a number of excellent free tools available too, most of these can be found easily through search engines.
Listen to what is being said about your organisation online. Where is the comment coming from – there will be particular communities who have a lot to say. Make a list of relevant communities that can be used as part of your social media strategy.
Again, don’t be tool led, think about segmenting your audience. When the Marketing Director suggests ‘getting on Twitter’ then suggest that according to your analysis only 1.8% of your target audiences engage with this tool so time and money will be better spent targeting other online communities and sites.
Prioritise based on the research and analysis undertaken earlier in your implementation process combined with the data collected from your social media monitoring tools. Which communities are most effective for achieving your objectives?
Participation in online communities
Managing the process of participation in online communities should be easier given the good work you will now have completed.
Think about terms of engagement – what will be the process for participation. How will participation work for different types of communities and social media sites?
Also consider what content is available for distribution across social networks, collaborate with your colleagues across departments to review and plan content for use in social media activity. Look at the development of future content for use.
Who will be the person or people in your organisation who will participate? Internal resource may be available via dedicated content and community roles; alternatively you may wish to undertake participation via an external supplier or agency. Whether internal or external resource is used this role will require a blend of skills covering the organisations’ goods or services, online media and user behaviour.
Build relationships online and use them to good effect, remember to always be honest, credible and professional in the approach used and tone of communication.
Track And Measure Response
Further improve targeting based on response rates, treat social media as an iterative process – learn and improve. Always work to key performance indicators and ensure that social media data is fully integrated into internal analytics dashboards and management information so that success can be clearly communicated throughout the organisation.
Good luck in implementing social media into your organisation, it will be a lot of fun along the way!
