I was talking this afternoon to a marketing director of a major hospitality venue, and we got to chatting about the initial things that every organization needs to do before starting a Social Media initiative.
Spending some more time thinking about it, I’ve put together what I think every company should do as they put together their strategy.
- Social Media Policy – It sounds a bit like this step should be a little later in the process, but I think there can be huge gains achieved by sitting down and thinking about your organization’s Social Media policy from the get go. You can obviously change this as you listen and engage, but it’s a good start. Thinking about how your employees will communicate with the outside world will allow you to start imagining where you want your company to be within Social Media. All companies are a slightly afraid, conservative or risk-averse to open themselves up completely to the world wide web, so put together a social media strategy that pushes the boundaries a bit. And then push a bit more.
- Monitor – Whether you take on very robust solution for social media monitoring or something that just gives you a feel for what’s out there, understand where core conversations are coming from. Look not only for your company being mentioned, but everywhere that you think your customers could possibly be. Do this quickly, and figure out where you want your initial strategy to focus.
- Benchmark - While it’s great to concentrate on ROI as marketing efforts resulting in sales, be cognizant that the benefits of Social Media may not be as easy to correlate as some other initiatives. Once you know where in your monitoring efforts you want to concentrate on engagement, lay down specific targets that you are looking to achieve. Whether it is increasing blog traffic or Twitter followers, make sure you have a concrete percentage that you want to hit to define success. And having sales based targets is not a bad idea either…
Once you have these three pillars set, you should have a pretty decent foundation from which to work from as you develop and execute your Social Media strategy.