3 Hot Tips About Social Media Strategies

Companies large and small are rushing to understand and get involved in social media. But most of the agencies and consultants who are being paid to establish social media campaigns for corporations are afraid to tell their clients three things they don't want to hear.

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1. Everyone Must Work Together

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In most big companies, IT, digital, marketing and sales not only don't work together, they compete with each other. Until they start collaborating as a team, you will not succeed in social media.
For example, I recently handled social media advertising for a major retail chain's holiday microsite. The promotion was conceived by the digital department and involved augmented reality. But the IT department refused to allow a link from the homepage to the microsite because the microsite's design was done by an external agency.

Further, the marketing department refused to allow a dedicated e-mail to go out to the company's mailing list, and when placed in the company's normal promotional e-mail, the link to the microsite was lost in a sea of weekly specials.

These hurdles made it very hard to drive traffic to the microsite.
But more than that, this lack of internal collaboration and contact makes any kind of social media involvement virtually impossible.

A company that hasn't learned to listen to its own employees, and encourage them to collaborate internally, is not likely to succeed in integrating social media tools into its marketing mix, no matter what agency or consultant they hire.

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2. Top Management Must Be On Board

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If the direction doesn't come from the very top, managers, who have myriad reasons to fear change, will hang on to the status quo.

Despite the best intentions of agencies and consultants, social media integration is bound to meet huge resistance until top management says it's OK to spend time and money to integrate it into the company's marketing and culture.

Example: The marketing team of an international manufacturer of electronics wanted to know how the company could begin to use social media and we discussed the many possibilities.
Listening and responding to what customers are saying about the brand in social media can supply good intelligence and give the company a chance to interact with customers.

"Our management doesn't want to listen to customers," the PR director said. "They want to talk to them."
However, that doesn't work anymore. The status quo is dead. Any company that isn't willing to listen to customers and be nimble and quick enough to respond, and, when necessary, change, will soon be unable to compete with smart, tech-savvy companies that can turn on a dime.

Willingness to change is the new bottom line for every business today. But top management has to buy in before change can begin.

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3. Don't Expect Overnight Success

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Sure there are videos that go viral, contests that attract a lot of buzz, and Facebook () pages that get a lot of fans. But what comes after those efforts?

After the tools change (and they surely will) how will social media fit into the company's overall strategy and help it reach long-term goals?

With the scissors brand losing market share to foreign knock-offs, the company enlisted several actual crafters to blog, attend events, and represent the brand to customers as part of a new community strategy.
"If you empower your customers to become your evangelists, you'd better be prepared to continue it," says Brains on Fire's Geno Church. "It's permanent when you engage in this type of marketing."

Once you have created the community, listen to it. Fiskars made several changes to its products based on what it discovered through its Fiskateers community. Doing so helped build customer trust and loyalty.

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Where Should Your Company Start?

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Realizing that employing social media in the marketing mix is a long-term commitment to change, the best way to start is to pick manageable, measurable goals.

Pick a small number of social media goals for the coming year. Some possibilities:

- Turn the company newsletter into an internal blog and give all employees the ability to contribute
- Establish a social media policy for employee participation in social media on company time and beyond
- Let employees vote on the best ideas suggested by other employees
- Resolve to respond to customer service issues within three hours, via social media

Don't try to do all of these things at once. Pick the ones that are most likely to be possible for your company to start and sustain.

B.L. Ochman is a Managing Director of Proof Digital Media; publisher of What's Next Blog, and co-founder of pet site Pawfun.com.  

Social Media: Not “One Size Fits All

Most companies are jumping on the social media marketing wagon and understand its role in brand reputation management and customer feedback. And why wouldn't they since it is quickly becoming one of the most intimate and non-invasive means of marketing? The "follow us," "be our fan," and recognizable Facebook and Twitter icons on company marketing materials  are growing and marketing professionals have come to understand it is necessary to have a presence in the space... and let people know you are there.

Once companies garner the internal support needed to initiate a social media commitment (and it is a commitment), they begin thinking about strategy, ROI, marketing integration, etc. and realize the depth of this medium can be overwhelming. Companies are learning from others' mistakes and smartly putting an emphasis on careful and effective execution and without proper planning, this is rarely accomplished.

To execute social media the right way, the next question a company should ask is "how do we get started?" and "what should we be doing?" Those questions are paramount when crafting a social media strategy since there is not a "one size fits all" approach.
When planning an approach, there are a few key components to consider:

• What is the overall goal for a social media campaign?
  Without identifying why a company wants to get into social, a strategy is impossible.
• What is important to the brand and to the target customer?
  What is the best use of social base on the company goals and current services?
• What do customers want to know or share (i.e. comments, images, videos, etc.)?
  Do customers simply need a way of informal communication to share opinions or do they need/want more of a service focus?
• What type of online presence already exists (if there is a presence, how can it be optimized)? Does the company current have an ad-hoc approach that can be organized to increase effectiveness or does the presence exist only on the customer side?

Carefully thinking about these considerations and crafting honest answers will help determine:

• Which social media outlets and accounts will be created and why (i.e. what will be the Twitter account focus?).
• How the social efforts will be maintained (updated and monitored). Are there internal resources or does the effort need a combination of internal resources and outsourcing?
• The positioning of the accounts, which includes the focus (i.e. which accounts will be used to encourage feedback or manage brand reputation).

After these considerations are evaluated and the questions answered, a comprehensive social media marketing strategy can be created and execution can be planned accordingly.
This will get a company off to a great social media start and encourage success!

Jen Cohen is a social media and marketing maven knocked down many times in 26 yrs. Something Creative http://somethingcreativemarketing.com

50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

Check out this great presentation on Social Media strategies and tactics. Even though the presentation is geared towards nonprofit, anyone can learn a few new tips and tricks and apply it to their own business.