Social Media Leaps

Developing a Strategy

The Strategy Leap: Thinking about your Social Media Goals

Everyone gets obsessed about strategy. But remember a strategy is “a plan, method, or series of maneuvers…for obtaining a specific goal or result .” (via www.dictionary.com) So, the critical question for you as a small business owner or the leader of a chamber is “what do you want to accomplish with social media efforts?”

Because you are probably pretty new to social media and the results it can create for you, its important to really focus in on one or two things that you want to accomplish as you get started. Over time, you can add to the goals as you get more comfortable and more familiar with the bounds of social media and its capabilities. Think about the entire process of figuring out what you can do with these tools as a long journey. The more you travel and see, the more ideas you’ll have for how to best use the tools to make something meaningful happen for your business.

There are a lot of frameworks, worksheets and approaches to think about how you want to get involved and get going with social media for your organization. For us, they boil down to four basic steps:

Listening

The most basic activity you can do on the social web is to tune into the conversations, people, organizations and issues that are most interesting and impactful to you, your organization, your industry, your cause or whatever else your business is all about. Social media tools create the biggest “hearing aid” ever invented. The investment of time and attention required is relatively modest and you’ll be amazed at what you hear – and, how you can use that information. If you care at all about the social web, you should at least be listening. Its easy, sometimes fun and definitely important to know what people are saying about you and your organization.

Participating

The next level is getting involved or jumping into the conversation. While listening is pretty easy to do, participating is where it gets a little scary for most people. Putting yourself and your organization’s ideas, opinions and ideas out there into the social web means “committing yourself” to being a part of the conversation. “What if someone actually responds or disagrees or tells me I’m an idiot and should never post again?” Relax. It’s all about conversations with people that have common interests. In all likelihood, unless you are obnoxious and abusive with your participation, others won’t show that discourtesy to you. However, you need to remember that if you are participating as an organization or with your personal brand, what you say does matter. Participate thoughtfully and all will be fine! When participating, you should start with just a few places that you become a regular participant. Be consistent and learn the people and the space you are participating in online. Like every real world community, there are standards, expectations and norms that take time to learn. This level of activity takes some effort and you should block off the time it requires. Five hours a week should be enough to get started. It usually takes the form of monitoring key sites or areas of focus and participating as you have something to say a few times a week or month.

Creating

The next level of participating is making a commitment to be a creator of content and information on the social web. In most cases this could be a blog, an active Twitter presence or a well updated and connected Facebook page. At this level you are contributing content, links, information, perspectives and updates regularly. The frequency could be hourly to weekly. The point is that you are making a commitment to doing more than just casually listening or participating randomly. You’ll begin to develop an audience and a reputation for content over time that should benefit your organization. At this level you should be thinking about 5-10 hours of work a week on your presence.

Leading

The vast minority of users of the social web are leading. These include people that deliver social media as a way of life, people that lead thought in an industry or community or owners of special content, information or research. Some organizations have begun to work to be the voice of their industry and have used social media to get there. Others pick a content area and decide that they are going to be the hub or connecting point for lots of other people to that space. This is a serious commitment and one that you should be prepared to staff up to accomplish. 20-30 hours of effort per week is not uncommon here. For many of these leaders, their entire business is built around their social media presence and the knowledge they have of that unique space. For a chamber this could be a commitment to a particular advocacy issue in your area. For a business this could be owning a space for the product or service you provide, its uses, applications and ongoing development.

Check out these levels of involvement or the types of users within the social media space
Forrestor Ladder: Forrestor has identified a number of different types of users of the social web and their characteristics. They also have assembled some data on the percentage of the population that is operating at each level.