Six Steps to a Social Media Strategy

Six Steps to a Social Media Strategyaka “What does a social media strategy look like?”
Neicole M. CrepeauOnline Strategist
Website, mobile & social media design specialists

We constantly hear the term social media strategy.
But what does one look like?

Example: Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Goals, Strategy, and Success Criteria
Detailed Criteria and Interim Measures
Suggested measurement processes
Tactical Plan
Phase 1 Tasks
Phase 2 Tasks
Phase 3 Tasks
…
Tools and Processes
Getting Your Facebook Vanity URL
Creating your Badges
Day to Day Social Media Work
Posting/Tweeting
General Monitoring, Measuring, and Reporting
Daily Measurement Tasks
Weekly Measurement Tasks
Monthly Measurement Tasks
Quarterly Measurement Tasks
Social Network Guidelines
Demographic Data
Content Recommendations

Example: Section

The strategy is a living
document—built to change.

You can plan,
you can shape the environment,
but you can’t control
the outcome.

To start,
assess your current status.
Even if you aren’t doing
social media, yet:
Where are your customers?
Where are you?
What’s being said?

Step 1:Define Your Goals

Your goals are
business goals.
What do you hope to achieve using social media?

Define up to four
discrete goals. For example:
Drive new registrations
Get partners to regularly provide end-user technical content
Get users to provide customer support to one another

Make your goals:
Business-focused
Action-oriented
Measurable
Succinct

If you can’t get a goal to
one,
action-oriented line,
it’s too fuzzy
or notgranularenough.

Step 2:Define Success Criteria

Success criteria are a criticalcomponent.
They validate goals & drive decisions
about measures, tools, and processes.

Success criteria should:
Define a timeframe
Be measurable
Include specific values
Support a single goal

Examples:
Six months post-launch of the social strategy, 10% of our new registrations can be traced back to the social channels we are working in.
One year after launch, partners are posting an average of twelve articles a month on the wiki.
One year after launch, the articles posted on the wiki receive an average three star (out of four) rating from customers.

Step 3:Create a High-Level Strategy

This is the part consultants get paid for.
Why?
It’s not easy to do…and requires specific knowledge and skills.

Knowledge about social media and the various social networks.

Marketing skills.

An understanding of your business.

Out of the box, creative thinking.

List five to ten bullets.
Action-oriented.
Create enough bullets to cover the goal from beginning to end.

Example strategy for the goalDrive new event registrations:
Gain social followers from existing online customers
Provide valuable, timely event information through social channels
Provide financial incentives to social users who register for events
Provide incentives for existing customers to promote us online/share info from us with friends/followers
Make it easy for new leads to connect socially
Participate in communities/subgroups where target customers are
Provide social places for existing and potential customers to discuss events/shows
Promote awareness among target customers of the event info available through our social channels

Step 4:Create the Tactical Plan

Now, merge your strategiesinto one, uber-strategy
delete any duplicate items

Order the strategy
logically
and chronologically.
Break the strategy into phases

Example strategy phases:

Connect online
Example strategy for a phase:
Gain social followers from existing online customers
Provide valuable, timely event information through social channels
Provide financial incentives to social users who register for events
Provide incentives for existing customers to promote us online/share info from us with friends/followers

For each bulletgo deepcreate a to-do list.
List every task required to implement that piece of the strategy.

What do you need to dofirst?
What doyou need to do next?

Need more information? Get it.

Need to make decisions? Make them.
Or at least plan for making them.

Be specific.
Be detailed.
Capture everything.

As you create the tactical plan,
hone your strategy.
Change it as needed.
Click here to see guidelines for building the tactical plan

Step 5:Define Interim Measures

The hardest part is done.
But there’s still more work.

Look at your success criteria
and your tactical plan
How will you know if you’re on track?

For each goal,
create interim measures
add measures for tactics, too.

Interim measures should:
Be specific
Have a timeframe
Click here to see guidelines for interim measures

Example interim measures:
Low-cost method: On a weekly basis, measure @’s mentioning our account and of other mentions, plus the number of new followers gained that week. Monthly, look for trends to find correlations between the number of mentions and follower gain. After three months, use the data to estimate the acquisition rate through existing followers.
High-cost method: On a weekly basis, track @’s and mentions by existing followers of our account, including the date they occurred. On a daily basis, track new followers of our account, including the date the become followers and who they are following at that time. Monthly, compile a list of the new followers who were following one of our existing followers upon acquisition, and where the existing follower mentioned us within two days of the new follower joining. Count this a follower acquisition via an existing follower. (Using this method, we could also do a deeper analysis to determine which of our followers is most influential in helping to acquire new followers.)

Step 6:List Tools & Processes

What do you need
in order to execute your strategy?
Tools and processes.

Review your success criteria and interim measures.
What tools will you need to do these measurements?

Review your tactical plan.
What tools will you need to implement it?
What processes?

Create a requirements document for your tools,
Research tools.
Pick them.

Create a list of
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Quarterly
measurement tasks

Ta da!
Seem like a lot of work?
It is.

Want help?
Contact us.
We’re Coherent Interactive.
We do social media strategies.

http://www.coherentia.com

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Six Steps to a Social Media Strategy

by Coherent Interactive, Inc. on Aug 09, 2010

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Six Steps to a Social Media Strategy — Presentation Transcript