Archive for March, 2009

With Twitter going mainstream and the number of social media experts, strategists and consultants on the scene, I thought it was high time to interject with some thoughts, seen as everyone else is. If you read my previous post “Brands on the rise” this ties in closely. Getting your brand socialised will become increasingly important in the future, for Internet Marketing.

So what should you consider for your business from a social media strategy, other than the need to show a return and the potential difficulty in measuring a return, be it financial or otherwise?

Also, while many agencies use social media as another channel for creative ideas to generate brand awareness or sales, this is not about campaigns using social media as a channel. This is about companies engaging with social media in a well thought out strategy. Setting up processes with the objective of increasing brand awareness and sales through ongoing relevant and value adding interaction with customers and potential customers. If you do have a campaign, you would these social media processes to deliver on the campaign and own them, not let your agencies own them.

Key activities to include in your social media strategy include:

1. Social media policies
2. Social media audit
3. Social media strategy
4. Social media operationalisation and ongoing monitoring

1. Social Media Policies

Have you got any guidelines, advice, communication for staff as to how they may or may not interact with online media while on company time, through the company network or as an ambassador of your brand. If you have people in your workforce under 55 years old, in fact if you have people in your workforce, trust me they are engaged somewhere, be it LinkedIN, FaceBook, FlickR or Twitter.

Do you have formal advice for them on:

• Whether they can represent the brand, e.g. commenting on an industry issue n a blog as a member of your company
• Whether they can mention customers, e.g Twittering about a new pitch or a customer experience
• What internal information can be discussed, e.g. Blogging about staff cuts
• Privacy e.g. including pictures from the office party of drunken colleagues in fancy dress in their public FlickR account More >