Social Media Marketing Strategy Guide – How To Get Things Done
Having a Social Media strategy means nothing if you can’t actually do it. In the last post, I outlined the need for not only having a plan, but also how to execute a Social Media Strategy.
Photo by Blumpy via Flickr
By addressing these areas, a company can better position itself for initial success and improve its ability to scale a Social Media program. These 9 steps will be covered in detail across 3 separate posts.
In this post, I’ll cover how to execute the middle 3 stages of the strategy; the ones most traditionally associated with Social Media Marketing Strategy.
9 Social Media Strategy Execution Steps
- Start with Business Objectives
- Staff a Diverse Team
- Study Customer Research
- Structure Problem Solving around Customer Needs
- Solve Problems Through Brainstorms
- Create a Social Media Portfolio
- Establish a Set of Metrics
- Learn by Doing
- Learn, Fix, Then Apply
4 – Structure Problem Solving around Customer Needs
What Does This Mean?
- Anyone can sit down and come up with 999 or so “great ideas” on paper.
- But, executing a Social Media idea becomes easier if it’s clear how it solves a customer problem.
- If you don’t understand the detail behind the problem, your efforts in Social Media could resemble a Cure Chasing a Disease.
How to Execute
- Organize all the customer research you collected in Step 3 into themes or insights.
- Consider doing some ethnographic research to help your team members better understand the problem.
- Create stimuli for a brainstorming session around these customer themes or insights.
5 – Solve Problems Through Brainstorms
What Does This Mean?
- It’s time for the fun part!!! Figuring out all the cool tools at your disposable and how they can help your customers and your business.
- You want to hold a brainstorming, or ideation, or Idea-Lab…whatever, to come up with ideas.
How to Execute
- Assemble a large group of people across groups like employees, business partners, suppliers, or even customers.
- Make sure you have a diverse group. You want some Social Media Experts and some people more knowledgeable in the Industry
- Use the customer insights as a way to ground the participants in the lives of your consumers
- Encourage participants explain their idea in terms that solve problems
- Avoid criticizing, bashing, or dismissing any idea at this stage
6 – Create a Social Media Portfolio
What Does This Mean?
- Social Media is too new to know exactly what is going to work, so try a bunch of ideas on a smaller scale.
- Think of Social Media Strategy as a portfolio of projects, just like a VC firm or a conglomerate. This helps to spreads risk, improve chance of success, and embed skills across your organization
How to Execute
- Before starting, agree upon who will make the final decision
- Organize the ideas you brainstormed in Step 5 into similar portfolio (or platform) areas. Examples could be consumer need, emerging trend, or strategic priority.
- Discuss the benefits, drawbacks, risks, and rewards of each portfolio or platform area with a strategic team.
- Feel free to “copy and paste” ideas into other portfolio or platform areas to make the portfolio more robust.
- Balance your portfolio across areas like the following:
- Business Function
- Level of Risk
- Customer Segment
- Scope and Time Frame
- Uniqueness and Ingenuity
