If You Don't Have a Social Media Strategy, You Will Fail

One of the biggest challenge companies face today in deploying an effective social media strategy is having a strategy at all. Companies are usually prepared to talk about the benefits of their company, services or products, but they aren’t necessarily comfortable with the concept of sharing and being open. This barrier often leaves entrepreneurs and corporate managers at a loss as to how to successfully deploy social media or worse, they jump in and shoot themselves in the foot before they even really get started.

Jeremiah Owyang from Web Strategy recommends that “companies have a ‘customer strategy’ not a ‘Twitter or Facebook strategy’. He reasons that to start in social media means you have to first understand the social behavior of your customers.

Companies may want to jump into the mainstream to be seen at the popular spots like Facebook and Twitter, and so they set off with some standard marketing blurbs and even links to some testimonials and product or service demos and descriptions on their website.

This is where the trouble begins.

The research phase is skipped because the value may not be understood. Without digging in, you risk wasting time and effort and possibly even expense in a network that might not be ripe for your business model. This isn’t to say that someday it might not be, but maybe this isn’t where you focus today. Another risk is that you are having the wrong conversation with the right people. What that means is that if you are posting irrelevant or self-serving content, you risk turning these people away.

For example, when someone follows me on Twitter, I take a look at their profile and if their stream is nothing more than marketing tweets, I don’t follow them back. I don’t think I differ much in this practice among serious Tweeters. I choose to not have my twitter stream filled with someone else’s sales pitches. The gold mine on Twitter comes when you engage in conversations, just like any relationship, it takes time.

Without doing the research you won’t know how to reach the people you desire. ‘Build it and they will come’ is not the way it works typically. You should spend some time first discovering the who, the what, the where, the when, and the why. When you have the data from those questions, then you can begin to create a strategy for the type of content to share and where best to share it.

A word of advice is to create a strategy that has nothing to do with selling! Social media should be about building a network and gaining exposure. Your strategy should comprise these six components:

1. Your keywords and phrases
2. Your target audience
3. Where your audience is engaging (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.)
4. The Gist: the topic or general area of content that is most likely to attract and engage this audience
5. Arsenal of resources for where you are going to find new and interesting content to share
6. Your Gist: just like No. 4, but things you are going to create such as blogs, white papers, surveys, videos, free ebooks or guides.

With the new emphasis of Google’s real time search, Twitter seems to be the perfect platform, but there is a caveat. Google is selective and they take quality of the tweeter and the tweet into account. Therefore just getting a Twitter account and blasting away sales pitches probably won’t have any impact on your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. However, if you take the time to build up a strong following, get on other Tweeter’s lists, RT often, and get retweeted as a result, Google will take notice.

Retweet

Once you start, retweet the posts from those whose attention you seek – they will appreciate those gestures. Also, retweet posts you find interesting or relevant to your area of expertise or that your followers might find interesting.

Ask and answer

Answer someone’s question on Twitter – if you aren’t sure you can test out @ianswr to see if there are any questions you would like to answer. Even better – ask a question. Not a question that is a typical sales opener but a genuine question that either gives you the pulse on what is going on out in the world or can offer assistance or direction that you seek.

Join in conversations

Another strategy (which takes some research time) is finding customers of yours or even of your competitor’s that are already on line and watch and listen to what they talk about. Join in the conversation or address any issues or concerns. The most important thing is that you sound interested in them and willing to be helpful. Not trying to make a sale.

I focused mostly on Twitter in this post because it is the most accessible of all the social sites out there. There are fewer barriers and with over 100 million registered users it is a great sea of opportunity. The suggestions here are relevant to any social network, although each works differently and has different best practices associated, this should give you an idea of what you might want to think about before you jump in to the mix.

I would love to hear about some of the strategies you’ve employed and how they have worked or not. And if you have something to add to this post, by all means, jump right in!