If You Only Do *Five Things in Social Media
We’ve talked about Social Media monitoring, policy-making, blogging and engagement in the first four of this five-part series. In my opinion, the FIFTH thing you should do, if you do nothing else, is: develop a CONTENT CREATION strategy.
Arguably, “blogging” is part of that content creation strategy, but I am talking about “what else” you are going to produce by way of shareable, compelling content.
“Shareability” is the key here: if you post a video to YouTube or your blog, but nobody sees or shares it, you’ve just wasted your time & money (though at least you didn’t hurt your organic SEO). In other words, the content has to be good, it has to be relevant.
“Content” can take many forms.
If you’re a restaurant, maybe you decide that the most relevant content you can offer is a bunch of coupons to local Twitterati and Yelpers.
If you’re a B2B software company, maybe you decide to demystify your product via a series of 1–minute videos on your 10–best-features.
If you make sneakers, maybe you decide to send your CEO on a world tour to investigate the product manufacturing process, via a series of blog posts, from “rubber sole” (jungles of Bali?!) to “leather uppers” (moo!) to the negotiation of a new retail partnership (ka-ching).
Again, let me say it one final time in this series: follow Forrester’s POST method. People, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics. Once you know WHO you want to reach, you soon realize WHAT makes them tick. You get a sense, by interacting with them, what type of content they respond to, and because you’ve started ENGAGING with them, you’ve got a ready group of prospects and customers ready to help you spread the word.
Now … I’ll bet you thought #5 would be “Measurement.” Maybe that’d be #6. But as important as it is, I cringe a little inside when corporate executives start-off a conversation about Social Media by saying, “First off, measuring the success of this Social Media stuff will be paramount.”
Why? Because if you can’t show off a pretty ROI chart to the CEO, you’ll stop engaging with customers and prospects?
Did you insist on seeing ROI when your parents told you to “Eat your vegetables?”
Create relevant, compelling content and engage in the right places with people who might care about your brand. Add value to the community. ROI will follow.
Posted on: July 8, 2010 at 11:21 am By Todd Defren
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Did you insist on seeing ROI when your parents told you to “Eat your vegetables?”
Of course we did, but as children we just didn’t know at the age of 4 what ROI meant but we did a cost/ benefit analysis every time. For example- if you eat your carrots that will help you see in the dark- how cool is that. If eat your veg you will be able to get ice cream for pudding- a no brainer.
The ROI was there up front in the discussion every time and there was an immediate pay off in a number of cases.
If it’s an act of faith then that’s what it is. Treat it as such.
Great post! very important points… Thanks for the information!
I agree that too much focus at first is one measurement. Social media takes patience and it’s hard to know promise results right away or in a set time.
GREAT points and I really like the idea for the company selling sneakers.
Excellent guidelines! Thanks for sharing your wisdom that confirms what I already see working for my clients and myself.
Enjoy,
Christine
Unfortunately in most companies you never get to creating “relevant, compelling content and engaging in the right places with people” unless you have some business case and cost-benefit justification. I know large, successful companies that won’t even allow a project to propose an analysis unless the final program cost is known and presented to a capital committee. Not saying I agree with it, but it is reality.
The smartest people are those who can translate complex concepts into simple, everyday language:
“Did you insist on seeing ROI when your parents told you to “Eat your vegetables?”"
How much better to do it with humor? Social Media IS complex for most companies and rife with intimidation, ego, and ‘secret sauce.’
I appreciate this post from as a consumer and as a seller of social media. Well done.
You missed one important point about why ROI is overvalued at the beginning: this stuff takes time to develop and grow.
I just wrote about a small business that gave up, clearly because there was no ROI — but there was a lot of untapped potential. http://ike4.me/o110