Social Media Strategy

Companies large and small are rushing to understand and get involved in social media. But most of the agencies and consultants who are being paid to establish social media campaigns for corporations are afraid to tell their clients three things they don’t want to hear.

1. Everyone Must Work Together

In most big companies, IT, digital, marketing and sales not only don’t work together, they compete with each other. Until they start collaborating as a team, you will not succeed in social media.

2. Top Management Must Be On Board

If the direction doesn’t come from the very top, managers, who have myriad reasons to fear change, will hang on to the status quo.

Despite the best intentions of agencies and consultants, social media integration is bound to meet huge resistance until top management says it’s OK to spend time and money to integrate it into the company’s marketing and culture.

3. Don’t Expect Overnight Success

Sure there are videos that go viral, contests that attract a lot of buzz, and Facebook pages that get tons of fans. But these tend to be the exception, most corporate and business social media campaigns tend to take time to build up the momentum and gather some steam. It may take time, but it’s cheap to produce and the brand exposure and client feed back is invaluable.

Once you have created the community, listen to it. Doing so will help you build customer trust and loyalty.

Where Should Your Company Start?

Realizing that employing social media in the marketing mix is a long-term commitment to change, the best way to start is to pick manageable, measurable goals.

Pick a small number of social media goals for the coming year. Some possibilities:

• Turn the company newsletter into an internal blog and give all employees the ability to contribute
• Establish a social media policy for employee participation in social media on company time and beyond
• Let employees vote on the best ideas suggested by other employees
• Resolve to respond to customer service issues within three hours, via social media

Don’t try to do all of these things at once. Pick the ones that are most likely to be possible for your company to start and sustain.