I’ve pooled together our team’s experience of the last two years on social media projects.
If we had known two years ago what we know now then we may have been able to move a lot quicker. Here, we share with you the biggest pitfalls we faced and solutions that worked.
1. Understand what you want to achieve
This sounds obvious. But don’t delve into social media for social media’s sake. Any social media activity should stem from your organisation’s strategy. Your objectives may change over time, but try to focus on one or two objectives at once. This will help you lever genuine benefit from your efforts.
You may wish to use social media to:
- simply listen to see what people are saying about your brand (visit the Socialbrite website for a list of tools that can help. Google Alerts is a good tool for getting started)
- raise awareness of your brand values
- educate a specific audience on a concept or share information with them by setting up a closed group
- grow a group of followers who give you feedback on new ideas and concepts
- use the Facebook Commerce facility as an e-commerce site (see JCPennys Facebook page).
Most importantly, make sure your objective contributes directly to your organisation’s strategy. As an example of what not to do, take a look at this recent case study by Marketing Week which demonstrates how Pepsi got it wrong when they focused 50% of their budget on social media activities that did not contribute to their core strategy.
2. Set straight the jargon and buzz about social media internally
To make your plan work, you need the buy-in of your internal stakeholders. So make sure that everyone knows that social media is simply another communications channel to add into the mix.
Explain the role of social media in the communications mix and give examples of what works well and what doesn’t work well, so you can manage expectations. Econsultancy’s blog is a good source of case studies.
3. Have a content plan
We found that a content plan is essential to social media activity. Our content plans are the hub of our website, blogging and social media activity.
In our experience, a big challenge with social media content is keeping it fresh. This is where using a content plan is most useful. It helps us focus on requesting and generating content. We publish content on our website and then drive traffic to it from our email communications and social media. It is a formula that has worked across all the brands we work on. Although, we are still learning about what type of content attracts the most interest.
4. Be realistic... start with small steps
Our biggest challenge is usually convincing people that an exciting vision starts with small steps.
Depending on your brand, motivating people to comment in social media can require a lot of effort.
Also, remember to explain internally that your followers are likely to only represent a proportion of your audience. Comments on Twitter/Facebook may give you some insights and generate a buzz. (Sky gained 200,000 Facebook fans in one weekend by generating discussion over the start of the Premier League season.) But three focus groups may indeed be less time-consuming and more insightful.
To grow your followers, start by:
- asking colleagues to interact; for example, by liking the Facebook page and inviting their contacts to like the page
- adding share buttons to email signatures and website
- communicating your social media pages on all offline communication tools
- liking/following/linking with other influential pages and organisations who, in turn, may reciprocate
- giving your followers a reason to follow you, whether you offer vouchers/discounts or provide interesting and valuable content
- engaging followers – social media is meant to be a conversation, so respond to comments/feedback promptly and encourage engagement on Twitter/Facebook by posing questions etc.
5. Experiment
No matter how well you prepare, it takes time to build up a strategy that will deliver real value to your organisation.
Use this time to experiment and find the things that work for you in relation to your objectives. Work out what about them worked and build it into the strategy as you go forward.
We'd love to hear how you are using social media. Feel free to leave your comments below...
Or take our Social Media Questionnaire.
