Social Media Strategy: a One-Two Punch

The social media one-two punch. Don't be afraid!

Ok, so you ribbed me about my “eating an elephant” analogy in the last post – so much so, I’m changing the social media comparison to boxing. Not that I’m a fighter, but “fighting” with social media (or yourself – or your management – or…) sounds like a better fit, anyway. Besides, the process of getting your head – and business – wrapped around social media can feel like a bit of a street brawl.

Picking up where we left off at the last post, you’re now clear on your business objective and your intended audience / social community (see my last post, complete with sample form you can use). Armed with this intelligence, think about using a one-two punch approach to getting started in social media. How long you take getting from one punch to the other depends on your objectives, your resources and your timeline.

Punch One: Participate in existing communities.  You’ve heard that it costs less to get repeat business from existing customers than new business from new customers. The same concept applies here. Find where your audience is already congregating online. What blogs do they read; what forums do they follow; what FB pages do they “like”; what links do the share? Follow, tweet and share where they are. Comment on blogs and posts. Become ‘known’ in the communities your where your audience is already present. You’ll become known within those communities which will generate awareness, conversation and traffic.

With regular and consistent participation you’ll quickly see feedback & responses.

Pro: Get started faster, see results & feedback faster. Lower resource requirement
Con: Passive social approach – it’s not ‘your’ community, not ‘your’ content – limits long-term ability to leverage successes.

Punch Two: Create and moderate your own community(ies), as well as continuing to participate outside. Creating your own social media communities is a strategic, long-term approach to marketing and communications. Here you are making a sizable investment of valuable resources. You are committing to create content on a regular basis (blog posts, videos, podcasts, webinars, etc) to share and (hopefully) to generate consistent buzz around which your audience will engage …commune. Community. Get it? You’re now the gathering point.

Pro: Active social strategy built around ‘your’ community supports long-term, scalable successes with unlimited upside potential.
Con: Long-term social strategy requires larger resource commitment and longer time to see measurable results.

As you see, each social media strategy has different pros and cons. What is NOT different, however, is the importance of being “regular and consistent.” with either / both strategies.

• Regular and consistent content.
• Regular and consistent engagement.
• Regular and consistent monitoring and measuring.

Regular and consistent require commitment and resources – regularly and consistently.  Whichever way you go:  one-punch -  two-punch or both (would that be a knockout?) you are committing to to being present and engaged on a regular and consistent basis.

Regardless of your organization – B2C, B2B, Non-Profit, Municipality – you should be involved in SOME form of Punch One. Any organization that gives a rip what their stakeholders are thinking and doing needs to be on board with being social onine. To what extent, how many punches, etc. might ‘depend’… but there’s no way any of us can say “social media doesn’t work in my world”.