The Importance Of Having A Social Media Strategy And Planned Content
2012 is going to see social media develop and grow even more. No longer the preserve of geeks and teenagers, social media is now recognised as form of marketing that is being used readily by big corporations and small businesses to spread their messages.
Organisations can no longer just dip their toes in and ‘have a go’ at social media. To have an impact and credible presence on platforms like Facebook and Twitter they need a cohesive social media strategy and plan for content.
These are some tools you can use and things to consider when creating such a plan:
1. Review your general marketing/PR activity for the year. Is there anything that lends itself to being talked about solely, or heavily just through your social media channels e.g. participation in a recognised event, launch of a new product, partnering with other organisations?
2. Decide where you are looking to push traffic to from any activity. Your blog, your website, a bespoke website/landing page or another social media channel.
3. Use all activity as an opportunity to gain more fans/followers and tag and engage with other organisations.
4. Look up what national days/weeks are planned for the year: http://projectbritain.com/specialdays.htm
Do any ‘fit’ with your organisations activities/products? If so plan some activity to coincide with them and then you can tag any tweets/updates and become part of the trending topic that will inevitably happen to mark the national day/week.
5. Continually monitor your feeds and trending topics to see if there is anything relevant to your organisation that you can hook into.
6. Use photos and video regularly as part of updates and encourage fans to upload photos and videos and tag you in them. In general an update with a link will encourage 37% engagement whilst and update with a video will encourage 45% engagement (source: Eloqua).
7. Consider running a competition (being careful to abide by the rules for the platform you are running it on). Even a simple competition such as giving something away when you reach, say 500 followers on Twitter can increase engagement and reach.
All activity should have the objective of raising your organisations profile, spreading key messages and engaging.
If this all seems a bit daunting you can always employ the expertise of a social media agency to help you with this stage and set you on the path to being active and engaging in the world of social media.
Does Your Organisation Need a Social Media Policy?
There is no doubt that social media has a strong presence in almost every organisation. Even if your organisation is not using social media as a marketing tool, your employees are most likely using it in your time and on your hardware and, more importantly, talking about you.
It is possible to sack an employee for ranting about your organisation via social media or online content – if you have a robust social media policy in place.
However, there are two ways to handle this…
Does your organisation see the use of social media by its employees as a positive thing? Are you the kind of open-minded, forward thinking business that would look to create a policy that encourages the use of social media but with some guidelines attached?
Used effectively by employees, social media platforms can enhance and spread the values of your brand. With some training and guidance, key employees can be used as ambassadors and a carefully thought out, but understated, policy maybe all that is needed to encourage and manage this use.
If your organisation sees the use of social media by employees as a waste of time and a potential threat, then you should look to introduce a robust and hard-hitting policy that makes it clear to your employees what their restrictions are and leaves no room for doubt.
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