Make social media a capability not a campaign:

Make social media a capability not a campaign:

Created by: Dirk Shaw, Social Media Strategist

4 steps to create a sustainable social media program.

It seems like everywhere you turn someone is talking about social media.

It’s adoption and the volume that people are creating content has companies scratching their heads on how to engage in social media.

?

The question is no longer should we participate in social

media. It is how do we get started?

Getting started requires more than simply setting up outpost on sites like Twitter & Facebook.

Social media metrics alone are meaningless.

That is until you can show which ones led to achieving business goals!

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Predicting social media value implies you can repeat a past success.

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Companies that engage in an uncoordinated manner

Have difficulties replicating success.

Which makes predicting future value almost

impossible.

4 steps to a sustainable social media program

Listen: Listening to the conversation is as important as

participating.

Each group will listen and respond to different things

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A marketer may want to know what it’s competition is doing.

A product manager will want to understand how customers feel about new products while identifying latent needs.

A communications person might want to understand sentiment.

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To achieve business goals it will require each of these groups to listen in a synchronized manner.

Learning: Turn insights into action

The biggest challenge is acting on what you hear.

Using monitoring solutions can streamline collaboration for acting on insights gained from social

media.

Engaging: Participation should be informed by listening.

The number of tools and places for companies to engage with customers can be overwhelming.

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Many companies simply skip the listening part and jump right into the conversation.

This is not the right approach..

Spending time where customers are not leads to a lack of results.

Poor results means less investment will be made into social media programs.

To avoid this. Define the role of each outpost, how it supports goals and who will be responsible for it.

Experimentation and prototyping is an essential step to making anything repeatable.

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This makes the role of experience planners even more essential.

Engaging social experiences integrate websites with earned media.

By defining the roles of each outpost AND knowing how they work together will deliver the most relevant

experience.

Replicate: Now that you have successfully accomplished a goal, can you do it again?

The ability to replicate allows you stop looking thru the rear view and start predicting future success.

Innovative companies are not successful because they came up with a clever idea.

Innovative companies know how to replicate success and refine things along the way.

The same is true with social media. It must become the way you do business.

Document each success. Capture metrics, who was involved and how you would do it differently.

Create guides that enable others to repeat, refine and mature as the organization grows.

Sharing success stories is a great way to get others excited and willing to dedicate resources to social media.

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Having a vision of where you're going allows you successfully align social media to goals, people and processes.

Listen: Listening to the conversation is as important as

participating.

Learning: Turn insights into action

Replicate: Now that you have successfully accomplished a goal, can you do it again?

Can you replicate social media success?

Twitter: @dirkmshawBlog: www.dirkshaw.comWeb: www.vignette.com