Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to DevelopYour Business Online

Chapter 68. Social Media Strategy: The Planning Stage

In coming up with the elements of a plan, I found a few surprises. One, I hadn't considered having a trial phase or project as part of a strategy. Maybe there are elements that you're not ready to roll out against your main brand. You might want to test those in a less direct way. Another surprise was that I hadn't considered the training required for internal resources until I had a conversation with Cynthia Closkey.^[230]

What follows is simply the list of elements to consider when building a social media strategy for your organization. I'm submitting it to you for consideration in the hope that you'll find it useful for your projects and so you can point out things I might have missed. Please note that every item here explodes into all kinds of subcategories and information. This is just the overview.

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: PLANNING

• Research. The internal social media evangelist looks at what might be possible (maybe by reading my stuff as a starting point).

• Trial or full plan. Decide whether you want a trial phase, perhaps not company-branded (e.g., Target stores doing an ice cream blog without any Target branding, just to try the culture of blogging).

• Goals. Without a clear understanding of your goals for the program, these steps are worthless.

• Target audience. Is this blog for customers, colleagues, coworkers, moms—who?

• End state. Once this project is running, what will improve within the company?

• Resources—internal. Who has the ...