Social Strategy…

At iGo2 we see a lot of social media tactics disguised as a social business strategy. One of the most common mistakes we see organisations making are jumping into a ‘strategy’ without understanding where they are today or considering what the objectives of their strategy should be. Secondly, they often confuse low level metrics such as fans, followers and friends with real business objectives such as increased revenue or increased market share leading to poor tactics being adopted.

We have developed an eight point framework to help organisations make the journey toward becoming a social business. The framework provides for organisations of all sizes and levels of social ‘maturity’ and guides activity regardless of where an organisation starts or is currently performing. The emphasis is on being proactive everywhere – in assessing your current situation, in creating or modifying a strategy; in creating content of value and so on.

Within each element of the framework we have supporting tools and methodologies as well as services to assist you. For example, our methodology in ASSESS utilises a four quadrant model to undertake a social assessment for your business. An assessment – that focusses on providing you with actionable insight. We need not only the raw data but an analysis of that data to understand what goals, priorities and metrics are going to deliver real business results.

A strategy is a plan of how an organisation will move from its current social assessment to its agreed business goals as it relates to the use of social media and networks to get there. Goals are key to great social strategies and they may be for sales (revenue, margin, share) or marketing (leads, programs, pipeline) or market research (monitoring, competitive, sentiment) or service (customer satisfaction, reduce service costs) or innovation (new product development, product testing, launches). But they must be tangible business goals.

If we know as a business where we are and what the goals for our use of social media are then we can create the correct social strategy for our business. The strategy will include people, processes, technology, budgets, priorities, resources and tactics to support that strategy. The most overused word in social media today is ‘engage’ but your social strategy must support three key points :

1. It must provide a path to your agreed business goals

2. It must recognise that people don’t actually want a social relationship with your brand, they want the benefits

3. It must provide you with an opportunity to be engaging – this is what will keep your customers returning

If a business doesn’t have it today then now is the time to create the social media policy guidelines to support the social strategy. Good policy guidelines need to take account of legal, financial and policy / regulatory constraints but at the same time encourage employee participation in pursuit of the business goals of the company. Not an easy balance to achieve but iGo2 can assist with the framing of your social media policy guidelines.

iGo2 provides affordable and customisable services in each area of the 8 point framework. We also provide Social Platforms to support many of these areas. Perhaps you just want the tools, or perhaps you just want the services or access to our methodologies. One size does not fit all. Call us today and we will work with you to co create a package that is right for your business