Top 5 keys to a successful social media strategy
Easy Does It
With the ability to scale ideas, networks, crowd sourcing, and product research to a virtually unlimited level; it is quite easy to jump in head first into social media marketing and overexpose yourself. Make sure you take things slow and build up a good knowledge base of the conversations that are happening so you don’t burn yourself, or more importantly your customers, out. Start nice and easy on a couple social networks until you get a good feel for the tone of voice to take in the conversation, then start to add more and more networks to your campaign.
Be Social Offline as Well
Educate your employees about your social networking campaign and encourage them to participate. The majority of your employees are already checking myspace, facebook, digg and youtube while they work or at least on their breaks so why not educate them in how to represent your company at the same time?
Stick to your Brand
Have a strong, clear brand across all your networks. Keep to a consistent branding so when someone cross follows you on Twitter and Myspace the pages look the same. Stick to using the same colors, logo and taglines on all the sites. Most of your companies will have a branding guide (if you don’t you should) so make sure to follow the guidelines in it for how you’re allowed to use your logo. You want your online presence to match your printed presence. If there are no guidelines for internet or social usage, sit down with the other departments and brainstorm one out. Better yet, contact us and let the experts help.
Clear and Consistent Voice
Try to communicate to your audience with the same style voice across all your platforms. If you are going to be witty on twitter then carry that over to Myspace and Facebook. Also, try to keep each network updated in timely matters with relevant information. If you send a tweet out about a conference you just got back to make sure you have some pictures from it on flickr and your videos on youtube. This will help encourage cross platform following.
Breathe Often
In other words… Don’t hold your breath. Good social media campaigns take time. You can’t expect to become the webs most popular person overnight. Good social networks take months to solidify and years to mature. Take your time and the results will show up.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I’m not sure how to balance it, but be careful about too much consistency and too much “corporateness” attached to your efforts. The social media space tends to react indifferently (or negatively) to being “talked at” by a corporate entity.
I think (and I’m still new at this) effective social media marketing requires some level of genuine engagement that can be hard if you have to stick to the same “consistent voice”. I’ve noticed outfits like dell give their social media presence a less unified front, with their twitter accounts looking like “richardatdell” that represent a real person who also happens to be at a company.