Online social Media Strategy & Guidelines

Is your business interested in using social media? Are you struggling to understand the "best practices" for allowing your employees to engage in social networking, as employees? Many of our clients are asking for guidance on how to go about implementing social media as part of their online marketing strategy. This article is intended to be a guide on how to approach incorporating social media into your marketing objectives.

CREATING A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: A 10 Step Guide

1. Social Media Overviews: Create an overview of the top ten social media platforms: Del.icio.us, DocStoc, Facebook, Flickr, Friend Feed, LinkedIn, Scribd, SlideShare, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter & You Tube, including how its used and how your business might participate, e.g. brand management, customer service, knowledge management, networking.

2. Competitive Analysis: Build a social media profile analysis of a competitor or client. This might include what platforms they use, how they participate and some metrics to determine how they are successful.

3. Account creation: Create and populate an executive's social media accounts. Then, set up some time for an intern to teach the executive about the platform. (NOTE: the intern should not participate on behalf of the executive).

4. Research: Are your main media contacts using social media? If so, which platforms? Are they blogging? Using Twitter? Do they want to be contacted through any of these by your company?

5. Template creation: If you have design skills, it might be fun to create customized templates for your firm's Twitter pages or a logo/avatar for your company's employees.

6. RSS: Set up an RSS reader to monitor social media activity around your brand, your client or your industry.

7. Blog monitoring: Of the millions of blogs, probably hundreds reference your brand or industry. Conduct research about the most important blogs in your niche.

8. Blogging: Have employees/interns post about their experiences on your internal or external blog. Not only will it showcase another side to your company, namely that you're empowering your interns, but it also provides your team with important feedback.

9. Web Analysis: Conduct an internal, in-depth analysis of your corporate site. A fresh set of eyes from your target demographic might be useful.

10. Video: Editing images and video are important new media skills. Record a few interviews with executives/customers.