Social Media Strategy--You Need A-PIE, part 2

This is is the second of a two-part post from Social Media 101 on building an effective social media strategy. In the first post, we covered the first two letters of the strategy acronym, "A" and "P"--Assess and Plan. See the post here. In this post, we will cover the second two pieces of social media strategy, "I" and "E"--Implement and Evaluate. 

"I" is For Implement

You have listened and documented and planned. You understand where you want to go, you have an idea how much time, money, and people your plan will take. You've listened to your stakeholders in-house and out, and you know where to reach them. You've prioritized what you can do now for success and what you will implement later.

Your main tool for implementing your strategy is going to be an editorial calendar. I set mine up with Excel. The editorial calendar should schedule basic updates for each tool (regular updates should have a purpose, such as a poll each Monday), indicate who is responsible for each application and how much daily time should be allotted for each tool. Also schedule time in to the calendar for professional development on a daily/weekly basis which would include setting up an RSS reader of some sort with top social media "how-to" sites, or making up a "social media curator" list on Twitter of those people who tweet out links to good "how-to" articles. Start with @cosidanews. Then, subscribe to http://www.socialmediatoday.com/ daily newlsetter of top blog posts on social media.  See the link below in the Facebook section for a good example of an editorial calendar.I do mine one month at a time. Next, a word about the tools.

Five Questions

Basically, there are five questions to ask yourself before picking a tool out of the toolbox:
1. What problem/opportunity/deliverable does this tool solve?
2.What value does it add to our overall strategy? What will it accomplish?
3. What target audience does it serve? (don't guess--look at the stats)
4. Does it fit in our time, resources and people plan?
5. How will we measure it? (ROI)

Basic Tools

Having answered the questions above, scan this list of basic tools. The order of importance and comments have been gleaned from informal research I've done in my social media workshops.
1. Interactive Website: Invest some money in making your website fan-friendly. Remember, the first priority here is fans, not media. You can have a press room on your website, if you like, but this is fan central. Make it user-friendly on the front and backend. This is your home base, the trunk of the communications tree. Make it fun and interactive. There should be icon links to all your social media above the fold. I would also suggest a video player above the fold.

Here are some quick questions to answer about your website: Does the domain name make sense and is it memorable? Do fans know where they are by the design of the home page? Is there a clear path to answers visitors will frequently ask such as contact info, schedule of events and scores? Does the home page include images? video? Are you capturing emails on the home page? Are there stories and links to info other than just straight news stories (academic and community service success stories?)  Do you regularly delete out-of-date content?Do you understand and implement basic search engine tactics? Do you have Google Analytics embedded in your website?

2. Facebook page: Where your website is more broadcast in nature, the Facebook (FB) page is engagement central. FB is a place where you will create a community of interactive fans. I won't go into detail about FB here, but delegate this task to someone who wants to do it. FB's mantra is change, so make a commitment to stay on top of it. I would strongly suggest doing an editorial calendar. This will ensure that you are following a strategy of engagement here. If you use Facebook for broadcasting only, it will be a waste of your time. Here's a link to one of the best instructional posts I've seen on setting up an editorial calendar for Facebook. Just remember, slow growth...if you stick to the strategy, they will come. If you sputter, do some research, look at best practices of others, or seek some input from those who know.

3. Twitter: Twitter feeds have evolved  into news broadcast tools. I see nothing wrong with this at all. Many people now have Twitter on their phones, and mobile is a great way to get quick updates of game scores, news articles and event feeds. Twitter can also be an effective channel for promotions, when coupled with other mediums. See Bill Smith's last few blog posts on the "Vote Mallet" promotion.

4. Other tools: In the coming weeks, we'll be looking at the social media tool box in the continuing series on Social Media 101 so I won't go into detail here. We'll look at Foursquare and other location-based apps, mobile phone apps, blogging, streaming video, event-day feeds, online video, and several other tools that enhance communications. Stay tuned.

"E" is for Evaluate

When all is said and done, evaluation is a constant. It isn't something you do once, it's a commitment to test and see if what you're doing is working and how to make it better. Return on investment (ROI) is the biggest question mark with social media. Yet, most of the research to this point indicates that social media has a much larger ROI than more costly traditional media. So why are administrators and communicators dragging their feet? The answer seems to be ignorance, or lack or understanding. Very few administrators and communicators are taking the time to develop a well-defined social media strategy that blends with their traditional marketing. Too many times, social media is an "add-on," sort of a, "we'll try it and if it doesn't work, we'll forget about it."

To give you a quick view of evaluation tools, I made up a matrix for a social media summit I did this summer (see it on slide #19 on this presentation).In the right hand column of the matrix is a "free" evaluation tool for each one of the main social media applications. Learn how to use each one to track the effectiveness of your social media efforts.  This presentation also gives a good primer for most of the main social media tools.

There are two key questions to answer to guarantee social media success. First, why do we want to do it? Hint: Everybody's doing it is not the right answer. Second, can we commit to doing it right (strategy, resources, time, professional development, and commitment to long run)?

What's your social media strategy?