The age of Social Media experimentation is over, yet many organizations still struggle with how content, community management, and social media can best be used to build relationships. We have a track record of innovation in this space since 1994.
Creating and optimizing a social media presence is not just about setting up a Facebook page or Twitter profile. It’s about creating an integrated and socially facing arm of your organization, leveraging a defined audience to engage with their network – and you. It is tightly bound to your brand – in look, feel, and tone. It cuts across organizational silos, and is just as important for recruiting and operations as it is for marketing. Most importantly, Social Media initiatives need to have specific goals, aimed at specific audiences, and be in tune with your organization’s overall strategy. It’s not just about a “campaign” – it’s about laying a foundational strategy that supports the organization as it engages with its stakeholders.
Despite the apparent opportunity, Social Media is fraught with danger: identity theft, brand hijacking, public embarrassment, and productivity loss to name but a few. The development of internal Social Media policy and training is a critical (and often forgetten) part of a strategy.
How we can help:
- Inbound Marketing Strategy: Content is the foundation of inbound marketing, as it demonstrates your expertise, builds trust, and can reduce service costs. An inbound marketing strategy connects this content to a target audience using an appropriate channel: Social Media, along with the web, email, and marketing automation. The goal of the inbound marketing strategy is to improve lead generation, improve lead scoring, and shorten the sales cycle.
- Executive Briefing on Social Media Issues and Trends: Before senior leadership makes any decisions, it’s important for everyone to be using the same vocabulary and use the same data points. This is a 90 minute briefing on upcoming issues and trends, with an introduction to several Social Media analytical models.
- Social Media Policy Check: Social media has a dark side that can put the organization at serious risk of identity theft, brand hijacking, lost productivity, and more. This framework is an assessment and set of recommendations for Social Media policies and guidelines.
- Social Media Strategy Audit: We assess your existing Social Media initiatives against a number of pre-defined criteria, and then provide strategic and tactical recommendations to improve their effectiveness.
- Social Media Strategy:Every organization is unique: different organizational strategy, different goals, different audiences, different resource bases, and differing priorities between internal departments. We understand that Social Media is not just a marketing or advocacy function, but is critical for Recruiting, IT, Governance, and other areas of the organization. Our approach to strategy means that each group can adopt as they see fit – but at the end of the day, their must be alignment and momentum.
- Employee training: We can provide functional training to specific groups (eg using Social Media to grow sales), general training to support risk policies, or executive training to develop profile/reduce risk.
- Community management: Curating content to grow an online community requires dedicated time and agility. For some clients, we either manage their communities completely, or provide training for community managers.
- Content development: We can write and edit content for the web, marketing automation sequences, printed collateral, and social media.
- Campaign development and design. Using Social Media to launch a product, influence stakeholders, or build a community is often pegged to a real-world event. We brainstorm and execute creative campaigns built around your event or objective.
- Crisis Communication plan: While better to do the thinking beforehand, sometimes issues can grow out of control on the social web. We can provide emergency counsel, content, and/or overall management of your organization’s response.
108 ideaspace can help you map and build the content strategy, and then help you execute it – from ideation, to writing (or video), to marketing the content, to capturing leads.
We have a deep and long knowledge in this area – some of our resources:
- Online PR and Social Media for Experts 5th Edition: Our book for people with real-world expertise looking to amplify it online.
- Online PR and Social Media for Associations: Our book on Social Media for associations and not-for-profits
- Social Media Benchmarking and Best Practices Survey: Our survey of over 400 Associations on their practices and plans in the area.
- Social Media for Business: One of our 7 books on the topic.
- Make It Happen Tipsheet: Over 550 Tipsheets on Social Media and business.
To learn more about helping you build your own social media voice and community, contact us.
(Randall Craig also speaks on Social Media at events and to corporate groups. See speaking topics at www.RandallCraig.com)