Our Social Identity Checklist

Here is our 10-step social media strategy checklist. By going through this checklist helps us to build a comprehensive and result driven plane of attack.

 

 

What are you trying to Accomplish?

Are you looking for more leads, more direct sales, greater brand awareness, conversions, or brand engagement? Understanding what you’re trying to actually do with your social media presence should be the first step in developing a social media strategy.

Why Social Media?

Is your audience there? Do you want to build stronger relationships with customers and prospects? Tap into online word-of-mouth channels? You have a niche audience that’s difficult to reach otherwise? The best way to avoid recklessly jumping on the bandwagon is to examine why the wagon is the best way to get where you’re going before you hop on.

What kind of social media will help you to best achieve your goals?

Do you need to utilize social networking sites, blogs, real-time updates (e.g., Twitter), social news sites, media-sharing sites, review/directory sites, virtual worlds, or display ads on social media sites? In some respects, talking about a social media presence is like talking about having an advertising presence: you must specify what you’re doing and where you’re going to place it. Examine the characteristics of the type of social media you want to have a presence on and how those characteristics fit what you’re trying to accomplish to help choose the ones that will work best for you.

Are you prepared to let go control of your brand?

You can’t participate in social media without being…well…social. And that means engaging in a conversation with customers. Once you engage in a conversation, you have to give up control. Is your company willing to do that?

What will you do to encourage participation?

There’s nothing more embarrassing than going to a corporate Blog and seeing that it has zero articles. The same for going to a company’s Twitter feed and seeing that it has all of 11 followers. What are you planning to do to drive people to your social media presence? And do you have the content, the knowledge and time to do this? In reality we find that the majority of our clients don’t. This is why more and more people talk to us about their social media.

Who will maintain your social media presence?

Participating in social media takes a lot of work. You must have something to say and you must have someone (or a team of people) to say it on a regular basis. It won’t happen unless it becomes part of someone’s job. Do you have someone ready to commit a big chunk of time to maintaining your social media presence? Does that person need coaching on how to do this and do it effectively?

Do you have the resources to keep this up?

Unless you specify that what you’re doing has a limited duration (such as a Twitter feed based on a particular promotion), people will expect you to keep it up. Do you have the literary skills to keep writing and updating your blog to maintain your place as a thought leader in your industry? Unless you have someone in house that has missed their calling as a writer you would probably want to outsource this. Leadstone has numerous technical writers/bloggers from various industries who we can put on your projects for you to get your message out there.

How does engaging users via social media integrate into your overall marketing/communications strategy?

None of this stuff exists in a vacuum. It has to be part of a larger marketing/communications strategy. How does social media fit into what you’re trying to do in all your other platforms, and how will you use those platforms to support each other? If you don’t consider your blog to be the greatest resource in your arsenal as the driving force in your twitter campaign then you are greatly mistaken. Your blog and online article presents has to be strategically tweeted and various times during the day to drive traffic back to your site to promote your products and services. Every platform you set up should be thought of as holding a supporting role for numerous functions in your online campaigns.

How do you measure success? What constitutes failure?

Are you measuring views, followers, comments, or subscribers? What’s the threshold for your success metrics that takes them into success territory? What happens if you don’t get there? Leadstone measures your success in any campaign by running various analytic programs behind everything we do.

What are you doing currently for advertising?

Most companies have a defined budget for advertising. How will your overall goals be impacted by taking money away from other forms of advertising/marketing and moving it into social media? Not sure if you should develop a new brochure or a blog/twitter campaign? Open your ears and eyes! Look around because everyone is talking about social media. Is now, not if you should be doing social media? Its, are you doing it effectively? Having a brochure that can be distributed within walking or driving distance of your office will never get the impact that a social media campaign can do for you. With one blog, a couple tweets and some strategic linking you will have global followers and now have opened your reach internationally.

After reading all of the above you are probably feeling overwhelmed. Not to worry!

Leadstone can put together a comprehensive social media marketing plan that will fit your company’s needs and budget. We understand social media but most of all we understand business and what it takes to get sales.

April 8, 2014

 

Kevin Turko CEO Leadstone Group Inc.

Get in touch with Kevin:                                                         kevin.turko@leadstonegroup.com       (403) 537-6561