By now, most companies realize that social media marketing is essential for their business. The challenge is knowing where to start. The Internet is a vast web and one can easily get tangled up, wasting enormous amounts of time just trying to figure out where to begin.
Last month, Mashable.com released an article on “The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration.” It provides a great overall strategy to begin implementing … Here is a summary:
1. Observe and Report: “Listen” to what is being said on the Internet about your company, industry and competitors by using various tools such as Twitter Search and Google Alerts. Then create a brief executive report that provides an overall summary of what you observed.
2. Setting the Stage + Dress Rehearsal: Create a few accounts or profiles on various social networks (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and begin posting and developing the accounts. Report back to your managers with an overall look at some of the metrics such as traffic, mentions and size of connections.
3. Socializing Media: Join the conversation. Be proactive and reactive and be sure to address any sort of issues or complaints anyone has about your company/products/services. Keep track of some metrics.
4. Finding a Voice and a Sense of Purpose: Take a step back to review activity and look at trends. Try to remain as relevant and focused by only participating where there is value. You don’t have to be everywhere at once. Consider your goals and objectives and be strategic in your approach to achieving them. You don’t want to be shouting into darkness.
5. Turning Words Into Actions: It’s no longer enough to simply respond. You have to engage your audience and make them believe that they can connect with you and that you are there to listen and hep them. This way, they are more likely to respond during a call to action.
6. Humanizing the Brand and Defining the Experience: Once you know your audience, you have to ensure that your brand speaks directly to them. Take a look at all of your online properties and consider how it speaks to your audience. Is the landing page static? Or does it continue to engage and drive interaction?
7. Community: It takes time to build a real community. Reach out to those in your community you see as potential “ambassadors.” You are the leader and must pave the way for a vibrant & lively community.
8. Social Darwinism: When it comes to effective social media integration, you have to make sure that you’re well structured and committed internally as an organization.
9. The Socialization of Business Processes: Mashable says it best, “Multiple disciplines and departments will socialize, and the assembly or adaptation of infrastructure is required to streamline and manage social work-flow.”
10. Business Performance Metrics: As with anything you do, you will ultimately have to address performance metrics or ROI. Unless you take the time to assess your efforts, you won’t know how to improve upon them and where to direct your attention.
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