Social Media Strategy

Most every brand feels the pressure to engage in social media. It seems like every day there is another article on the need for brands to dive into social media or improve upon what they are already doing.

Here are a few quick observations on things that we've seen that have led to successful social media initiatives.

1. Coordinate. Make sure your organization either centralizes or strongly coordinates social media. If PR has certain ideas, different marketing managers have other ideas, and the CEO wants to start tweeting on her own, you are going to have a fragmented approach to communicating your brand in this space. Also, put a senior manager in charge of social media and hold them accountable for meeting goals.

2. Set goals. Social media does not have to be an experiment. It has matured to the point where real goals should be set as a part of a social media strategy. These can involve identifying top influencers, turning customer conversation into insights that are fed back into the organization and reducing customer service costs.

3. Measure. There are many tools available to support your work in the social media space. And there are tools available to meet almost any budget: Adobe's Ominture, Radian6, TwitterAnalyzer are just a few. Others are becoming available as new social media tools come on the scene.