Oct. 9, 2009 at 12:16pm

Don’t do it just because everyone says to

10 social media tips

Posted by Shari Campbell in Advertising, Branding, Planning and Strategy
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©iStockphoto.com/henrik5000
 

You should blog!

Everyone says our hospital should have a Facebook page.

I’ll never convince the docs to Twitter!

Social media marketing isn’t new anymore (more than four out of five online Americans are creating, participating or reading some form of social media every month, according to Groundswell.  

Yet I find myself growing weary of the “you should” recommendations because they frequently lack a strategic platform, never mind a business objective.

A case in point. Adam Sarner noted in an interview last year that 50 percent of fortune 1,000 companies would see their social media campaigns fail. The reason: they don’t have a purpose.

What should you think about when developing your organization’s social media strategy? Here are 10 tips culled from some recent articles, webinars and blogs:

1. Establish business objectives.
2. Determine the target audience or audiences and make a list of what is important to them.
3. Remind yourself—and others—that social media marketing is fundamentally, well, social. That’s different from direct mail and print advertising, for example, where your goal is to get someone to take action. Now.
4. Develop a social media plan that is integrated with your organization’s overall marketing plan.
5. Assign responsibility for the plan; in particular, be thoughtful about others who can help contribute to the conversation—and help monitor the conversation that may be taking place about your organization.
6. Don’t let loss of control, fear or the possibility of negative comments stop you. And then read tip #7.
7. Embrace contribution, rather than control. Google’s new “SideWiki.”  is a great example of how power is shifting to consumers.
8. Develop an internal strategy and policy. Provide education before a free-for-all ensues.
9. The days of just pushing a marketing message are over. Gen Xers and Millenials, in particular, look to friends and people they trust for advice.
10. Accept this truth, courtesy of Charlene Li to be self-evident: “Mistakes in social media are inevitable—after all, you're building relationships and what relationship is perfect?”

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