February 12, 2008
Strategy, strategy, strategy - but only 12 months, please
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Following on from my earlier post about strategic comms plans in a web2.0 world, Geoff Livingstone has written a fabulous post about communication strategy as it pertains to today’s comms landscape.
It’s hip, slick and social to have a blog and a Facebook profile, but really, so what? If companies don’t think about their efforts in the larger marketing context as well as the unique needs of social communities, then their efforts will be useless.
The end result? We’re going to be treated to a deluge of bad social media from companies. And in six months we will be hearing cries about how it didn’t work. But the fault does not lie in the medium, rather it’s in the strategy and approach.
Geoff’s six point primer is a great reminder to those who think Social Media is the only way to fly that the new kid on the block shouldn’t get all the attention at the expense of the hard-working residents.
As Geoff so wisely says at the end of his post,
Unfortunately, in some competitive situations, it’s become apparent that agencies and consultants have greatly contributed to this mess. Agencies will tell you they know what they are doing, and learn on your dollar. The price: Lost opportunity, time and financial resources.
Companies need to take the time to find socially engaged companies. Don’t hire people that without a track record. Make sure the actual team performing the work have successfully blogged (please, a bare minimum 20 authority on Technorati), are enjoying social network engagement effort, and have a track record of past successes. And if they don’t advise you on the above six matters, know they are incompetent and continue with your selection process.
I commend and command you to read Geoff’s post about the right and the wrong ways to enter into the Social Media space. There is just sooo much good info there, along with some great comments.
But please, please, please… don’t try and shoe-horn the very twistable, malleable and shape-shifting ‘relationship-first’ tools of Social Media into a corporate Five Year Plan. Think twelve months, eighteen at max.
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p.s. and having got these two posts out of the way, I’m back off to bed.
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