develop a social media campaign

“Hey guys, we need a new website, a blog and a Facebook page. We also need one of those twit thingies. I saw it on my blackberry. We can get Barbara in accounting to write the blog everyday – she’s only busy on payday; Steve, in our creative department, can manage the Facebook page ‘cos he’s on it all the time. Let’s chat to the IT guys about a new website, we can have it all running by the end of the week!”

What’s the first to go in your management strategy?

This is an all-too-familiar conversation that we’ve heard in many an EXCO meeting. The problem is that the above intentions, although great and very necessary, need to form part of an online communications strategy that follow the guidelines of the corporate communications strategy. The intentions are spot on: you do need a fresh website, you do need a blog and you do need to be present on social media platforms. However, you need the process to be managed holistically with both the greater vision in mind and sustainability. Continue reading →

Is the focus of your online social media campaign Facebook or Twitter? Our approach to online reputation management (ORM) and search engine optimization (SEO) always begins with the relationships within the organisation. It’s not services or products that keep business alive, it’s relationships.

Social media is first and foremost about people.

In a recent blog, Mike Saunders makes an excellent observation that so often goes awry when devising communication strategies.

“Social media is about the people, well at least it should be. Approaching social media strategy with a “platform mentality” is like focusing our attention on the which {sic} bike we need to ride when we should be concentrating on our fitness levels to win the race.

Fitness in social media is the ability to understand our consumers. Social media allows us to engage, communicate, question and observe our customers. This should give us a wealth of information to better understand our customers and better meet their needs. Regardless of the platform, their communication over these platforms should give us insight into their lives, their vales and their needs.”

What Saunders says is not actually a new concept; it’s the age-old concept of defining your target audience before you package your message. The foremost task in approaching a communication campaign has always been to define your audience and then to choose the best medium possible to reach them. The options have not changed; they have just expanded.

I was in a strategy meeting last week with the CEO, CFO and IT-guru of a major international group and they have come to the point where they have decided that they need to be present on the social media platforms that are popular in South Africa – Facebook and Twitter. This is great – they are right, they do need this. However, with a staff of over 60 000, they wanted to know how their people, the ones without computers or smartphones, would interact with the online social media.

We discussed notice-boards and in-house newsletters, which they already have in place. I then posed the question; “Who are you trying to reach with the social media available to you?”. It was this question that allowed them to better understand where we would be headed with the social media campaign and the type of messages that we would use them to communicate.

Developing an online social media strategy is not an IT exercise, it’s not a marketing ploy, and it’s not an advertising campaign. It’s stock standard Public Relations Management.

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