Responding to Social Media Buzz - Step #2 ==> Set out your Strategy

Setting your strategy is an iterative process, which goes something like this:

• Listen to the conversation ... Before you jump in with both feet, find and read Social Media about your company and get an understanding of what those conversations are all about. Determine what the buzz is, and how much you need to be involved with it.
• Set some goals ... This is a tough thing to do, given that the metrics on Social Media are few and far between and it is even harder to see an immediate positive benefit to any responses. This is also the time and place to start doing one of the toughest things … drafting your business case. Take a look at the benefits and consider how you’re going to make or save money by responding to Social Media Buzz. Be cognizant that benefits will not magically happen overnight. They will take time to be realized, and consequently you should stage your benefit calculations over several months or years. Also, be careful not to overstate the potential benefits and costs savings. If you state that you will be able to cut your advertising budget by 50% as a result of improved Social Media Buzz, then your CFO will come calling in short order. In reality your benefits have to outweigh your costs only by a reasonable amount. Potential benefits might include:
• increasing positive buzz about your company (thereby driving up the value of your brand, allowing you to reduce advertising costs, and at the same time driving sales up),
• reducing negative buzz about your company (reducing the amount of time you need to spend defending yourself in the media, and the amount of cash you have to spend on PR),
• increasing your Organic Search Ranking by propagating relevant links to your own website (and thereby both driving more traffic to your site (hopefully leading to more sales), and saving advertising dollars), and
• operational improvements driven by keeping your ear to the ground (improving the engagement and brand loyalty of your customers, reducing advertising costs, and improving the utility of your product or service (which likely has a self-fulfilling effect of bringing more customers to your door)).
• Plan for success ... You will need to give Social Media care and feeding - Social Media isn't something you should step into once and back away from. You have to get into and stay in it. That means that once you determine how you will respond to good and bad social media and you will need to set aside time on a regular basis to participate in Social Media. You may even need to have staff in place to keep up with it. Even more, you may need to involve professionals to help you engage in social media. This is the time to draft up the second part of your business case. Now you will start to develop an eye for how much meeting your goals will cost. How many people will need to be involved in listening and responding to buzz? How often will you do it? How often will you need third parties? Be careful not to dig too far into too many details at this point. Focus on the “why” and not the “how”. You probably want to keep your plan to a few PowerPoint slides featuring big concepts, a couple of examples, and your high-level business case. Also, you might want a short-term and a long-term plan. Your short-term plan will look at the immediate future of Responding to Social Media Buzz. This may be a 6-month plan to staff up a team, create a library of responses, and so on. The outcome will be that you are in the game of Social Media. The longer-term plans may include how you may become involved in other types of social media, in creating your own company blog, or in creating your own customer forum. Put your short-term plan on the table. Keep your long-term plan in your back pocket.

Now for the final - and perhaps most complicated step, because it forms your "make or break moment" ...

• Sell the idea ... responding to Social Media as a representative of your company and brand can test your company's culture and its leadership. Before you do the “big sell”, you will need work the slow and soft sell to a variety of individual executives and your peers to ensure that you understand and are cautious of their concerns, and that they understand what you are setting out to do. To do this well means that you must not be married to your plan. You need to listen to the executives and adjust your goals and plan accordingly.

Trends for 2009: #12. The demand to build bulletproof cases to gain project funding

As economic times tighten the Accountants tend to rule the roost. It is a catch-22 in a sense, as I have already talked about previously in some of my other "trends for 2009" and random blog posts. The essence of a low-cost business strategy will help lead to long-term overall success. However, this also makes doing business challenging at times.

To succeed with starting a project in 2009, you are going to have to get it past your bean counters. This means that:

1. You will need to be VERY confident in the business benefits, and will need a good model to show how you will achieve those. To that end, you will may also need to point to 3rd party experts who can back you up on the likelihood of achieving the benefits.
   
2. You will need to have solid cost models, including IT, marketing, etc., etc., etc.. The departments that will have to spend to support your project will need to agree to the estimates you put forward, and indeed may have to sign-off on them for the CEO.
3. You will need to ensure that you build in future flexibility. With uncertainty comes the need to be flexible through the downturn, the eventual upturn, and every crazy thing in between.
   
4. You will need to have plans for substantial risk mitigation. In easier times, risks like project budget overruns or late delivery were all right given the speed that the economy was moving. That won't be acceptable in the foreseeable future.
   

What's a marketer to do in 2009?

• Spend a lot of time planning. In fact, set up cross-functional teams to help you do your planning,
• Get your teams trained in good planning methods, and
  
• Rely on standard and proven project management and financial models.

At the same time (and seemingly counter-intuitively), don't be afraid of being a Disruptor. Make your case and go for it. History has shown that being conservative in a recession isn't necessarily a good strategy. Grab an innovation and pursue it.

Will I be right? The year will tell!

• Follow this blog and watch for the next marketing trends I'm forecasting for 2009.
• Feel free to contact Market GoGo to discuss this further.