Starting in Social Media? The 5 P’s of a Perfect Program

So you are new in this Social Media revolution. You may or may not have been an innovator or early adapter – or perhaps you are still cautiously implementing Social Media into your business.

This article isn't going to convince you WHY to use Social Media, but rather teach you HOW to best use it.

Create your Perfect Program with your plan, position, platform, people and performance.

The 5 P’s of a Perfect Program -
Social Media Success:

PLAN: Social Media Strategy
Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance. So, before you venture out, create accounts and starting posting – take a big step back and think about your strategy. Then, put it on paper.

• Establish goals (recruiting, training, client interaction, PR, branding, education, culture, etc.)
• Integrate social media strategy piece with your business plan
• Establish a content strategy based on your goals
• Budget for both time and resources
• Set a timeline for frequency of messages
• Implement HR policies and procedures
• Partner with your IT department
• Communicate your plan and engage your internal audience!

POSITION: What’s Your Point?
One of the best parts (and biggest challenges) in Social Media is crafting a clever (and memorable) message. So, what is your point? What are you trying to convey? Finding your voice will help you differentiate and dominate.

• Differentiate your content
• Become the expert in your industry
• Link, link, link!
• Get involved with group discussions
• Value before self-promotion
• Research what others are doing
• Talk about what you are already doing
• How personal do you get?
• Is there such as thing as sensitive information?

PLATFORMS: Tools and Tactics
Over 350 mediums for sharing online – how do you have the time for all that?! Make sure you are learning which platforms are best suited for your strategy. The Big 4 (5 with the new Google+ platform) are most utilized because of their impact and influence online. Finding tools to expedite your posts and content will help!

• Understand key social platforms and their purposes – with an integrated approach
• The Big 4: Facebook (500M), Twitter (200M), LinkedIn (100M), Blogs – and Google+
• 350+ mediums for ‘sharing’ online!
• Resource libraries (Wikipedia, etc.) exponential growth in use, high accuracy of content
• Photo and video sharing phenomenon (YouTube, SlideShare, Flickr, etc.)
• Others: Tumblr (3^rd party), Foursquare (location), etc.
• Tools for managing multiple platforms (Tweetdeck, HootSuite, etc.)
• Link shorteners and trackers (bitly, owly, deckly, etc.)
• Tagging (@), hashtags (#), and other key tools

PEOPLE: Internal and External Audiences
Once you have a strategy and Social Media functionality figured out, what is next? Engaging your audiences. And yes, this includes both external and internal. You could have crafted the best message, but if no one is listening and responding you are missing half the battle.

• Who dictates your content (internal audience)?
• Who posts content, how many voices?
• Give incentives for posting good content
• Have a watchdog that monitors content
• Utilize training forums so your content is well thought out
• Who is your external audience?
• Grow your external audience
• Retain your external audience
• Interaction with People vs. Companies
• Small company can have a much bigger voice!

PERFORMANCE: Return On Investment?
Monitoring and measuring ROI for your Social Media efforts can seem daunting. Frankly, sometimes it is hard to quantify. The biggest key is to ensure you are measuring against the goals of your Social Media campaign. If you are looking to brand your business or recruit great talent, your metrics may be different.

• Utilize analytics already built into the platforms
• Use measurement tools available online
  (google analytics, ominiture, postrank, sentiment metrics)
• Monitoring vs. Measurement, there is a difference
• Report, report, report
• Track and improve your SEO
• Integrate your Social Media ROI with other business metrics
• Tracking the intangible parts of ROI (feedback)
• What are YOU learning in social media space?!

So is there really a “Perfect Program” in Social Media? Depends. What are your goals versus your successes? How much are you learning? Do your customers and colleagues engage with you in a new way? Then perhaps you are finding your Social Media Success.