Tweet

So what is a strategy without opening a whole different type of debate? For me it is that which can answer the following questions:

What : What is the; business, product, project, program, brand etc.

Who : Who is the project, project, brand targeted at (target audience, your customers). This in social media is a real dynamic variable and there are a lot more components involved that aren’t there in standard communication / marketing, such facilitators, influencers’ etc.

How : How are we going to roll it out, execute etc, the pragmatics?When : A time line for the entire process, project, program, business etc.

Why : If we don’t know why we are doing what we are doing we might as well close shop now and save ourselves time and effort.

With who/what: What resources / budget will we have available to complete your strategy.

From this broad framework, which you can add your own questions, you can then create more concrete plans, objectives etc. All of which must ultimately link back in to your strategy. The objectives are obviously a must as you need to be able to measure your success. We will look at measuring social media in future posts.

So for your communication strategy social media and in this particular case your blog should be part of the answers to the “How” and “Who” questions. You can drill down and then create another specific strategy for your social media, always making sure that it links back into your global communication strategy.

As social media is more volatile and user sensitive / conscious the need for change you may identify in your social media strategy my ultimately force you to change your entire communication strategy, that’s sort of the thing about social media, it’s no longer top down broadcasting communication. The world is now flat and the communication is no longer monologue, it’s now dialogue so the response that comes from engagement has to filter upwards as well.

Where does that leave us in regards to what should I blog about?

I would recommend that you write down these questions and create your own strategy and what you blog about should become pretty clear, at least to start off with. At a personal level you could also create your own strategy, why not? I am only a few weeks set up and already and I am rethinking some of my original ideas and basically learning through trial and error. As I mentioned before I am starting to grasp that social media doesn’t abide by other paradigms and standard broadcasting communication, I shoot you listen, I get my message across and it works or at least it worked up until recently.

I have seen on other blogs that you should blog about something you love as it will give you the passion to be consistent and consistency is an absolute necessity for your blog as nobody is going to follow you if they are unsure if you are going to be there next week, month etc.

I think that the “love” approach is not bad in the sense that it facilitates your creativity and if your goal is simply to share what moves you, you are in a win win situation. However, we don’t all have that same luck. So, if you find that the actual concepts or bottom line of your message doesn’t really float your boat you can also find inspiration in the end result, the impact on your customer. Really focus on how they are going to receive your message, you are trying to create value and if you are not creating value they will not engage with your message and by extension your brand.

As value is subjective the more you know your followers the better, it’s logical, they know better than anybody what they want. And you have to engage with them to find out what that really is. The thing that I find so interesting about social media is that it facilitates that process, you can engage and change your value proposition to what it should be and that is “what your customers want”. Remember, your followers should be the “target audience” you defined in your strategy. My understanding of social media at the moment is that what customers want or value is direction, answers to their problems and ultimately knowledge. They are not looking for sales pitches and standard marketing messages about products and services. There are enough places online and off for that type of information.

There are a lot more issues that we need to look at regarding your customers and the added complexities of social media that don’t exist in the pre-social media world of top down communication, however, I think I have covered enough in this post to get started and it has help get my ideas a little bit clearer on how I ultimately want to engage with my potential customers.

Summary:

1. Create your strategy.

2. Don’t use your blog to amplify all your messages. Keep it to a small group of topics, even better if you can reduce it to one main topic. Define your topics, max 3-4.

3. Think of the value you add your message will create to inspire your writing. Interact with your customers and facilitate that dialogue that eventually will identify what your customers really want.

4. Your objective is to engage people, share knowledge and learn from that process. What you learn is how your customers are and what you need to create value for them.

5. Don’t go creating sales pitches.