Social Media strategy is a term that gets thrown around a lot by people within the Marketing/PR field. For many it is seen as a sign of an “expert”, that they have the ability to construct a social media strategy. But what is a social media strategy really?
Content Still Rules
I argue that when people use the term social media strategy what they are actually referring to is a Content Strategy. A Social Media strategy might be better termed a Social Media Use or Social Media Presence Strategy, mainly because when you dig into a Social Media strategy it tends to focus on the technology. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc all appear in Social Media strategies but those are just content outlets. A Social Media strategy that focuses on these is the same as saying that your company has an IT Strategy and then finding the document simply lists which computers you are going to buy.
Read All About It!
Before you can have an effective Social Media Strategy (e.g. one that determines which technology you are going to use) you need a Content Strategy that determines what content you currently have, what content you can create, who will create it, who will edit it and who will publish it. In addition to this your Content Strategy should identify who your intended audience is. After all if you don’t know who you are trying to reach how will you reach them? The key here is to identify both your internal content creation resources, who is currently producing content that can be used outside of the company, who could be a content producer and what formats they can produce content in. Don’t immediately think – “Who are our best writers?”, maybe video is going to be a compelling medium for your audience or podcasts or Powerpoint (for use on Slideshare or other platforms).
There are a dozen different ways of getting your content out there and I am not suggesting you don’t need a strategy for publishing your content, you absolutely do. But don’t get the cart before the horse. Content first, Technology second.
Do you have a content Strategy?
image used under license by Sixteen Miles
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