Monday 1st March 2010 by Lawrence Clarke

Previously we have exercised ourselves over the meaning of ‘social media’ and the importance of a ‘social media policy’.  With that as background it was clear from a recent talk I gave on ‘Creating an integrated social media strategy’ at the TFM&A show that there were plenty of people looking for answers.

What is social media?

To get us all in the same place it’s important to clarify the words we use. In this context when we say ‘social media’ we actually mean ‘online social media’ – and yet when we say that we’re probably not including the most ubiquitous online social medium, email, in our thoughts, so perhaps what we really mean is ‘new online social media’. Then again many of us are currently not thinking of new iphone apps – preferring not to be early adopters. So perhaps for most of us when we use the term ‘social media’ what we actually have in mind is ‘recent online social media’ – in other words Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blogs and our own online communities. Trying to nail the definition of ‘social media’ (and yes on Wikipedia people are struggling to the point that some are recommending removing it altogether), demonstrates what an imprecise term it is. It’s not surprising that ‘social media strategy’ leaves many bemused. Earlier this year the Internet Advertising Bureau surveyed its members and revealed that 22% of marketers considered social media a core part of their marketing strategy and 22% a core part of their promotional strategies. As for the responsibility for social media, 33% thought it lay with PR, 12% with the research department and 7% with IT.

What is a strategy?

We need strategies to help us to answer the question ‘why?’.  It’s essential to be able to articulate our unique selling propositions in the context of our strategic objectives. If we can answer the question ‘why do we want to do this?’ it’s then relatively straightforward to address how we go about it (tactics) and with what (tools). We will also be able to identify what we want to measure and report on to improve our strategy.  In military terms tactics, backed up with the right tools/equipment, win battles, but it’s the strategy that wins the war. In short, everyone can see our tactics but our strategy should remain unseen. Approaching the use of tools with no strategy means that what people experience and see is an open-ended experiment with no obvious benefit. None of the recent crop of social media applications would have got to their dominant positions without a clear purpose to fulfil a perceived need. At every stage in their strategic evolution they were and are able to answer the question ‘why?’.

Is it right to be thinking of a social media strategy?

Taking our understanding of ‘social media’ to describe such applications as Facebook and Twitter, it doesn’t sound right to be talking about a ‘Facebook strategy’ any more than it sounds right to be thinking of a ‘telephone strategy’ or an ‘email strategy’. Social media are applications that facilitate social interaction (online) – as such they are there to be deployed to support strategies that have human interaction at their core.

A good starting point is a ‘communication strategy’. It is no coincidence that communications departments, tasked with owning and running intranets, are now realising that for internal communications to work they need to mimic how employees communicate with each other outside office hours. In other words social media tools should be incorporated internally. The only problem with this idea is that for it to work the culture of the business or organisation has to align with the way people want to communicate with each other – openly and transparently and across silos (remember the office parties?). Zappos is our favourite company that gets to the heart of this challenge. Led by the CEO, their mantra is ‘our culture is our brand’ and one of their core values reinforces both the internal and external communication challenge: ‘Build open and honest relationships with communication’. Customer service is your external communication channel. If your customer service is goaled to upsell, keep each call-time to a minimum and not mention the competition, then using social media will not work. Your culture and how it manifests itself in customer service need to be fixed first.

So relax about the social media strategy, and instead take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself whether your internal communications are all they could be. If they are, then fine: set up some common-sense guidelines for the use of online social media - your social media policy, and trust your team to find ways to explore the opportunities they can see for themselves. But if you find, like most people, internal communications are less than perfect, then that’s the place to be putting your energies.

Related video blog

What is social media?