Social Business Strategy & Planning
Created on: Aug 8, 2009 3:07 PM by snowflake - Last Modified: Feb 18, 2010 6:42 AM by charlessheldon
Welcome to the Groundswell!
At 7Summits, we look at your Social Business Strategy and Plan like the plan for climbing a major mountain. You don’t just get all of your equipment and gear together and head for the summit! You need a plan. That plan takes into account current conditions, the terrain, other climbers on the mountain and much more. Once the plan is all set, the climb is executed in steps and refinements are made along the way to better guarantee success.
So building the case for social media is not just about what technology to use; it requires examination of your business objectives, related marketing strategies and customer needs. Looking at how your target audience is using social media tools is an important step in this process. Remember, a successfully executed social media plan is driven by the customer’s voice, not yours.
7Summits understands that social media should not be treated like just another marketing channel. We help you stop thinking “campaigns” and start thinking “conversations” and how to have them, on-line, with your customers. We help you step back, look at your business and determine why to use Social Media, not just how to use it.
Consider this. Your business is comprised of several key stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, and investors. Relationships with those stakeholders are affected by various parts of your organization: marketing, sales, customer service, human resources, public relations, logistics, procurement, product development, and more. Social Media can add value to those relationships. Measureable Value. Your objectives for using social media should be grounded with this in mind to set a solid foundation.
This is what we mean by “Applied Social Media.” At 7Summits, we extend that idea by taking a closer look at several business imperatives along with some specific value levers that move the needle when social media is applied. The results should be measured in terms of either delivering a hard ROI calculation or clearly moving key operation metrics. Join our community called The Business Case for Social Media and share your thoughts on these imperatives and drivers as we refine them in the coming months.
So how do you get started? There are specific steps that we can guide you through. First, we’ll want to get your overall objective defined in the right way. We’ll also look at your audience and how they currently use social media; you’ll want to engage them in their media. Our Measurement & Insights solution provides insight into how your audience relates to your product or service inside social media. It also provides competitive insights that are critical to understand as you formulate your Social Business Strategy. 7Summits’s Strategic Framework for Applied Social Media becomes the guiding light as we now define your target audience, set specific objectives around that audience, define pointed strategies for delivering on those objectives and then select the media to best enables those strategies.
Here’s a rundown of the items that you’ll need to get your expedition off on the right foot (or boot):
Business Review and Objectives Definition
Your Social Business Strategy needs to reflect your overall business strategy, business imperatives and brand goals. 7Summits performs an overall review of your current business strategy and goals, your marketing strategies and your brand promise as we help you define your overall objective.
This is the beginning of your journey with social media, so our component offerings are designed to get the expedition setup for success at its very beginning:
- Readiness Assessment
- Social Media Training for Executives
- Clear Statement of Goals
- Content Availability and Strategy
- Benefits Assessment
- Success Measures and Baseline
Target Audience & Social Media Profile
Focusing on the needs of your customers and how to communicate effectively with them is essential. Identifying the social Media venues that your customers live in is an important first step. Our <link/ Measurement & Insights/link> solution provides the tools needed to determine what your target audience prefers for their media and how they relate to your product or service. It also provides competitive insights that are critical to understand as you formulate your Social Business Strategy.
7Summits guides you through the process of profiling your audience and creating your own Social Media Map. We use online surveys, expert opinions, web-based trade resources and syndicated research to help get the job done.
Competitive Review
Your competitors in the digital space may not be the same as the traditional competitors you encounter. We review both traditional and ‘potential’ competitors, evaluating and rating each competitor based on a series of agreed upon points. The same online tools that are used to understand your brand and products online are used to gain insight on competitors as well.
Social Business Strategy & Plan
Here we use a Groundwell-based planning process, nick-named ‘POST’, along with 7Summits’s Strategic Framework for Applied Social Media:
- People – Who is the audience being targeted? Our company-centered model tells us to think customers, employees, partners and investors.
- Objectives – What are the goals for that audience? Our Strategic Framework for Applied Social Media tells us to think activation, re-activation and retention. Groundswell focuses on goals for each audience: Listening, Talking, Energizing, Supporting and Embracing.
- Strategy – How will you deliver each objective? Our Strategic Framework for Applied Social Media tells us to think awareness, relevance, conversion, involvement and ongoing engagement. Groundswell encourages specific approaches for your company relative to your goals. If the focus is on “Talking”, how will you initially engage your customers and how will that engagement grow over time?
- Technology – What applications should you build or buy? What online media should you leverage to enable each strategy in support of a specific objective for a given audience? These are the media. This can include social networks, blogs, forums, micro-blogs, micro-sites, video, podcasts, SEO/SEM integration to social, product reviews, and more.
These plans are designed for quick execution. Each plan identifies what we call a minimal marketable feature. The idea is to get you ‘out there’ on the mountain! Now you are in the conversation! Together, we nurture and adjust based on the behaviors we observe, measuring as we go. Think of it as getting acclimated at base-camp. Once we see the connection is solid and the result can be measured, we head up the mountain with confidence that we will reach the top, delivering measured value along the way.
Other solution offerings to help speed the expedition along:
New Media Marketing Solutions
Customized, Tailored Social Communities
Rich Internet Applications and Components
Mobile Solutions
Don't forget your compass!
Measurement & Insights is core to a business focused Social Media investment. Models that connect both conversations and activity on the web to your business performance are the fundamental tools that we work with. Baseline measures, along with agile test-measure-learn cycles allow you to adapt, grow, and improve at web speed.
At 7Summits, we understand the principles that align social participation with business value. We help you create models that measure and watch as your investment delivers tangible results. We have partnerships that provide us with the leading analytics and insights for social measurement. And we show you what to watch, and how to respond.
There are no comments on this document
