Understanding Social Media Strategy – SMCpros

By Adam Maikkula | November 8, 2009

One of the most common responses I receive from clients who are new to social media is that they feel overwhelmed by all of the options available to them. Not only are there a lot of sites, but each site has many unique features that should be properly used to fully leverage the power of social media. Oftentimes, clients feel that they have a wrap on social media because they went out and created their own profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. While it is true that simply creating the profiles is a step in the right direction, many people/businesses do not put much thought into developing a specific strategy for how they should leverage social media in an effective manner to achieve important business objectives.

The first step in developing an effective social media strategy is to understand the unique purposes each site (as well as its individual features) offers to businesses. It is important to remember that these sites and their specific features are resources available for you and your business to gain exposure, share information, and communicate with people of interest. When I look at a social media site or product, I view it as an intricate set of levers that when maneuvered properly, drastically increases your ability to get the most out of your time and financial investments in social media. On that note, I regularly get asked “How much time should I spend working on my social media each day?” To which I say it really depends on what you are trying to accomplish through your efforts, but if you do not have a good plan in place, you probably are exerting unnecessary effort in the wrong direction. If that is the case, it really doesn’t matter how much time you spend on social media, because you will never have the ability to regularly track the benefits of your efforts. Having clear objectives and a game plan is the best way to create a quantifiable approach to social media. Thanks to the complexity of social media and the rapidity at which it changes, you can always adjust what you are trying to measure since new options are provided to you on a regular basis.

*In hindsight after writing this blog post, I would add that if your primary question regarding social media is “How much time should I spend?”, then you really do not understand the power of what you are looking at through your computer screen. To say that social media is about the time invested in it is to overlook the fact that it is a highly integrated environment that involves communication, technology, brand management, sales, marketing, advertising, and human resources. I would equate “time spent on social media” to time spent giving a presentation at school or work. True, you can say that the longer you spend talking, the better your presentation may be, but you are overlooking the fact that the unique variable is not necessarily the length of time. The key factor is your ability to communicate efficiently to your audience using the resources available to you. In a nutshell, your social media is a presentation to a variety of audiences at one time…make sure you are prepared to handle that.