Social media is a mess. There’s Facebook which now has over 800 million registered users, Twitter with over 300 Million registered users, Google+ who has some insane growth potential, Tumblr whose traffic has almost doubled in 2011 and who pulled in more than 17 million unique visitors (US) in November 2011, and so on. The list goes on and on. The internet is filled with so many different social outlets who seem to rise and fall every day. So, as a business, where should you invest your time and money?

Obviously it’s impractical for a business to utilize every social media website out there and it’s often unnecessary. Therefor a business needs to make a calculated decision and choose an appropriate tool.

Social Media Strategy

The best piece of advice I can offer you about social media strategy is that the answer to all of your questions is always: it depends. Simply put, no "silver bullet" solution exists with social media. There are no "right" or "wrong" ways to do social media. There certainly are better social media methods and best practices, but the success of particular strategies and techniques depends entirely on the specifics of your individual business as well as countless other undefined variables. Therefore, rather than adopting a social media plan solely based on a previous company’s success, it is essential that you take the time to appropriately develop a plan which directly aligns with the goals and values of your organization and your customer. This is critical to your success.

The Social Media Plan

One of the most important parts of having a successful social media campaign is drawing up and implementing a structured social media strategy. To do this effectively I have developed a 5-component cycle for continuous social media success and growth. The model illustrates a 5-step process that is intended to help businesses develop and implement successful social media plans which continuously build and improve upon themselves. The components include: A Direction (Goal), A Target (Target Market), Uniqueness (Differentiator), Technology (Marketing Tools), and Assessment (Feedback)

Each component within the model carries an equal importance and is fully integrated with the remaining components. If a single component is weakened, the entire system suffers.

1. A Direction

Select a Goal: What do you want to achieve with social media?

"Sound strategy starts with having the right goal." - Michael Porter

At its core a goal is the desired outcome you want. To determine your goal you need to figure out exactly what you want to achieve with social media. There are countless goals that businesses have with Social media.

5 Social Media Goals at Their Core:

• Listening (or market research) - this would focus on discovering and understanding what the internet is saying about your company, your brand, or your product.
• Talking (or marketing) - this focuses on spread messages about your company and/or making your current online advertising methods more interactive and more social.
• Amplifying (or sales) - this centers around the idea of finding you most enthusiastic (and influential) customers and using their word of mouth to spread and amplify your message. You would effectively be using your best customers recruit new customers.
• Customer Support - this could be used to not only provide support to your customers but to provide the ability for your customers to help each other. A great example of this would be SEOmoz enabling me to share this information with all of you.
• Customer Integration (or development) - this could be described as the ability to integrate customer feedback into your business.

Spending adequate time properly choosing your goal is essential. Your goal will essentially end up writing the rest of your strategy for you. It will allow you to build a map leading to what you want to achieve.

Things you need to consider:

You should consider writing S.M.A.R.T. goals.

I think the most important part is that your goal is properly quantified. This will allow you to directly measure the progress and success of your strategy. It’s important to understand that if incorrect measures are used you ultimately will end up ineffectively measuring the strategies success and this may be a costly mistake.

It is a good practice to have more than just financial measures. Sticking strictly with financial measures usually results in an improper measurement of the strategy’s success. This is because it is extremely difficult to directly trace the financial implications that social media has on a business. Consider the following: how much money is gaining an additional Twitter follower worth to your business?

Other critical points:

You need to make sure that you fully understand all the possible implications of “going social”. If you fully understand any potential damages that could occur they may be able to be strategically avoided.

If implemented in such a way social media can completely transform your organization and your industry. It can force a fundamentally different understanding of how your organization does business: giving the customer a voice. This can occur now or you can wait till your competitors do it. It’s really your choice.

2. A Target

Identify Your Target Market: Who are you trying to communicate with and how do they participate in Social Media?

In order for your strategy to be successful you need to determine exactly who would be interested in participating. When you understand who your target market is you will then be able to determine how to reach them and understand what exactly they value.

One of the most important reasons for understanding who your target market is, is that people participate in social media in different ways.

In the book The Groundswell (from Foster Research and Harvard Business School) they identify 6 different types of users online: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, Inactives

Once you understand how your target market participates you should look into why they participate. If you understand why your target market participates, you can begin to unfold their motives and ultimately how you can integrate your brand into in a way that is fully aligned with what your customer really wants.

Here's a few reasons why people participate online (again adopted from The Goundswell):

• Keeping up with Friendships
• Making New Friends
• Succumbing to Social Pressure from Existing Friends
• Paying it Forward
• The Altruistic Impulse - people participate because they think they should
• The Prurient Impulse - people participate because they find other people interesting
• The Creative Impulse - people participate to show off their own work
• The Validation Impulse - people participate to be seen as a knowledgeable expert
• The Affinity Impulse - people participate becasue they can relate to others (they share a common base of experience)

3. Uniqueness

Differentiate Yourself: Why should someone participate?

"Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image." - David Ogilvy

Once you figure out your goal and who your target market is the question then becomes: why should someone participate with you and not your competition?

You need to differentiate yourself. You need to give your customer a completely unique reason to participate with you in social media. There are hundreds of companies competing for your target market’s time. You need to give your target market a reason to pick you.

4. Technology

What Marketing Tools are you going to use: How are you going to communicate your message?

Finally the question becomes: what tool(s) am I going to use that aligns perfectly with the first three steps? These tools need to be carefully analyzed and selected. Remember, in most cases it is better to focus your efforts; to be really good at one tool rather than average at three.

5. Assessment

This step ensures that you have sustained results.

You need to ask yourself: How am I doing? What can I do to improve? Am I fully meeting my customer’s needs? Am I exceeding my customer’s expectations.

You need to ask your customers: How are we doing? What do you like? What do you want more of? What do you dislike? What do you want us to change?

Remember:

Without customers your business will cease to exist. If a customer complains to you, despite if you agree or disagree, you need to consider the possibility they are doing you a favor. Think about all of your other customers who may have experienced the same problem but who were reluctant to say anything.

Make sure you understand the customer satisfaction spectrum. It’s very difficult to get information about a customer’s satisfaction unless they are extremely satisfied or extremely upset and dissatisfied.

Listen to your customers. Act on what they tell you. After all this is social media.