Social Media Strategy: How Is a Social Media Strategy Created?

To create a social media strategy, a marketer must ask these questions: • Does a marketer want more revenue for your e-commerce effort or more direct revenue? • Are you directing your efforts toward new customers? • Are you trying to create brand? • Are you trying to create brand awareness? • Are you trying to communicate better with existing customers? • Do you want to improve your customer engagement or brand image? • Are you trying to establish a base from which you can market future products and services over coming months and years? • Do you need to connect better with people in different demographic groups? • Do you want to create a large "friend" list through email, create a subscription base for newsletters, and create a roster list for conferences? • Are you trying to increase your referral business? • Are you trying to redefine or reposition your business or brand?? • What do you want to say? • How will you say it? • Are you going to create your own content or are you going to have customers, "friends" create content of their own, and share it with their "friends" (as President Obama did in 2008, or as Ford Motor Company did in its Fiesta Project) • Who is going to post the content? Are customers (supporters) going to create a brand for you, or are you going to control the touch points as they are created? When you answer these questions, you will come into contact with analytics to track.
Numbers are important.
If it can't be measured, it can't be managed.
Social media platforms such as Facebook have created tremendous communication capabilities and married these capabilities to unheard of database power.
Social media has created a "perfect storm".
Now a marketer has ¼ of the world's population meeting in one spot at the same time.
These social media platforms track and target customers as never before.
Through the wise use of social media platforms a marketer knows exactly what customers to target and with what product.
To harness these capabilities a marketer must have adult supervision.
For social media to work there must be plans, goals, and objectives.
Exactly, how does a marketer create a social media strategy? Irregardless, of your political views, even his greatest detractors admit that President Obama's social media strategy that was used to create brand for the 2008 campaign is a bench mark for all marketers to follow.
President Obama had a plan.
His social media strategy revolved around creating a brand very, quickly.
As the political cycle began in 2008, he knew that he had two problems.
He had no name recognition (he possessed no brand) and he had no money.
In times past, this would have created real problems to create a viable candidacy.
President Obama understood the power of social media.
He knew that low recognition was a problem that could easily be overcome with the correct goal.
To create a brand for himself he understood that he had to create a "conversation" among "friends".
President Obama realized that in a new media age, brand is created when a "friend" recommends a "brand" to a "friend".
To create this conversation, President Obama put together a goal.
To create these conversations, President Obama transformed his website MyBO into a social platform.
His website became a small version imitation of Facebook.
MyBO became a place where supporters, could come, hang out, converse with friends, and be given campaign assignments.
By having a goal such as this, President Obama was able to give possession of the brand over to his supporters.
This quickly created a brand for President Obama.
Obama supporters personalized and experienced the brand on a personal level.
This is why the brand developed and spread so quickly.
President Obama was able to brand himself as a "friend".
The other candidates were "candidates".
By doing things this way, President Obama was able to create objectives.
He was able to create analytics.
He could measure his progress.
Social Media allows a marketer to measure their brand.