The Reason Most Companies Will Fail With Social Media: 5 Phase Process To Get it Right

I have to get this off my chest.

Over the past few months we have encountered way too many great organizations implementing new websites and social media marketing programs without any clear objectives, strategy, measurement for success…nothing. Just and email from an executive demanding something get created that resembles social media so they look good in a press release, to the board or the CEO.

It reminds me of when I was running a major web 2.0 widget syndication platform company, and I got a call from the President of the digital division of a major entertainment company demanding that they need to get a Facebook application up asap!  It was when Facebook opened up the platform to third party developers for apps. When I asked why, it was just cuz…

We need to stop the madness or this social media marketing thing is going to hit a wall. Lots of time, money, and more importantly expectations, will be put into programs that will not work. Yes, it’s not that costly to build a Squidoo page, and you can build a Facebook Page in 45 minutes. But trust me, these efforts done in isolation, without being connected to all the other activity your business is doing, and without a strategy that builds on each piece, will not result in any meaningful impact on your business.

Seth Godin wrote about this issue in the context of businesses finding it easier to create events versus employ a process. It’s much easier to create a event (Seth uses the example of a trade show, but you could substitute a Facebook Page instead) because it has a specific focus and it’s temporal. It’s much easier to implement and get people rallied around a trade show booth…or get your 25 year old developer to do a Facebook Page! Social media marketing is a process that takes time, attention and a new kind of professionalism. Done right, it is a process and can be very effective and giving your business a real economic advantage.

Here is an outline of how we think about the process when we engage a client:

• Understand The Client’s Business:
  • What does your sales and product funnel look like?
  • Who is your best prospect, what is the emotional connection and how can we improve engagement?
  • Who are the top competitors and what makes them successful?
  • How can we improve exposure and coverage?
  • How are we empowering the community to interact and expand?
  • How can we increase lifetime value of each member of the community?
  • How can we build a voice and a new stage for your licensees?
  • How do we bridge offline experiences with online presence?
  • How are we extending to the mobile environment?
  • Baseline metrics

• Digital Forensics: Complete Analysis of the Marketplace
  • Reverse engineer digital footprint of target customers, key competitors and existing licensees
  • Uncover the most powerful, high volume keywords and phrases used that we can win
  • Step inside the dialogue going on in the target customers head while searching for related solutions
  • Partnership and linking strategy
  • Evaluate how competitors are implementing keyword/positioning and conversion mechanisms

• Get The “Home Base” Right: Website and Blog Evaluation, Organization and Structure
  • SEO site structure including landing pages and site sculpting
  • Content planning for distributed web, blog and website
  • Blog strategy
  • Take advantage of content pumps and leverage

• Build The Distributed Network: Social Media Content Build-Out And Distribution
  • Blog, Website and landing pages (plug-ins) as needed
  • Build and assemble content assets and other resources
  • Publish and distribute 10-12 SEO rich articles to start
  • Create 10-20 videos in the form of FAQ’s or mini-course. Distribute to over 80 sites using four different keywords
  • Create 4-5 Web 2.0 SEO optimized pages including Squidoo, Hub Pages, Facebook and Twitter (also vertical focused)
  • Establish Internal and External linking strategy
  • Blogging and forum participation strategy
  • Tools, dashboard and workflow
  • Integrate lead follow-up with autoresponders and/or sales people

• Measurement: Monitor key metrics on dashboard
  • Identify what is working and do more of it
  • Identify what is not working and do less of it
  • Work the math model to reduce average cost per lead/customer over time

This is a four plus month process and it actually never ends because you should be continually optimizing. These phases build on each other and are all connected so they have huge impact on your business. Also, this new marketing paradigm is moving so quickly, new concepts are being introduced daily, you should be always integrating new ideas.

Their are many terrific people and firms that can help implement a similar process. But as a businesses owner or manager, you can no longer abdicate the knowledge of what should be done, and how to do it right. Don’t let the “event planners” ruin your opportunity!