A working methodology example for a Social Media Optimization strategy

The example below is far from being perfect, but it will give you an idea of the different questions you should ask yourself when you are going for a specific online acquisition channel. Note that this working methodology may differ according to the size of your organization and the acquisition channel you are choosing.

Goals

What do you expect from a presence on social networks? branding? acquisition? Can you give any figures of what you would like to achieve in terms of subscribers, purchases, number of visitors on your websites, number of likes, shares?

Audience

Who are your audience on social networks? What are they saying? What are they saying about your organization? For example, are they interested within your products/services? or have they never been exposed to your brand? Try to imagine how they will react once you will be on social networks? Who will you target with your communications? Do you want to talk to individuals? Or do you consider that your communications should be general? Why do you think this audience is yours? Who are the people on social networks who have an influence on others? What is the expected behavior that you want to have from them (a share, a @, to make them nervous, to get support. Is going for social networks fit your communication strategy?

Design

Whatever the social network channel you are going to choose, you will need to make a bit of design. In fact the different covers social networks are supporting are of different sizes. You need as well to take care about the colors you will choose so as the pictures you will publish there. Out of the big questions you need to ask yourself are do I have the resources to do it?

Categories

You may have different brands, offices, employees, how are you going to proceed? Will you create one account or one for each? If you have one single account, it means that you need to take care about the way the password is going to be shared. What about the social networks you are going to choose? How are you going to make those choices?

Post types

Ok, great, you are going for social networks, but what kind of information are you going to publish? Is it going to be a copy/paste of what people can find on your website? Will it be exclusive offers like coupons? Will it be about showing a part of your organization that we cannot find anywhere? Will it be jokes and funny kitty videos? Will it be the communication of the boss of the company or the voice of the employees? Will it be institutional? Will you share communications from your competitors, from your partners, from political parties? A bit of everything? What would you like not to post?

Post management

How will you manage your posts? For example on Monday you will only afford to publish news and on Wednesday latest projects you signed? At which frequence will you publish posts on social networks? Do you really think you can run the distance on the short, mid and long term? Who will be in charge of posting those communications? Will you automate your posts? At what time do you want to publish your communications? How your audience will know at what time you will publish specific information and in which delay can they expect an answer?

Authorizations

Who is in charge of pushing the publish button? Do you want to have a system in which everything go into draft before publishing? Do you know and consider the consequences if you do not answer in real time? Do you know how risky it is to answer when you are boiling? Who has an access to the social networks accounts of the organization? How those authorizations system are set? Is your team know the consequences if a password is stolen? Do they know where those data are stored within their devices?

Time

How much time would you like to dedicate to each social network per day, week, month? If a user is writing to you by night or over the week end, do you agree to answer? Will you pay your employee accordingly for those extra hours?

Content example

In this part just give a couple of communication examples you may publish. It will act as a wireframing, the idea is for your team to understand what kind of content you are planning to publish.

Search Engine Optimization

Social networks are nothing more than websites. So high chances that they have an internal search engine. As a result your communication will need to follow a convention in order to be easily found by users. So do you have a process in order to ensure that you are using the right keywords, tags or hashtags in order to be visible?

Law

As previously mentioned, social networks are websites, it is about content so there are things that you can do and things that you cannot do. Did you read carefully the conditions of use of each social network. Does it fit the strategy of your organization? What is your policy regarding the images you own? Do you agree to publish them on social networks? The personal communication of your employees on social networks can have consequences on the one of your organization, would you like to set some rules they have to know?

Share policy

What kind of contents are you ready to like or publish? In which conditions?

Showing your results

You have for sure some expectations regarding the return on investment on those platforms, but how are you going to make it visual? Will you use a simple spreadsheet? Will you use a data visualization program? Will you use the platform itself? What are the different metrics that you would like to follow?

Taking actions

Showing results is a thing but acting based on metrics is another. Did you define what you will do if metrics are under or over performing?

Checklist

Have checklists such as this one ready for your guy who will handle the social network account:
This example is extracted from the Mastodon social network:

  • Is the toot sent when your audience is online?
  • Do you use the right conventions within it? For example # and @?
  • The persons/organization that you are mentioning are included within your message? You will increase your chances to have interactions if you do so?
  • Did you use all the space that you have? maximum is about: 500 caracters long, spaces included.
  • Did you have a picture or a video into it? You will have more interactions if you include one. Is this picture/video at the right format? Will it be embed or will people have to click on it?
  • Did you re-read the message before sending it? Are you 100% sure that the orthography/grammar is correct?
  • Did your boss say yes?
  • Do you think your message can have a negative impact?
  • Is there something of value within your message for your audience?

Tools

There are many tools out there than you can use in order to optimize the production of posts and their tracking. Though most of them are proprietary solutions. Did you read their conditions of use? Did you forecast this budget within your plan?

Inside your organization

A social network is like a website in itself, so the big question is, did you get the authorization to create a social network account/platform? Who created the accounts? Is there any chances that this person may leave the company with the access? Who is the owner of the account? Are you 100% sure that this is not a personal email address which has been used? Who is the administrator of the page? Who is in charge of publishing the content? Do you think that some contents to publish require the go of the stakeholders of your organization? List the names of the person who will have an access to the account and their respective responsibility. What are the names that you will use in order to communicate? If it is your personal name, did you mitigate the personal risks? Does the name align with the of your company? Are you going to hide yourself behind a pseudonym? If there is an online reputation crisis, what is your plan?

Budget

How much time would you like to spend on social networks? So to so how much are your ready to invest? Do you know that most of social networks have advertising systems? Do you want to go for one of them? If yes how much are you ready to invest and what is your expected return on investment? If one of your employee is in charge of taking care of social networks, will you pay them the device? After all most of social networks require mobility.

Network

How big are you? Do you want to start your community from scratch or do you want to add all your contacts in one row? Will you then select the person you will invite? Will you write a personal message to each of them?

Last modified: Monday, 27 January 2020, 3:39 PM