Navigating through many available Social Media technologies can be challenging. The options and types of technologies are endless, and like most technology solutions, finding the best solution to meet your organization’s needs is not easy. Recently, many members of our team read the book Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. This book is an excellent resource and provides research and practical recommendations for evaluating and building a Social Media strategy. In today’s post, we will outline the book’s four-step planning process to building a Social Media strategy, as we have found this to be of great value.

When building a Social Media strategy, Li and Bernoff recommend that you use the POST method (People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technology) to guide your planning process.

1. People – You must first ask yourself, “What are my customers ready for?” As a first step, it is important that you assess what technologies your customers are currently using. For example, if the majority of your consumers are seeking a way to write reviews and rate other comments, then tools that employ more robust social networking uses might not be necessary or applicable to your audience. The authors offer a tool to help you determine your customers’ profile, for more information click here.
2. Objectives – What are your company’s’ goals? Are you likely to utilize social technologies to achieve marketing objectives or to achieve sales goals? It is crucial that you determine what you plan to accomplish with Social Media before you choose a technology.
3. Strategy – How do you want relationships with your customers to change? Do you want your customers to become engaged with your company, or do you want them to help you carry out messages to others? By deciding how you want your customers to change, you can plan for that change and determine how to measure it once the strategy is underway.
4. Technology – Which applications should you build? Once you have addressed the people, objectives, and strategy concerns, you can then begin the process of evaluating possible technology solutions.

A high-performing organization is one that can adapt to new technologies successfully so choosing the correct social media is crucial. There are many other factors that should be considered when choosing the correct Social Media technology (e.g. Will your customers feel secure using the technology?). Yet, the POST framework provides you with a solid foundation to build your strategy. We’re interested to hear what you think about a social media strategy for your company, so feel free to share your thoughts and opinions.

Tags: Groundswell, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Social Media Technology

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 10:21 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.