Eight Components for Social Media Success, #1 – Strategy and Business Objectives
In previous posts, Strategy and Planning for Online Community and The Missing 8th Component of the Seven Components of Successful Community, I describe the eight components any social media initiative needs to be successful. Over the next few weeks I’m going to explore each of the eight components in detail.
Some will say there are five components, some will say there are eleven, but the consensus is that regardless of how many components and how they are organized, the appropriate strategy and planning greatly increases the probability of success. My Eight Components for Social Media Success are:
1) Strategy and Business Objectives
2) Membership Identification and Acquisition Plan
3) Content / Programming Plan
4) Community Management Plan
5) Communication Plan
6) Moderation Plan
7) Tools and Rollout Plan
8) Social Media Knowledge and Expertise
In the graphic below you will notice that Strategy and Business Objectives, and Membership Identification and Acquisition Plan are grouped above the rest of the components. This is because these two components need to be completed before you can start working on the rest. Similarly, Tools & Rollout Plan is below the rest because the others must be completed (or close to it) before you can determine what tools and functionality are required to support the initiative.
Today I’ll dive into more detail of the Strategy and Business Objectives component.
The Eight Components for Social Media Success
Strategy & Business Objectives
Usually done iteratively and in parallel with Membership Identification and Acquisition Plan, the Strategy and Business Objectives component is the foundation for the social media initiative. The following items need to be identified and documented (as applicable):
- Vision: An overview of the social media initiative and how it aligns with corporate or departmental strategy. In effect, a social media initiative charter statement.
- Goals and Objectives: Statement of the business and financial goals and objectives. It is extremely important to make sure that the goals and objectives of different stakeholders align. Although each may have their own valid goals and objectives for the social media initiative, their goals and objectives may not align with the goals and objectives of other stakeholders. In identifying each stakeholder’s goals and objectives, it will become apparent if they are miss-aligned. Make sure all stakeholders understand and agree to the goals and objectives of the initiative.
- Return on Investment (ROI): ROI is included in this component, including hard ROI (if measurable based on the scope of the initiative and available data), measurement (typical web and social media measurements), as well as soft (such as like reputation, voice of the conversation).
- Documentation: Documentation applicable to the social media initiative. This may include existing social media guidelines or policies, communications policies, or published web practices and security procedures.
- Ownership & Roles: Identification stakeholders, owners (of content, web properties, this social media initiative, existing social media activities,…). Also includes current roles and responsibilities as related to community initiative.
- Procedures and Processes: What is the change management process for getting changes to the web properties? What are the procedures for getting approval of content? Definition of the change management process for modifications for this social media initiative. (May require initial identification of possible internal and external content sources and repositories. Deep identification of possible internal and external content sources is done in the Content / Programming Plan component.)
- Decision Making: Who is responsible for decisions regarding the social media initiative? Includes decision makers not just for the initial phases, but also the decision makers ongoing. If applicable, internal processes such as content approval need to be identified documented, and modified if necessary to meet the needs of the social media initiative.
Conduct an Analysis
After the items above have been identified and documented, analysis to determine if the current state will support the social media initiative as it is, or (more likely) what changes are required. This is an important step that many organizations bypass as they charge down the path to launching their social media project – however, doing so is a step towards failure of the social media initiative. There are many reasons why, but I will give you just one example…
Content Process Example
Let’s look at an example of a company’s current content approval process. The current process for internally created content to be approved for external use starts with 1) content created by the author, which is 2) passed to an editor or manager for modification and approval, then forwarded to 3) HR for compliance approval, which is then passed to 4) legal for approval, and is finally provided to 5) whoever publishes on whatever medium. The process from start to finish takes three to four weeks and has to be completed before any content can be released.
When responding to a hot topic within an online community (such as a product issue), communication has to be almost instantaneous. Given the current content approval process of the example company, three to four weeks to respond is unacceptable. This indicates that the content approval process needs to be modified to support the social media initiative, or a process specific to social media content needs to be defined.
A Good Social Media Initiative Foundation
In a software development project, where time spent flushing out the business and functional requirements before beginning development greatly reduces code rework and testing time, and increases the probability that the software will meet the business need. Likewise, spending time and resources on Strategy and Business Objectives will lay a good foundation for your social media initiative, and increase the probability that the initiative will meet your business need.
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Steve,
Nice post. A couple of other items to consider, Governance and Organization. You may have these wrapped into one of the other areas already, but if not, these are components of the overall strategy as well. Governance is fairly straight forward, but the Organization can be rather difficult to structure correctly to support the emerging social media operations. These, and many other elements of an SM strategy can be iterated through and don’t need to be done in one single shot. This is a growing and evolving space.
You are right that Governance and Organization are wrapped into the other areas. You are also right that Governance is fairly straight forward, but the Organization can be rather difficult to structure correctly to support the emerging social media operations. I find the latter especially true when the social media initiative spans across multiple verticals organizations within the company.
Thanks for the comment, Paul.
Thanks for sharing this post with the Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community, Steve. Here are a few thoughts on what you’ve written:
1. I advise folks to start with an articulation of their vision and goals/objectives without regard to social media. Once they’ve defined them, then they can assess whether and how social media can be leveraged to help achieve their goals. If technology enters the conversation too early, it can dominate the discussion and lead people astray. Delaying its inclusion emphasizes its role as a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. I would almost argue, therefore, that the strategy process for a social media initiative doesn’t begin until after “steps” 1 and 2 are substantially complete.
2. I consider some of the elements you’ve identified as part of the strategy process more appropriate for assessment (e.g., documentation) and/or tactical planning (e.g., decision making) stages. As you note in the “Procedures and Processes” bullet, however, perhaps the idea is get a high-level understanding during the strategy phase and drill deeper later. And, as Paul noted in his comment, the entire process is iterative, with lots of looping back and refining as you continue to move forward.
As evidenced by my preceding comments, my model and its details would look different from yours, and to a naive viewer our approaches could seem contradictory and confusing. Ultimately, we’d address all the same points, but our differences illustrate that there’s no simple formula or “one best way” to approach the development and implementation of social media initiatives. They also reinforce for me the non-linear nature of the process. Organizational leaders and their social media teams who recognize and accept both of those realities will ultimately be more successful than those who don’t.
Thanks again.
1. Folks definitely need to have their vision and goals/objectives defined before considering the social media aspect. That’s why I state it as “…aligns with corporate or departmental strategy”. The assumption is that it is already in place before considering leveraging social media to support.
Technology is absolutely the last component. That’s one of the reasons why it is at the bottom of the graphic. Just as in software development, where one of the first questions has to be, “What are the business needs this will product will meet?”, not “What functionality shall we have in the product?”, so too it goes with social media. A good example of this was at a recent conference where a young lady from Microsoft came up to me and said, “My boss wants me to start an online community, what tools should I use?” I immediately stopped her and explained that the technology should not be taken into consideration at this stage of her project, and I redirected to the conversation to a discussion of the organization’s business objectives. Too many companies have failing social media initiatives because of a “if you build it, they will come” technology focused approach.
2. These are the components – not the methodology or process. I purposely kept them separate because I was finding that folks need to understand the components before they can understand the process to use them. To use another software development analogy, a coder needs to understand the different types of commands before they can combine them to create a functional, working program.
The process is iterative, and I’ll be covering methodology and process in a later blog posts. And yes, the idea is get a high-level understanding during the strategy phase and drill deeper later. Or as I sometimes describe it, the first pass through is to identify the current state. Later passes address the changes required to support the social media initiative.
You are right that there’s no one best way, and I think anybody who says they have the “ultimate approach” is either fooling themselves, their employer/client, or both. I agree that we’d ultimately address all the same points, even if from different approaches.
Adding to your point about the non-linear nature of the process… so many leaders think that once (if) they’ve done all the proper strategy and planning, they launch and never look at it again. But as you know, the process is not only iterative in the planning/pre-launch stages, but needs to be revisited on a regular basis for re-validation and realignment.
Thanks for your observations and contributing to the conversation!
Steve
Steve, Courtney,
A little more background here on the approach that I take, if for no other reason to keep the conversation going since this is interesting to me and I find little content on this topic.
I use 4 steps as I start with a client, or start a new iteration in the process. If we are starting on a new Iteration, these 4 steps can all be sized to the appropriate level. They are:
• Assessment
• Goals
• Roadmap
• Measurement
Assessment – This step defines the current state of a company’s social media program. There are 3 primary activities that I go through for the assessment.
• Survey – online, 20 minutes, taken by stakeholders, practitioners, executives
• Interview stakeholders
• Research – Assets, competition, etc
Goals – These start with business goals, both Corporate and Marketing, customer service, sales, etc, depending upon the objectives of the Social Media program. These goals are broken down into the elements of a Social Media programs can help the organization achieve these goals.
Both the Assessment and Goals are lined up against the Social Media Maturity Model. This model outlines an organizations’ progression from Novice to Expert with Social Media. For more details: http://pwsmc.com/2010/07/09/the-social-media-maturity-model/
Roadmap – The roadmap pulls from 17 tactical execution modules to make up each phase of the process. This is a bit of an a la carte menu, but every program is different and needs to be customized in order to achieve the defined goals.
Measurement – It is very hard to manage what you can’t measure. Defining the proper metrics to track is one of the keys to keeping a Social Media program on track.
Feel free to Attack, Defend or Modify (as my history teacher in high school used to say).
Thanks, Paul. Another good example of a different methodology that ultimately address all the same points.
Good Post – I always use the Forrester POST method for new clients. Pretty similar to whats being said above.
Thanks
Richard
Glad you like it. I’m not familiar with the Forrester POST method, but I’ve found that most good approaches have a majority of these components /sub-components.
Steve