Thinking of following in the footsteps of some of the world’s most successful companies by implementing a social media strategy? One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to being social so we’ve taken the time to draw up a few pointers that should help you along the way.

1.        How will you listen?

Listening is an integral part of any conversation and plays a crucial role in ensuring your social media strategy succeeds, but how can you listen effectively if all your customers are talking at once? After all, a large company or brand could have hundreds of mentions every hour.

Monitoring is imperative for all organisations in order to identify and respond to feedback. For a small organisation, hiring a media analyst to trawl the web might be sufficient, but larger organisations may need to use a tool in order to gather all of the conversations about them in one place. This makes it easier to know where to engage. Using a social media monitoring platform can help ensure that you are always abreast of conversation and inform your engagement strategy appropriately.

2.        How will your approach be structured?

Some companies prefer to take a personal approach, with all staff members responsible for updating social media content, as with US shoe company Zappos. Others might take a more structured approach, the method adopted by Dell, with customer service feedback handled by clearly defined teams.

Both approaches have been shown to be equally effective. How well an approach works will depend upon resources, brand image and the relationship the company has with staff and customers. Consider the manner in which you already speak to customers as a baseline; speaking in completely different tonalities can take away from messaging.

3.        What style of engagement will your company take?

Once you have decided how your approach will be structured, this will likely determine the style your engagement should take. For example:

Natural cosmetics company Lush take a personal approach on Twitter, asking conversational questions and responding to tweets in a personable manner.

In contrast Dell, take a more structured approach, by responding to tweets with personable Twitter account ID’s e.g. @KerryAtDell, rather than under one all-encompassing company Twitter ID @DellUK. They also speak in a more customer service focused manner, in some instances asking for further details about customer queries directly through social media.

4.        What is the value of your engagement?

When engaging with customers it is important to consider what value you are bringing to the conversation. If you’re tweeting about your favourite movies when your customers are asking you to resolve an issue for them, are you really adding value to the conversation? Similarly, if you’re sending out impersonal, automated tweets when your customers are crying out for human interaction, are you making the most of your social media opportunities?

Listening to what your customers want and finding the best way to support them whilst adding value to the business is key to a successful social media strategy. Similarly, you can help your customers in social media, but they can also help you by providing feedback on products, services and campaigns. This reciprocal approach will add value to your engagement, whether you choose to take a structured approach like Dell or the more personal approach like Zappos and Lush.

5.       Evaluate your social media strategy

Having measurable goals in place before monitoring begins is essential; this will ensure you recognise successes or limitations. As such, planning how to evaluate a social media strategy before the implementation stage is a good method of ensuring any issues are highlighted and used to build upon future social media strategies. Questions to consider might include:

• How is the tonality and structure of your engagement being received by your customers? Do you need to take a different approach?
• Where in social media are conversations occurring and does this impact upon the tonality or structure of your engagement?

Asking these sorts of questions will ensure that your company is making the most of any social media strategy in place. How you engage with customers and act on information gleaned from the evaluation process could determine your success in social media.

6.        Stay ahead of the curve

Many companies are now using social media platforms to communicate with customers. As a result, breaking new ground is becoming increasingly important as customers seek out new and exciting ways to engage with companies and brands online. Staying ahead of the curve by using new interactive applications and social media metrics effectively is a good predictor of success in social media. This was highlighted recently by Virgin America who identified key Twitter influencers and gave them free flights which resulted in significantly increased conversation about the company.

Have you been impressed or disappointed by a particular social media strategy? Feel free to share in the comments section below.

Tags: engagement, Enterprise wide social media, Professional Services, Social Media