Social Media Strategy

Strategy is an integral part to the success of a campaign that involves social media. I've said it on this blog before and I say it all the time in my work, but there has to be a strategy behind social media efforts. You shouldn't dive right in and hope it all works out. "Guess and check" isn't a good system when trying to build a positive reputation for your brand.

With that said, you have to be extremely careful about who you talk to and what advice you get when building a social media strategy. Here are a few key points to remember:

1. The strategy should be your own

Don't settle for the application of basic social media best practices to your brand. Your brand, products, services, target audience, resources, leadership buy-in, and much more make your campaign unique.The campaign you create should be tailor made to give you the greatest chance of success after factoring all of these key variables.

2. Social media won't succeed alone

Though social media is a great communication platform, it won't win the battle for brand awareness and advocacy alone. Social media is best used if integrated into a cross-platform marketing/PR strategy.

3. Don't obsess over a single tool

Make sure you don't focus all your time and effort on a single tool like Facebook or Twitter. You need a proper cross-pollination of messaging on multiple tools. What if you focused your social media efforts solely on Twitter and it went under because it couldn't procure $100 million in funding? Where your brand be now? Make sure there are at least 2-3 landing pages for consumers to visit.

4. Content continues to be king

What you put on your blog, in your profile, in your tweets or wherever else you are is vital to the success of your campaign. The content should be engaging and relevant to what you are trying to achieve. It should also be published on a regular basis. You shouldn't have long lapses in time between posts.

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Don't Let Your Social Media be a Frozen Meal

Social media is truly what you make it. You can join whatever community you want on whatever platform. You can participate on a regular basis or you can almost never participate. You can listen and read or you can put your opinions forward.

For brands and companies, social media is what you make is as well. It can either be as good as a four course meal in a five-star restaurant, or it can be a frozen meal that takes a couple minutes to heat up.


The five-star meal comes from people that have worked behind the scenes to strategize about the best combination of flavors. It is also a meal that they have tested time and again before offering it up on their menu.

The frozen meal is essentially a quick fix for you hunger needs. It may satisfy your hunger temporarily, but it has it's problems. First, if you are like me, a frozen meal doesn't fill you up. It doesn't do enough to compare the five-star meal. Second, more often than not it is unhealthy. Eating that frozen meal may actually hurt you in the long run because of added calories and unhealthy ingredients.

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