Steps to Creating a Social Media Strategy Summary

Setting Goals1. Write down your goals. Brainstorm first. Think of all the things that you want to accomplish.

2. Refine your list of goals.Look at your list. Is each goal SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely)? Focus particularly on whether it is measurable and realistic. Prioritize your top goals and see if you can narrow them down to your top 3 or 4.

3. Look at your list. Are your top 3 goals in conflict with one another? This is not necessarily a bad thing – it just means that you’ll need to keep in mind that you’ll likely be using different tools and mediums to reach different audiences in order to accomplish these goals. Or that you’ll need to focus on a single goal to begin with, and wait until later to try to accomplish the others.

Finding Your Audience1. Brainstorm the characteristics of your audienceWrite down what you know about your audience. Demographics including age, lifestyle, geography, places they go, things they buy. Defining your audience is often the most difficult part of the plan, but it’s also the most important. Strategic communication is audience-centered, so you need to know your audience to communicate effectively. Don’t worry about the outliers right now, focus on the big commonalities that you can identify.

2. Figure out where your audience is. Are they online (and if so, where)? Are they already organized? What do they like to do online? How do they interact? Do the people you found match the characteristics you listed in #1?Testing your assumptions will be very important. You may find that you need to narrow down your audience definitions, or find the right platform. Birdwatchers who share photos on facebook may be very different from birdwatchers who share photos on flickr. Sometimes the platform’s standards and guidelines will define the community and how it interacts. See what people enjoy doing on these platforms and think about ways that you could meet your goals based on these activities.

3. Map your goals to the communities you’ve found (or plan to create) online. Make sure there is alignment (at least in theory).

Join in and experiment1. Listen to others. Join in the existing community. Test your assumptions and see if you fit in as you expected.

2. Start small. Get feedback. Make mistakes and learn from them.

3. Evaluate what is working and what isn’t. Plan to spend more time on the things that are working, and think about cutting out or changing the things that aren’t working.

4. Go back to your goal setting and audience defining steps. Are there things that you would change based on what you know now? Change them – it’s not too late!

Evaluate your efforts and make big plans1. Go back to those measurable goals, and ensure that you have tools and metrics to match to each of them.

2. Set up a system to track your progress

3. Invest more time, money and energy in those things that are working.

4. Be ruthless in cutting off the efforts that aren’t working. Think of this as gardening – if you don’t prune some branches everything could die.

5. Set up long-term planning so that your efforts are part of your overall organizational communications plan. Revisit this plan regularly, as the technology and channels are likely to change more often than your long-term strategy will.