The extent to which social business is going to work out well for you depends largely on what you aim to achieve with it. Take the time to develop comprehensive goals and objectives. Use the results from the Analysis phase to establish a baseline which you’ll use to formulate goals/objectives and measure them against.
Here are some questions to ask when you start thinking about goals and objectives:
- Which goals/objectives need to be achieved?
- What are the expectations of your customers?
- What quantity is expected?
- What are the levels of quality that you’ll distinguish between?
- What levels of quality are acceptable?
- What is the time-frame?
- What is the available budget (for people, training, technology, et cetera)?
- What are the expectations in regards to ROI?
- Which KPIs are important to your stakeholders?
- How do these goals/objectives tie into existing corporate goals/objectives?
- How are we going to compare social business results to “traditional” (online) marketing results?
Remember that social business is just as much about “social” as it is about “business”. Your goals and objectives shouldn’t only aim at your business but also at your customers. What is your social business manifesto going to look like?
Here are some guidelines to help you develop goals and objectives as well as a social business manifesto:
- Focus Know what matters to you. Be where you need to be. Don’t talk to a void.
- Brand it Make sure your social business efforts are well-branded so they’re recognized by your community.
- Be consistent Manage both your community’s expectations as well as your own in terms of interaction (form, frequency, tone, et cetera).
- Go beyond Social business should be an extension of what you’re already doing. If it was the same, then there wouldn’t be any added value. Look at what social business can do for you what other activities cannot.
- Provide value Give to your community, this could be physical (e.g. samples), emotional (e.g. relationship-building), financial (e.g. discounts), intellectual (e.g. white papers) or anything else that is of value.
- Be human Remember the social aspect and incorporate the human aspect.
- Leverage Your social business efforts should focus on leveraging the strengths of social media and communities.
- Drive action Make sure your efforts move people to do something. Whether it’s a click, a comment, a purchase or something else, point them in the direction that makes business sense to you.
- Measure While some aspects of social business are difficult to measure, strive to establish metrics for everything you do.
I’ll be back with an announcement next week. Until then, comments and questions are welcome as always!
Related posts:
- Social Business: Analysis – Part 6: Social Business Challenges
- Getting Into Social Business
- Social Business: Analysis – Part 2A: Reasons To Participate In Social Business: Marketing
- Social Business: Analysis – Part 3A: As-Is And To-Be Considerations
- Social Business: Analysis – Part 2C: Reasons To Participate In Social Business: Internal Reasons And Avoiding Social Business
