In coming up with the elements of a plan, I found a few surprises. One, I hadn't considered having a trial phase or project as part of a strategy. Maybe there are elements that you're not ready to roll out against your main brand. You might want to test those in a less direct way. Another surprise was that I hadn't considered the training required for internal resources until I had a conversation with Cynthia Closkey.[230]
What follows is simply the list of elements to consider when building a social media strategy for your organization. I'm submitting it to you for consideration in the hope that you'll find it useful for your projects and so you can point out things I might have missed. Please note that every item here explodes into all kinds of subcategories and information. This is just the overview.
Research. The internal social media evangelist looks at what might be possible (maybe by reading my stuff as a starting point).
Trial or full plan. Decide whether you want a trial phase, perhaps not company-branded (e.g., Target stores doing an ice cream blog without any Target branding, just to try the culture of blogging).
Goals. Without a clear understanding of your goals for the program, these steps are worthless.
Target audience. Is this blog for customers, colleagues, coworkers, moms—who?
End state. Once this project is running, what will improve within the company?
Resources—internal. Who has the responsibility (fun?) of maintaining a community, creating content, being a good social media citizen?
Resources—external. Do you hire consultants, advisers, analysts to help you launch? Do you outsource the entire platform, like American Express or Fast Search have done?
Integration points with existing ops structure. If this is a tiny offshoot of its own, it won't live long. How do you tie in what this person's doing to the larger organization?
Input from team. Once you have your plan, do you shop it around internally? If so, help people own it. Give your ideas handles, so people can take the ideas and make them their own.
Reporting structure. Is the keeper of the social media project a different person than the creator's boss? Where does the information that is gathered go? Who needs to know when something comes up?
Training. This turns out to be an important step. How will you handle it?
Legal. The project should be blessed at least once by legal. Thereafter, do you make every step of the way a legal hurdle to jump? I lean toward no, but your culture might say differently.
Again, there are lots of ways to arrive at the finish line. You can add in the parts you might also need to consider; you can remove the things you don't want to talk about. You can shape this to fit the various business types you have in mind.