Good Works Grapevine

This morning, I was invited to participate in a panel entitled “Web 2.0: Beyond the Hype” for professional service firms. The panel was hosted by Hinge and included two other lovely colleagues - Tracy Betts and Jen Sterling. We focused on objectives, assumptions, validation, technology selection and results for your social media campaign. Here are the take aways:

• Objectives. Almost every business starting a social media campaign has the main goal of gaining exposure for their message. While exposure is a byproduct of social media, your objectives should focus on user engagement, not only from customer to business but also customer to customer. No matter what your objectives are (and they may vary depending on your needs) always remember that engagement is key.
• Assumptions. In this case, assumptions refer to the theories you have about your audience. Who are they and more importantly, where are they? Are you targeting a younger crowd who are frequenting Facebook or MySpace? Is your market business professionals who may be on LinkedIn? Define your market and think about where they spend their time - both socially and professionally.
• Validation. So you think you know where your audience spends their time? Go there. Spend some time within the space communicating with the folks who “live” there. If your theories are correct, you’ll find the most effective properties to target your campaign. If you are wrong about your assumptions, you may need to do more research to determine where your audience is on the web.
• Technology Selection. Based upon your audience and their online habits, determine what tools are best for reaching them. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Start small with one or two tools. Use them in different ways. Experiment until you find the tools that meet your ultimate objectives. And don’t be afraid to push one tool aside and try another. At the end of the day, you want a toolkit that suits your needs personally and meets your business goals.
• Results. Where applicable, use tools like Google Analytics to track your metrics. Track qualitative as well as quantitative results. Are you seeing new members in your communities? Has the dialogue increased between you and your customers via social media? Are you getting more interest from the media? There are many ways to gauge the success of your social media campaign through both figures and general evaluation. Find the best metric for your business and track it over time.

The podcast of the event should be available shortly, so I’ll add the link as soon as its live.