Twitter isn’t a Strategy

Image by lopolis via Flickr

Twitter isn’t a strategy, it’s a tactic.

There is a lot of “snake oil” being sold to innocent small and mid-size businesses. Which should be expected, due to the fact that social media is the latest and greatest shiny object. However, there are some basic rules that you if apply them it will make it a lot easier to identify the snake and their oil.

There is a ton of potential to communicate with your consumers and bring brand awareness through social media. But, there is more to it than just acquiring friends and followers. While reaching the masses has its place, the success of social media is putting a face to the brand so that you’re in a position to listen and converse with your consumer, and hopefully through a positive experience empower them to be your brand loyalists. It also connects your friends with a person not just a logo or product.

The key to any social media strategy is the foundation that it’s built upon. Here are a few foundational questions.

1. What is it’s purpose? If you know the purpose of your interaction within the digital space, it will make it easier to weed out the cool ideas with the right ideas. It will also save you time and money from chasing rainbows and pots of gold.

2. What business goals will it address? Your social media strategy should address one of your business goals. By linking your strategy to your business goals it makes it easier to define the purpose of your social engagement.

3. What audience are you trying to reach? When you know who you’re wanting to talk to and where your community is active, you can better outline your tactical plan, as well as save you time, energy, and money. If your customers aren’t active on Twitter or Facebook, but are still on Myspace… perhaps that’s where you should be as well.

4. What tactics will accomplish questions 1-3? When you know your purpose, your goals and your audience, you are then able to build a tactical plan around it. You can then build your strategy from listening all the way to engagement.

What’s making social media work for these brands, is that they built their strategies without diluting their brand. They just provided an opportunity for their brand to be engaged by their consumers.

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Tagged as: brand, Marketing and Advertising, Online Communities, Social media, Social Networking