Strategy - easy on the T&A

I've been writing a social media strategy, it isn't my first, but since the first few I've written I feel the use of social media has matured, also, as we are constantly told, these are leaner times, and hours spent on social networks must be justified, particularly to higher management who may associate something like Facebook with something their teenage kids play with. Of course, in higher education, that is the exact reason why we are using social media, we're going to where our audience are. However, without a clear strategy, complex and well judged social media activity can come across as sophisticated as hanging out in the local park with a sandwich board.

I used a standard CIM style SOSTAC strategy, but it was heavy on the situational analysis and light on the actual actions. This may seem shallow, but, in itself, social media strategies are shallow - in a couple of years they probably won't exist, this is still a hangover from the shock of the impact of social media on business, and many people still think of it as an end, not a means - an undergraduate recruitment strategy is common but we don't have a billboard/48sheet strategy, it's a method, not an objective.

This is why my social media strategy is heavy on the S and light on the T and A (hmm, unfortunate letters), because it would end up 30 pages long, no-one would read it and it would be out of date in 6 months time.

I consider the purpose of a social media strategy as an overview of where we are using this channel, so far (it's rare, particularly in a university, that people wait for a fully formed strategy before diving in), how successful it's been, and where errors have been made. Then over arching aims (recruitment etc) and some specific SMART objectives for the establishment of the channel as part of standard marketing and communications protocol. I discussed integration with existing activity, but personally didn't link these to specific campaigns, I know that isn't a SMART objective exactly, though I didn't add some time parameters).

Finally I added measurements. This section is important because it outlines the fact that all we do is measurable - these are no longer the days of Wanamaker.

Hopefully this will be useful to you - you could disagree completely and feel pages of specific action are important, but remember that these actions should be in individual campaign strategies, and no-one wants to read the same thing over and over!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

More Dash, less Bored..

Oh yes, I went there, 2nd post and already I'm using bad puns.

Recently I've been working on a page of stats for a web committee, with the aim of it being presented to directorate level staff. At first, this seemed like a simple task, I've been knocking together web stats for years, on social media, e-commerce, web analytics, the lot.  However, previously it was either for tech or marketing people like myself, or for a statistics-junkie manager who was very specific about what stats he wanted, I just had to provide them. So being presented with the task of providing a "dashboard for people" who knew they wanted something, but didnt know enough about the tech to know exactly what they wanted, or how it should be presented, was a challenge.

The main concerns here are, what level shall I pitch this at? These are clever people, and responsible for the direction of a university, so require all the information relevant to that process, but they aren't marketers or web managers so bounce, reach and sentiment ratio don't mean much to them. Pitch it too high, and the data will be meaningless, too low, and the the data will be useless.

I did this in my head for about 3 months and 4 dashboard drafts. It took 3 things to shake me out of this:

1. Reminding myself that "I" knew what it all meant, and so I was best qualified to make the decision of what was left in. If I felt it was important, and it was actionable, it needed to go in.
2. These things evolve, I could create a first version, with a little bit of commentary explaining each stat what WHY it was important.
3. I'm lucky enough to work in the same office as a market researcher - she's used to distilling an avalanche of stats and I asked her to take a look over it - she merely confirmed everything I suspected - this chart was too much, this should have more detail, this should go in etc.  It reaffirmed point 1, but it was still good to have someone to ask.

So, why haven't I just thrown up my dashboard as a template, and skipped all this? Because my dashboard looks at stats that are important to my institution, and if I give you that template, you're never going to learn rule number 1.

Trust yourself. You're in the job for a reason.

Oh... go on then... here's some links to some article that may help - there are hundreds of articles on social media ROI now as businesses wake up to the fact that it's no longer just a matter of ticking a box, its potentially the most powerful and certainly the most cost effective means of marketing out there.

http://www.1updigital.com/blog/5-rules-for-the-perfect-web-analytics-dashboard.html

http://mashable.com/2010/01/26/maturation-social-media-roi/

And finally, my dashboard had to cover site analytics and social media metrics - these are two different topics, don't try and fit them on one big dashboard if you're required to do the same - to the untrained eye it will just be confusing. Next to each table & graph (use charts instead of numbers wherever appropriate) put a small commentary text box - giving your insight into the data - in the first to go to directorate I explained each stats succinctly - if it takes more than a sentence or two to exaplain it's importance, it's probably too complex to view. Also, I added some caveats "this is a snapshot" "this stat is prone to extreme fluctuation" "this will have been influenced by Clearing activity" etc.

Enjoy! My dashboard is far from finished, and will continue to evolve, so any tips you can share, post them here!

Do as I say, not as I do..

I spend a lot of my time advising people to blog. A lot of the time, the conversation goes like this:

"You really should consider writing a blog, its the best way to show your knowledge in this field, and that, as much as anything else, will help attract students to your course"

"But doesnt that take a lot of time? I'm very busy"

"Oh no, we'll set up your blog for you, you just need to talk about what you're interested in. Before you know it, you'll do everything you can to MAKE time to blog"

"Wow, ok, well set it up for me and I'll give it a go"

However, sometimes it goes like this:

"You really should consider writing a blog, its the best way to show your knowledge in this field, and that, as much as anything else, will help attract students to your course"

"But doesnt that take a lot of time? I'm very busy"


"Oh no, we'll set up your blog for you, you just need to talk about what you're interested in. Before you know it, you'll do everything you can to MAKE time to blog"

"Really? So you blog then?"

"Erm...."

So, here is is, my own blog. I've contributed to many marketing, social media, technology and gaming blogs, and written on a few sites on a regular basis, but I've never actually had my own blog. So here it is.

I'll be using this mainly to share and discuss the great articles I read every day on various social media, there are so many clever people talking about it, and so many great article every day, that it can be quite overwhelming, and it's easy to end up not reading any, just because the task becomes daunting, and we get ever busier. My hope is that this will force me to take the time to read through this wealth of information, while helping anyone who reads this to maybe identify articles that will be of interest to them.

Oh, and so I can actually stop being such a bloody hypocrite.