Before creating a corporate blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, etc., it is necessary to think of what the Company’s online strategy will be in general and particularly on social networks. The defined strategy shall guide the Company’s steps and will help in the day-to-day presence on social networks. This strategy shall be aligned with the strategic Company objectives, of course.
We recommend that the defined strategy is written in a document that can be accessed by all people within the Company who collaborate in social network activities. This document must contain at least the following parts:
| Objectives
What are the intended objectives on social media. Examples of objectives may be:
| Increase our online presence and brand-name recognition
| Generate traffic to our corporate website
| Increase the level of interaction of our users
| Position ourselves as references in our sector by creating content
| Increase the number of contacts through new media and access to new clients
| Improve our customer service and encourage loyalty
| Improve our reputation if necessary, or start to earn one if we are not very well known…
| Audience
Whom we are targeting; what is the public objective.
| Content
What topics are we going to talk about. It is recommended that our content demonstrates our Companies’ differences and what our strengths are in comparison with our competitors.
| Plataformas
What media will be used. Examples of media include:
| Blogs, Wikis
| Video platforms
| Photo platform
| General social networks
| Social network topics…
| Planning publications
What type of publications will be made on each selected platform, and with what frequency.
| Indicators
What parameters are we going to measure when evaluating the success of the defined strategy. The indicators should be online with the objectives defined. The tool with which the selected indicators are going to be measured must be indicated.
| Active listening
In addition to the content planning that we do, it is also necessary to activate a listening system that alerts us when the brand name of our Company appears in new online content. Though there are free and commercial applications that achieve this task, the most direct way of doing so is to activate an alert in Google Alerts. We can receive alerts about new content that talks about our brand through e-mail, but our recommendation is to separate them from mail and read them through RSS, in a source reader like Feedly, for example.
In this way, we can stay up-to-date about what is said about our brand and, if we deem it to be necessary, we can react to content that is said about us.
