Listen, plan, analyse then engage. Your Social Media Mantra for 2012

There's no doubt about it - 2012 looks like the year of the Tipping Point for businesses seriously looking to engage with social media in the UK. I'm not saying that we are anywhere near mainstream adoption, but the 'it's just a fad' response is fast becoming a distant memory for organisations of all sectors, shapes and sizes.

However, how organisations go about adoption is key.

If we view social media platforms as far reaching communication channels, then that poses the question to organisations as to how they can leverage these channels to deliver on business objectives.

Let's face it - the remit of any marketing strategy is to deliver on the business objectives - to ultimately drive activity to achieve results that make sense for the business.

Therefore, social media isn't something an organisation does just for the sake of doing social media, (because everyone else is!) but rather to deliver business on objectives - hopefully as part of a well defined marketing strategy.

Business owners, CEOs and marketing directors should be thinking 'how' can we plug social media into what we currently do to maximise reach and realise objectives etc. However, probably due to eagerness to get onto the channels, often what we see is businesses diving into social media without any real thinking or planning.

This simple model (adapted from the brilliant book by Olivier Blanchard, Social Media ROI)

Outlines how one should ideally be approaching social media.

So to summarise and get back to the point I started with, plan, listen, analyse before you engage.

Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  Carvill Creative covers all aspects of online visibility – website effectiveness, social media marketing, social media management and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Passionate about Online Visibility - creating an integrated approach across websites, blogs and social media platforms.