Social Media - Know it before you use it.
Every company is different, so a one size fits all approach can't work with social media. At Liquid Telecom we used social media as an awareness and engagement tool with a significant emphasis on LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. Video content is shared through company wide Facebook accounts and the mirror hosted on Vimeo accounts.
Listening - In the B2B market place particularly, social media is incredibly important as a listening tool. Monitoring social media gives market information, competitor data, industry context.
Talking - Social media marketing is most effective when other people talk about your business. If you've done a good job, others will do your advertising for you.
Knowing how to use any media effectively is key, but equally important is to recognise what each media can’t be. This is true of TV, radio, print, social, digital or experiential. How can you add nuance or emotion to an SMS or email, or present At Liquid Telecom I worked with our customers experience and web masters to define that social media would not be used as a customer service portal, or to seek dialogue or to present views other than those approved by Liquid Telecom Group. We also made sure that it's never used for internal communications.
By doing this, we took control of social media ownership, monitoring and reporting across the group and created the companies first 'Social Media Policy' with management guidelines.
Through a process of strategic planning, understanding the power of social media, but allying this with the limitations of our own internal resourcing, we are able to create great content that positions our brand and gives sharable content that we distribute across multiple platforms.
Our retail marketing was different again - but that's another story.