Part 1: Dipping your toe into social media

This is the first in a 4 part series about how you can start a social media strategy program started in a risk-averse company. In part 1, we’ll start out very slowly and just dip our toe in to some of the basic platforms.

I’m sure you have a list of your favorite industry blogs, you’ve dabbled in LinkedIn and Facebook and you’ve even heard of Twitter. You undoubtedly know that you “need” to take advantage of social media to stay competitive, but you’re a bit overwhelmed and your company isn’t exactly sure it’s a good fit.

You know that connecting with your customers on a more personal level can improve your brand and your bottom line. You understand that social media can be a great way to influence behavior with minimal out-of-pocket expenses. And you realize that you’ll need to do something fast just to stay competitive. But, because you’re part of a large company, particularly if you’re in a highly regulated, risk-averse industry like health care or banking, your company may feel there’s just too much risk associated with that level of transparency. And thinking about shifting your marketing communications into conversations, your organization might feel like it would lose control over its message and its brand, and that there could be very real legal and IP considerations.

Here is an easy 4-day (or 4-hour) plan to dip your toe into social media. If you haven’t used these tools before, spend just an hour each week and you’ll be laying the groundwork for implementing a social media strategy for your company.

Day 1: Make it brief
Create a communications strategy brief. The operative word is “brief”. Don’t get bogged down in committee meetings, just create a one-page outline of who your target audience is, what your organization’s goals are for the next year and how you think your company and customers can benefit by adopting social media. Then, write down your top 3 concerns. This will be your guide throughout the process. It’s not set in stone, so feel free to update it at any time.

Day 2: Set up basic accounts
If you haven’t already, set up personal accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and start exploring. This will allow you to get familiar with what each platform offers without involving the company brand. Find a handful of people you know and start connecting with them. These can be friends, co-workers or thought leaders in your industry. The important thing is to explore without any grand agenda.

Day 3: Listen to the chatter
A fundamental benefit of social media tools that often can get overlooked is the ability to eavesdrop on conversations. You can search twitter posts, blog posts and reader comments to find out what people are saying about your brand, your industry and your competition. Here is two good places to start searching–just type in your company name, your product, even your name (come on, you know you want to):

• Search twitter
• Search blogs

What do you notice? Is there even anybody talking about you? Do you see any patterns? Are there people that you’d never heard of that your customers listening to? Did you find anything surprising?

Day 4: Participate in the community
You’ve created your strategy brief (you may have even updated it already), you’re more familiar with some of the core social media platforms and you’ve explored what others are saying about you online. Now it’s time to start participating. The easiest thing to do is to comment on another’s blog. Choose 3 of your favorite industry blogs and post comments on a couple of articles you find particularly helpful or interesting. Your comments don’t need to be lengthy or even deep. Eventually, you‘ll want to provide more insightful comments, but even thanking the blogger for their contribution or insight is enough. Your comments should be informal and authentic and this shouldn’t be used as an opportunity to directly sell your services. Just say what you would if that person were standing right in front of you.

What are you waiting for?
When you start using this simple plan, you’ll be laying the foundation for your company’s social media strategy with very little brand risk. You can do these steps in 4 days or 4 hours. The important thing is to take a little time each day or each week to explore and to participate. Become a part of the community you want to do business with.

In part 2, I’ll kick it up a notch and talk about how you can begin making the case to your risk-averse organization for adopting social media. Part 3 will talk about ideas for implementing social media internally. Finally, part 4 will discuss simple and low-risk ways to turn your social media program outward.

Photo by adactio. Creative Commons image license.