Roadmap for social media

How to get people to interact through an organisation’s social media sites is one of the most common questions I get asked.

An old university friend of mine works for an organisation which already has a lot on its website, but he wanted to know how to get people to interact with their content.

I gave him my roadmap, developed over the past few years working in the field, and it goes like this:

1. Facebook: begin with Facebook

• This is the largest and most successful social network out there
• The people you want to reach are increasingly found there
• Ordinary people are getting used it
• It’s becoming more and more of a search engine
• It’s here for the long term and not going away
• It’s going to evolve and develop to enable more connections
• Your competitors are probably there already
• The skills to use it are probably in your office
• The learning curve isn’t so steep
• It doesn’t require lots of effort
• Returns on investment can be high

2. Twitter: once you’ve built up a social media workflow try out Twitter

• Once you have Facebook under control – experience the magic of Twitter!
• Twitter is a terrific place to discover things you are interested in
• You have to monitor Twitter as well as post on it to get the most out of it
• People who discover you will rapidly befriend you
• It takes a little practice but can be learned quite easily
• The skills may well be in your office already
• Reach out to existing and new communities as with Facebook
• It is low maintenance
• Informal Q&As are possible
• Loyal followings can be built up quickly

3. Blog: this requires commitment and more time

• This place should become your long term archive
• It should be hooked up to Facebook and Twitter
• You should use photos and videos
• Open up and show your personal side in this blog space
• Drive interested people to your content and to learn about you
• This should be linked to the organisation website

I’ll catch up with him after summer and find out how far he has progressed his organisation’s move into social media.