When my wife and I were consulting in the financial services industry, we were continually asked, "How on earth have you accomplished what you have?"
As we would begin our investigation, we would quite often occasion the wild gunslinger who would run to battle firing wildly, making lots of noise, and unfortunately, many times run back wounded, or perhaps even dead (the business that is).
Now, make no mistake, there is a place for a gunslinger. However, the best gunslingers do not simply grab a gun and run off shooting. Sure, you are likely to hit something. Sure, you will likely get a lot of attention.
But hear this, it is not sustainable! You will either be mortally wounded, or perhaps even dead.
This is also true of an organization's social media strategy.
Here are 11 critical questions to ask, and answer, before you begin a social media channel:
- Why are we doing this?
- Who do we hope to communicate with?
- How are we going to communicate? (video, audio, text, all of the above?)
- How often are we going to communicate?
- What are we going to communicate?
- Might we expand our influence through a social media channel? How? Who would we want to talk to?
- Might we better communicate, and deepen the relationship with our current patrons? What would this look like?
- Might we better help our patrons, and potential patrons to understand the heart of our organization?
- Might this medium, over time, reduce our cost of communication? Can we reduce our exposure to expensive print costs?
- What does success look like?
- What would a return on investment (ROI) look like?
Most businesses that we consulted with essentially ran on the "idea of the month". There were no foundational principles to what they were doing, they had no specific, measurable objectives, they were often victims of burnout, and found themselves on the battle field, smoke rising from the barrels of their guns, and completely lost, frustrated, and defeated.
Look, when you enter the world of social media, you are going to make a first impression. First impressions are very quickly made, and very, very difficult to change.
Therefore, I say, ready, carefully aim, and then...fire to beat the band!
PS - the "ready, aim" part of this equation might take an afternoon. Do it, measure, and constantly make adjustments as you go along.
