Ready, Set … Wait, Do You Have a Plan?

When it comes to launching a social media campaign, some people just jump in with both feet. They sign up for their accounts one morning, and are linking in, facebooking, and tweeting out later that afternoon. They figure it can be hard to know what you want to do before you know what it is you are doing.

Other people like to plan. For those people a recent article, by social media consultant and copywriter Catherine Parker, outlines some important steps to take before launching a campaign. Those steps include defining goals, defining what success looks like to you, outlining your underlying strategy, understanding your position in the marketplace, knowing your target market, and making sure you have the resources available to wage a campaign.

That last step is often overlooked. She says,

“Starting a social media campaign is easy enough, but having the resources and commitment to keep it going is another story altogether. In fact, starting a campaign and then stopping it because you’ve run out of steam can damage your brand even more than not using social media at all. Before you start, decide whether you can commit to the time resources required to run your campaign. If you can’t, consider outsourcing your campaign’s management to a third party. Alternatively you could also narrow your campaign’s scope, or postpone its launch altogether until you have the internal resources available to run it.”

To find out more, you can read the entire article at memeburn.com.

For those of you who like to jump in with both feet, there is the approach of First National Bank CEO and technophile Michael Jordaan. His bank, the oldest in South Africa, can trace its roots back to 1838. Jordaan says, “We love innovation and encourage all our 30,000 staff to innovate. In fact the best innovator can win R1-million. This means that we have to rely less on a formal strategy for something like social media (or anything else) and more on just employing the right people and empowering them to get on with it.” Read more, also on memeburn.com.

Whether you’re a planner or a “get on with it” type, there are plenty of great examples and great ideas for you to follow when it comes to engaging in social media. If social media is something that can help you communicate and connect with your constituencies, and you haven’t started, it’s time.