Trade Show TalesBlog

Guest post by Tim Patterson of www.tradeshowguyblog.com.

Social Media Planning

Depending on what your company’s involvement is in social media, there are a number of approaches you can take to moving forward during the first quarter of 2011. And that’s the KEY: MOVING FORWARD from wherever you are at this moment. With the forward motion of all things social media, if you sit still you’ll get further and further behind!

If Your Company is NOT Doing Anything with Social Media

If you’re at the very beginning, you’ll have to start somewhere. Starting anywhere is better than not starting at all. Ask around the office, and look for your company’s own ‘digital native.’ This is the person that’s already online with social media. They’re already on Facebook and Twitter. They may be posting fun videos on YouTube or Facebook. Perhaps they’ve got a LinkedIn account. They’re adept at discussing and moving around in the social media world.

Once you find that person, sit down with your marketing manager and the company owner (presuming you’re a small or medium-sized company and have easy access to these people) and discuss the following steps:

• Where you are
• Where you want to go in the next 3 – 6 months
• What tools you’ll need
• Who will be in charge of the company’s social media efforts
• How much time it will realistically take to set up accounts and start to build your community
• What are your goals
• What are the steps required to meet those goals
• What other internal or external help you’ll need

At this point, you’re really doing a full assessment of where the company is in social media. Find out what your strengths are, where the holes are in your knowledge and determine the best way to fill those gaps. Here is where you’ll also be appointing someone (or two or three) that have the capabilities to lead the company’s social media efforts.

From here, look to what how you can start to create a community, stay in touch with them and provide them with information, content and response to their feedback.

Then, start: get the Facebook and Twitter accounts going, check in daily, put up links on your website to direct people to the new social media outposts. At the outset, once the accounts are set-up (should take a very short amount of time), the initial involvement might be a few minutes a day. As you see more of your community finding you, you’ll have more opportunity to ask questions, look for feedback and find ways to respond to their comments and questions.

If You Feel There’s a LOT More You Could be Doing

GET CREATIVE: If you’re past the first few baby steps described above, this is where you can start to get creative with your postings. Take note of what other companies that ‘get’ social media do. Riff off of their efforts. Come up with ways to creatively produce short videos that show the human side of your company, such as this one from gDiapers that was a video birthday present where employees described what they liked about their boss Kim.

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