On Thursday June 27th I gave a talk at Social Media Day Belgium on social media strategy. Teased by one of the event’s hashtags, #socialbitchness, I decided to spice it up a little bit and take a stroll down the dark side of the moon, where I myself used to live some years ago. Right before struggling with companies investing real money on social media. Money you can count, as it goes down the drain, while you measure «fans increase» and talk about how great Pinterest is.
Below you can find the presentation -don’t miss the after event pictures too. But a keynote won’t tell that much. An image is not a 1000 words, at least not in this case. So that’s why I am here summing up the 10 commandments any ‘social media manager’ who wants to ruin a brand must keep.
10 commandments to create the worst social media plan ever
1) Bring out the romantic side. Let it go wild on your strategy stage. That side that when thinking of ‘social media’ it instinctively thinks of ‘love, sharing, relationships’. Yes, for some unknown reason, when asked what crossed your mind when you hear ‘medicine’, chances are you’d say ‘healing’. However we tend not to think of achievements, objectives as verbs, if «social media» is the word. And be honest. We do not. Not instinctively.
2) Skip core parts of your social media plan: a) where/who are we? (what are we actually selling? what are we good/less good at?…); b) understanding your target; c) dissecting your competition steps; d) setting goals, objectives and related KPIs; e) gray areas: replies workflow. And focus only on content tactics, the money you need and the phases. And in your own way, too. Keep on reading.
3) Drive a Hummer. Forget about SMART objectives, for these can help you progress on a daily basis towards your aim, and put your performance to the test. We don’t want that, do we? So if your client or board of executives gives you the hummer «we want more sales» or «we want to be known as experts nr.1» just put that on your plan and don’t drill it down to something more useful.
4) Plan as a weather vane. If you haven’t set smart objectives, there’s no way to define the KPIs that would measure each campaign performance. So include ‘orphan metrics‘.
5) Do not, by all means, set tracking schemes. Our mission is to prove nothing. Just publish, share and distribute links like crazy. Open Google Analytics to see numbers of new visitors, types of traffic, and that’s all. Who cares after all about setting a scheme on tagging urls, defining social media and specific referral advanced segments for the web analytics tool, and let us not even go beyond and talk about event tracking.
6) Go on a «social media signing up spree«. Yeah. The average US company is said to have 178 social media corporate accounts. Meet David Ghetta on his new social media dj set.
7) Don’t set a content strategy. Let your content strategy be spray & pray. And pray because you don’t know anything about the real interests of users, you don’t know what you’re actually trying to achieve. So who cares if you’re a social media manager for a human reproduction clinic, go wild with the last mobile facebook contest app and give human eggs as the prize. Oh, and forget about social media calendars, or editorial calendars.
8) ROI? If you are to include that on your social media plan, make sure your ROI part rolls up to the general bullshit (I must admit I’ve been part of too. I am guilty): return on ignoring, return on interaction. Or if you want, talk about general metrics as ROI.
9) You have to think of social media as a whole, so when dealing with ROI, make sure you say something like the ‘roi of social media’ just like ‘roi of TV’. Don’t ever relate ROI to specific tangible actions, for that’s too good for a social media manager, and we wouldn’t accomplish our mission..
10) You are set, free to go. Come on and go wild, driven by serendipity, Pinterest and beautiful conversations. Ain’t life wonderful?
Now, ready for backstage & after events moments?
Thanks @rienvdb and @rik_lagey for the invitation. Thanks for the great pictures, @nanske and @bbonamie.