What happens when you don’t plan your use of social media?  The same thing that occurs with any other PR, advertising and marketing communications tactics.  You end up doing the wrong things, at the wrong time, with the wrong focus.

If you don’t plan, you:

• start doing before listening.
• think social media is traditional marketing.
• won’t know how social media fits into your company’s overall strategy.
• don’t recognize how social media should complement your overall marketing strategy.
• won’t know who to engage and where to find your audience.
• can’t know if the bulk of your customers are or are not online.
• won’t know what it is you want to get out of social media.
• approach Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as strategies.
• won’t know the difference between a group page and a fan page on Facebook.
• believe the here-and-there-post approach to blogging will build an audience.
• think the number of fans/followers is the only metric that matters.
• can’t decide who from your company will engage your online audience.
• fail to determine how much time to spend on social media.
• believe you control the message.
• assume that social media tools don’t have a cost.
• ignore setting accurate benchmarks.
• won’t hone your message for simplicity and clarity.
• pass up the opportunity to demonstrate what you know.
• ignore the fact that social media tools are temporary.
• expect to only get when you don’t give.

What would you add to this list?

From JISC infoNet, a JISC Advance Service

What could America’s companies have done to fare better in the economic downturn?

Scenario Planning – a strategic method for preparing responses to imagined changes in conditions. 

 The art of scenario planning is making a comeback from its early days as a military tool, to a popular management practice in the 1970s.  Addressing different scenarios as part of the annual planning process enables companies to be ready with identified action steps before a crisis or opportunity hits. 

It is credited with many seemingly prescient decisions – including the New York Board of Trade’s 1990s decision to build a second trading floor outside of the World Trade Center.

This year, companies that saw the warning signs early and prepared in advance fared better, some even continuing to generate cash despite double-digit sales declines.  Those that are suffering lament that they made changes later than they should have. 

Regardless of how well they weathered the storm, many companies are now reporting increased productivity, despite fewer employees, with a relatively low percentage planning to re-hire anytime soon.  That’s a negative for the unemployed, but a positive for the companies.  It means they’ve found ways to work smarter not harder (a silver lining?).

How Well Do You Plan For the Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Scenario planning is a world unto its own, with complicated methodologies and potential dangers (such as constructing scenarios based on too simplistic a difference, i.e. optimistic and pessimistic, according to this Scenario Planning Corporate Strategy Model*.  

Having survived 2009, you may decide to do more future thinking.  Here are some quick questions you’re likely already asking:

• What’s working, and not working, as a result of any changes made this year?

• What should be continued?

• What could use further improvement?

• What wasn’t looked at, that should be?

• How about new opportunities or market trends on the horizon?  Can your company get ahead of the New Year with aggressive effort now?

Planning of any kind takes time and focus.  Planning for multiple scenarios, even more.  But this is planning season.  Whether the business climate improves as predicted, tanks further or stays the same, prepare to act quickly!

* For more detailed reading on the subject, see:

How scenario planning can significantly reduce strategic risks and boost value in the innovation value chain

Future-Proof Your Organization, CEO Journal, Oct. 2008

The Secrets of Successful Scenario Planning, Forbes Aug. 2009

www.scenariothinking.org

It’s not your fault.

It seems like effectively communicating with your market gets more complex by the hour (even for those of us who have been at it for 25 years).

A single tactic; throwing money at multiple tactics and seeing what sticks; or any effort completed without both a tight grip on the marketplace AND a clear objective are all examples of a silver bullet mentality.

Yes we know … marketing 101, right?  Surprisingly few businesses apply what they know about people who do buy from them, or apply any real strategy whatsoever.  Apply is the key verb.

Amazing, but true.  And we have the stories, as well as lessons for those who seek to make their marketing do more than it did last year.

Starting with our premise – that your marketing should be a continual process of educating your customers and prospects about the value of your product or service – what exactly are some of the rules that will take you on the road to being a better marketer?

Let’s begin at the beginning.  Whenever we critique a client’s marketing materials – be it PR, web site, brochure, presentation, social media approach, etc. – we always find room for improving the following:

• Presenting your company and its services in compelling language that is relevant to the buyer
• Being crystal clear in showing how you differ from competitors
• Regularly expressing and reinforcing the value you bring, even to current customers
• Persuading, not just stating, features and benefits
• Getting your market’s attention.  This applies to content as well as how the message is delivered

There is so much to be said on all of the above, and many more key points we’ve learned in working with dozens of companies of all sizes.   All of it – the insight into why your customers buy; the analysis and creation of proper, strong brand messages; the new campaigns to take your message out to the market; the integration and cohesion of all your marketing tools — takes time and effort.

But the payoff will be your company in the spotlight, getting the attention you’ve worked for, and the envy of your competitors.