I'm now in the midst of refining the first draft of the social media roadmap template that I first blogged about on 28 Mar 2009, and I thought it'll be interesting to keep you updated on what's transpiring so far. So here's an excerpt from my current work...
When planning its communication roadmap and making their initial strides towards social media competency, organizations must keep in mind the 4 factors of Goals, Influencers, Resources and Integration (adapted from Li, 2007; Breakenridge, 2009, personal communication).
In a sense, think of this as part of strategic communication planning that entails a very careful internal and eternal stakeholder/influencer analysis before charting out the rest of the plan. Remember that gaining traction with your communities and their conversations require more than just getting on board various social media applications, and strategic planning at this juncture will be a critical part of communication success!
Refer to the graphic below (click here for enlarged version on Scribd) for an illustration:
Seeing Things in Perspective
The next illustration below places the four factors of Goals, Influencers, Resources and Integration into perspective. Using the orange node to represent the organization you belong to, think of the critical elements of integration goals and resources as subsets of the organizational system due to their inherent functions as part of its internal processes and systems. The influencers are in the wider environment that the organization exists in (so in a sense, this has a hint of the Social Media Ecosystem by Deb Schultz).
Red lines map the conventional approach of getting messages heard – i.e. via the media, which then retells the message via news stories to other ‘groups’ like the customers, lay public, partners, etc. But notice that each ‘targeted’ group actually has its own sphere or community of dialogue where their conversations occur (some which overlap with that of other groups). The aim then, is for us as communication professionals to understand where these ‘other’ conversations are going on, and then build a direct connection to support direct ‘1-to-1’ dialogue (as Brian Solis puts it) as represented by the blue double-arrowhead lines.
This is still a work in progress for me, so please feel free to tell me if this model is useful in helping you to understand the communication matrix of new and 'old' media that we now have to manage.