Thinking Aloud!
In my previous blog two days ago about the importance for organizations to understand their conversation ecosystems and their organic inbound and outbound communication channels, I had a good friend who told me that as much as he liked my postings so far (thank goodness!!!), he nevertheless felt that I ought to move away from the theoretical discussions and move into the application and tactical aspect of things. Oops…
Well, I heard you, my friend.
So here’s another ‘Thinking Aloud’ piece on a topic of great interest – what it takes to piece an organizational social media and communication roadmap together – that I’ll try to walk through as a practical exercise and I really hope to have your thoughts and feedback, especially since it’s a work-in-progress…
No Silver Bullet
I think for organizations that are just starting to awaken to the potential of social media as a conventional communication and listening channel, it'll seem frustrating and daunting. Just where do they start? How do they proceed? What element should go into the plan? Did I say plan? What plan???
As I trawled the Wed for examples of social media roadmap templates, I must say these have been far and few between. Why?
I suspect that one reason is because there is no silver bullet when it comes to developing such roadmaps, since things would depend on the organization’s resources, goals and target audiences.
So, instead of talking at the tactical framework level, most practitioners may instead prefer to discuss things at a broader level (i.e. recognizing the importance of social media, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the tools available) and leave it to the organizations to make their own plans.
Still, being a startup to this field myself, I think it is intuitively instructive to have a framework of sorts to orientate our discussions, so here is my view of what the first cut of an organization’s communication roadmap ought to include.
The overarching framework to follow is heavily influenced by what I picked up from SEO Marketer and blogger Lorna Li of Green Marketing 2.0. She talks about a 6-step social media roadmap on her personal blog that I find is extremely useful as a trigger in thinking about our own plans.
The template in this post is a greatly repurposed and adapted version of her roadmap, fused with my own understanding of areas that should receive heavier focus and attention.
A Mix of the Old and New – A Communication 2.0 Perspective
I’m a firm believer that most organizations today are well-drilled in the conventional ways of communication (e.g. through the media, community relations, etc), but need to find a structured way of approaching social media tools and their integration into the corporation’s communication matrix, so I have chosen to call this a Communication 2.0 Roadmap (instead of limiting it as a social media roadmap) to reflect a the need to have a balanced mix of the old and new.
Still, you’ll find that this discussion is slanted more towards new media because that’s where we need to work on, right?
So here goes…
Ingredients that go into the Roadmap
When planning their communication roadmap and making their initial strides towards social media integration, organizations must always keep three areas in mind:
GOALS – what the goals are, whether it is PR, leadership positioning, awareness, conversion, etc;
AUDIENCE – who and where the audience are (including what and where their main spheres of conversations are found); and
RESOURCES – availability of personnel from the organization to support the communication needs.
With these three aspects in perspective, I think it is useful to think of the roadmap in three phases: (1) the preliminary activities, (2) the development of the roadmap proper, and (3) the follow-up activities.
The fleshing out of the difference phases is as follows:
Phase I – Preliminary Activities
- Educate
* Understand what social media is all about
- How it complements traditional communication tools
* Knowing the basics
- The capabilities and limitations of the tools available in the market
* Understand the scope of social media
- What it can help the firm achieve, and what it can't do.
Phase II – Development of Roadmap
- Research and Planning
* Determine where conversations are happening (the organization’s communication ecosystem)
- Conversations in the conventional/traditional realm
- Conversations in the social media realm
* Determine corporate assets available for Communication 2.0
- Where the main communication ‘think tank’ will be sited
- Who the organizational ambassadors are
>> Who's geared for offline communication/engagement
>> Who's suited for online communication/engagement
* Strategic development of core messages/narratives
- List issues, practices and plans of individual departments that may be of interest to public
- Flesh out a list of core/principle or organizational positions on various issues, get these ‘talking points’ approved, and make them known to the organizational ambassadors
- Continuous environmental monitoring, updating and refreshing of the ‘issues’ list for relevancy
- Paralleled development of issues that can provide knowledge leadership positions in the market, based on the services and products of the organization’s core business
* Development of overarching corporate guidelines on public engagement and communication
* Chart out the organization’s main inbound/outbound communication routes (to understand how organization’s messages or positions are ‘getting out there’ and how it’s receiving feedback from the community)
- Segmenting the conversation ecosystem by types and categories (e.g. blogs, social networks, social news sites, forums), segmentation by target audience, and segmentation by topical interest
>> What are the main outbound communication channels
-- Traditional/conventional outbound routes
-- Shortlisted outbound new media/social networking channels
>> What are the main inbound communication channels
-- List the traditional/conventional inbound routes
-- List the shortlisted inbound new media/social networking channels
- Rule of thumb
>> Be wary when outbound channels outnumber inbound channels
>> Use a mix of traditional and new media for inbound/outbound channels
- Integrate and Experience
* Seek and cultivate
- After identifying where the main spheres of conversations relative to the organization are, it is time to ‘step in,’ listen, and participate.
- Organizational ambassadors will be tactically engaged in these communities in ongoing dialogues and relationship building
>> Need to be armed to ‘approved’ list of organizational ‘talking points’
>> Need to understand areas where knowledge leadership can be offered
>> External communication and engagement based on corporate guidelines
- Other tactical relationship management measures
>> Identifying ‘A-List’ of online/offline thought leaders
>> Engaging guest bloggers/participating as guest blogger, etc
- Ties in with corporate social media marketing strategies
>> Leverage organization’s market position or content leadership
>> UGC to enhance dialogue via blogs, social networks, wikis, etc
- Monitor & Measure
* Building on online/offline reputation management system (offline approaches will not be discussed here!) - Develop buzz monitoring (process of online reputation monitoring)
- Keep the monitoring process simple
- Some approaches to take include:
>> Signing up for Google Alerts
>> Monitoring of blogs
~ Google Blog Search
~ Technorati
>> Tracking conversations and message boards
~ Board Tracker
>> Make use of RSS to bring news and developments to the end-user
Phase III – Follow-up Activities
- Maintenance
* Building trust and relationships
- Online/offline events to build relationships with different communities
- Foster understanding with thought leaders from different communities
- Etc
* Building internal capabilities
- Personnel development courses (local and overseas)
- Hosting forums and communities of practice on New Media/Web 2.0
- Etc
- Innovation
* Continuous monitoring of new developments in the social media scene
* Experimenting with new networking platforms for usability