Daily Bytes: A Pre-Thanksgiving Strategy Helping from Jay Deragon
Posted on Wed, Nov 25, 2009
OK I missed blogging yesterday and I am just finishing today’s post before midnight on Wednesday! I have been swamped with moving and working. So Wednesday this week is about Strategy and that will be it for this week as I take time to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday and cherish the many blessings I enjoy in my own life. So, now onto strategy. Jay Deragon of The Relationship Economy blog has provided great perspectives on strategy in his recent Social Media Directions series. Through the series, he argues that the internet is changing all strategies, creating a need for a new type of strategy – the social strategy which defines how an organization can better “relate and communicate” with all its constituents.
Here is an overview of few of Jay’s posts [in somewhat of a different order than Jay used in his series] on the emerging world of social strategy:
Old Strategies No Longer Work!
Strategy traditionally (and for many companies still) has been about building strategies from inside the company walls, with a heavy reliance on market strategy and competitive analysis. Traditional media has been a helpful partner creating messages targeted at their defined markets. Jay argues that strategy is no longer about how a company defines the market. The internet has change everything and has made it about the real-time conversations of consumers. These real-time conversations include consumer ratings, blogs, and social media comments. It is also about consumer reliance on search about companies and their products. This reality can have real consequences. As Jay points out, “one angry customer can reach 3,000 people at the click of a mouse.” Traditional strategic methods were not built around the “click of the mouse”, now forcing businesses to look doing strategy differently.
So If Old Strategies No Longer Work, What is Your Social Strategy?
As written above, social strategy defines how an organization can better “relate and communicate” with all its constituents. This is in contrast to traditional strategy design which focuses on organizational alignments, e.g. . “organizational design, culture, leadership, management, communications, marketing, technology, human relations, finance and market research.” Social strategy focuses on 1) mapping out how your organization currently relates and communicates to its constituencies and 2) researching what, how, when, where and why the market may be discussing your organization, its products, services and people.
So You Have a Social Srategy: Do You Have a Strategy for Social Media ROI?
Social Media ROI is a hotly debated structure. Yet getting management on board on a social media strategy does require demonstrating what are the bottom line results for investing in and deploying a social strategy? However, Jay argues that social strategy ROI is less about focusing on the result and more focused on the intent. ” Intent is revealed and reflected by your communications, your relationships and your depth of knowledge of both. Intent is transparent as is the knowledge used to create and deliver on intents.” Jay uses this recent video from Erik Qualman [covered in Daily Bytes on November 18] to give context to the subject of ROI:
For more defined bottom-line information to present to your management on your social strategy plan, I recommend using today’s blog post from HubSpot entitled Companies Engaging in Social Media Have Higher Financial Performance.
As a final wrap to this Pre-Thanksgiving Strategy Helping from Jay Deragon, I also recommend watching this Social Strategy presentation he posted on You Tube.
Finally, have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I will be back next Monday.