“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
A Social Perspective
Young businesses usually don’t struggle with social—they follow the cue of their founder or founding team. But as the business grows, social media can become a point of struggle. You hear questions like, “what’s our social strategy?” and “how do we measure this?”
From our perspective, for rapidly scaling tech and energy firms, social media is not a strategy in and of itself—it is a medium, and in many ways a tactical one.
We guide growing businesses through tackling social in productive ways, by facilitating real answers to questions like:
- How can you “micro headline” in meaningful ways?
- How would we know it is meaningful?
- How would we measure the meaningfulness, assuming there was such a meaningfulness to measure?
- How could we track and improve the value of a social outreach program over time?
- How can we get your whole team engaged?
Why social media for your business?
To develop a meaningful, metric-friendly approach for a business social media campaign, we have to consider the medium’s “DNA.” Social media is meant to:
- Connect people
- Inform people
- Celebrate and “chirp”
These three activities are all suitable for companies as well as individuals. When individuals interact with social media, presumably they are projecting a cohesive personality over time. When companies use social media, it’s also critical—maybe even more so—that a cohesive personality is projected and defined.
That’s why defining your brand personality is crucial before a significant social media effort is engaged.
Social media is a reflection of the broader, bigger, deeper vision of your company. It is reflection, not substance. Your organization has to do, be, want or achieve something before we can chirp about it, inform people, connect to it, or reflect. Thus, core brand personality and an industry leadership stance are critical to a successful social program.
The Seven Faces of Social Media
Short, highly personal, completely clickable—the micro headline nature of social media is perfect for fast growth firms. In fact, the following seven faces of social may help you think through how you want to be seen online. B2B and B2C social media is useful for:
- Customer service response, especially complaints
- “Listening” to competitors or customers
- Brochuring or putting perspectives out there
- Mining the social network of customers (you’re friends with my friend? Let’s connect!)
- Broadcasting messages—the microheadlining approach
- Prospecting in a social network
- Recruitment of talent
Social media has tended to “fail” at sales, but interestingly, LinkedIn seems to be a “social solution” to sales oriented networking. So we add:
And as companies grow, they also find social is a terrific water cooler to vet, warn and even woo potential employees. So let’s add:
As you consider your industry leadership stance, and how it supports your people, your partners, and your profit potential, social has a definite resonance. Our team of talented social media facilitators help our clients wade through a sensible message structure and use this tactical medium to full advantage.
Samples from W2M’s Atlanta public relations and copywriting team: