Waltzing Matilda

What was first, the chicken or the egg? Or translated to the world of social media – what should come first, the strategy or their use? While at university they teach us that one should first develop a strategy on the basis of which communication activities should be conducted, this somehow fails to translate to the professional world.  

It is not unusual to have your boss tell you to start using social media because others use them. Many organisations are afraid they might miss on something if they don’t go social. They are right. But there is no point in going social unless it helps you achieve your organisational goals and reach your target audience.

There are few organisations that have a social media strategy with clearly defined target audience, objectives and evaluation methods. When talking about target groups they most often mention the general audience. But does anyone actually know who a general audience is? I don’t. It might be a bit hard to target someone who you don’t really know.

When it comes to objectives situation isn’t any better. People’s most common response to why they want to use social media is because they are hip, price-efficient and everybody uses them. Even if you come across strategies with set objectives, they usually say something like, we want to share our content or reach the young, which says nothing about what they want to achieve by doing that.  

It gets worse when it comes to evaluation. Even though many organisations seem to stress the importance of ROI, it is impossible to measure your success without a previously specified target audience and SMART objectives. It’s like a jigsaw – you can’t expect to see the whole picture if you miss a few pieces.

I have been asking the question of why organisations don’t use social media strategically over and over again, but to date I haven’t found the answer. However, I have come up with a few possible reasons which I would like to share with you:

• They don’t take social media seriously and are convinced that traditional communication rules don’t really apply here.

• Their use of social media is no different from their use of other media – they just don’t know how to develop a strategy.
• Employees responsible for social media often face internal challenges when trying to convince their superiors about the value of social media. Even when they succeed, they are usually very limited in what they can do and have to fight for resources.
• They don’t know yet how to use social media strategically and are trying to figure it out.

Tell me what you think about it. I am looking forward to hearing your opinion and experience with the issue. 

Posted by Alenka

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