On This Page: Avoiding the Meatball Sundaes | Social Media Planning | Your Social Media Plan
Considering taking your brand into the social media arena? First evaluate the social media channels you are contemplating engaging and then cross-reference your current brand position and marketing action plan. How well do they mix - like ice cream and hot fudge or are you on the road to making a "meatball sundae"?
avoiding the meatball sundae
Marketing guru Seth Godin created this term to graphically illustrate what can happen when a brand storms ahead into social media without adjusting its traditional marketing concepts, plans or even brand position. Like any other brand communication vehicle, social media doesn't always fit with every brand product or service and entering the arena can sometimes do more harm than good. This is especially true if there has been no planning as to how it will be rolled out.
social media planning
In traditional marketing concepts, you would not launch into a hundred-thousand-dollar television campaign without some research and assumption there would be a return on investement. Social media is no different, it is just a different medium with far shorter attention spans some 50 years later. Social media is about your story and what people will say to you and more importantly about you to their people.
Quickly you start to see that entering social media is more like planning an expedition than throwing a few words into a "What's Happening Now?" box on a website. Much internal ground work should be laid out first and a Social Media Policy created that include:
- Who is in charge of managing the social media plan
- Who will be responsible for starting the conversations
- What it the policy in handling rude comments or negative opinons (justified or not)
- How will you inspire people to take action
- How will you measure the program(s) for success
