The Social Media Bandwagon: Presence vs. Strategy

By James Nicholson

Social media has become as much a part of our business environment as it has our personal lives. It’s in every new business proposal, every tradeshow, every job posting, every website.

The communications industry is getting it too. In the eyes of PR practitioners in particular, social media is a powerful tool, a great opportunity, perhaps the future of communications.

If social media was a device, it’d outsell the iPad. If it was a reality show, it might actually be entertaining. If it was a movie…well, actually it is.

Attention! The bandwagon is still accepting late jumpers!

A recent article by Brian Solis highlights an issue that all too often gets lost in the mad rush to participate online.

Whether or not PR practitioners have grown entirely accustomed to using it, social media is nonetheless increasingly expected to be part of a communications strategy. And so they get to work – boldly going where almost everyone else has already gone before. They start Tweeting about business successes, participate in online forums and create a company or client Facebook page. Then they sit back and breathe easy. There, they tell themselves, now we have a Social Media Strategy.

Solis points out that this is far from the case. A social media presence is not the same as a social media strategy. Far from it. Without goals, objectives or even coordinated purpose behind these efforts, they are nothing more than a Band-Aid on a wound that really needs stitches – designed to address the social media deficiency, but not actually deal with it.

The same thought process for creating traditional media communications are applicable to social media strategies. Set a goal for our communications then establish strategies to achieve that goal. We define measurable objectives for each strategy then develop the tactics that we will use to achieve those objectives. This is also known as strategic planning.

Marketing communications for business-to-business companies is challenging because the subject matter is often technical and the sales cycle is long.  Planning and patience – not just a series of Tweets or posts – is crucial in this industry.

Jumping on the bandwagon is fine. But do yourself a favor and look before you leap.

James Nicholson is an Account Manager at ABI marketing public relations. You can reach him at +1 212-529-2543 and jnicholson@abipr.com.

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